Don’t Look Behind You

Edmonds and had become lost on his way home from Everett; he was only coming up the hill in an effort to find the road home.
    There was no further conversation. Captain Neuert then received information from the officers at Linda’s residence that the suspect had had a Polaroid camera, and Neuert located the case for a Polaroid in the back of the white Chevrolet behind the driver’s seat and the camera itself under the right front seat.
    Neuert and Detective Wally Tribuzio transported the suspect to the Edmonds Police Department for further questioning.
    The man was twenty-five-year-old Thomas G. Barrington—the same man Tribuzio had arrested the previous December in the Bali Hai Sauna robbery! Looking at the mug shot taken in that case—sans mustache—Detective Marian McCann could see why it might be difficult for a victim to identify it as a likeness of the man before her.
    Barrington signed a rights waiver and talked to Detective McCann. He said that he was unmarried, had lived with his parents since the previous October. He explained that he was in an alcohol treatment program and was also addicted to heroin, and “would be hurting soon.”
    Barrington told Detective McCann that he had started seeing a psychiatrist and had had one appointment. He readily admitted the charges against him in the Bali Hai Sauna case and said he had been convicted of robbery only—not the rape charge—a few weeks before. But he didn’t remember it—his mind had “blacked out,” he said. He was employed at a Seattle newspaper and worked nights. He repeated the phrase that so many of his suspected victims had heard: “I need help.”
    At that point, Barrington requested permission to callhis attorney, and it was granted. There, the interview stopped.
    Detective McCann called Detective Sedy of Snohomish County and told him of the arrest of Barrington. Since Sedy had been investigating so many similar assaults in his county, he was elated to hear the news.
    Detectives Robin Hickok and Marian McCann transported Barrington, and he was booked into the Snohomish County Jail.
    With the help of Snohomish County deputy prosecuting attorney Tom Wynne, a search warrant was obtained for Barrington’s parents’ home. The parents were extremely cooperative, although understandably stricken at the charges against their son. They had tried repeatedly to obtain psychiatric help for him, and he was presently being seen at a VA hospital. Everything had seemed to be better for the man who had come home from service in Vietnam a changed man. Beyond his psychiatric problems—drinking and drugs—Barrington had had surgery for a cancerous testicle; it had been removed. Whether this particular kind of surgery might have been enough to have any influence at all in turning a man into a compulsive sexual criminal is a question that only a top team of psychiatrists could determine—if, indeed, even they could.
    Asked if Barrington owned a Polaroid camera, his parents said he didn’t—but they did. However, when they looked for it, they found it was missing.
    The physical evidence against Thomas Barrington mounted steadily. When Detective Tribuzio searched him,he found a pair of turquoise panties trimmed with lace in the suspect’s pants pocket—a “souvenir” from the attack on Linda Miller.
    Officer Terry Minnihan, searching the probable escape route from Linda’s home to Barrington’s vehicle, found three Polaroid photos showing a woman with a pillowcase over her head, a woman wearing different panties in each shot.
    When Barrington’s car was processed, a large buck knife was found under the cardboard flooring of the white Chevrolet. The Chevrolet was registered to Barrington’s father, but McCann learned that his brother-in-law owned an orange van.
    A canvass of the neighborhood where Linda lived turned up two fourteen-year-old girls who had been frightened by a man answering Barrington’s description just before the attack on Linda Miller. He had parked and stared at them so intently that they had run for home as fast as they could.
    The long hunt by detectives from three jurisdictions seemed to be over: Ben Colwell from King County, Ken Sedy from Snohomish County, and the Edmonds police detectives. Still ahead lay a lineup before the women who had been attacked. This was set for July 6, 1977. The handsome suspect shaved off his Fu Manchu mustache before his lineup; it did little good.
    When Tom Barrington stepped forward from the