Don’t Look Behind You

group of men who were similar to him in height, weight, coloring, and age, he was asked to repeat phrases—phrases thevictims would never forget: “I am sorry, lady, I’m sick. I need help.” “I’ve come to rape you.” “This is a rape—”
    Linda Miller, Tula French, Jill Whaley, and Dorian Bliss positively identified Thomas Barrington as the man who had attacked them. “There simply isn’t any doubt,” Jill said.
    Later, although Ashley Varner, the young woman who had been attacked in the Edmonds church, was unable to pick Barrington in the lineup, Barrington himself admitted to Detective McCann that that, too, was his crime.
    Thomas Barrington subsequently pleaded guilty to first-degree rape in the case of Linda Miller, first-degree burglary in the attack on Tula French, and armed robbery in the Bali Hai Sauna case. He received a twenty-year sentence in each case with a ten-year minimum—to run consecutively. That meant that he had at least thirty years to serve on Snohomish County charges.
    On September 30, he pleaded guilty to first-degree rape in the Jill Whaley attack in King County and received a life maximum sentence, fifteen-year minimum sentence. If this sentence ran consecutively to the Snohomish County sentences, it would be at least forty-five long years before Thomas Barrington saw the world outside prison walls.
    One thing will continue to puzzle Detective Marian McCann: She could never get Barrington to tell her how he picked his victims—how he knew they would be alone, why he almost always chose pretty young housewives with small children. Did he stalk them, or were they only spur-of-the-momentchoices? He took incredible chances at being discovered—or did he? Did he think his only adversaries were helpless women and children? Did he forget that some of the best detectives in three departments were after him and would surely catch up with him? It is now only conjecture; Barrington’s yearlong reign of terror is over.

PART TWO
THE HANDSOME RAPIST
    Despite the current proliferation of books, articles, and television shows about rapists, there are still many laymen who believe that most sex offenders attack women because they are losers in the dating game, men too unattractive to obtain sex through socially acceptable means. Not true. Many rapists are good-looking enough to pick and choose among the female population. But they don’t get sexual satisfaction through intercourse with a willing female. Rather, they are turned on by the terror they evoke by grabbing a woman by force in the dark, making her submit, and, for some, the thrill they get when they hear the satisfying crunch of their fists against a soft cheek.
    These are the men who most alarm sex assault detectives. The psychic scars left by a “gentle” rapist are bad enough; the injuries helpless women suffer at the hands of a punitive rapist tend to increase with each attack and very often result in the death of a victim.
    The man who terrorized Seattle women for four months through the winter and spring of 1980 was a good-lookingex-con who liked to brag that he looked like actor Peter Fonda. He expected compliments on his sexual prowess and technique, although he left his pretty victims bruised and battered. There was a definite pattern to his attacks, but, unfortunately, several women had to suffer utter terror before that pattern began to emerge.
    Ordinarily, Kitty Amela,* nineteen, would not have been out so late on a Sunday night, but on February 16, 1975, the young nurse had a visit to make after finishing her late shift in the emergency room of a north end hospital. Her fiancé was in the hospital, about to undergo emergency surgery, and she stayed with him until after one a.m., when he was wheeled away to the operating room. Then she left to go home for a few hours of sleep before she came back to sit beside him when he awakened from the anesthetics.
    Kitty lived with her family in a quiet residential neighborhood, but her relatives were away for the weekend. She had carefully left the lights and radio on at home so that it wouldn’t seem quite so much like coming back alone to an empty house in the wee hours of the morning.
    The porch light was on, and she felt safe as she drove into her own driveway. She set the emergency brake and jumped out of the car to lock the doors. It was very still, but only for a few moments. As she headed for the front door, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned around, but