Don’t Look Behind You

and fearful. This benefits no one but the sex criminal.
    It was near closing time—nine p.m.—at the huge Northgate Mall on May 13 when the rapist came out of hiding again.
    Lynn Rutledge* walked toward her new car, which she had parked near the Bon Marché store. She had just put her purse on the backseat when she sensed that someone had walked up behind her. It was a man who was mutteringsome words she didn’t understand. Then she realized that he was telling her to hand over her purse.
    “I’ve only got two dollars left,” she answered, and tossed her keys out onto the parking lot to divert attention. She kicked the stranger as he pushed her toward her car. Angry, he called her, “Bitch!” as he retrieved the keys.
    “Get in the car,” the man ordered. When Lynn didn’t react quickly enough, he struck her in the face twice. He pushed her into the passenger seat and got into the driver’s seat. Brutally, he forced her head toward the floor. “Keep it down,” he barked.
    It was full dark as the man drove away from the lot, and he seemed satisfied that no one had noticed them. He drove to the corner of North 95th Street and Fremont Avenue North and ordered Lynn out of the car, pointing toward a thick cluster of bushes.
    After he put his own shirt over her eyes, Lynn’s abductor ripped her blouse down the front, tearing the buttons off. Then he stripped off the rest of her clothes. He spread them on the ground and directed her to lie down on them.
    And then he raped her.
    When he had finished, he allowed Lynn to get dressed, and he made her walk in front of him back to her car. As he drove back to the Northgate Mall, her attacker said he had friends waiting for him there.
    He apologized to her, and he told her he had a wife and child.
    “I’m sorry I had to hit you,” he said, almost pleading for forgiveness. “I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
    “Not really,” she murmured, praying that he would see his friends and let her go. But when they got back to the mall, he couldn’t find his friends.
    “I guess they left without him,” Lynn Rutledge told Joyce Johnson later. “That made him really upset.”
    Now Lynn’s nightmare began a replay.
    “Get your head down, bitch,” the tall man snarled, calling her “bitch” again and again. He drove around aimlessly, perhaps looking for his friends—if they ever really existed. Lynn could see him well now. He looked to be about twenty-five, was tall and slender, and had a medium-length, sloppy, grown-out shag haircut and a small mustache. She studied him covertly, memorizing every detail of his clothes. He wore a white pull-on shirt with short sleeves and a three-quarter zipper and light-colored brushed denim jeans. And well-worn cowboy boots.
    The nervous rapist talked continually. “Would you believe I have a college education?” he asked, and Lynn nodded, figuring that flattery might save her. He told her he had majored in sociology and then served in Vietnam, where he’d become hooked on heroin.
    “The army didn’t help me, so now I have a three-hundred-dollar-a-day habit. I was a parole officer before I was drafted.
    “Don’t you think I look like Peter Fonda?” he asked. “You know, Henry Fonda’s son?”
    “Yes, you do,” Lynn said, adding, “but you’re better looking. You shouldn’t have to kidnap a girl—you could easily find lots of them that wanted to go out with you.”
    Trying to be sympathetic to his drug addiction, she suggested that he might try the methadone program.
    “I tried it, but they couldn’t help me even though I want to quit.”
    Lynn Rutledge’s mind raced as she tried to keep her kidnapper talking and, at the same time, agree with him. It was a delicate balance. She was afraid of what he might do next. But none of her talking was doing any good.
    She realized that the handsome rapist was heading her car right back to the same corner where he’d attacked her before. She balked at walking into the berry patch again because she’d lost her shoes. That made him mad, and he started calling her “bitch” again as he pushed her into the bushes. His emotions were mercurial and he was instantly violent again. He punched Lynn twice in the face, and then he picked her up and threw her bodily farther into the brush.
    Even through her fear, Lynn was reminded of a child who was having a tantrum. She had tried everything to placate him, but all of her amateur psychology had