Empty Promises

in the last moments of their lives. Only Susan had lived to speak of it.
    True to his opening statement, Prosecutor Metcalf presented dozens of witnesses who retraced the fatal journey of Braun and Maine.
    First, Denny Buse described his wife’s last day on earth. The young husband was dismissed as a witness after he identified pictures of Deanna and their Buick Skylark. As Buse left the courtroom that day, the prosecution submitted pictures of the victim taken as she lay dead on the ground near Echo Lake. The defendants’ attorneys, Bailey and Hale, argued vociferously that several of them should be kept from the jury because they were “inflammatory.” The pictures, showing the nude victim with her eyes closed and visible bullet wounds to her head, were admitted by Judge McCrea with a few reservations. Hale next argued that “in the interests of good taste” the pictures should be cropped so that the victim’s pubic area would not be shown.
    This motion was denied, and the pictures were shown. Braun and Maine were allowed to see the pictures, and the courtroom quieted as they glanced at the startling photos. Neither defendant showed any emotion.
    Jurors and spectators then experienced an eerie sensation as they watched a seven-minute movie. The showing of the film in the darkened courtroom was prefaced by testimony from Chief Criminal Deputy Ross Jubie, who told of receiving word through the Seattle Police Department that two suspects in Tuolumne County, California, had confessed knowledge of Deanna Buse’s murder. Jubie testified about a telephone conversation he had with Leonard Maine. During that call, Maine had described to him what had happened to the missing woman.
    After finishing her shopping in Redmond, Washington, the young wife had headed for her mother’s home in Monroe along Route 202. Braun and Maine, driving the Borgward, had pulled up beside her and signaled to her that she had a tire that was about to blow out. According to Maine, Mrs. Buse eased her car over to the side of the road. The suspects then pulled in behind her. After walking around her car and finding all her tires in good shape, the young woman turned to face the two strangers with a questioning look, only to be met by the sight of a gun in Braun’s hand. He then ordered her back into her own car, got in with her, and instructed Maine to follow them in the Borgward. Slowly, the two-car caravan proceeded, under Braun’s direction, onto less and less traveled roads until the trio pulled up at the end of the dirt lane leading into the woods near Echo Lake.
    Maine alleged that Braun then disappeared into the woods with his helpless captive. Minutes passed and then Maine told Jubie of hearing five shots ring out in the wilderness. Braun returned to the car alone.
    The film shown to the jurors retraced the route Deanna Buse was forced to drive at gunpoint. Following Maine’s directions, a sheriff’s patrol car drove that route while a deputy sat on the hood of the car with a camera. Those watching the film could not help but put themselves in the place of the terrified woman as the film showed first a well-traveled highway and then focused on side roads and finally on deep woods. The wooded scene—the last thing Deanna saw before she was killed—lingered in the courtroom as the film ended.
    According to Maine, both cars were driven from the scene of the murder but the ancient Borgward had become excess baggage, so they abandoned it on a busy Seattle street. The two men were seen by witnesses removing articles from the Borgward and transferring them to a maroon Buick Skylark.
    Sergeant Tom Hart told the jury that he searched the Borgward, which had been impounded by the Seattle Police Department, on August 23, 1967. Hart found five .22 caliber shell casings in the black foreign car.
    After a weekend recess, the first witness to be heard on Monday morning, November 9, was an uncle of co-defendant Leonard Maine. The uncle, a resident of Fife, Washington, twenty-two miles south of Seattle, told about a visit from his nephew and a friend during the afternoon of August 19, 1967. The two arrived in a 1964 or 1965 Buick and asked him the quickest way to get to Portland, Oregon. The uncle could not identify Maine’s companion during the visit.
    The next witness shed some light upon the frame of mind Leonard Maine was in on that grim Saturday. The pretty woman who lived next door to another uncle of Maine’s and who told the jury she