Empty Promises

the home and yard with yellow crime-scene tape and sent for a homicide team.
    While a police radio operator was alerting the oncall sergeant, Don Cameron, the officers inspected the exterior doors and windows of the home. There was no sign of forced entry, and Joseph Reilly assured them that the doors and windows had been locked when the family went to bed the night before. He had double-checked them himself.
    Understandably, the Reillys were nearly overwhelmed with shock and grief, and their priest hurried over to give what comfort he could to the family who were now confined to the kitchen while the police began their investigation. Lorraine Reilly’s brother, Arnold Brown, crouched on his heels next to the refrigerator, his large brown eyes fixed on the opposite wall. Antsy and tense, he made several trips to the bathroom to wash his hands.
    Nobody was acting normal—but it was a far from normal situation. Only Jannie’s little brother, Max, slept on, unaware that his world had changed forever.
    It was 4:36 A.M. when Don Cameron called his crew—Danny Melton and John Nordlund—at home. Then he left for the crime scene. The three detectives arrived at the Reilly home shortly after 5:00 A.M. and tried to make some sense of what had happened. The house was warm and homey, but the Reillys were obviously not at all wealthy. Why would someone choose their home to invade?
    Cameron asked the Reillys what they remembered of the previous night. Had they heard or seen anything out of the ordinary? Shaking his head as if waking from a nightmare, Joseph Reilly said that everything had been completely routine the night before—until Arnold woke him in the wee hours of the morning. “He said he had walked past Jannie’s room and she wasn’t there,” Reilly recalled. “We immediately began to search for her.”
    He and Arnold had hurried to the backyard, accompanied by the family dog. “Our dog immediately went to the right with his tail wagging, and then he went to the corner of the fence,” Reilly said. “I looked over the fence, and that’s when I saw Jannie over on the other side of the fence, lying on the ground.”
    Reilly said he scaled the fence and ran to his daughter, who was lying on her side in a fetal position. He lifted her and carried her in his arms, while Arnold wrenched a section of the fence out with his bare hands so that Reilly could bring Jannie through. She felt warm and soft, like herself, and he thought she had only been walking in her sleep. But he couldn’t figure out how she had gotten over the fence.
    He tried to fight down the panic that kept bubbling up. Jannie’s body was very still, and she wasn’t making a sound. The horrified father called out to his wife as he ran toward the house, shouting for her to call 911. They laid Jannie on the couch and covered her with a blanket while Arnold ran out to watch for the paramedics.
    Arnold Brown explained to the trio of detectives that he was not a regular member of the Reilly household; he had arrived only three days earlier and was visiting from Eugene, Oregon, where he lived with his parents and his other sisters. “I’m only going to stay and visit about ten days,” he said.
    Arnold said that he’d spent the previous evening at the Reillys’ house, except for a short stroll from 10:30 to 11:00, when he took their dog for a walk. After that, he stayed up late watching television while the Reillys went to bed.
    “How was it that you noticed Jannie was missing?” Don Cameron asked.
    “Well, I watched TV upstairs until about two-thirty and then I went down to my room to watch on my set there,” he answered. “I got thirsty and started upstairs to get a glass of water, and I noticed that Jannie wasn’t in her bed, but Max was there. That’s when I went and woke up my sister and brother-in-law and we started to look for her. I helped Joseph over the fence, and then went to where I thought there was a gate, but there wasn’t any, so I just pulled the fence apart.”
    Dr. John Eisele, assistant King County medical examiner, arrived to examine the victim’s body at 7:15 A.M. He agreed with the investigators that the reddish purple mark on her neck indicated that some kind of ligature had been tightened around her throat with terrific force.
    There was very little in the way of physical evidence. Eisele found a few single hairs inside the victim’s red panties. They appeared to be pubic hairs and they were much darker than her