Empty Promises

examination to back up his claim. The test, administered by Seattle Police polygraphist Dewey Gillespie, supported his protestations of innocence. He was telling the truth.
    With the cooperation of the Renton Library, the detectives began a tedious search. With no other clues to go on, they could only wonder if someone had seen Carole in the library and decided to follow her down the gravel path when she left. Now they copied down the names of every patron who visited the library on December 15. They found that eight hundred people had passed through the library on the day Carole was killed. Was the killer somewhere on that list?
    Their meticulous backtracking eased—if only for the moment—when a man came forward in response to an appeal for information. “I think it’s possible that I saw that girl’s killer just before it happened,” he said. “My son and I were driving along the river at dusk on December 15.”
    Huebner and Dashnea showed him a photograph of Carole Erickson, and he was sure she was the girl he had seen on the path. But he had also seen a man—a man who was walking several feet behind her. “I doubt that she even knew he was there,” the eyewitness recalled. “He was an adult, I think. Over twenty-one, anyway. He was a white man with dark hair combed straight back and a pompadour in front. He wore a long-sleeved windbreaker jacket and ‘Beatle’ boots that came up over his trouser cuffs. I’m sure he was aware of me because he ducked his head and turned his face away when he saw me.”
    The man regretted now that he hadn’t warned the girl, but he had no idea she was in danger. Working with a Seattle Police Department artist, he described the man he’d seen on the river path. Gradually, a composite sketch emerged. It was done in profile, the angle at which he’d seen the man. That was all he could recall, at least consciously. He readily agreed to submit to a session with a hypnotist in the hope that there was more information locked in his memory that he might be able to tap into. Disappointingly, the hypnosis elicited no further information.
    Working on the theory that murderers seldom report for work the day after their crimes, the Renton detectives obtained absentee reports from the Boeing Company for December 16. Their murder investigation took place well before the computer era. A computer would have made their search much easier, but the principle of winnowing out non-suspects was the same. First, they eliminated all females, then non-Caucasians, and finally individuals whose age didn’t match that of the man on the path. The names that were left were matched against the eight hundred library patrons. Names that popped up on both lists were examined and culled. In the end, they questioned more than two hundred individuals and arranged for ten polygraph examinations.
    Despite their efforts, the name they were seeking didn’t drop out of the mass of information. A sad Christmas passed, and the identity of Carole Adele Erickson’s slayer remained a mystery.
    All through the spring and summer that followed, the investigation continued with no tangible results. By fall, reports on the investigation of Carole Erickson’s murder were relegated to occasional newspaper updates. For everyone but those who had loved her, her murder was old news—but the Renton detectives still followed every possible lead that came their way.
    Seventeen-year-old Joann Marie Zulauf, who lived just outside the Renton city limits, felt no trepidation about taking a late Sunday afternoon walk by herself on September 20. The pretty teenager waved to a neighbor before she turned onto a deeply wooded path, one of many that crisscrossed a ravine in the Renton Highlands that led down to Honey Creek. The neighbor watched the blue-jean-clad teenager disappear into the trees, waited a few moments, and then himself headed down one of the sylvan trails. He didn’t see Joann, but he didn’t think anything about it; the area was a jungle of blackberry bushes, alder saplings, and evergreens as the path meandered down to the creek.
    In fact, he didn’t think of Joann again until hours later, when her worried parents began to search the neighborhood and asked him if he had seen her. The Sunday dinner hour had come and gone and the tiny brunette girl had not come home. The night passed and the sun rose without anyone finding any sign of Joann. Her mother and stepfather and neighbors searched steadily for