Empty Promises

measure respiration, blood pressure, pulse, galvanic skin response, perspiration. A number of people are convinced it can somehow read human thought. It is certainly an intimidating machine.
    Gary Grant was far from sophisticated, and he was already sweating and mumbling.
    When the tests were evaluated, however, it would be the detectives who were shocked. They had no idea when they brought Gary in for a lie detector test that they had netted a much bigger fish than they could have imagined.
    In the jargon of the polygrapher, Gary Gene Grant “blew ink all over the walls.”
    When the information he gave Dewey Gillespie was followed up by more questioning from Renton detectives and a careful reconstruction of his whereabouts in the prior eighteen months, they realized that one man and one man alone was probably responsible not only for the murders of Scott Andrews and Brad Lyons but also for the violent deaths of Carol Adele Erickson and Joann Marie Zulauf.
    Grant was not a flamboyant suspect, and that may have made it easier for him to move about Renton without being noticed. He was not in the least memorable. He was something of a loner who had few close friends and who worked at a low-profile job. What rage he carried within himself—and he did carry rage—he kept carefully hidden.
    After his encounter with Dewey Gillespie and the polygraph, nineteen-year-old Gary Grant was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. As far as the public knew, he was initially arrested and held only as a material witness in the tragic murders of two six-year-old boys. They would have to wait until his trial to learn the whole story.
    In the meantime, charges against Antoine Bertrand, the bearded and rambling man who had walked into the ER at Valley General Hospital, were dropped.
    Grant’s trial was set for July 6, 1971. Because neither he nor his parents could afford to retain criminal defense attorneys, two of King County’s most able lawyers were appointed to defend him. One was C. N. “Nick” Marshall, who had been the senior deputy prosecuting attorney in the King County prosecutor’s office until six months before. He was now a partner in his own firm. Marshall had successfully prosecuted some of the most infamous homicide cases in Washington State. The other was James E. Anderson, also a former deputy prosecutor with a solid conviction record. Now the onetime prosecutors would be on the other side in a very challenging defense case.
    Judge David Soukup would preside over the trial. His black Abraham Lincoln beard made him look very judge-like, but spectators were sometimes surprised to see him before court began as he jogged to trials from his home. Racing through the marble halls of the courthouse in shorts and Nikes, Judge Soukup looked more like a marathon runner than a superior court judge.
    Gary Grant’s trial was a battlefield of legal experts all trained in the same school. Besides Marshall and Anderson, Judge Soukup, and both prosecuting attorneys—Edmund P. Allen and Michael T. Di Julio—were all either current or former deputy prosecutors. There was an expectant air in the courtroom as the gallery waited to see how the five men, trained to work together, would act in their new roles.
    Gary Grant was noticeably thinner than he had appeared in early press photos, and he sat stoically beside Nick Marshall as the prosecution built its case against him. He was gaunt and pale. He gulped silently, his breathing rate increased, and he would occasionally lower his forehead to his hands.
    A great deal of the testimony in the Grant trial was painfully explicit. The prosecution produced witness after witness who detailed the last hours of each victim’s life. As they spoke, the victims came alive in the courtroom, and the enormity of their loss brought tears. Even Defense Attorney Marshall, who had a five-year-old son of his own, walked quickly from the courtroom during a break and ducked into one of the myriad marble niches to hide the tears streaking his face.
    Over the defense’s strong objections, the prosecution introduced graphic pictures of the victims’ bodies. Medical Examiner Gale Wilson’s testimony was lengthy, and Nick Marshall cross-examined him vigorously, particularly on the alleged sexual motivation of the killer. In the Carole Erickson case, he disagreed with Wilson on how precisely the age of sperm can be pinpointed. Wilson replied that it could be done within certain limitations, but he