Last Dance, Last Chance

when he would be 84 years old.
    Gasser began his third trip to prison in the penitentiary at Walla Walla, but alcohol and perhaps genetics caught up with him. He was no longer the good-looking young kid; he was an old man in poor health. Whereas he had once been charming, Gasser was surly and full of complaints, more so with every year that passed.
    Just before Christmas 1996, Jack Gasser was transferred to the Ahtanum View Assisted Living Facility. Located near Yakima, Washington, it is a kind of nursing home for convicts. He was angry about being there and refused to cooperate with intake workers who tried to fill out their forms and evaluations.
    “He is a 71-year-old inmate,” his report read in 1999. “With extensive medical problems, given his sentence structure, he will likely not survive until release.”
    Jack Gasser knew the prison system well, and his subsequent evaluations reflected his discontent at his present quarters. He would have much preferred to be at the new and modern prison facility, Airway Heights Corrections Center, due to open soon, where he felt the accommodations and amenities were more pleasing. Airway Heights also had a section for minimum security prisoners, although even now Gasser was still considered a medium risk.
    Doctors suspected he had either had a stroke or was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He said he could not walk with a walker or push himself in his wheelchair. He commandeered other prisoners to help him, insisting that he was unable to care for himself.
    Jack Gasser bombarded his corrections counselor with demands. He still wanted a transfer to Airway Heights in April 2000. He claimed he wasn’t strong enough to stay at Ahtanum, but the impression he gave was of a manipulator and malingerer.
    He still wasn’t eligible for the new prison, but he was happier when another prisoner was assigned to serve as his wheelchair pusher and to stand by his side when he used his walker.
     
    The public tends to think of convicts as young, strong, and tough, but those with life sentences grow old in the system. Jack Gasser had never lost his air of barely repressed hostility—even when he needed help getting in and out of bed and went everywhere in a wheelchair.
    “He is 74 years old,” his last report read. “His percentage to re-offend is 31.1. This is his second time for the same crime…He has not done a lot to improve himself. If released, he would still be very dangerous…”
    Had she lived, Donna Woodcock would be 76 now, but she has been gone for 54 years. When retired King County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney John Vogel heard about the murder of Gerri Barker, he summed up what any number of detectives and grieving relatives thought: “He should have been hanged in 1948.”
    Retired Homicide Lieutenant Austin Seth, 87, agrees. “No one will ever really know how many women Jack Gasser killed. He spent a lot of time in prison—but he was free and traveling around Washington State for 25 years. I know that I, for one, will never stop wondering what the whole story is.”

The Killer Who Begged to Die
    L ike Jack Gasser, there was another man who served his time in prison in the Northwest and who was paroled when he should have stayed locked up. He himself knew he shouldn’t be walking free. In the end, he felt he should not be allowed to live. And yet, he had to fight his way through crowds of people who wanted to save him. His is a backward or “inside-out” kind of story. When I wrote about him the first time, I never expected to write about him again.
    But I did.

T he only thing at all flamboyant about the neat little motel on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue North was its name: the Eldorado. When Bertha Maude Lush bought it, it had seen better days. That was why she could afford it. She cleaned it up and kept it spotless, and she made sure that it was always freshly painted.
    Before Interstate 5 was built, Aurora Avenue was the main route from Seattle to Canada and points north. Back in the thirties and forties, the Eldorado was considered modern. Now it catered to those who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—pay the asking price for a night in one of the huge glass-and-stone motels that had sprouted along the new freeway.
    Many of Bertha’s guests were return customers, visitors from Vancouver, British Columbia, who made it a habit to stop there on trips to shop in Seattle.
    Ironically, it was the reasonable cost of a room at the Eldorado that drew a killer