Last Dance, Last Chance

most laymen have never heard of petechiae, Wilson explained further. “These result from the damming of capillaries which burst from prolonged pressure. The whole picture is one of manual strangulation. There are two rounded depressions on the right forehead and concurrent hemorrhaging in the brain itself, but no skull fracture. The hemorrhages in the neck area are of the type caused by fingers.
    “To make marks on the neck like this, it requires a great deal of pressure. The victim would have lost consciousness in 15 or 20 seconds. I would say she was clinically dead in a couple of minutes. In my opinion the person strangling Mrs. Bodine would have had to apply steady pressure for at least two minutes. She died at approximately 7 P.M. on December 19, 1963.”
    Gladys had been dead since Thursday evening, but her daughter had had no inkling of the horror in her mother’s house when Denny Tuohmy called her as she arrived at work Friday morning. Now she understood why he had asked her if anything was wrong, and wanted to be sure that she still loved him. In all likelihood, he had strangled her mother the night before. He must have been checking to see if she knew about her mother’s murder yet.
     
    Dr. Wilson performed the autopsy on Fritz Donohue’s body next. It was still early on Saturday morning, December 21.
    “Donohue was a man of 39, 5’7" tall, weighing 135 pounds. His body showed a large caliber gunshot entry wound just in front of the left ear canal. The bullet passed horizontally through the base of the skull and emerged through the right ear. The skull in these cases is so fragmented that the head feels like popcorn in a bag, the whole head has a putty-like feeling. There were no other injuries.”
    Dr. Wilson felt that the location of the single bullet wound was consistent with a bullet fired by a person holding his gun to his shoulder and aiming carefully. “Assuming the victim was standing up, the bullet traveled horizontally, approximately five feet above the ground.”
    The only other alternative would be more damning for Denny Tuohmy. He would have had to aim straight down at a victim lying on the ground. That was not, however, consistent with Tuohmy’s height. He was too short to have held the gun far above Fritz’s head, and the entry wound didn’t have the characteristic powder burns and gun barrel debris of a near-contact wound.
     
    Denny Tuohmy was arrested and charged with murder in the deaths of Gladys Bodine and Fritz Donohue.
    Cherie Mullins visited him in jail on Christmas Eve, not because she felt affection for him but because she was completely stunned and shocked, and full of questions.
    She found that Tuohmy was quite clearheaded. “But he seemed sad and tired. I looked at him and I said, ‘Why Denny, why?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know, Mama,’ and I said, ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to you?’”
    Tuohmy’s response was with a hand gesture. “He drew his finger across his throat like this.”
    He would spend the six months following his arrest in the King County Jail. He wrote letters—rational, lucid letters—to relatives and to Cherie Mullins.
     
    The most significant question was this: Was Denny Tuohmy sane or insane at the time of his crimes? Under the M’Naughton Rule, the killer must have the ability to perceive reality at the time of the crime and must be able to differentiate between right and wrong in order to go to trial. Defense attorneys worked feverishly to prove that Tuohmy had been certifiably psychotic when he killed Gladys Bodine and Fritz Donohue and when he kidnapped Pat Jacque.
    Until his discharge from the Army seven years before these felonies, Denny Lee Tuohmy had spent periodic sojourns in service hospitals. But opinions regarding the cause of his problems differed from one Army psychiatrist to another. One diagnosed his actions as schizophrenic and found him mentally ill.
    Yet, there were other excerpts from Army records with different viewpoints on Tuohmy’s personality problems. One mental evaluation declared him to be “extremely immature, impulsive, with no insight into his own problems.”
    Two years after that conclusion, a report read: “No delusions or hallucinations. Inability to postpone gratification. This man cannot profit from punishment or experience. Hopeless to treat. Probably will be life-long.”
    That psychiatrist may have been right on the mark.
    Dishonorably discharged from the service, Denny Lee