No Regrets

years older than Judy, the teenagers had become good friends. When Dick and Carol were married, Judy was thrilled to be the maid of honor at their wedding.
    When their first baby, a girl, was born, she was named “Judy” in honor of Judy King. Two years later, they had a baby boy, Robert Lee. Both Judy and her mother had been babysitters for the youngsters and grown even closer to the family. When Carol Hamilton found steady work at thepost office, she hired a full-time sitter, but she still visited with the Kings often.
    Dick Hamilton still attended the Bible college and also worked as a part-time medical technician. With Carol working and Dick’s part-time job, they were able to buy their own home on S.E. 157th. Judy had always seen them as the ideal family. That was why she and her folks had been shocked on the previous Sunday evening when they received a visit from Dick Hamilton. What he told them left them thoroughly confused. When he showed up at their home unexpectedly, Dick was disheveled and upset. He had obvious scratches on his face. With great difficulty, he told Judy and her mother that Carol had left him for another man.
    Dick was so distraught over the thought of losing his wife to a lover that he said he’d walked for miles on Saturday night trying to sort things out in his mind. At one point, he said, he had fallen, hurting his hand and scratching his face.
    Mrs. King could not imagine Carol Hamilton being involved with another man. She felt she knew the young mother as well as anyone. Carol was a devoted mother, a faithful churchgoer, and a hard worker. Was it possible that she had been carrying on an affair so torrid that she would take her children and walk out on her husband less than a week before Christmas? Mrs. King could not believe it.
    After Dick left, she and Judy had stared at one another, dumbfounded. Neither of them could picture Carol Hamilton cheating on Dick. She had always adored him, and they had never seen her with any other man.
    Now the two women studied the faces in the newspaper. There was no mistake; that was Carol and little Judy.But where was the little boy—Bobby Lee? Had Dick been right after all? Had Carol run off with a man, a man who’d killed her and Judy, and abducted Bobby?
    “We have to call Dick,” Mrs. King said grimly. “Better we tell him than have him read it in the paper.”
    But she was too late; Dick Hamilton already knew. It was a quarter to five on the afternoon of Christmas Eve when Multnomah County Detective Tom Sawyer received a call from the Portland Police Department’s major crime unit. Hamilton had called the Portland police to say that he believed the unidentified bodies found on Sauvie Island were his wife and daughter. The Portland detectives told him to remain at his home; someone from the sheriff’s office would contact him right away.
    Tom Sawyer phoned Hamilton, who seemed to be doing a good job of keeping his emotions in check. He said he had seen the picture of his daughter in the paper and read the clothing description. He was positive it was his little girl. “The last time I saw Judy—last Saturday, the twenty-first—she was wearing her blue dress and her parka jacket.”
    Sawyer asked Hamilton if he felt able to come to the morgue to make a positive identification, and he said he could. Less than an hour later, the slender, twenty-five-year-old Bible college student appeared at Sawyer’s eighth-floor office. Judy King had driven him down, and she told the detectives that her family was trying to support him in his hour of grief. Hamilton identified his daughter’s photo.
    Sawyer, along with Phil Todd and Phil Jackson of the Portland Police Department, talked with Hamilton. They advised him of his rights under Miranda, explaining that he seemed to be the last person to see his family. Hamilton nodded politely as if he understood.
    Jackson asked quietly, “Does your wife have any scars on her back?”
    “Yes,” Hamilton said. “One at the end of her tailbone— where she had a cyst taken off.”
    Jackson looked at Sawyer over Hamilton’s bent head and shook his head. He then showed Hamilton the picture of Carol Hamilton that Bob Zion had taken.
    Hamilton swallowed hard and then he nodded sadly. “That’s her...that’s my wife.”
    The detective trio asked no more questions. Instead, they asked Hamilton to wait for a few moments and contacted Detectives Yazzolino and MacNeel, who had been assigned to work the case.