No Regrets

the packages with Dick Hamilton’s name on them. A box that had held an electric shaver still rested on a crumpled bed of wrapping paper and bore a tag, “To Dick, from Carol.”
    “He’s already opened it,” Yazzolino said. “He’s been using the razor she meant to give him on Christmas.”
    Detective Hugh Swaney located a trapdoor that led to a crawl space beneath the house. It was in a bedroom closet. He opened it and saw a small pile of freshly dug dirt directly under the opening. The pile measured approximately two feet in diameter. The thought uppermost on everyone’s mind was Bobby Lee. The two-year-old boy was still missing. Swaney photographed the small hill of dirt and then tediously removed the soil with a serving spoon. There was no hole beneath the dirt; it had to have come from somewhere else under the house. He held his breath as he saw the pair of small black mittens that lay near the edge of the pile of dirt. There was a cigarette filter there, too. Swaney lowered himself down into the crawl space, which measured between eighteen inches and two feet in height. It was not an assignment for anyone with even a trace of claustrophobia. He clutched a flashlight and crawled on his belly over the entire square footage of the crawl space. Twenty feet from the trapdoor, Swaney found a freshly dug hole four feet by eighteen inches. The dirt in the hole was removed with the serving spoon. There was nothing in the hole.
    (Later, Hamilton would say that he had considered burying some member of his family down there but had discarded the idea as impractical.)
    After the sun rose on Christmas Day, Swaney went back to the quiet neighborhood in southeast Portland. Accompanied by uniformed officers Milligan and La Follette, he carried the pictures of Carol and Judy and began a door-to-door canvass of the Hamiltons’ neighbors. The family immediately north of the Hamilton home had just watched a television broadcast about the bodies that had been found on Sauvie Island. They had thought the dead child pictured looked familiar. But they hadn’t realized the child was Judy. Now, looking at the photo, the wife cried, “Oh my God, it is her! It’s Judy!” She put her head down on the chair and began to sob. It was grief that would sweep the blocks that surrounded the Hamiltons’ small house. None of their neighbors could recall any dissension in the family. They had seemed quiet, religious, and devoted to each other. No one had ever seen a strange man entering the Hamilton home while Dick Hamilton was away.
    Patrol officers located Carol Hamilton’s red Ford behind a Safeway store located on Hayden Island. Yazzolino and MacNeel ordered it towed to a garage where Bob Pin-nick oversaw it as it was processed for evidence. Pinnick removed a number of items and sealed and tagged them: two blankets; two stuffed animals; one nylon stocking; one cardboard box with magazines and newspapers; one white rag; a brown paper bag with potato chips and cookies; a red and white plastic flashlight; jack, a jack-handle and lug wrench; one spare tire and wheel; one axe; one hunting knife; vacuum sweepings of entire vehicle; a black sock; dirt from under front fenders; radio knobs (for latent prints); a piece of plastic and plastic bags.
    At eight-thirty on the morning after Christmas, MacNeel and Yazzolino arrived on Sauvie Island to assist Oregon State Police in their dragging operations for BobbyLee’s body. Hamilton had said his tiny son was wearing a red blazer jacket, dark pants, and brown shoes. Working with River Patrol deputies F. Hanna and F. Pearce, the men rowed back and forth for six hours, looking for some trace of the little boy in the twelve-foot-deep river. The OSP crew had already dragged the river for three days, and they had found a number of items connected with the case, but they hadn’t found Bobby Lee.
    They never found Bobby Lee’s body. He was lost in the mighty Columbia River, perhaps even carried out to the Pacific Ocean.
    On December 30, Dick Hamilton talked again to his minister—who advised Yazzolino and MacNeel that there had never been a “Ron Wilson.” They were not surprised at all; the veteran detectives figured Hamilton had simply made him up out of whole cloth. He was someone to blame for the slaughter of Carol, Judy, and Bobby Lee.
    The obvious question, not so easily answered, was “Why? Why had Hamilton wanted his family dead?” It had haunted the detectives as they carried out