Worth More Dead

instead about his own life. He was born in New York City and had been raised in the “projects.” He had one brother and a daughter and a son. He graduated from the Naval Academy and had expected to eventually become an admiral in the Naval Reserve. He had the distinction of having had two meetings with Admiral Hyman Rickover.
    Pawlyk dominated the conversation and jumped from one subject to another, although he didn’t seem crazy to Cindy. He liked to talk about books and advised her “Go up to Tower Records in Belltown [a district on the north end of Seattle’s downtown area] and you can get cheap books there.”
    Bill Pawlyk asked Cynthia for her phone number, explaining that he could only call out of jail with collect calls. She was reluctant to give it to him but finally relented. He didn’t seem at all interested in her as a woman, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He wouldn’t be showing up on her doorstep.
    “He only called me once,” she remembers. “And he talked steadily for half an hour—all about books. I could barely get a word in. He was very intelligent, and you could tell he knew it.”
    Lee Yates and Jeff Baird, senior deputy prosecuting attorneys for King County, represented the State in the case against William Pawlyk. Yates had been with the prosecutor’s office for many years, and he had successfully prosecuted a number of high-profile cases. Baird had been there fewer years, and he went on to be the lead prosecutor many years later in the Green River Murder case. They made a very strong team for the State.
    This courtroom was full of tension. Debra Sweiger’s siblings were there, as was Larry’s brother, Phil Sturholm, a constant presence as he took voluminous notes. Phil and Larry had been extremely close, and it was tremendously difficult for the older brother to hear details of Larry’s murder.
    The gallery was packed day after day with court watchers who could not imagine why anyone would kill the genial television star who had seemed like a friend to them.
    Pawlyk had been examined by two eminent forensic psychiatrists, paid for by the State because he claimed that he was indigent. One, Dr. Emanuel Tanay, who had examined any number of nationally known high-profile offenders, including Ted Bundy, flew to Seattle to interview Pawlyk. He was the second psychiatrist the Defense hired. Tanay diagnosed Pawlyk as having suffered a psychotic break during which he killed Debra Sweiger and Larry Sturholm. Tanay opined that Pawlyk was legally insane at the time of the double murder and his attempted suicide.
    Dr. Christian Harris, who was also hired by the Defense, found just the opposite. Harris, too, had many, many years of experience in evaluating murder defendants. It was his opinion that Pawlyk had been fully aware of the difference between right and wrong when he carried out the savage stabbings and was cognizant of the nature and quality of his acts. The Defense had been aghast when they read Harris’s report. So they hired Tanay. Satisfied with his report, they attempted to scratch Harris from the witness list. His diagnosis would be far more beneficial to Baird and Yates’s prosecution than it was to Pawlyk’s case. They wanted the jurors to hear only Dr. Tanay’s analysis. Yates and Baird argued that both psychiatric evaluations should be heard.
    The Court refused the Defense motion.
    Just how bizarrely had Bill Pawlyk behaved on the fatal Monday of July 31? He purchased the hunting knives expressly for the occasion. He brought a gun for backup. Apparently his 200-mile drive from Richland hadn’t been erratic, or he would undoubtedly have been stopped by Washington State troopers.
    King County detectives traced his movements back to the time he left Richland and headed for Debra’s house for a final showdown. They learned to their amazement that he was in her home, twice on the day of the murders. Apparently, he got hungry while he waited for her to come home so he drove back to the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge, a luxurious resort known for its fine cuisine, particularly its huge farm breakfasts.
    There, Pawlyk ordered and consumed the lodge’s seven-course breakfast. Sixteen years ago, the thirty-dollar charge for breakfast was the priciest in the area, but diners agreed that it was well worth it. Reservations for Sunday breakfast had a waiting list that was several weeks long, but this was a Monday. Pawlyk dined on fresh fruit, oatmeal with clotted cream, bacon, ham, eggs,