Worth More Dead

seen crime scenes on television shows, but this was real. Carolyn had been here, but her spirit was gone from the house that she had tended so carefully. Seeing her makeup and hair-care products left behind in the master bathroom almost made the women cry. They knew she didn’t need them any longer.
     
    On August 22, 1998, Gary Kittleson went to Robert Durall’s mother’s home. There, he told Durall that he was under arrest. The suspect didn’t seem to be upset or even surprised; he didn’t even ask Kittleson what he was being arrested for. He was arraigned, pleaded not guilty, and was held without bail. He was charged with second-degree murder.
    Durall, appearing for his arraignment in the orange coveralls of a high-risk prisoner and without his toupee, looked much diminished as he stood at the rail in the Regional Justice Center of King County. His mother did her best to rally their friends, his coworkers, and members of the church, where he had recently become an elder, to stand behind him and write letters attesting to his good reputation.
    It was impossible not to feel sorry for this elderly woman whose life was nearly destroyed by her son’s situation and who also grieved for the daughter-in-law she loved and for her three grandchildren who were being cared for by Carolyn’s family. She could not even imagine that her boy could have done anything to hurt anyone.
    The ripples that spread out from violent crime always wash over innocent people.
     
    Durall wanted to get out of jail as soon as possible. Two King County deputy prosecutors, Patricia Eakes and Jeff Baird, asked that if bail were set for Bob Durall, it should be high.
    “The State requests bail in the amount of $1 million. The defendant went to great lengths to conceal this crime. He has disposed of his wife’s body and attempted to destroy the evidence that existed in the family home. For more than two weeks after his wife’s disappearance, he continued to mislead people, including police, about her death. Given the nature of the crime, the potential for extended incarceration, and the defendant’s actions, and the fact that his wife’s body has not been recovered, he should be considered not only a danger to the community but a flight risk.”
    Durall’s original attorneys, John Henry Browne and Tim Dole, asked that he be released on his own recognizance or on “reasonable bail” of $25,000, citing his three years in a supervisory position at the King County Housing Authority. They listed his more prestigious former jobs—Boeing (1987 to 1990), IPC Pension Services (1991 to 1995), and two short-term jobs at IBM, in 1983 and 1985—his loyalty to his mother and sister, and his three small children who were “dependent upon him for emotional and financial support.” They quoted letters from his fellow church members who described him as “gentle, loving spiritual, full of honesty and integrity” and pointed out that if he were planning to flee Seattle, he would surely have done so before he was arrested.
    None of their arguments did any good; bail was set at $1 million.
    Bob Durall refused to discuss where his wife might be, claiming that he did not know. Her family and the more than a hundred people who had looked for her or her car kept up their search, determined that they would find Carolyn. If she was dead, she deserved to have a funeral or a memorial service and a decent burial. If she was miraculously alive somewhere, she needed to be found.
     
    Bob Durall, the complete expert on computers, should have known that nothing is ever truly deleted from a hard drive. The bytes laid down might not surface in the same pattern that they had been typed in, but they are there, someplace. Perhaps he was confident that no one would have reason to check his computer.
    He may not have been aware of it, but his supervisors had noticed that he spent an inordinate amount of time on his computer. Indeed, he had come close to being fired after people walked in on him and noticed that he wasn’t doing agency business on it.
    Durall’s coworkers were not close to him, and most of their contact outside the office had been to play on company sports teams or to attend events he had at his house. He was involved in a multilevel marketing firm whose participants moved up the ladder by recruiting new members and also a long-distance phone plan that worked much the same way. For those who worked under him at the King County Housing Authority, it was