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In early February of 1981, authorities from Salem flew down the Interstate 5 corridor and assembled with detectives and law officials from northern California and southern Oregon. Each detective had a crime, or two, in their jurisdiction matching a particular modus operandi, and the list of incidents just kept growing. When they gathered, they had no idea the scope of the mystery they were unraveling or just far it was going to reach.



It started with a robbery. On December 9, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington, a gas station was held up at gun point, the female attendant left alone in the store. A man entered wearing a brown coat and a fake beard. He demanded cash and brandished a small, silver gun to prove he was serious. The cashier obliged. 
A few days later, in Eugene, Oregon, on December thirteenth, a Baskin-Robbins was robbed by a man holding a silver gun and wearing a fake beard and a band aid across his nose. 
In Albany, Oregon, a drive-in was hit on December fourteenth by a man flashing a silver gun.
On the twenty-first of December, a man in a fake beard followed a young woman working at a Church's Chicken in Lake Forest Park, just north of Seattle, into the bathroom. Pulling a silver revolver from his pocket, he forced the twenty-five-year-old to remove her shirt and bra and to masturbate him. After he finished, he left the restaurant, telling her to stay in the bathroom for five minutes before coming out. She obeyed, waiting the longest five minutes of her life before running to find a co-worker and call the police. 
Not more then ten minutes away, the same man went into a Baskin-Robbins in Bothell, Washington and ordered a cone. He lingered as the two girls closing the shop waited for him to leave so they could lock the doors. They giggled and joked about how he  might be planning on robbing the store, but moments later he came to them and requested a paper bag. Then he demanded they fill it with cash. His silver revolver urged them on.
Over the holidays, everything settled. The Washington and Oregon communities calmed; each individual jurisdiction working on catching their bandit, no idea the range of his crimes. It wasn't until January 8, 1981 that the terror began again. A man walked in to the same gas station as almost a month before, though the clerk behind the counter was a different person. This time, though, he wanted more from the young woman than just the cash in her till. Brandishing his silver pistol, he had her empty the register before he ordered her to sit on the floor and remove her shirt, then lift up her bra. He stared at her for several minutes, appraising her breasts. He muttered something she couldn't quite make out, she guessed either "okay" or "ugly," but, seemingly satisfied, he told her to count to fifty and he left. 
Three days later, a grocery store in Eugene, Oregon was robbed by a bearded man with a band aid over his nose. 

Within the following twenty-four, he was in Southerlin, Oregon, holding up a market. The young cashier, twenty-year-old Susie Benet, thought at first he was joking when he told her to give him all of the money in the register. She joked back and received a bullet in her right shoulder from the silver gun. Ordering her to the floor, he took all of the money from the till. She hid as best she could behind the counter, hoping not to be shot again, and waited until she heard him leave before calling emergency services. Detectives were able to retrieve a single bullet from the scene which had blown through the woman's shoulder and bounced behind a shelf. 


In Corvallis, on the fourteenth of January, two young girls, ages 8 and 10, were left at home alone after dinner by their mother, who often took that time in the evening to workout at the local gym. Corvallis is a small college town, comfortable and safe. In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon to leave children at home for long periods of time. These girls, however, were only going to be alone for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. But he didn't need that much time.

About fifteen minutes after their mother left, there was a knock at the door, interrupting the girls' TV show. The eldest went to the door and flipped on the porch light, but it did not illuminate. She opened the door and a man with a beard and the hood of his brown jacket pulled over his head walked into the house. She hadn't invited him, he had just pushed past her, stating he needed to use the phone. Since he was already there, she told him he could use the phone in the kitchen to dial someone for help with his broken down car. She watched him dial, but she could tell he was faking. 

He told them he would sit and watch TV with them until their mother came home, but the little girl was firm in her dismissal of that idea. She wasn't going to let him stay. She didn't know how to make him leave, but she knew she couldn't let him stay in the house. He made another phone call that sounded fake to her as well and once again told the girls he would sit with them and watch TV. When she refused, he pulled out a small, silver gun and ushered both girls into the bathroom.
Composites of the I-5 Killer.
He made them strip and then fondled their small bodies, the girls terrified and sobbing. Then he took out his erect penis and made them preform fellatio until he climaxed, forcing the ten-year-old girl to swallow his ejaculate. She was terrified and confused, clinging to her little sister as the man toyed with his gun and watched them tremble. Eventually, he told them to redress and to remain in the bathroom. He left them quavering on the floor. Ten minutes later, their mother came home and found them still crouched on the bathroom floor.

The two girls gave an excellent description, the eldest certain that the beard was fake and pretty sure, since they had both survived, that the gun was, too. But, it wasn't a toy gun, it would be used a few days later to murder and assault Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot in Salem, Oregon. And the composite created from the little girls' memories would add to a pile of nearly identical composites, all pointing to one man, yet detectives still didn't know that they were not alone in their hunt for the I-5 Killer.




When Beth got out of the hospital, Dave Kominek's family took her in, since she was now alone in Salem. They worked on their composite of the killer with hypnosis and a very brave Beth even returned to the scene of the crime to try and knock loose any more memories of that night. She couldn't come up with much more after that, but what she had managed to remember and the courage she had already shown was going to be enough, if they managed to make it to trial. Along with the head wounds and trauma, Beth also received a sexually transmitted disease from her attacker, herpes. Another reminder she would have to carry for the rest of her life.

On the day following the murder in Salem, Oregon, January 19, a robbery occurred in Vancouver, Washington. A composite was drawn of a dark man. Seven days later, on January 26, a robbery in Eugene, Oregon occurred. A fresh composite was drawn of a dark man. By January 29, 1981, he had headed further south, committing multiple robberies and assaults in the Grant's Pass and Medford areas in a matter of hours. In Grant's Pass, he sexually assaulted two women. The bandit escaped and more composites were drawn.

On February 4, 1981, Shasta County detectives contacted Marion County detectives to discuss the similar cases of Shari Hull and Beth's attack and the murders of Donna Lee Eckard and her teenage daughter Janell Jarvis, raped and killed in their northern California home. But, the detectives had more to talk about than the Eckard murders. And detectives from all over Washington, Oregon, and northern California were calling up Kominek's office in response to the teletype he'd sent out just the day before. Attacks had been building up for months now, a robber and a rapist prowling the I-5 corridor. A few days later, several jurisdictions came together to collaborate, the detectives, district attorneys, and crime labs of the three states Interstate 5 runs through began to share their information and pool their ideas. They were certain this was the same man committing all of these crimes, a man they named the I-5 Killer.

They knew a few things about him already, including his penchant for wearing a band aid or tape over the bridge of his nose. They knew he was a secretor, meaning that the lab could tell his blood-type from secretions found in his body fluids. From the semen swabs they took on all four victims, the found the presence of type B blood. They new he was infected with the STI, herpes. They knew he took a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson from the Eckard home. They knew he drove a Volkswagen Beetle. They knew he was tall and very well-built, his broad shoulders and wide chest indicative of someone who spends a lot time working out. They knew he carried a silver .32 caliber gun.

The very next day, February seventh, when the report came back on the bullets found in the bodies of Janell and her mother Donna Lee, the suspicion that this bandit, rapist, and murderer was all one just one man was confirmed with real, physical evidence. The bullets were a match for the bullets used to kill Shari Hull. They had been fired from the same gun.

As the task force was coming into being, the I-5 Killer continued to stalk the region.

Most serial killers are creatures of habit, who like to savor their kills for weeks to months on end, taking a break between each one to relive the thrill of the kill and derive sexual pleasure from their memories of murder. They have a victim type, very rarely straying outside of their own race, or a certain age group. Pedophiles don't assault older women, and typically someone who shows preference in older women,  don't hunt for little girls. They stick to their habits, their motivation, their type. After a while, their attacks will accelerate, but in several instances, have been known to slow down as well, even stopping for years on end. Sexually sadistic rapist and murderers are typically very organized and very interested in maintaining the order of their ritual.

Spree killers are often very disorganized, moving quickly from kill to kill, taking who they can in their path. They don't have a ritual so much as have been triggered by an event that led them to begin their killer career for seemingly no reason. There isn't a pattern or a design. They kill for a different reason.

The I-5 Killer wasn't exactly a typical serial killer, often committing multiple crimes in one day, but he also wasn't a typical spree killer. Though his choice of victims were wide-ranging in age, they were all female, and they were all sexually motivated. He attacked them in the same way each time, forcing them to remove their clothing, fondling their breasts, making them bring him to climax with their hands or their mouths. He taped up arms and legs with surgical tape and executed

The very same day Donna Lee Eckard and Janell Jarvis were murdered, February 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer was making his way north on the interstate through northern California. Just an hour before the Eckard murders, in Redding, California, two women were robbed and assaulted, forced into the bathroom by the barrel of a silver gun. The younger of the two was orally and anally raped in front of her boss. He left them alive only because he was interrupted by the elder woman's husband. He fled the scene and found two new victims just north on the highway. The next day, in Yreka, California, another woman was kidnapped and raped. Jessie Clovis, 21, was getting into her car when a man came upon her with a gun and forced her to scoot into the passenger seat so he could sit with her in the cab and drive the car. He drove her away and pushed her head into his lap, forcing her to unzip his pants and to fellate him while he fondled her breasts. He seemed very wrapped up in needing her approval, asking her if he could touch her, but touching her anyway, not really looking for permission. He asked her if she liked what he was doing, if he was bigger than her boyfriend. He pulled over and had her strip and get in the backseat. He raped her, asking her where she wanted him to finish so he could gauge what would be the worst for her and do that instead. Then, when he was done, he asked her if it was good. She agreed, terrified to be shot with the silver gun. Her attacker drove her back to the parking lot in which he had hijacked her car and left here there. When she was sure he was gone, she threw on her clothes and rushed to call the cops. Another composite was made of the dark man.

The same day, farther north on Interstate 5, in Ashland, Oregon, there was another robbery by a man wearing a band aid over the bridge of his nose.

On the way home from the first task force meeting in California, Dave Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, each took a guess on where the killer would hit next. Weirdly enough, they would split the difference.



On February 9, he resurfaced in Corvallis, Oregon, to rob a fabric store. He took the clerk and her customer into the back of the shop, using the silver gun to threaten them, and bound them with surgical tape, including their mouths. He assaulted them and masturbated to the sight of them, ejaculating on the clerk's face.

The same night, just ten miles east in Albany, Oregon, he bound a raped two women at a laundromat.

On February 12, he headed north, stopping first in Vancouver, Washington to rob a dress shop, leaving the elderly clerk bound with tape. Ninety minutes later, he had slipped up the I-5 to Olympia, where he forced two teenagers into a drive-thru restaurant's freezer. He robbed the store and sexually assaulted the two teens, leaving them locked in the nearly-airless deep freeze. Finally, around ten at night, as a Bellevue Dairy Queen was closing shop, he barged in, gun in hand, and emptied the registers. He forced the male employee into the freezer and then sexually assaulted his female coworker. All three composite sketches for each of his Washington crimes were nearly identical. They were added to the growing list, Polaroids of each one tacked up next to a long map Detective Kominek crafted himself of the entire I-5 corridor. Each Polaroid a composite, each composite a crime.



Julie Reitz body was found in her Beaverton townhouse by her mother the day after Valentine's, 1981. Her naked body was strewn across the stairs. She'd been shot in the back of the head, execution style, by a .38 caliber bullet as she had been fleeing from her killer down the stairs and had fallen dead where she stood. She had been raped.

Beaverton Detectives Dave Bishop and Neal Loper knew quite a lot about the I-5 Killer. In the ten days since the creation of the task force, departments in the area were flooded with information about him, the composite drawings, his MO. But, Beaverton was west of Portland, and fairly far off the I-5. Only one woman had been attacked. She'd been shot only once in the head, and not by his standard .32 caliber bullet, but by a .38. They just didn't think this was the work of the I-5 Killer. It was horrific, but it wasn't him,

Within days of beginning their investigation into Julie Reitz's death, they learned of Randall Woodfield. Randy was known by most of the women they spoke to about Julie. He was known to a lot of women. He had spent Valentine's Day sending out hundreds of cards, dozens of flower arrangements, and invitation after invitation to spend the day with him at the Marriott in Portland. He'd driven up from his current home in Eugene, expecting to have the time of his life, but was disappointed when no one showed to his party and no one opted to spend the most romantic of days with him. When the detectives heard Randy's name come up three times during the early days of their investigation, they decided to focus on him.

They learn from Randy's parole officer--a woman whom he rarely communicated with because of his deep resentment of women in authority--that he had moved out of Portland without telling her. Also, that he had been the suspect in two murders that took place last fall. The murder of Cheryl Ayers, a high school friend of Randy's, in October and the double homicide of Darcey Fix and Doug Altig the weekend of Thanksgiving. Randy had been questioned in both investigations and had refused a polygraph, but was eventually ruled out due to lack of evidence. All three deaths were still unsolved.

Bishop and Loper headed south on I-5 to meet with Randy in Eugene.

That same day, March 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer task force was assembling in Eugene for their third meeting on the case, a brainstorming session they hoped would light up a few light bulbs. The I-5 Killer had kept on through the end of February, hitting two places in Eugene. On the eighteenth, a young woman was found bound in tape in the back room of a 7-11. She had been assaulted and the place robbed. Then, an attempted robbery at a Taco Time was thwarted by a young woman who ran for help, on the twenty-first. On February 25, he cornered a young woman in the bathroom of the restaurant in which she worked in Corvallis and sexually assaulted her in his usual manner, leaving her bound with tape on the floor. Frustrations were mounting within the task force.



Randy didn't show to the meeting, so Bishop and Loper, with the permission of local cops, swung by his house and picked him up. Randall was cool, collected, but he lied about knowing Julie. He consented to a search of his room he rented at Arden Bates' home. They collected sheets that held several head and pubic hairs, a mattress pad with a dried blood stain, a receipt for a .22 caliber pistol, though he had claimed during their interview that he owned no weapons, a paper bag containing a handgun cleaning kit, and, most telling, rolls of white athletic tape.

The tape stood out to Loper. It was a box of six rolls, one of them missing. As soon as he saw it, his mind made the connection to the I-5 Killer. The task force had collected tape just like this from nearly all of their victims and the lab had been able to confirm the tape came from the same roll, the torn edges tediously approximated, but a perfect fit.

They let Randy go, but kept an eye on the house. When Arden Bates returned home, they quickly moved to question her.

Arden had been suspicious of Randy for a long time. He was a strange roommate. Occasionally, he would bring very young women home, which upset her because she had a young son also living in the house. He didn't have a job and claimed he took home $90 in unemployment weekly, but was somehow able to pay his share of everything, including his astronomical phone bills. Randy loved to talk, he was always calling someone, one of his many girls, he was always charging the long-distance calls to Arden's bill when he was away from home for several days at a time, which was often. But, despite his lack of obvious income, always paid the bill. She had suspected he was the I-5 Killer, but had been too afraid to say anything.

Curious, Bishop asked to see Arden's phone bill. He scanned the bill and something caught his eye--a long-distance call charged to Arden's phone, place on February 3 near Mount Shasta, California. Bishop took the phone bill, told Arden to take her son and leave for a while, and called Dave Kominek.



Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, were already home from the task force meeting in Eugene when they got the call from Bishop and Loper. They sped back down to Eugene to meet with the Beaverton detectives and discuss Randall Woodfield.

Randall Woodfield's Volkswagen Beetle.He was a damn-near perfect match. Kominek was ecstatic. Bishop laid out what they knew about Randy, including his B negative blood type, his Volkswagen Bug, and the long phone bill that showed Randy's movements all across the Pacific Northwest and California--phone records that showed him stopping to make calls in or around several of the cities in which I-5 attacks had taken place.  Kominek wondered why he hadn't heard of Randall Woodfield before, but saw in his record that the oral sodomy charges from his Duniway Park robberies had been dropped before his sentencing. He didn't come up in their search of western state sex criminals because he had never been charged as one. He had slid right under the radar.

Springfield PD put a team on Woodfield and the task force began to assemble.

There was a dispute for days over who had jurisdiction. The detectives, Kominek from Salem, Bishop from Beaverton, and the DA of Lane County, Pat Horton, went head-to-head for two days. More cops from all over Oregon began appearing in Springfield, each one with a charge for the I-5 Killer. By March 4, the media had caught on to the building frenzy.

Monty Holloway flew out to Spokane, where Beth Wilmot had returned to her family home, to see if the witness could identify Randall Woodfield in a six-photo lineup. She was unsure, but agreed to take a bus down to Eugene and look at a real lineup. She believed if she saw him in real life, she would know it was him.

The media began to stake out Randy's home along with the police. It was getting out of hand. After it was announced on the evening news that police were looking for a man named Randy in the I-5 killings, Bishop and Kominek had had enough. On March 5, 1981, they went around DA Horton. Kominek and Eugene detective Ron Griesel walked up to Randell Woodfield's front door and rang the bell. Kominek was not surprised to see a near exact match of the composite image that had been haunting him for over a month answer the door.

Randy let them in. He was weirdly casual, just a guy having friends over. He gave them a tour and answered their questions. But Kominek noticed something when they asked questions specific to the I-5 incidents. Randy tensed up, just a little. He became uncomfortable. He began to lie.

Kominek and Griesel arrested Randy for violation of parole. It was a pretty weak charge, but it meant they could keep him in custody for a few days. The detectives began calling in the witnesses and victims of the I-5 Killer's crimes, bringing detectives up from California and down from Washington to escort those few people who could identify their attacker.

The line-up began, Randall Woodfield labeled number five. Over and over again, as the six men stepped into the viewing room, brave victims stood in front of the man who so viciously interrupted their lives and identified subject number five.



Randy's mugshot.On March 16, 1981, multiple indictments from several Oregon and Washington jurisdictions for murder, rape, armed robbery, attempted kidnapping, illegal possession of a firearm, and sodomy. In late June, Randall Woodfield was convicted for the murder of Shari Hull and the attempted murder and rape of Beth Wilmot. Beth testified against Randy in court. He was sentenced to life, plus ninety years.

Later that year, in October, Randy was tried again in Benton County for the Grants Pass assault and robbery. He was convicted and received another 35 years.

California attorneys never charged Randall with the Eckard murders or the assaults, robberies, and kidnappings. There is a chance Randy will be eligible for parole, and if that happens, California detectives will be waiting with two counts of murder and an extradition order.

In 1987, Randy filed a lawsuit against Ann Rule for her book, The I-5 Killer, for $12 million. In January of 1988, the lawsuit was dismissed by the court.



With the rise of DNA technology in the early 2000's, new evidence linked Randall to three more deaths.

Letters found addressed to Cheryl Ayers,
 from inmate Randall WoodfieldCheryl Ayers, 29, was a long-time friend of Randy's, having known him since the second grade. She worked as an X-Ray technician in Portland, Oregon. She was raped brutally bludgeoned to death on October 9, 1980. Her family suspected Randy and told police to look into him. He had corresponded with her frequently during his time in prison, and several letters from him were found in her residence. Though Randall was questioned and refused to sit for a polygraph test. Though detectives found him sketchy, the semen present in Cheryl's body did not match Randall's blood type and he was dropped as a suspect. DNA tested in 2001 connects him without a doubt to her murder.

Darcey Fix, 22, had recently ended her relationship with one of Randy's closest friends. When Randy visited that friend in Tacoma in late 1980, he was infuriated, despite his friend finding the breakup fairly amiable. On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1980, Darcey was found executed in her Portland home along with her new beau, Doug Altig, 24. Randy was questioned, but there was no evidence linking him to the murders, so he was dropped as a suspect. In 2009, when DNA was tested again, it matched Randall Woodfield to the double homicide.

Curiously, missing from the Fix home was a .32 caliber, silver pistol.




***

Thanks so much for reading you guys! I know this took longer than I said it would, but it was a lot to compile! I can honestly say I am so glad to have it off my chest. What a fascinating case, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that Randy spent his time after prison trying to meet and sleep with every girl on the West Coast, keeping a huge diary of their names, numbers, and addresses. He called constantly, wrote letters, sent gifts. He forced himself in more than one way on every young woman he saw. And those actions came to bite him, hard, in the end, because each of those women could and would identify him. They saw what he was, and they stood up to him and in the face of evil, shown a light for all to see what he was, a monster.

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Sources:

The I-5 Killer. by Ann Rule
Wikipedia
KATU News
OregonLive

In early February of 1981, authorities from Salem flew down the Interstate 5 corridor and assembled with detectives and law officials from northern California and southern Oregon. Each detective had a crime, or two, in their jurisdiction matching a particular modus operandi, and the list of incidents just kept growing. When they gathered, they had no idea the scope of the mystery they were unraveling or just far it was going to reach.



It started with a robbery. On December 9, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington, a gas station was held up at gun point, the female attendant left alone in the store. A man entered wearing a brown coat and a fake beard. He demanded cash and brandished a small, silver gun to prove he was serious. The cashier obliged. 
A few days later, in Eugene, Oregon, on December thirteenth, a Baskin-Robbins was robbed by a man holding a silver gun and wearing a fake beard and a band aid across his nose. 
In Albany, Oregon, a drive-in was hit on December fourteenth by a man flashing a silver gun.
On the twenty-first of December, a man in a fake beard followed a young woman working at a Church's Chicken in Lake Forest Park, just north of Seattle, into the bathroom. Pulling a silver revolver from his pocket, he forced the twenty-five-year-old to remove her shirt and bra and to masturbate him. After he finished, he left the restaurant, telling her to stay in the bathroom for five minutes before coming out. She obeyed, waiting the longest five minutes of her life before running to find a co-worker and call the police. 
Not more then ten minutes away, the same man went into a Baskin-Robbins in Bothell, Washington and ordered a cone. He lingered as the two girls closing the shop waited for him to leave so they could lock the doors. They giggled and joked about how he  might be planning on robbing the store, but moments later he came to them and requested a paper bag. Then he demanded they fill it with cash. His silver revolver urged them on.
Over the holidays, everything settled. The Washington and Oregon communities calmed; each individual jurisdiction working on catching their bandit, no idea the range of his crimes. It wasn't until January 8, 1981 that the terror began again. A man walked in to the same gas station as almost a month before, though the clerk behind the counter was a different person. This time, though, he wanted more from the young woman than just the cash in her till. Brandishing his silver pistol, he had her empty the register before he ordered her to sit on the floor and remove her shirt, then lift up her bra. He stared at her for several minutes, appraising her breasts. He muttered something she couldn't quite make out, she guessed either "okay" or "ugly," but, seemingly satisfied, he told her to count to fifty and he left. 
Three days later, a grocery store in Eugene, Oregon was robbed by a bearded man with a band aid over his nose. 

Within the following twenty-four, he was in Southerlin, Oregon, holding up a market. The young cashier, twenty-year-old Susie Benet, thought at first he was joking when he told her to give him all of the money in the register. She joked back and received a bullet in her right shoulder from the silver gun. Ordering her to the floor, he took all of the money from the till. She hid as best she could behind the counter, hoping not to be shot again, and waited until she heard him leave before calling emergency services. Detectives were able to retrieve a single bullet from the scene which had blown through the woman's shoulder and bounced behind a shelf. 


In Corvallis, on the fourteenth of January, two young girls, ages 8 and 10, were left at home alone after dinner by their mother, who often took that time in the evening to workout at the local gym. Corvallis is a small college town, comfortable and safe. In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon to leave children at home for long periods of time. These girls, however, were only going to be alone for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. But he didn't need that much time.

About fifteen minutes after their mother left, there was a knock at the door, interrupting the girls' TV show. The eldest went to the door and flipped on the porch light, but it did not illuminate. She opened the door and a man with a beard and the hood of his brown jacket pulled over his head walked into the house. She hadn't invited him, he had just pushed past her, stating he needed to use the phone. Since he was already there, she told him he could use the phone in the kitchen to dial someone for help with his broken down car. She watched him dial, but she could tell he was faking. 

He told them he would sit and watch TV with them until their mother came home, but the little girl was firm in her dismissal of that idea. She wasn't going to let him stay. She didn't know how to make him leave, but she knew she couldn't let him stay in the house. He made another phone call that sounded fake to her as well and once again told the girls he would sit with them and watch TV. When she refused, he pulled out a small, silver gun and ushered both girls into the bathroom.
Composites of the I-5 Killer.
He made them strip and then fondled their small bodies, the girls terrified and sobbing. Then he took out his erect penis and made them preform fellatio until he climaxed, forcing the ten-year-old girl to swallow his ejaculate. She was terrified and confused, clinging to her little sister as the man toyed with his gun and watched them tremble. Eventually, he told them to redress and to remain in the bathroom. He left them quavering on the floor. Ten minutes later, their mother came home and found them still crouched on the bathroom floor.

The two girls gave an excellent description, the eldest certain that the beard was fake and pretty sure, since they had both survived, that the gun was, too. But, it wasn't a toy gun, it would be used a few days later to murder and assault Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot in Salem, Oregon. And the composite created from the little girls' memories would add to a pile of nearly identical composites, all pointing to one man, yet detectives still didn't know that they were not alone in their hunt for the I-5 Killer.




When Beth got out of the hospital, Dave Kominek's family took her in, since she was now alone in Salem. They worked on their composite of the killer with hypnosis and a very brave Beth even returned to the scene of the crime to try and knock loose any more memories of that night. She couldn't come up with much more after that, but what she had managed to remember and the courage she had already shown was going to be enough, if they managed to make it to trial. Along with the head wounds and trauma, Beth also received a sexually transmitted disease from her attacker, herpes. Another reminder she would have to carry for the rest of her life.

On the day following the murder in Salem, Oregon, January 19, a robbery occurred in Vancouver, Washington. A composite was drawn of a dark man. Seven days later, on January 26, a robbery in Eugene, Oregon occurred. A fresh composite was drawn of a dark man. By January 29, 1981, he had headed further south, committing multiple robberies and assaults in the Grant's Pass and Medford areas in a matter of hours. In Grant's Pass, he sexually assaulted two women. The bandit escaped and more composites were drawn.

On February 4, 1981, Shasta County detectives contacted Marion County detectives to discuss the similar cases of Shari Hull and Beth's attack and the murders of Donna Lee Eckard and her teenage daughter Janell Jarvis, raped and killed in their northern California home. But, the detectives had more to talk about than the Eckard murders. And detectives from all over Washington, Oregon, and northern California were calling up Kominek's office in response to the teletype he'd sent out just the day before. Attacks had been building up for months now, a robber and a rapist prowling the I-5 corridor. A few days later, several jurisdictions came together to collaborate, the detectives, district attorneys, and crime labs of the three states Interstate 5 runs through began to share their information and pool their ideas. They were certain this was the same man committing all of these crimes, a man they named the I-5 Killer.

They knew a few things about him already, including his penchant for wearing a band aid or tape over the bridge of his nose. They knew he was a secretor, meaning that the lab could tell his blood-type from secretions found in his body fluids. From the semen swabs they took on all four victims, the found the presence of type B blood. They new he was infected with the STI, herpes. They knew he took a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson from the Eckard home. They knew he drove a Volkswagen Beetle. They knew he was tall and very well-built, his broad shoulders and wide chest indicative of someone who spends a lot time working out. They knew he carried a silver .32 caliber gun.

The very next day, February seventh, when the report came back on the bullets found in the bodies of Janell and her mother Donna Lee, the suspicion that this bandit, rapist, and murderer was all one just one man was confirmed with real, physical evidence. The bullets were a match for the bullets used to kill Shari Hull. They had been fired from the same gun.

As the task force was coming into being, the I-5 Killer continued to stalk the region.

Most serial killers are creatures of habit, who like to savor their kills for weeks to months on end, taking a break between each one to relive the thrill of the kill and derive sexual pleasure from their memories of murder. They have a victim type, very rarely straying outside of their own race, or a certain age group. Pedophiles don't assault older women, and typically someone who shows preference in older women,  don't hunt for little girls. They stick to their habits, their motivation, their type. After a while, their attacks will accelerate, but in several instances, have been known to slow down as well, even stopping for years on end. Sexually sadistic rapist and murderers are typically very organized and very interested in maintaining the order of their ritual.

Spree killers are often very disorganized, moving quickly from kill to kill, taking who they can in their path. They don't have a ritual so much as have been triggered by an event that led them to begin their killer career for seemingly no reason. There isn't a pattern or a design. They kill for a different reason.

The I-5 Killer wasn't exactly a typical serial killer, often committing multiple crimes in one day, but he also wasn't a typical spree killer. Though his choice of victims were wide-ranging in age, they were all female, and they were all sexually motivated. He attacked them in the same way each time, forcing them to remove their clothing, fondling their breasts, making them bring him to climax with their hands or their mouths. He taped up arms and legs with surgical tape and executed

The very same day Donna Lee Eckard and Janell Jarvis were murdered, February 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer was making his way north on the interstate through northern California. Just an hour before the Eckard murders, in Redding, California, two women were robbed and assaulted, forced into the bathroom by the barrel of a silver gun. The younger of the two was orally and anally raped in front of her boss. He left them alive only because he was interrupted by the elder woman's husband. He fled the scene and found two new victims just north on the highway. The next day, in Yreka, California, another woman was kidnapped and raped. Jessie Clovis, 21, was getting into her car when a man came upon her with a gun and forced her to scoot into the passenger seat so he could sit with her in the cab and drive the car. He drove her away and pushed her head into his lap, forcing her to unzip his pants and to fellate him while he fondled her breasts. He seemed very wrapped up in needing her approval, asking her if he could touch her, but touching her anyway, not really looking for permission. He asked her if she liked what he was doing, if he was bigger than her boyfriend. He pulled over and had her strip and get in the backseat. He raped her, asking her where she wanted him to finish so he could gauge what would be the worst for her and do that instead. Then, when he was done, he asked her if it was good. She agreed, terrified to be shot with the silver gun. Her attacker drove her back to the parking lot in which he had hijacked her car and left here there. When she was sure he was gone, she threw on her clothes and rushed to call the cops. Another composite was made of the dark man.

The same day, farther north on Interstate 5, in Ashland, Oregon, there was another robbery by a man wearing a band aid over the bridge of his nose.

On the way home from the first task force meeting in California, Dave Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, each took a guess on where the killer would hit next. Weirdly enough, they would split the difference.



On February 9, he resurfaced in Corvallis, Oregon, to rob a fabric store. He took the clerk and her customer into the back of the shop, using the silver gun to threaten them, and bound them with surgical tape, including their mouths. He assaulted them and masturbated to the sight of them, ejaculating on the clerk's face.

The same night, just ten miles east in Albany, Oregon, he bound a raped two women at a laundromat.

On February 12, he headed north, stopping first in Vancouver, Washington to rob a dress shop, leaving the elderly clerk bound with tape. Ninety minutes later, he had slipped up the I-5 to Olympia, where he forced two teenagers into a drive-thru restaurant's freezer. He robbed the store and sexually assaulted the two teens, leaving them locked in the nearly-airless deep freeze. Finally, around ten at night, as a Bellevue Dairy Queen was closing shop, he barged in, gun in hand, and emptied the registers. He forced the male employee into the freezer and then sexually assaulted his female coworker. All three composite sketches for each of his Washington crimes were nearly identical. They were added to the growing list, Polaroids of each one tacked up next to a long map Detective Kominek crafted himself of the entire I-5 corridor. Each Polaroid a composite, each composite a crime.



Julie Reitz body was found in her Beaverton townhouse by her mother the day after Valentine's, 1981. Her naked body was strewn across the stairs. She'd been shot in the back of the head, execution style, by a .38 caliber bullet as she had been fleeing from her killer down the stairs and had fallen dead where she stood. She had been raped.

Beaverton Detectives Dave Bishop and Neal Loper knew quite a lot about the I-5 Killer. In the ten days since the creation of the task force, departments in the area were flooded with information about him, the composite drawings, his MO. But, Beaverton was west of Portland, and fairly far off the I-5. Only one woman had been attacked. She'd been shot only once in the head, and not by his standard .32 caliber bullet, but by a .38. They just didn't think this was the work of the I-5 Killer. It was horrific, but it wasn't him,

Within days of beginning their investigation into Julie Reitz's death, they learned of Randall Woodfield. Randy was known by most of the women they spoke to about Julie. He was known to a lot of women. He had spent Valentine's Day sending out hundreds of cards, dozens of flower arrangements, and invitation after invitation to spend the day with him at the Marriott in Portland. He'd driven up from his current home in Eugene, expecting to have the time of his life, but was disappointed when no one showed to his party and no one opted to spend the most romantic of days with him. When the detectives heard Randy's name come up three times during the early days of their investigation, they decided to focus on him.

They learn from Randy's parole officer--a woman whom he rarely communicated with because of his deep resentment of women in authority--that he had moved out of Portland without telling her. Also, that he had been the suspect in two murders that took place last fall. The murder of Cheryl Ayers, a high school friend of Randy's, in October and the double homicide of Darcey Fix and Doug Altig the weekend of Thanksgiving. Randy had been questioned in both investigations and had refused a polygraph, but was eventually ruled out due to lack of evidence. All three deaths were still unsolved.

Bishop and Loper headed south on I-5 to meet with Randy in Eugene.

That same day, March 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer task force was assembling in Eugene for their third meeting on the case, a brainstorming session they hoped would light up a few light bulbs. The I-5 Killer had kept on through the end of February, hitting two places in Eugene. On the eighteenth, a young woman was found bound in tape in the back room of a 7-11. She had been assaulted and the place robbed. Then, an attempted robbery at a Taco Time was thwarted by a young woman who ran for help, on the twenty-first. On February 25, he cornered a young woman in the bathroom of the restaurant in which she worked in Corvallis and sexually assaulted her in his usual manner, leaving her bound with tape on the floor. Frustrations were mounting within the task force.



Randy didn't show to the meeting, so Bishop and Loper, with the permission of local cops, swung by his house and picked him up. Randall was cool, collected, but he lied about knowing Julie. He consented to a search of his room he rented at Arden Bates' home. They collected sheets that held several head and pubic hairs, a mattress pad with a dried blood stain, a receipt for a .22 caliber pistol, though he had claimed during their interview that he owned no weapons, a paper bag containing a handgun cleaning kit, and, most telling, rolls of white athletic tape.

The tape stood out to Loper. It was a box of six rolls, one of them missing. As soon as he saw it, his mind made the connection to the I-5 Killer. The task force had collected tape just like this from nearly all of their victims and the lab had been able to confirm the tape came from the same roll, the torn edges tediously approximated, but a perfect fit.

They let Randy go, but kept an eye on the house. When Arden Bates returned home, they quickly moved to question her.

Arden had been suspicious of Randy for a long time. He was a strange roommate. Occasionally, he would bring very young women home, which upset her because she had a young son also living in the house. He didn't have a job and claimed he took home $90 in unemployment weekly, but was somehow able to pay his share of everything, including his astronomical phone bills. Randy loved to talk, he was always calling someone, one of his many girls, he was always charging the long-distance calls to Arden's bill when he was away from home for several days at a time, which was often. But, despite his lack of obvious income, always paid the bill. She had suspected he was the I-5 Killer, but had been too afraid to say anything.

Curious, Bishop asked to see Arden's phone bill. He scanned the bill and something caught his eye--a long-distance call charged to Arden's phone, place on February 3 near Mount Shasta, California. Bishop took the phone bill, told Arden to take her son and leave for a while, and called Dave Kominek.



Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, were already home from the task force meeting in Eugene when they got the call from Bishop and Loper. They sped back down to Eugene to meet with the Beaverton detectives and discuss Randall Woodfield.

Randall Woodfield's Volkswagen Beetle.He was a damn-near perfect match. Kominek was ecstatic. Bishop laid out what they knew about Randy, including his B negative blood type, his Volkswagen Bug, and the long phone bill that showed Randy's movements all across the Pacific Northwest and California--phone records that showed him stopping to make calls in or around several of the cities in which I-5 attacks had taken place.  Kominek wondered why he hadn't heard of Randall Woodfield before, but saw in his record that the oral sodomy charges from his Duniway Park robberies had been dropped before his sentencing. He didn't come up in their search of western state sex criminals because he had never been charged as one. He had slid right under the radar.

Springfield PD put a team on Woodfield and the task force began to assemble.

There was a dispute for days over who had jurisdiction. The detectives, Kominek from Salem, Bishop from Beaverton, and the DA of Lane County, Pat Horton, went head-to-head for two days. More cops from all over Oregon began appearing in Springfield, each one with a charge for the I-5 Killer. By March 4, the media had caught on to the building frenzy.

Monty Holloway flew out to Spokane, where Beth Wilmot had returned to her family home, to see if the witness could identify Randall Woodfield in a six-photo lineup. She was unsure, but agreed to take a bus down to Eugene and look at a real lineup. She believed if she saw him in real life, she would know it was him.

The media began to stake out Randy's home along with the police. It was getting out of hand. After it was announced on the evening news that police were looking for a man named Randy in the I-5 killings, Bishop and Kominek had had enough. On March 5, 1981, they went around DA Horton. Kominek and Eugene detective Ron Griesel walked up to Randell Woodfield's front door and rang the bell. Kominek was not surprised to see a near exact match of the composite image that had been haunting him for over a month answer the door.

Randy let them in. He was weirdly casual, just a guy having friends over. He gave them a tour and answered their questions. But Kominek noticed something when they asked questions specific to the I-5 incidents. Randy tensed up, just a little. He became uncomfortable. He began to lie.

Kominek and Griesel arrested Randy for violation of parole. It was a pretty weak charge, but it meant they could keep him in custody for a few days. The detectives began calling in the witnesses and victims of the I-5 Killer's crimes, bringing detectives up from California and down from Washington to escort those few people who could identify their attacker.

The line-up began, Randall Woodfield labeled number five. Over and over again, as the six men stepped into the viewing room, brave victims stood in front of the man who so viciously interrupted their lives and identified subject number five.



Randy's mugshot.On March 16, 1981, multiple indictments from several Oregon and Washington jurisdictions for murder, rape, armed robbery, attempted kidnapping, illegal possession of a firearm, and sodomy. In late June, Randall Woodfield was convicted for the murder of Shari Hull and the attempted murder and rape of Beth Wilmot. Beth testified against Randy in court. He was sentenced to life, plus ninety years.

Later that year, in October, Randy was tried again in Benton County for the Grants Pass assault and robbery. He was convicted and received another 35 years.

California attorneys never charged Randall with the Eckard murders or the assaults, robberies, and kidnappings. There is a chance Randy will be eligible for parole, and if that happens, California detectives will be waiting with two counts of murder and an extradition order.

In 1987, Randy filed a lawsuit against Ann Rule for her book, The I-5 Killer, for $12 million. In January of 1988, the lawsuit was dismissed by the court.



With the rise of DNA technology in the early 2000's, new evidence linked Randall to three more deaths.

Letters found addressed to Cheryl Ayers,
 from inmate Randall WoodfieldCheryl Ayers, 29, was a long-time friend of Randy's, having known him since the second grade. She worked as an X-Ray technician in Portland, Oregon. She was raped brutally bludgeoned to death on October 9, 1980. Her family suspected Randy and told police to look into him. He had corresponded with her frequently during his time in prison, and several letters from him were found in her residence. Though Randall was questioned and refused to sit for a polygraph test. Though detectives found him sketchy, the semen present in Cheryl's body did not match Randall's blood type and he was dropped as a suspect. DNA tested in 2001 connects him without a doubt to her murder.

Darcey Fix, 22, had recently ended her relationship with one of Randy's closest friends. When Randy visited that friend in Tacoma in late 1980, he was infuriated, despite his friend finding the breakup fairly amiable. On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1980, Darcey was found executed in her Portland home along with her new beau, Doug Altig, 24. Randy was questioned, but there was no evidence linking him to the murders, so he was dropped as a suspect. In 2009, when DNA was tested again, it matched Randall Woodfield to the double homicide.

Curiously, missing from the Fix home was a .32 caliber, silver pistol.




***

Thanks so much for reading you guys! I know this took longer than I said it would, but it was a lot to compile! I can honestly say I am so glad to have it off my chest. What a fascinating case, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that Randy spent his time after prison trying to meet and sleep with every girl on the West Coast, keeping a huge diary of their names, numbers, and addresses. He called constantly, wrote letters, sent gifts. He forced himself in more than one way on every young woman he saw. And those actions came to bite him, hard, in the end, because each of those women could and would identify him. They saw what he was, and they stood up to him and in the face of evil, shown a light for all to see what he was, a monster.

As always, if you love the blog, you can subscribe by clicking the button at the top right corner and entering an email. If you are interested in reading more of my work, I have a novel available on Amazon. If you would like to write a review, I will send you a free eBook or Kindle copy! Amazon likes books to have 50 reviews before they start advertising it, so I could really use the reviews. You can also support this blog by becoming a patron at pateron.com/Skeleton_Friend.

Thanks again! #themurderyouknow


Sources:

The I-5 Killer. by Ann Rule
Wikipedia
KATU News
OregonLive

On a chilly Sunday evening in mid-January, two young women rolled up to the TransAmerica Title Building on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon, just off Interstate 5, to clean the office. It was their usual Sunday job, though today they had gotten a bit of a late start, having to shower and stop for gas, so they didn't arrive to the business complex until after nine p.m. The office had wide, welcoming windows on every wall and, with the bright florescent lights flipped on, the effect was to create a fishbowl-like scene, the women bustling around in their duties like two busy, little fish. They'd left the door unlocked and entertained themselves by chatting to each other, the two of them best friends. They were Shari Hull, twenty-years-old and the daughter of the owner of the housekeeping company with which they were both employed, and Beth Wilmot, also twenty and a fairly recent transplant to Salem from Spokane, Washington. She'd come for work, and along with steady pay, she'd found a true friend. 
Everything was going well. It was a small office and kept very clean during the week, so the two women had barely anything to do. They cleaned the floors and dusted; wiped the doors and took out the garbage. Shari took it out alone, feeling comfortable enough in the empty office park to do so. They were almost done and ready to climb back into Shari's Bronco, they'd left it running to keep it warm, and head home. But, someone must have seen Shari when she took the garbage out on her own. They must have seen that the door was left open. They must have watched the two women, alone in the fishbowl-like office, sweep and scrub, talk and laugh. And they must have known that they could do anything, anything they wanted, and no one would ever know.
He came in through the door, bolstering a gun, his face hidden by the hood of his jacket, a band aid stretched over the bridge of his nose. 
He corralled the two women into the small lunchroom of the office, the only room without a view into the parking lot or nearby River Road, and demanded they strip naked and get down onto the floor. He told them, then, to preform oral sex, unzipping his pants and exposing his erect penis. Terrified, shaking, and crying, Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot complied. He told Shari to masturbate and attempted to vaginally rape Beth, but was unable to, so he commanded again that both girls fellate him until he reached climax at which point he demanded they swallow his ejaculate. 
When he was satisfied sexually, he told them to lie face down and asked them if they had any rope. They didn't have any or know where any was, so he stood over them, quietly, and listened to them beg. Shari was hysterical, pleading for her life, swearing never to tell what they had done. Her cries were useless, but she had to fight for her life. Beth spoke more rationally, asking him to leave them unharmed. He had already decided what he was going to do.
A shot rang out, a bullet slamming into Shari's head. Another echoed in the tiny room, knocking hard into Beth's skull. Three more shots followed, one more for Beth, leaving her ears ringing, and two for Shari, who lay moaning on the floor.
He walked out, sprinting into the night, leaving two young women to bleed out on the floor, thinking he'd won. He'd left no witnesses.
Minutes passed and Beth finally found herself able to rise up and walk to the bathroom. Her head was pounding, her heart still racing. The right side of her face was becoming a blackened, bloody mess, the swelling spanning across her cheek and jaw, over her eye, deep into her hairline. She stumbled away from the mirror and found a phone where she dialed 911.
Detective Dave Kominek of the Marion County Sheriff's Office caught the case and got to work immediately. The killer had been wearing gloves, he hadn't taken off a single item of clothing, he'd kept his hair covered by the hood of his jacket. They found little evidence, save for the .32 caliber bullets that barreled through Shari's head, and a lone curly, black pubic hair. He'd run the hair against everyone that was at the crime scene, which included the two victims, as well as deputies, paramedics, and fire fighters responding to the call. It was a match for no one. 
Shari Hull was found barely breathing, three gunshot wounds to her head, fired at such a close range as to blacken her hair with singed gunpowder residue. She was rushed to the hospital, but died very shortly thereafter. 
Beth Wilmot was found fully conscious, two gunshot wounds to her head, fired execution style at point-blank range. But, Beth Wilmot was going to survive.
Rushed to the hospital, the ED physicians and nurses found something incredibly surprising. A .32 caliber bullet sitting in a nest of matted, bloody hair. They took an X-Ray and found that another bullet had been fired into Beth's head and had skirted along her skull under her skin to rest a few inches in front of her right ear. The same bullets that had ripped through Shari's brain hadn't even penetrated Beth's skull. Everyone was amazed. Beth's survival was truly miraculous. Physicians deduced that Beth must have had very dense bone, enough to stop a bullet fired at extremely close range. Not only could Beth survive two bullets to the head, but she could testify against Shari's killer and find some justice for herself and her best friend.
At the time of Shari's murder, no one had any idea of what they were actually walking into. With a fairly detailed description and a composite made from Beth's memory, Detective Kominek sent out a teletype to seven western states, including within it the strange modus operandi of his killer. 
The next day, the case broke into one hundred little pieces, each one spanning across the vast expanse of the Interstate 5 corridor, from a small Seattle suburb into the depths of the California Redwood Forest. Somebody was robbing, raping, and ruining lives, and he'd been doing it undetected for months.


Randall Brent Woodfield was born on December 26, 1950 to two very pleased parents. They had wanted a son and, after two beautiful girls, they were granted their wish. He was perfect and he was going to be the perfect son. Dad had high hopes he would be an athlete. Mom believed he would do great things in the world.
Randall grew up in a charming, rainy beach town on the coast of Oregon. Otter Rock was the ideal place to raise a family. It was small and friendly; neighborly folks looking out for one another. The Woodfields were very well-liked and popular about town. Everyone said they were such a nice family. They had such a nice boy.
But, Randall, or Randy as his mother called him, was a troubled child. Yet, no one seemed to notice. He was very jealous of the freedom his older sisters experienced. He did not believe it was due to their age. That soon, when he was older, he too would also experience this liberation. He believed it was due to their sex. That, because they were female, they were privileged. He resented that he was not granted such freedom as his sister even though he was a boy and thus was owed attention and affection. 
He had a strange relationship with his mother. He worshipped the ground she walked on, but as she was the main disciplinarian, resented her greatly. He felt like he could never and would never live up to her unbelievably high standards, standards he set for himself in his own head. His mother was always very proud of him, but he never felt that pride, and felt every time he messed up or did wrong that she was severely disappointed in him. He invested his self-worth in the approval of his mother and then convinced himself he would never gain that approval. Throughout his life, his actions and motivations would all lead back to the approval of women and especially that of his beloved mother.
When Randall entered his very early teens, he started to feel intense sexual desires. As a child born in the early '50's, there was no talk of sex or sexuality in the home, at least not until high school. He watched as his sisters were granted even more privileges, like learning to drive and staying out later at night, and began to resent girls even more. He couldn't act on, or even understand, his sexual urges and girls were really starting to piss him off. So, Randall began a life-long career of flashing.
He would expose his erect penis to women and girls all over town. Sometimes flashing one woman and sprinting with his quick, athletic legs to another part of the city to flash another woman or a group of girls. He reveled in their looks of horror and disgust. It made his heart race, his blood rush--he was aroused. 
By this time in his life, it was apparent to everyone in town that Randall Woodfield was a star athlete. He excelled at every sport he was asked to play--baseball, basketball, track and field, though his passion was found in football--and a buzz was building that maybe he would be the one to put the little ocean-side town on the map. So when Randall was caught exposing himself to local women and girls, there was no punishment, there was no counseling, there was no reform school. His parents either ignored it or repressed it, neither ever speaking of it. The town swept it away and kept watching Randall play. He was good. So good, in fact, that he was chosen in 1974 to play for the Green Bay Packers.
Randall never really had a steady girlfriend. He would date a girl for a few weeks, maybe a few months, and then it was over. Randall would rage about how he was wronged, how women were untrustworthy, that they were purposefully deceptive. He would move on to another girl, rushing in, pledging his love, and his heart would break again. 
He never quite got over any of his girlfriends, or even the girls that outright rejected him. After his college girlfriend broke it off, he broke into her dorm room thinking maybe stealing back what he had given her would make him feel better. Instead, he got in trouble. And, yet, Randy kept writing her, sending her pictures of himself naked or nearly so, relentlessly for a decade. It was a pattern he would repeat with hundreds of women over the coming years.
Randall was cut from the 1974 Packers team. He stuck around in Wisconsin to play for a minor league team, but eventually returned home to Oregon ashamed. There was no exact reason given why he was cut. If you ask Randy, he would tell you he just didn't have the skills. For a man that was obsessed with becoming a professional running back, whose life was centered for a decade on that dream, admitting that you just didn't cut it and leaving it behind was strange. When asked about it later by Oregon detectives, Wisconsin police officers confirmed that Randall had been flashing again. So much so that his sexual exploits led to his dismissal from the NFL team. 
Returning home with his tail-tucked, Randall didn't know what to do. He didn't see the point in returning to college, he was only there to play football and become a star. He moved back to Portland, where he had attended Portland State, and took a job with an electronics company. In 1975
In college, Randall had become extremely religious. His family and friends would call him obsessed. He seemed to be the type of personality that, when he found something to focus his energy on, like religion or football, he became completely immersed in it, absolutely obsessed to the point of madness. His father worried and it drove a wedge between them, but Randall did not falter in his devotion. It was almost as if he were drowning himself in Christianity to stifle the demons within. In prison, Randall again turned to religion. 
Randall's time in prison did not start out well. He had a problem with female guards. He had a problem with the female nurse that ran his therapy group. He had a problem with female authority. 
He pledged to his therapist over and over that his issue was sex related and in order to fix it, he would abstain from sex once he got out of prison. He wanted to meet one woman, he said, that would fulfill all his needs and raise a family; have a quiet life. He was argumentative and got written up several times. A few years in, he realized this strategy wasn't working for him. He needed to focus on what he wanted, and what he wanted was out of prison. So, he began to tell counselors and guards what they wanted to hear, he became a model prisoner. Believing he was rehabilitated, he was released on parole in 1979. 
Just one year later, Randall would graduate from exposure and sexual assault to premeditated murder.


After Randy got out of prison, his obsession with religion dwindled and he focused on something new. Sex. He wanted to have sex with every woman he could, completely contradicting his previous statements about finding the one woman to settle down with, he courted every woman he met. He would come on strong, hitting on one woman and immediately moving on to the one next to her if she declined his offer. He would suggest serious relationships within minutes of meeting someone, beg to accompany them home. If he did go home with them, he would ask for fellatio. That was his thing. Rarely did he ever have intercourse with his girlfriends. 
Randy liked them young. He was often seeing girls in their late teens, some as young as sixteen and seventeen. Women his age, he was nearing 30, saw through him immediately and found him shallow and dull, the maturity of a teenager. He fared better with younger girls, found he could control them easier, manipulate them to his desires. They thought he was cute and could talk with him on the same level. Young women fawned over Randall Woodfield. 
But, many of them realized their mistake, and would ask him--he who came on very strong--to back off. Randall would hide his building rage and resentment at women and move on to the next girl. But he would write down their names, their numbers, and throughout the years would call them, try to court them, send them pictures and flowers. He had a little black book full of over 500 women. He would string several along at a time for years on end, promising a serious future and proclaiming his love. 
One such woman was Shelley Janson, a college student in New Mexico, who met Randy when she was visiting home in Oregon over the 1980-81 holiday break. Within a month, Shelley and Randall were on a trip to San Francisco. Randall drove down to meet her and they spent three days at the end of January together. And the end of the trip, Randall proposed. By March, Shelley couldn't stand to be away from Randall another day and dropped out of college in New Mexico to return to Oregon and live with Randall in Eugene. When she arrived in early March, everything she'd dreamt of with Randall was suddenly, horrifically changed.


On February 4, 1981, Shasta County detectives received a teletype from an Oregon sheriff's office about a brutal assault and murder that had occurred days before. They picked up the phone and dialed up Detective Dave Kominek.
Less than twenty-four hours before, in the little town of Moutain Gate, California, Donna Lee Eckard, thirty-seven, and her fourteen-year-old daughter Janell Jarvis were at home alone. Donna Lee's husband was a firefighter and had just begun his twenty-four hour shift at the station close by. Her youngest daughter, twelve-year-old Kristin, had called, after staying late from school to watch a basketball game, to ask to stay over at a friend's for dinner. Donna Lee had been woken up from a nap by the call. She hadn't been feeling well after a minor surgical procedure earlier in the day and when she realized she needed breakfast things for the next morning, threw a coat over her nightgown and wrote a check for Janell to take in to the store down the street. They were going to drive together and Janell was going to go in. But someone had seen them, at home alone, Donna Lee in her nightgown, Janell just fourteen. Before they could leave for the store, someone stopped them.
A few minutes before nine p.m., Kristin returned home. She called out for her mom, but wasn't worried when she received no answer. She walked from room to room, looking for her family, and when she entered her parents' bedroom, she found them.
Donna Lee lay on the bed, her arms bound underneath her and her ankles wrapped with surgical tape. Her nightgown was pulled down to reveal her breasts, her coat stripped off and cast aside. A wide piece of tape covered her mouth and nose.
Janell lay beside her mother, prone and completely nude. To Kristin, she was obviously dead. Her head was covered in blood and bullet holes. Later, at autopsy, they would discover she had been shot a total of seven times with .32 caliber bullets, and had been anally raped after her death.

Kristin checked on her mother. She ripped the taped from her face and shook her, urging her to wake up, to respond. Fearing the worst, Kristin picked up the phone and dialed 911. Her firefighter step-father, Steve Eckard, raced with his superiors to his home. All he could do when he arrived was identify their bodies.
Detectives Gene Farley and Rick Burnett noted the execution style wounds on both women and were at a loss to how, in a quaint little mountain town just off Interstate 5, at the end of a quiet residential street, such carnage had found it's way into this home.




***
That was part one of my entry on the I-5 Killer. As I was writing it, I realize there was a lot of information, and I needed more room to tell the story. I have always wanted to learn more about this particular serial killer and find travel killers absolutely fascinating. The idea of a man like this roaming from place to place, killing and cutting people down across our vast country is absolutely terrying. Especially considering how hard it is to hunt a killer like this. Just getting everyone on the same page, all the jurisdictions and the various persons involved in a homicide investigation, is a daunting task. This was a story I didn't know very well, but I am glad I am getting the chance to tell it now. So, stay tuned for part two, because it will be interesting.

As always, if you want to support this blog and my other writing endevors, please click on the patreon link above. Also, if you are interested in writing a review for my novel The Skeleton Friend, please let me know. You'll receive a free eBook or Kindle edition of the book for your review. And, if you like the blog so far, you can subscribe to receive e-mail updates. Just click the SUBSCRIBE button at the top of the page and enter your e-mail address to follow the blog! Thanks so much everyone for your support. I hope this was educational. #themurderyouknow


Sources:

The I-5 Killer , by Ann Rule
Learning History
Wikipedia

On a chilly February night, five days after the start of the Chinese New Year, 1983, three young men walked into one of the most renowned, high-stakes gambling dens in the heart of Seattle's Chinatown International District and walked away with thousands of dollars of cash in their pockets and fourteen lives hanging in the balance in their wake. 
The club was the Wah Mee, a sixty-year-old casino and bar that catered exclusively to Chinese clientele and hosted the highest-stakes illegal gambling in the Pacific Northwest. The men were 22-year-old Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, 20-year-old Benjamin Ng, and 25-year-old Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng. 
Willie Mak was born in Kwangtung Province in mainland China and immigrated to the US with his family in 1975 when he was fifteen. By 22, Willie was a high school drop out, working various jobs in and around Seattle, and had a penchant for gambling. He was well-known in the International District gambling clubs, including the Wah Mee, and may have even worked there on-and-off. He had a dream of opening his own Chinese restaurant, but gambling got in the way of any plans he made. By early 1983, his debt had grown to $30,000 and Willie began to plan his way out. 
The Wah Mee, originally called Blue Heaven when it was opened in the 1920s, was located in Maynard Alley, off of South King Street in the historic Nelson, Tagholm, and Jensen Tenement, later renamed the Hudson Hotel, and finally the Louisa Hotel. It was a hopping spot throughout Prohibition and the jazz era, a speakeasy that offered drinks, dancing, and gambling. At the time, they catered to all clientele, but as the decades drew on, a new ownership took over, the newly named Wah Mee became a private club for Chinese members only. Like many other illegal gambling joints at the time, the Wah Mee had the Seattle Police Department on their payroll. A small deposit of about $2,000 to the pockets of local cops and their superiors was all that was required to keep the money rolling at the Wah Mee, and, since the Wah Mee was known for such high-stakes, with easily up to $100,000 in the bank on any given weekend night, the price was more than affordable to continue to serve the Chinese public of Seattle. The club offered two traditional Chinese games, mahjong and Pai Gow, four tables total, set lower in the club from the sweeping, curved bar and office located on a raised stage. In the early '80s, you could visit the Wah Mee for a drink, to socialize with local affluent restaurant owners, or you could go to gamble.
Wah Mee entrance, August 2010. Photo by Joe Mabel.Security at the Wah Mee was a system of two doorways. At the first door, you buzzed in and a guard in the office peered through a single clear glass brick to identify you and buzz you into the bar. It was traditionally a very effective form of security, but Willie Mak was well-known to the Wah Mee, and getting past the guard was as easy as showing his face. 
In late January, 1983, Willie Mak began planning a heist that would cure him of all his gambling debt, and leave some money left over to start a new future for himself. Meeting at a south Seattle Denny's, Willie enlisted former high school classmate Benjamin Ng into his scheme.
Benjamin Ng was born, like Willie, in the Kwangtung Province in China and immigrated with his family in 1975 to Seattle. Both boys attended Cleveland High School and both dropped out before graduation. Unlike Willie, Benjamin had a history of violent crimes leading as far back as his teens. Ng had a history of gun violence specifically, having fired into the car of Michael Chinn in 1981 and seriously injuring the teenager, wounding his neck, chest, and thigh. Chinn and his friends were coming to confront Ng about slashed tires on Chinn's car.  Ng was cleared of charges two months later because it was determined that he was acting in self-defense. Ng was the perfect accomplice for Willie; he wasn't afraid to fire a gun. Willie had already decided that there could be no witnesses.

The plan was to hit a high-stakes club on the weekend of the Chinese New Year. Patrons would be flush with cash from their week's work and in good spirits because of the holiday. Willie figured, since the club was operating illegally as a casino and had cops on the payroll, the likelihood of an investigation, or even the report, of a robbery was extremely low. An investigation would likely mean the club having to shut down permanently, so Willie thought it was a safe bet that he could get away unscathed and the club would continue to operate as if it were any other day. Though he had already decided to kill everyone in the club on the night of the heist, he apparently hadn't factored in the consequences of those deaths.

The third and final man came into the plan late in the game, as Willie was becoming desperate. Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng, no relation to Benjamin Ng, was an immigrant from Hong Kong and another former student of Cleveland High School. He had no criminal record and was by all accounts a quiet, nice man. Tony owed Willie $1,000. Willie told Tony he could absolve his debt if he helped Willie rob one of the illegal gambling dens in the International District. Willie had chosen the Wah Mee for his heist because it was easily the most-famous, club with the highest stakes. Coerced, Tony joined the group for meetings at Denny's to discuss the plan, Willie's plan. Tony and Benjamin would do everything Willie said, he was the ring-leader. The plan would be meticulous. Willie believed it would go off without a hitch.

The day before the robbery, Tony got cold feet. He refused to kill anyone and borrowed money from his girlfriend to pay off his debt to Willie. They met to discuss it and Willie outright told Tony that if he didn't participate in the heist, Willie would kill him, his family, his girlfriend, everyone he loved. Tony wasn't getting out of this one.

Layout of the Wah Mee Club the night of the heist.The morning of February 18, 1983, Willie Mak, Tony Ng, and Benjamin Ng met at six in the morning for breakfast at Denny's. Later in the day, they swapped cars with Willie's cousin and congregated at Mak's residence. In the basement, they gathered their supplies: nylon cords, a duffel bag, and guns.

Tony and Willie went to the Wah Mee first, granted access by doorman Gim Lun Wong, and loitered for about a half hour. There were only about seven or eight people in the club at that time, including a bartender, the doorman, dealers, and patrons. Wai Chin, a Pai Gow dealer, sat at the bar next to Tony Ng and offered him a bite of his late-night dinner. Later, Chin would wonder if this kindness he offered the young man may have saved his life.

Around 12:30, Benjamin Ng, carrying a brown paper bag stuffed with pre-cut nylon cords, rang the doorbell of the Wah Mee and was recognized by security guard Wong. He was buzzed into the building.

The three men turned off the lights, only the eerie orange glow of lanterns illuminated the room. Ordering them to the ground, they hog-tied everyone in the club, save for Wong, who was to stay at the door with a gun on his head and admit new patrons as they buzzed to be let in. As new patrons entered, they, too, were hog-tied on the floor.

Restaurateur Moo Min Mar and his wife Jean, cook and waiter Hung Fat Gee, retired postal worker Jack Mar, doorman Henning Chin, and Dewey Mar who ran the Kokusai Theater, were lined up in a curving row at the back wall of the club. Close by, near the adjacent wall, lay cook and former army sargeant Wing Wong, Wah Mee manager John Loui, Chong Chin, a legionnaire and cook, fisherman and cook Lung Wing Chin, Chin Lee Law, owner of a car repair shop, George Mar who worked at the Far East Restaurant, and Pai Gow dealer Wai Yok Chin.

Wallets, the cash register, and Mrs. Mar's purse were emptied. When Willie was satisfied, he ordered Tony to wait between the two security doors at the entrance. Stepping up onto the raised stage that comprised the bar and security office, Willie Mak and Benjamin Ng opened fire on the twelve men and single woman lying in the floor of the club. They fired a total of thirty rounds, pausing to reload multiple times. Each shot was a hit, fired from point-blank range. Doorman Gim Lun Wong was shot at his post in the office, slumped over an old love seat.

The three men exited the Wah Mee Club, the doors locking behind them, and fled in the borrowed car across Lake Washington, dumping their weapons into the lake along the way.

The victims lay dead or bleeding out, some tied so tight that their heads were pulled up off the floor from the strain of their bindings. Wrists bound to ankles, animalistic.

Horrific image of the crime scene the morning of February 19, 1984.
Courtesy of the Seattle Police Department.But Wai Chin was not tied so tightly. Tony Ng, to whom he had offered a bite of his meal, was the one charged with tying the 62-year-old dealer. Chin asked Tony to make them not so tight, shrugging that he was an old man and couldn't well escape anyway. Chin knew the men were likely going to kill him, to kill all of them. When the time came, he tried to scuttle under a nearby table and thus the bullets meant for his brain missed, catching his jaw and neck instead. Knocked out cold from the impact, Wai Chin lay with the others, the pool of blood rapidly growing.

Patrons were still arriving to the club on the alleyway outside. They buzzed to be let in, but there was no answer. For a Saturday night, this was very unusual. The doors were locked, of course, so George Ong began to bang on the doors with his fist. The loud, repeating thump woke Chin. As he remembered what happened, he wiggled from his restraints and rose to his feet.

Staggering, he found his way out of the club, blood pouring from his wounds, and into the arms of George Ong.

When asked who did it, Chin replied, "Ng and Mak. That's all I can tell. The door locked already. Call ambulance."

Within an hour, the crime scene was abuzz with cops, paramedics, and staff from the medical examiner's office. The blood was so thick on the floor, detectives wrapped their shoes in bags to keep them dry. Chin was rushed to Harborview Medical Center and taken immediately to surgery. Shortly after police descended on the Wah Mee, John Loui was found to still be breathing, and joined Chin at Harborview, his surgery taking place in the operating room next door. John Loui died on the table.

Benjamin Ng at his trial on August 17, 1983.
Photo by Barry Wong, Seattle Times.Early on February 19, 1983, Benjamin Ng and Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak were taken into custody. Tony Ng remained at large. To find him, police set up a Chinese-language answering service, simply saying "Your friends were killed. Help us to catch the persons responsible."

On the 24th of February, Benjamin Ng and Willie Mak were charged with thirteen counts of aggravated first degree murder. Six months later, Ng was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. Two
Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, 1983.
Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.
In June of 1984, Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was apprehended four months later in Calgary, Alberta by the RCMP.

Tony was acquitted of all counts of murder in April of 1985. He never fired his gun, his lawyer argued, and was made to preform the robbery under duress. He was convicted on thirteen counts of first degree robbery and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. Each charge held a minimum sentence of five years, to be served consecutively, but each charge offered the chance at parole. Over the years, the parole board granted Tony parole, lessening his time served and bringing his release date closer and closer. Family members of the victims gathered in outrage when the parole board considered granting parole for his 12th count of robbery, meaning he could be eligible for release as early as 2010. They were upset that they had not been made aware of previous parole board meetings, thus missing their chance to testify that he should remain in prison. King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng and former Seattle Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons both argued against Tony Ng's parole. In February of 2010, a parole board unanimously voted to parole Tony Ng on his 13th count. In October of 2013, Tony was granted parole and in May of 2014 he was released from prison and immediately deported from the United States to Hong Kong.
The wanted poster for Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng.
Willie Mak's execution was stayed a number of times and in 2006, after several appeals, his death penalty conviction was overturned and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

The Wah Mee Massacre stands as the deadliest mass murder in Washington State history. It shook Seattle and forever changed the International District. The Wah Mee Club was shut down and padlocked from that day onward, for over thirty years, until much of the derelict Louisa Hotel was destroyed in a fire on Christmas Eve of 2013.

Wai Yok Chin, an incredible survivor and the only witness to the massacre, who was able to identify and testify against the perpetrators, died ten years after the events of February 1983, at the age of 72. When describing the situation to friends, he would comment on how he was unafraid. "If you die, you die," he said. "That's all. They already tie you up. What else can you do?" But there was more he could do, and because of his quick thinking, strength, and bravery, three men were caught and convicted for the slaughter of twelve men and one woman at the Wah Mee Club in Seattle.



***
Thank you guys so much for reading my first entry into my new true crime blog. This story was one I had never heard, and I couldn't believe I hadn't! Not only did it keep me up at night, but it gave me nightmares. Mass shootings are difficult for me to talk about and to read about, but I knew this was a story I wanted to tell, if only to honor Wai Chin and the thirteen victims of this heinous crime. I think one of the reasons I chose to write about this, and to include a mass shooting in my first novel, is because knowledge has always been a source of strength for me. I fear guns, so I learned how to shoot one, so I could understand it, qualify and quantify it. In a way, talking about mass murder like this, helps me to face my own fear. I hope I was able to help some of you, too. In the very least, I hope I was able to educate you about a huge piece of Seattle and Washington State history you may not have known about!

If you want to support this blog and my writing, please become a patron! And, if you are interested in reviewing my first novel, The Skeleton Friend, you will receive a free eBook or Kindle copy for your review! Just let me know in the comments below or shoot me an email. Thanks again, everyone. :)


Sources:

Wah Mee , by Todd Matthews
http://www.historylink.org/File/2984
Wikipedia
Seattle PI

Hey guys! Big announcement!
I am turning this blog into a true crime blog!!!
Fucking exciting. And kind of terrifying, because it is actually a big endeavor. There is a lot of responsibility in writing about true crime. Honoring the legacies and lives of the victims while detailing the crimes that brought an end to those lives is a heavy weight. But, I have been thinking about writing true crime now for a couple of years and I think now is absolutely the time to make the transition. So, coming soon will be the first story in my true crime series. 
The blog will focus on Washington State murders and abhorrent crimes. Everyone knows about Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer, which I will be covering, of course--because how could I not?!--but Washington is a haven of heinous crimes and there is a lot to discuss. True crime is so popular, I believe, for two reasons. First, because we want to understand how someone could do something so incredibly horrific as take a life, or in the case of a few murderers, become serial killers. It fascinates us and bewilders us. We want to know the psychology of a killer, see into their minds and be enlightened as to why they became what they became, how this happened to them. We seek to understand it, to identify and qualify it. Knowledge is power. Understanding is strength. 
Which leads to the second reason: we want to protect ourselves. Statistically, women are more fascinated with true crime than men and it has been suggested this is because women tend to be the victims of abuse, rape, and murder. As women, as potential victims, we want to protect ourselves, learn from the tragedies that befell others. Even to find common ground with victims, an understanding of what it feels like to be a victim, a shared experience. If we have already experienced something traumatic, immersing ourselves in the world of true crime and thus in the lives of other victims can actually help us cope, help us heal. And we can learn to protect ourselves from the devil lurking in the night, or the charming guy with the injured arm who needs help to his car. Women recognizing that they are vulnerable is also allowing us to stand up and say, "no more." From the #metoo movement to My Favorite Murder, ladies everywhere are saying no to being victims. So, with this blog, I don't just want to discuss murder and the implications of it, I want to empower my fellow woman to stand strong, to refuse to be a victim, to kick and fight and never say die, and to probably get a knife and a dog with a mean bark (mine is a total chicken, but she has that scary bark and it has served us well). I hope that I can help women to feel their own strength, help victims to feel they are in a safe space to heal, and help everyone to understand a little better why bad things happen.

I hope someday, if all of this goes well, to add a podcast into the mix. It's something I have wanted to do for years as well, but I need to start small, and do the things that I can do now. To build this up from the ground floor.

I hope you guys tune in. I will be writing a new story each week and posting them on Wednesdays for now. So keep an eye out for the first one! I'm not going to spoil it, but I am definitely going to be starting out with a bang!

I don't have a fun catchphrase like the ladies over at MFM, but I guess if I did, it'd go something like "stay safe and get a big dog!" I dunno. It's all a work in progress.



I am still an author of fiction, so I will absolutely still be talking about what I am currently writing and what's coming next in that arena, so if you pop into the blog because you are a fan of The Skeleton Friend, I will still try to keep you updated on what is happening with the sequel, The Skeleton Girls, and my new, currently untitled, novel that takes place during a zombie apocalypse. Super excited about that shit! If you are interested in writing a review for The Skeleton Friend on Amazon, I am desperately seeking volunteers! You will receive a free copy of The Skeleton Friend for your Amazon review in either Kindle or eBook format. Just hit me up and I will send it along! The is also a Patreon set up to help support this blog and my writing. There will be exclusive content for patrons! :)

Well, I was planning on going back to the west coast, but that isn't going to happen. At least, it isn't going to happen anytime soon. Hopefully for medical school; definitely for residency (unless I try for the Boston Combined Residency Program in pediatrics, which I might, but I might also decide to be a surgeon. And, of course, that is what is weighing most on my mind, because, though I am going back to school soon, I am not there yet, and I have nothing else to think about, so I think about my future). It isn't going to happen because I am tired of taking the hard way. I am exhausted of somehow always doing everything hard. I know, I know--life itself is hard, and there truly is no easy way. Obviously, I am not taking any kind of easy way by deciding to become a doctor. But, there is always an easier way, and for some reason, I am always taking the less-than-easy route. And, I am tired. Usually, it is because I want to go to a damn good school and be a well educated as I can possibly be. But, when I started out I didn't go to a shitty school. It was a good school. As good of a school as the one my sister went to for both undergrad and her veterinary degree. And, while I left with less-than-excellent academic standing, they took me back once before so I can imagine they will do the same, especially with a well-written letter of petition. The truth of the matter is: I have messed up a lot academically. I have an okay GPA right now, but I dropped out twice--once from this institution and once from community college, both related to the level of serotonin in my brain. And in order to get into a better school or into a school on the west coast, I will have to add time to my degree and jump through hoop after hoop. I am already going to be jumping through a world of hoops just to become a doctor. Just to get into medical school. I just want something to be fairly straight forward for once. To have only a few steps instead of twenty or thirty. So, I am not going back to the west coast. Not for a while. I am going back to Chicago. I am applying for readmission to the University of Illinois at Chicago for fall of 2018 and I am aiming to finish my degree by 2020. Because I am tired of putting it off, I am tired of adding time, and I am tired of not being a doctor. I have taken the advice of all of the doctors I have talked to, and the thing is, there isn't anything else that will make me happy. I have tried other careers, I have tried lesser careers, I have tried to do things in medicine to satisfy my need to practice medicine without getting the MD, and nothing has worked, I keep coming back to this. I keep coming back to the idea that I need to be a doctor. Or, at least, try to be a doctor. That nothing else will make me happy. That I won't feel satisfied until I have done this. That my stupid heart won't stop singing until it's singing about physiology, pharmacokinetics, cell biology, mattress sutures, and one-handed knots.So, I am jumping in again. And I don't know if I will sink or if I will swim. But, I am going to kick my legs really hard and I am going to swallow some pride and put on some fucking arm floaties. And maybe one of those waist inner tubes. And some damn goggles.


I'm in Durant for three months on a travel job. It's a very, very tiny town that doesn't even have a Starbucks--although, it's technically a college town, so I don't even know how that is possible. The hospital is three ORs. I don't think I have ever worked at a facility with less than 15. It's definitely different.
My company hasn't gotten me into an apartment yet, so I am still staying in the crappy hotel they booked me. I decided to let them take care of housing and forego the untaxed, weekly stipend because I was very broke. Now I am stressed just wondering when we're going to have a place to live that isn't next to a very-frequented railroad and doesn't require that I rely on someone else for clean towels. I had to apply for the apartment, which has me very worried due to my extremely terrible credit. So, we'll see how that goes.
The good news is, I have a job and it's in the OR. That means I am one step closer to finishing my degree. Because I owe money to the schools. I owe money to all of the schools. They won't let me go back until I pay it back. So, I have a job, and I am paying it back. Every day I am a little bit farther down the road. Every day I am a little bit closer.

Well, I got a job. And it's kind of perfect, so I am going to do everything in my power to make it permanent. Right now, it is just seasonal, but since it is a work from home opportunity and I can work four ten hour shifts a week, I really want to make it permanent. Especially since it could travel with me when I transfer to a four-year university. And it's with Amazon, and Amazon just so happens to be headquartered in Seattle. So, these are all good things. 
The pay isn't the best rate I've ever gotten, but for where I am right now, it's pretty good and it will allow me to start moving forward again. Along with seeing a psychiatrist again, I am starting to feel like the pieces are snapping back into place regarding who I am and what I can become. That feels good.
I entered The Skeleton Friend into a novel writing contest. According to the rules, it could be already self-published, so I went ahead and put it out there. Not entirely sure how the winners are picked. They were looking specifically for a series of novels, which TSF is the first of. We'll see what happens, but I don't think it hurts to put it out there. 
I am having serious trouble sleeping at night. Mostly falling asleep. My anxiety is crazy high. I am desperate for something to give and hopefully, this is the thing that starts to ease some of my worry. I don't know. Bedtime isn't for a while, so in the meantime, I guess I'll reheat this coffee and try not to drum my fingers broken or bite my nail beds bloody.
All I can do is try.

My life has been a fucking disaster and I think I might be ready to talk about it.
I am back in Tulsa and I am not happy about it. I don't like Oklahoma. The weather is uncomfortable and, ideologically, I don't really fit in. But, it also has a few advantages. I have some of my best friends here, and they afford a lot of support and comfort. My mother is here, and she does the same. Plus, the school that I was attending is here and it should be pretty easy to go back, which I want to do. I've finally decided that it is what I have to do, both intellectually and spiritually (not, like, religiously, because I am a proud atheist, but in a way that is more for the good of my soul, as if my soul is calling out for something and won't be satisfied until I have at least tried to accomplish what it wants). Yet, still, I would rather be in Seattle--and, for all intents and purposes, I am still keeping my residency in Washington State. I feel like I did everything I absolutely could to remain in Seattle and having to leave broke my heart. But, the truth is, coming back was the best thing. While I still haven't been able to nail down a job--the market here for medical personnel is pretty small--being here to restart my degree is smart, both in terms of already being established at the school here and financially. And, once I am able to transfer schools, I will probably be right back on the west coast. I want to be on the West Coast; I want to live there and work there.
But, right now, I have to focus on getting my life back on track. Which means work. 
I am looking for freelancing jobs and ways to make money writing, mostly just to serve as a supplement to any job I get. Because I am planning on going back to school full-time, I am seriously considering just taking any job. Obviously, if I hear from a hospital, I will take that job. It's the best pay I am going to make short of becoming a well-selling author, which I don't see happening anytime soon. But, the truth is, I just need something, because I am going to have to take out loans anyway. So, I'm looking everywhere. It isn't happening fast, and the fact that I don't have a job is causing a lot of tension in the house. I don't know what to do about it. I don't know how much harder I can try. 
I am exhausted all of the time, but I am seeing a psychiatrist again, so hopefully here soon I will start to feel better. 
I lost everything, almost absolutely everything, in the last six months. But, I still have my dog and I still have my laptop, and I have always said those are the only things I need in this world. So, I am going to keep writing, and I am going to keep fighting, and I am going to get back on my feet. Hopefully, I can make it happen. I don't think I have much of a choice about it. I can't imagine what would happen if I couldn't. Nothing good. 
But, maybe, nothing bad, either. And that's really the thing that worries me the most because I can't let myself coast or get too comfortable or fail to overcome. The thing is: I want to be a doctor and I am not just going to stumble into it or fall into a white coat. So, whatever it is that is causing me to fail, I have to find the source and break it down, and that source is somewhere within me. 
I am the problem and I am the only one that can fix the problem.

So, there has been a lot going on in my life this summer. You have no idea how happy I am that it is turning to autumn here in Seattle. Because of all of the drama and scrambling to catch up on nearly everything, I stopped writing. Just stopped. Chapter four was the last chapter I wrote, and that was in, like, July (I actually had to go back to my Twitter feed to figure this out, because it has been such a long, dramatic summer I honestly forgot). It's not even finished, chapter four. It's just sitting there all open-ended. I actually wrote the words "more words" on the last page where I intended for the next scene to take place. That was the last thing I wrote.
But, now, my life is free and easy and I miss writing. I had to put school off for another quater and, while i am hell-bent these days on becoming a doctor, I have the time on my hands to at least look at what I've written so far in book two.
So, that's what I am doing this afternoon. And, in an effort to motivate myself as well as titilate my readers, I am going to share a little of what I have. I think I have already posted this, so if you've read it, I'm sorry. Unfortunately, I am not prepared to share anything else. Not because it is still rough, but because I want it to be a surprise. :) 
So, here it is, the first scene of The Skeleton Girls:

Sometimes I still dream about sirens.The echo of them—bouncing against houses, reverberating off of sidewalks and asphalt  streets—a melody on repeat. The corresponding colors, the memory of them dancing, penetrating the black city sky, play like a series of disjointed home movies on the insides of my eyelids, haunting my sleep with the weight of melancholic nostalgia. I usually wake with a cool sweat dappling my forehead, names of lost friends on my lips, the vision of blood spatter dancing in my head. But, not tonight. Tonight there will be little sleep. And the sound of sirens will be reality, police and emergency vehicles rushing to another scene of another crime in this city. The blood spatter that will stain the streets will be fresh and fragrant, the body it came from still very much warm. This city is full of homicide—gunshot wounds and ruthless beatings, initiations and executions. And I am deployed into the fray to point out how these killings happen, whether the cops should add another name in red to the long list of names filling their murder room murder boards. I am a medico-legal investigator—a woman charged with the responsibility of the dead. I’ve abandoned the world of the living and spend my days studying liver, rigor, bloating, and blood. I observe their bodies, assist in their autopsies, and inform their families of their passing. Often, I have to track down who they were. Often, there isn’t a straight answer to that question. In this city, this bloodied city, I am the conduit between the living and the dead. I wonder sometimes if my view of this city from my position in the morgue has tainted my opinion of this place. It’s new to me, still, though I’ve been here more than two years. In many ways, it remains unfamiliar—uncomfortable and unfitted to my personality. I keep waiting for it to grow on me and, as much as I like the snow, the city hangs around me daunting and heavy. Death comes every night, haunts every neighborhood, stalking with his scythe, his hood pulled tight against the cold. Tonight is no different. It’s past midnight in Chicago and the war is on.

The snow is iced over, thick and crunchy, the gathered piles on the sidewalks black with soot. My boots are knee-high and protect my feet from the chill, but it seeps in everywhere else. Between the threads in my scarf, under the hem of my coat, scratching at my jean-wrapped legs, begging to come in. I trudge off the sidewalk and into the foot-deep accumulation on a scrappy city yard. The body is another young black man. Bullets riddle his lanky physique, his blood leaking quickly through fresh wounds, melting the snow below and pooling at our feet. He is a rare one, to be pronounced dead on the scene like this. Usually a drive-by doesn’t do enough damage to merit this kind of instantaneous damage. Usually—the boys and girls, the men in hooded sweaters, the young mothers with young children—usually there is a slow progression, a reverberation that ripples through the neighborhood, because bullet wounds are stray and random and almost always miss their first or second or third mark. Victims are taken to the ER still breathing. Gang shootings, for me, usually culminate in hospital trauma rooms and chilled, over-full morgues. But tonight I get to witness the devastation in situ.I huddle down a little into my coat, pulling my shoulders in and involuntarily shivering. I can handle cold, I tell myself. It gets cold in Seattle. I can handle wet and cold and cloudy. But, fuck, this is cold. I can almost feel the flesh of my lips turning blue. Snippets of conversation, of the cops updating me on the situation, barely break the frost building on my skin.“Pretty straightforward—dealer hanging by the porch waiting for buyer, gets gunned down by rival gang.”“It’s too fuckin’ cold for this shit.”“Ain’t never too cold for killing, Joe.”“Isn’t that the truth?” I sigh, looking first to Detective Miguel Rodriguez and then to Sergeant Joseph Sawyer. “So, what do you want to do?” the sergeant asks me as he raises the collar of his coat and sniffs a red, stuffy nose.“Well, time of death isn’t really going to be an issue. He’s practically still warm,” I mutter, though I haven’t even pulled my hand from my pocket to touch him. “Oh yeah,” says Miguel, “we were on the scene pretty much as the smoke was settling.”“I’ll get the guys to take him to the morgue. If you need something from him, wallet or I.D., go ahead.” I nod toward the body. They can’t touch him until I clear them. The moment the words leave my lips, Miguel is bending over and giving the young man a shove to his side so he might frisk the body for anything of interest or importance. I step back and let the cops handle this part, though it is part of my job and something I should be doing. But, I’m tired, and freezing, and there is a willing cop before me ready and waiting to take the helm. Miguel is able to shove hard enough to flop the fresh body onto his stomach, revealing the blood soaked snow that lie beneath.“Wait!” I stop Miguel from further inspection. Pulling a set of purple nitrile gloves from my pocket, I step closer to the dead man. There is a little hole in the blood-soaked, ice-packed snow carpeting the lawn. “It wasn’t a drive-by,” I say thoughtfully, bending over and palpating the small puncture. My fingers begin to burn instantly, the thin gloves offering no barrier from the cold. A little way in, maybe the length of my pinky, I graze something hard and jagged. With a scooping motion, I pull the bullet from the hole and hold it up to Miguel and the sergeant. “Someone was standing over him?” Miguel asks, scouring the scene for evidence of another body.“I’m guessing one set of these foot tracks belongs to your killer,” I offer as I drop the bullet into a plastic bag the sergeant proffers. “Shit, man,” Miguel says quietly.“I don’t think it changes much, except maybe the guy knew our man. Came to buy a hit, pulled one instead. That makes everyone’s job a little easier, at least.” I shrug.“You got a good eye, kid,” the sergeant says with a smile. The collar of his coat droops again onto his shoulders.As I begin to answer, my phone buzzes in my pocket, the vibrations causing an ache in my cold hands. Shit. “Carlyle,” I answer, a little surly, as I lift the device to my ear.“Hey, sorry Carly, but I got another one for you,” the voice of my boss, the MLI coordinator and right-hand man to the county medical examiner, crackles over the line.“Where’s Andy?” I ask, truly annoyed. In a city this size, we should have more than one investigator on call, but budget cuts and hiring freezes plague the public offices of Chicago.“He’s got family stuff. And, before you asked, I tried Marlow, too. It’s not her night, she didn’t answer.”The three MLIs in my precinct and I am the only one available for a midnight murder. Although, it could simply be a peaceful death, natural causes in the warmth of their bed. But, I doubt it. It is too early in the morning for people to wake to find loved ones cold in bed. And, sometimes, I just know.“Text me the address,” I say shortly and hang up. He’s my boss and I should probably be more respectful, but I don’t have the patience for pleasantries. If there are consequences for my attitude, I will deal with them in the morning.Later in the morning, I mean, since it’s already past midnight.“I gotta go, guys,” I tell the cops standing over this dead body.“Another one, eh?” Joe asks, readjusting his lapels and raising the collar of his coat around his neck again.“Yeah. It’s almost surprising. The boys’ll take him to the morgue, I’ll probably see you guys there in the—in a few hours.” I turn and trudge away, their sympathetic goodbyes calling after me and hanging heavy on my shoulders. 
“Goddamn it, Chicago,” I mutter to myself as I slide into the driver’s seat of the county OCME vehicle I use when I am on the clock. I turn over the engine and blast the heat, scowling down at my phone for the address of the next departed soul.