Empty Promises: And Other True Cases Read online

  Empty Promises

  and Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 7

  Ann Rule

  POCKET BOOKS

  New York London Toronto

  Sydney Singapore

  The names of some individuals in this book have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Copyright © 2001 by Ann Rule

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  eISBN 0-7434-2405-0

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Books by Ann Rule

  …And Never Let Her Go

  Bitter Harvest

  Dead by Sunset

  Everything She Ever Wanted

  If You Really Loved Me

  The Stranger Beside Me

  Possession

  Small Sacrifices

  Empty Promises and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 7

  A Rage to Kill and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 6

  The End of the Dream and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 5

  In the Name of Love and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 4

  A Fever in the Heart and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 3

  You Belong to Me and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 2

  A Rose for Her Grave and

  Other True Cases

  Ann Rule's Crime Files: Vol. 1

  The I-5 Killer

  The Want-Ad Killer

  Lust Killer

  To all the women trapped in abusive and tragic relationships, with the sincere hope that Empty Promises may help you find a way to be free and to be safe at last.

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes I tell myself that I can turn in a perfect manuscript the first time out, but I know I'm just whistling into the wind. Empty Promises needed far more talent and expertise than I possess. The skill of editors, the canny knowledge of detectives, the brilliance of prosecutors, lawyers and judges all combine to make a book. And always, always, there are the victims' families who are willing to share their stories with me.

  I thank my publisher, Judith Curr, and my very encouraging editor, Mitchell Ivers— who had some editing assistance from Amanda Ayers and Emily Heckman— as we put together the many cases in Empty Promises. No writer can manage without an able production staff and I was lucky to have Donna O'Neill and Penny Haynes. As he always does, Paolo Pepe designed a cover that embodies the essence of my book.

  My literary agents, Joan and Joe Foley, have been with me for three decades and we are like family now.

  I'd also like to thank my theatrical agent, Ron Bernstein.

  My all-time first reader, Gerry Brittingham Hay, somehow managed to read my manuscript in planes, trains and automobiles as she headed east for a family wedding. Gerry read the end of the book as she drove up to the church!

  For the Empty Promises book-length feature, I am indebted to Lt. J.W.B. Taylor and Detectives Greg Mains and Mike Faddis of the Redmond Police Department. They solved an unsolvable case with the help of Detectives Lon Shultz, Brian Tuskan, Anne Malins, Rob Bunn, Glenn Rotton, and Detective Secretary Sandy Glynn, who transcribed a tower of notes and tape recordings. Officers Christine Penwell and Kristi Roze and Victims' Advocate Linda Webb were vital to the probe. The Redmond crew was headed by Commander Chuck Krieble and Commander Gail Marsh.

  King County Senior Deputy Prosecutors Marilyn Brenneman, Hank Corscadden, and Kristin Richardson took on a murder case that few prosecutors would have attempted— and won. Val Epperson kept all their files in order, a gargantuan job. I also admire King County Superior Court Judge Anthony P. Wartnik for his ability and calm as he oversaw a trial with inflammatory possibilities. And thanks as well to his very helpful assistants, Pam Roark and Barbara Tsuchida, and to King County Court Deputies Andre Tuttle and Richard Clements.

  I especially appreciated Judy and Jerry Hagel's kindness as they shared memories of their daughter with me, and I admire their courage and commitment.

  Without exaggerating, I have interviewed thousands of detectives in my life, and they have taught me a great deal and have shared their feelings and their philosophies with me to the point that I sometimes feel a little like a detective myself. My gratitude for the cases in Empty Promises goes to Don Cameron, Wally Hume, the late Don Dashnea, Arnold Hubner, Jim Byrnes, John Boatman, Walt Stout, Terry Murphy, John Nordlund, Mike Tando, Danny Melton, Gary Fowler, George Marberg, William Dougherty, George Vasil and Darryl Stuver.

  Many thanks to former Oregon Attorney General Bob Hamilton, Kent and Kim Smith, Bob Grau, C.N. "Nick" Marshall, Trilby Jordan, Ila Birkland, and to my own office staff: Leslie, Mike and Don.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Empty Promises

  Bitter Lake

  Young Love

  Love and Insurance

  The Gentler Sex

  The Conjugal Visit

  Killers on the Road

  A Dangerous Mind

  To Kill and Kill Again

  The Stockholm Syndrome

  Foreword

  Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that, over the last three decades, I have researched and written about more than 1,400 actual felony cases. Most of them dealt with homicide, but many were also about sexual predators, arsonists, bank robbers, and con artists. As I leaf through some of the fact-detective magazines for which I was a correspondent early in my career, I come across cases that once captured my attention for weeks, or even months, and I'm back in a kind of true-crime time tunnel. How many times I sat on hard benches in a stuffy courtroom, and how many hours I spent interviewing detectives or friends and families of victims.

  Each case comes back to me as though it is my first. Out of those 1,400 cases, there are probably 300 whose stories might well have happened yesterday; I can recall every detail. Initially, some seemed almost impossible to solve, and others involved human aberration that still shocks me. Sadly, the way humans respond to their needs, wants, desires, and compulsions has not changed, although in many cases it would be fortunate for society if they did.

  While I was working on the older cases in this book, I was also writing about and attending the trials of two recent cases that came to court. With an intense rush of déjà vu, I found myself in the same courtrooms I'd visited years ago, where nothing but the faces had changed. After thirty years, a certain philosophy has burned itself into my mind: Bereft of honesty, empathy, trust, concern for other human beings, and any sense of guilt, there are those among us who seem destined to commit the kinds of crimes that make headlines. There are certain rules of human interaction that, when broken, will lead to tragedy, if not violence. The era in which we live doesn't change that. But sometimes we can only understand the people who break these rules with the clear vision that comes with hindsight.

  Then we can see that long before relationships escalated to a point where murder was committed, there were lies. There are people, both men and women, who pretend to be someone they are not. Th
ey make commitments, agreements, assurances, pledges, and vows— promises— to get what they want. When they abuse the trust of those who believe in them, those empty promises often lead to violent death.

  This is the seventh volume of the crime files series I began in 1993. Empty Promises focuses on cases where all manner of victims were betrayed by killers who were adept at making pledges that they never intended to honor. The naïveté of the victims often led to chilling endgames. As I looked for cases for this volume, I wasn't surprised to find an inordinate number of homicides that were spawned by broken love affairs, where one partner "loved" too much. I found many hollow vows made to victims who were kind and trusting— so trusting that their lives ended at the hands of the devious schemers who ensnared them. For many, the promises were implicit in a friendly smile. Innocents— who failed to recognize the danger in those smiles— died.

  Two disturbing categories of homicide keep appearing in the letters and calls I receive from readers and detec tives. One has, I fear, always been with us and is finally surfacing because the victims are no longer ashamed to come forward to ask for help. Many years ago I responded to domestic violence calls when I was a policewoman, but there was nowhere for battered women to go for help in those days. Even though there are now shelters and help, many women live with abuse, both mental and physical, until it is too late. The second murder genre that has accelerated alarmingly in the last decade may well reflect the violent images our children are routinely exposed to: homicides committed by teenagers. Cases representative of each category appear in this volume.

  I often say that what real people do can be so heroic, bizarre, savage, and completely unpredictable that no fiction writer could have pulled it out of her imagination. The characters in Empty Promises won't disappoint you as you read their incredible stories.

  As many of you know, in the seventies and eighties my territory as a correspondent for five fact-detective magazines was the Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana. In my fifteen years as a stringer, I wrote about the same detectives from big-city police departments dozens of times. Readers of my true-crime files may recognize the names of these investigators. The names are the same; the cases are unique. If I were producing a television series, it would be along the lines of NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Hill Street Blues. But the series would be called Seattle: Murder in the Emerald City or Portland: Cops and Roses. Another, far more important, difference would be that every one of my cases would be absolutely true.

  Most of the stories in this collection are companion pieces. They show slightly different views of similar motivation on the part of the killers. The first book-length case deals with the bleak mystery of wives and mothers who vanish inexplicably from their homes. In "Empty Promises" you will learn about a lovely young woman, trapped and seduced by a world that was completely alien to the atmosphere in which she was raised. Her marriage was a nightmare. It's necessary only to turn that story a few degrees to find a tragically similar puzzle.

  "Bitter Lake" and "Young Love" demonstrate that not being loved at all can be preferable— and much safer— than being loved too much.

  "Love and Insurance" and "The Gentler Sex" seem at first to be quite different from one another. And yet they both deal with charming con artists who actually seem to savor the elaborately deceptive plots they have concocted more than the sex and money that appear— at first— to be their motivation.

  "The Conjugal Visit" and "Killers on the Road" explore the mindless kind of murder that we all fear in our deepest hearts. Why would an absolute stranger set out to earn our trust— and at the same time be coldly willing to destroy us? These predators are out there, prowling our streets and highways, looking for a perverted and deadly thrill.

  "A Dangerous Mind" and "To Kill and Kill Again" explore the phenomenon of socially alienated youthful murderers whose motivation is more difficult to understand than any I have encountered. Teenage killers inspire shocking headlines as their number increases in our society. We have to wonder how someone so young can be so full of rage.

  "The Stockholm Syndrome" stands alone. This is the case on which I based my only novel, Possession. This Oregon case may be a lesson for anyone who has ever said that he or she could never be brainwashed. Think again; it is only a matter of how long it would take.

  Empty Promises

  The disappearance of Jami Hagel Sherer has many chilling similarities to the vanishing of a half-dozen wives and mothers who were listed as missing in western Washington in the nineties, so many women gone with no explanation that it seemed epidemic in the Northwest.

  Jami was twenty-five when she disappeared. She would be thirty-five today— if she is still alive. Jami grew up only blocks from where I raised my four children in the sixties and seventies. Young families moved to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue as it burgeoned in the early fifties because it seemed the safest, best place to raise children. Then it was a world where crime and drugs and ugliness seemed far away.

  1

  It was a Sunday afternoon, the last day of September 1990, when Judy Hagel began to feel uneasy. Usually she grew annoyed and exasperated when her son-in-law, Steve Sherer, phoned constantly to check on her daughter, Jami. He kept such close tabs on Jami that she seemed to move on an invisible tether. If she left home to visit her parents, he called to be sure she arrived within fifteen minutes, and then he kept calling to ask what she was doing, and very soon, of course, to insist that she come back home to their house in Redmond. If he had his way, Jami would never visit her family at all.

  But this afternoon, Steve didn't call— not for five hours. It was a record for him, and Judy found herself jumpy not at the ringing of her phone but because of the silence. She had expected Jami all day, and Jami never showed up. Judy was baby-sitting with Jami's little boy, Chris,

  * and it wasn't like her daughter to stay away when she had promised Chris she would be back soon.

  * * *

  Bellevue was once as far removed from Seattle in lifestyle and population as any of a number of small towns that dot the state of Washington. Fifty years ago it was a rustic hamlet on the other side of Lake Washington, where farms and blueberry bogs could be found just outside town. Before the first floating bridge con necting Mercer Island and Bellevue to the mainland in Seattle was completed in 1940, the little town was far off the beaten path. No one ever imagined Bellevue would become the third largest city in the state with its own mirror-windowed skyscrapers and upscale malls. After World War II, it became a bastion of affordable three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half houses that young marrieds could afford, and they flocked to the neighborhoods of Lake Hills and Eastgate. Returning veterans and recent college graduates found jobs at the Boeing Airplane Company. Young husbands went off to work and young wives stayed home and raised four children per family, long before anyone had heard about the population explosion. Appliances were avocado green, carpets were an orange shag that had to be raked as well as vacuumed, and tile floors were waxed faithfully once a week.

  It was a world of kaffeeklatsches, where wives shared recipes for frozen strawberry jam, onion soup dip, and complicated casseroles whose main ingredient seemed always to be Cheez Whiz. Yards sprouted gardens, and wives traded seedlings as frequently as they took turns baby-sitting. It was a time long before day care and two-income families. Bellevue seemed to promise that after the long dark war, everything was going to be all right. It was an ideal community in a halcyon era.

  But the decades that followed brought a tragic tumbling-down for many of the children whose future had seemed so bright. Bellevue, Washington, wasn't unique; drugs and more wars and assassinations and rock and roll and XXX-rated movies and videos and the erratic vicissitudes of fortune eroded family-based towns all over America. As Bellevue became a little grittier and far less inviolate, Jami Hagel's desolate destiny began to take shape, despite her family's struggle to save her.

  Judy and Jerry Hagel left tiny Carrington, No
rth Dakota, in 1967 and headed for Washington State; Judy's two brothers lived there, and they said the job prospects were good. Judy and Jerry's oldest child, Randy, was five then and Jami Sue was almost three. A year later, Judy gave birth to twin boys, Rob and Rich.

  Rather than resenting all the attention the twins got, Jami was enthralled with them, and their birth gave her a tighter bond with her mother. Even though she was only three, she took care of the twins for her mother. "I wasn't expecting twins," Judy recalls. "I had no help, and Jami was there to help me. We had a little rocker, and I couldn't feed two babies at one time, so I'd hand one baby to her and she'd rock it to sleep. And I'd get the other baby and hand it to her. She was very helpful for me. She was always holding them— they were so little."