Mortal Danger and Other True Cases Read online

  PRAISE FOR “AMERICA’S BEST TRUE-CRIME WRITER” (Kirkus Reviews) AND HER #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES

  ANN RULE’S CRIME FILES

  Thirteen riveting volumes of true-crime stories drawn from her personal collection

  “Chilling cases…. A frightening, fascinating rogue’s gallery of mercenary murderers.”

  —Mystery Guild

  “Prolific and talented Rule proves her warranted reputation as one of true crime’s leading lights…. With a novelist’s skill, Rule brings to life a rich case.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Spine-tingling…could win a place in any insomniac’s heart.”

  —Barnesandnoble.com

  “Fascinating, unsettling tales…. Among the very small group of top-notch true-crime writers, Rule just may be the best of the bunch.”

  —Booklist

  “Rule’s ability to depict both criminals and victims as believable human beings is perfectly embodied in this sad, fascinating account.”

  —Library Journal

  “Gripping tales…. Fans of true crime know they can rely on Ann Rule to deliver the dead-level best.”

  —The Hartford Courant (CT)

  MORE MUST-READ TRUE CRIME FROM ANN RULE—DON’T MISS THESE CELEBRATED BESTSELLERS

  TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE

  “The quintessential true-crime story…. The mesmerizing tale of how law enforcement coordinated information from two deaths separated by nearly a decade to convict Bart Corbin of murder…. Prepare yourself for a few late nights of reading.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  GREEN RIVER, RUNNING RED

  “[Rule] conveys the emotional truth of the Green River case.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Riveting…. Rule infuses her case study with a personally felt sense of urgency.”

  —People

  “Perhaps Rule’s finest work…holds the reader in a firm grip.”

  —Statesman Journal (Salem, OR)

  “Rule gives full, heartbreaking emotional weight to what America’s most notorious serial killer truly wrought. A must for the author’s legions of fans.”

  —Booklist

  HEART FULL OF LIES

  “A convincing portrait of a meticulous criminal mind.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Fascinating…. The sheer weight of [Rule’s] investigative technique places her at the forefront of true-crime writers.”

  —Booklist

  EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

  “Affecting, tense, and smart true crime.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Absolutely riveting…psychologically perceptive.”

  —Booklist

  …AND NEVER LET HER GO

  “Truly creepy…. This portrait of an evil prince needs no embellishment.”

  —People

  “[Rule] might have created her masterpiece.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “Even crime buffs who followed the case closely [will] gain new insights.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel (FL)

  “[Rule] tell[s] the sad story with authority, flair, and pace.”

  —The Washington Post

  BITTER HARVEST

  “A must-read story of the ’90s American dream turned, tragically, to self-absorbed ashes.”

  —People

  “Impossible to put down…. A tour de force.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  BOOKS BY ANN RULE

  Too Late to Say Goodbye

  Green River, Running Red

  Heart Full of Lies

  Every Breath You Take

  …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

  Ann Rule’s Crime Files

  Vol. 12: Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases

  Vol. 11: No Regrets and Other True Cases

  Vol. 10: Worth More Dead and Other True Cases

  Vol. 9: Kiss Me, Kill Me and Other True Cases

  Vol. 8: Last Dance, Last Chance and Other True Cases

  Vol. 7: Empty Promises and Other True Cases

  Vol. 6: A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases

  Vol. 5: The End of the Dream and Other True Cases

  Vol. 4: In the Name of Love and Other True Cases

  Vol. 3: A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases

  Vol. 2: You Belong to Me and Other True Cases

  Vol. 1: A Rose for Her Grave and Other True Cases

  Without Pity: Ann Rule’s Most Dangerous Killers

  The I-5 Killer

  The Want-Ad Killer

  Lust Killer

  Pocket Books

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  Copyright © 2008 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 Subsidiary Rights Department,

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  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9402-4

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-9402-7

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

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  For the families and friends of violent crime victims

  and missing persons.

  I salute you for three decades of helping others

  because you’ve been through it and you understand.

  You have made a difference.

  Acknowledgments

  Most readers have no idea how many people it takes to make a book! There are numerous levels before I finally receive my first copy, which thrills me as much as it did twenty-nine books ago. As always, I feel lucky to have the wisdom, talent, skills, memories, and support from the many who have contributed to Mortal Danger. From detectives who worked hard to solve these cases to the families of victims who shared what I realize is very painful to survivors, my gratitude knows no bounds.

  And from my editors to my production team to my literary and theatrical agents, I could not possibly have completed this book without you!

  My appreciation goes to: Kate Jewell, Susan Hoskinson, David Gardiner, Gold Beach Police Department; Karen Slater, Dr. Randall Nozawa, Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp, Sergeant Ben Benson, Ed Troyer, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.

  To the late Dave Hart, Port of Seattle Police Department; Mike Ciesynski, Mike Tando, Hank Gruber, and Bob Holter, Seattle Police Department; and Bruce Whitman and Dick Taylor, Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office; and Jarl Gunderson, Marysville Police Department.

  I thank my publisher, Louise Burke, for trusting my judgment in selecting cases, and my editor, Mitchell Ivers, who—with his sharp eye, literary skill, and deft pen—makes criticism almost fun. His assistant, Jessica Webb, makes things happen on time, and she helped tremendously in organizing the photo sections. The production staff—Carly Sommerstein, Sally Franklin, and Lisa Litwack—whipped all the parts of this book into one cohesive package and sent it off to the printer.

  Joan and Joe Foley in New York City have been my literary agents and cheering section for more than three decades. I was lucky when they took a chance on me! Ron Bernstein, my theatrical agent at International Creative Management (ICM) in Los Angeles, is responsible for transforming many of my books into movies and miniseries, and we have more to come soon.

  Gerry Hay is still my first re
ader, and my daughter, Leslie Rule, is a proofreader who catches almost all the mistakes I’ve missed! My special thanks to Marie Heaney, Donna Anders, Blanche Beanblossom, Marnie Campbell, Brian Heil, Dawn Dunn, Grace Kingman, and Diane Benson, to the “Jolly Matrons of Willamette University and the University of Washington,” the “Ladies Who Lunch/Union Meeting Extraordinaire,” and to the “Loyal Order of ARFs [Ann Rule Fans],” who never fail to brighten my days.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Mortal Danger

  Written in Blood

  If I Can’t Have You…

  Thirty Years Later

  Not Safe at Home

  Photographic Insert

  Foreword

  The format of my True Crime Files series changes constantly. Sometimes, there may be eight or ten short cases. Occasionally, as in this book, there are several long cases and only a few short cases. When I was in college, my professors in writing classes taught me to tell a story until it was told. The trick was to know when that was! It shouldn’t be a sentence shorter or a paragraph longer.

  In 2007, as it happened, I came across three cases that demanded well over a hundred pages apiece to unveil the many tunnels, dead ends, corners, intersections, and amazing revelations that startled even experienced detectives. And I took all the pages I needed.

  There are also two shorter cases in Mortal Danger. Readers often tell me that they read my crime files on the bus or a plane. This collection should fit, then, for short or long trips.

  Next year, I may choose an entirely different format as I write both new cases and mysteries going back decades. With the evolution of cold case squads in almost all large police agencies, I am learning the answers to many unsolved homicides that I covered at the beginning of my career, and it feels good to be able to write these endings long after we all believed the cases would lie dormant forever.

  As I explore each case, I try my best to research the motivation of the killer, going back as far as I can in his (or her) life. I also try to allow readers to come to know the victims as if they were still with us. I look for the moment their two paths cross and tragedy blooms. Sometimes they are strangers who meet only once; sometimes it takes years before the true personality of the killer emerges.

  As often as I can, I go to the cities and states where the crimes I write about occurred so that I—and then my readers—can know what it is like to live there. What is the weather like? What grows there? How does the air feel? How do people make a living? And even what local culinary treats abound there? In my head, I’m picturing us walking through a heretofore unknown place and, together, observing what happened there.

  Many people have the mistaken idea that I write only about the Northwest, but I have spent weeks and months in New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Delaware, California, Idaho, and many other locales where crimes occurred. I have probably attended more than a hundred trials. This book happens to have cases that occurred in the Northwest, where I have lived for many years—yet there are links to the East Coast, too.

  Frightening my readers is never my goal, but I do want to warn you of possible danger. I want you to be conscious of what’s happening around you and be ready to question odd comments, requests, pleas, life stories, and the people who tell them to you.

  You are your first line of defense. Always remember that.

  Sometimes I shudder to think of how many stories I have told about cases involving possessive, controlling men and hapless, hopeless women. Although they are all true, and involve scores of couples who don’t know one another—and never will—the three-act “play” of each relationship might well have been written by the same author. The first act is all about romance and trust; it moves along so gently that the woman who will soon be captive never senses danger. The second act is a slow progression—he cuts her off from her friends, her family, her job, and her self-respect, until she finds herself dancing to whatever tune her formerly perfect lover chooses to play.

  The third act can end one of three ways: (1) the emotionally imprisoned woman gives up and remains with the man who forbids her to leave him; (2) she escapes from him but is left with a constant sense of someone silently stalking her; or (3) their “love story” turns tragic, and she dies at his hand. In the possessive lover’s mind, she always belongs to him. He finds this perfectly reasonable, and since the trapped woman had the audacity and cruelty to run from him, she deserves to die.

  With every case of domestic violence I write, I am hoping and praying that I will warn other women who are on the verge of turning their lives over to a man who has shown them only a mask—a façade. I want to shake them enough to make them back away in time. I also hope that I may give women already captive the strength to leave. But when a woman is entrenched in a sick relationship, it’s difficult to escape. She may have no income of her own. She may be very afraid. She has to find someplace to live, some way to support herself, some way to find secure child care. She may also have to locate shelter for beloved pets.

  This first case—Mortal Danger—is perhaps one of the strangest and most mysterious tales of obsessive love I have ever encountered. When I began to follow this twisted and interlaced story, I found that each door I opened led to another door.

  Did I ever get to the final door? I’m not entirely sure. It may be that there are readers who hold the answers to puzzles that came about because of a man called “Mr. Williams.” Maybe someone out there knew him by one of his many names. Maybe the end of the story will come from you.

  Time and again, John Williams stated that his true goal in life was to help people—to help bring them health, wealth, and happiness. His full legal name was John William Branden, but he often found it more convenient to use one of any number of pseudonyms. The women he attracted had the same goals: a desire to serve others. He appeared to be a companion who would join with them so that, together, they would be more effective in doing good.

  It was only natural that love and respect also came along with Mr. Williams. Or Dr. Branden. Or Jack Hennings. He used all those names—and more. In the beginning, no woman could have asked for a kinder lover.

  I make no bones about it—this is a terrifying, cautionary tale. If it saves some lives with its warning, the women who moved through it, caught between life and death, will be forever grateful and know that some good came out of telling it. If you recognize yourself in it, run! It doesn’t matter if a woman who is targeted by an obsessive, possessive lover is a high-school dropout or highly educated, or if she is naïve or brilliant, homely or beautiful, poor or wealthy. The brainwashing that certain men employ can trap any woman until the invisible, silken strands of their webs render her virtually helpless, cut off from those who might help her, her self-esteem squashed, her mind confused.

  Ironically, it is quite often the weakest of men who stalk and capture. An insightful friend of mine calls this “the tyranny of the weak.”

  Strong, confident, men have no need to control. Only those who are empty inside have to—or they cannot survive themselves.

  MORTAL DANGER

  Chapter One

  May 2008

  Pacific Northwest residents were enjoying the sixth warm day of the year after a very long, very rainy winter. There was no better place to be on a day like this than in the town of Gig Harbor, Washington. Once a seaside hamlet where almost everyone knew everyone else, Gig Harbor’s ideal location made the town’s population grow by leaps and bounds. The original town had clustered around the harbor itself, but now there were new developments and shopping malls on both sides of the I-16 freeway that raced from the western end of the soaring Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Washington, to the Bremerton navy shipyards.

  The Washington Corrections Center for Women was located a few miles away in Purdy, but Gig Harbor hadn’t known much crime—until recently. From 2006 to 2007, a series of appalling murders reminded people who lived in Gig Harbor that there really is no completely safe place anywhere.
r />   On a balmy spring Saturday in 2006, David Brame, the police chief of the City of Tacoma, stalked his pretty young wife, Crystal, with deadly intensity. She had finally gotten the nerve to separate from him, and he would not allow that. In a crowded shopping mall in Gig Harbor, with their two small children in the backseat of their mother’s car, Brame fatally wounded his wife with his service revolver before committing suicide.

  Passersby rushed to remove the children from the car and shield them from seeing any more horror than they already had. Brame was dead, but Crystal lingered in critical condition for several days while family, friends, and strangers prayed that she might survive to raise her children. She could not come back from her massive brain injuries, although she fought a good fight.

  Ten months later, in March 2007, an older couple died in Gig Harbor in a murder-suicide in their own home. It was difficult to say which tragedy shocked locals the most. The two deadly encounters made headlines in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane, and the news flashed throughout the Internet, touching lives far away, too.

  Even so, there are still numerous pockets of serenity in Gig Harbor. None seem quite as safe as a small development a half mile from the original downtown. The residents there are all over fifty, and bylaws of the community are strict. None of the homes are sprawling or flashy, all are painted a discreet gray and white. The streets are named with sailing terms, such as Dockside Drive, Tideland Terrace, Windy Way, and Jib Sail, and they wind around in a series of curves and cul-de-sacs. The homes at the front of the neighborhood have wonderful views of the harbor, the Dalco and Colvos passages that curve west of Vashon Island, leading to Puget Sound beyond. Most of the others have at least a peek at the view, and the tall fir trees in Grandview Forest Park creep up to their backyards, swaying and sighing in the wind off the water.