Without Pity Page 12

  Someone had gotten into the Wicklund home, someone strong enough to overpower two women; the youngster could not have been much of an adversary. It appeared that Barbara Hendrickson had broken free and was, perhaps, running for help when she was struck down in the hall. It was even possible that Renae Wicklund and Shannah were already dead when Barbara Hendrickson entered the home. She might have called out to them, or she might have felt the same dread that her husband felt an hour later, might have heard the same thundering silence and been afraid—only to encounter the person with the knife and realize at the last moment that she had walked into horror.

  The Snohomish County investigators spent hours at the scene, looking for bits of physical evidence that the killer might have left behind. The bodies were photographed where they lay before they were released to the Snohomish County coroner’s deputies. Saddened and shocked neighbors stood at the edge of the crime-scene search area, along with cameramen from the news media who shot footage of the body bags being loaded into a station wagon—hearse for removal to await autopsy. It did not seem possible to them that Renae and Shannah and Barbara were dead. This couldn’t have happened, not so suddenly and so quietly on an April day. One neighbor murmured how frightened she was, wondering if some madman was on the loose, waiting somewhere in the thick trees to strike again.

  The investigators began a door-to-door canvass. They found no one who had heard or seen anything—but they did hear again and again that this was not the first time that Renae Wicklund had been the victim of a madman. Everyone knew that Renae had been attacked eight years before, and those close to her recalled that she had lived in a state of quiet terror ever since. She had feared that he might come back one day and wreak revenge upon her for testifying against him. No amount of reassurance that she had probably been a random victim, that he had probably forgotten all about her, could convince her.

  She had seemed to know that she was doomed, that he—or someone—would destroy the safe walls she’d tried to build around herself and Shannah. And yet everyone described Renae as a wonderful person, a good friend, an intelligent hard worker. The extent of her friends’ and neighbors’ grief demonstrated just what a good person she had been. And so had Barbara Hendrickson. Once, Barbara had loaded a shotgun to protect Renae and Shannah. This time, she hadn’t had the opportunity to seize a weapon to fight back. The slash wounds across each victim’s throat stamped the killings as executions—cold-blooded, effective, designed to kill as if that was the murderer’s only mission. He had wanted them dead. It seemed that simple. The child? She couldn’t have harmed the killer, but she was old enough and smart enough to describe him, and so she had to die too. It seemed impossible that anyone could have had a grudge against a nine-year-old girl.

  The detectives questioned Don Hendrickson, asking who he thought might have had reason to kill his wife and neighbors. He finally said, “The only person I could imagine that might have done this is the man who raped Renae.”

  At the time, he could not even remember Charles Campbell’s name. Campbell was history, or he was supposed to be. But when the detectives checked on Campbell’s whereabouts, they were shocked to find out that he had been living and working a short distance from Clearview, without supervision, almost every day.

  The word from the Department of Corrections was not only startling; it was appalling. Records showed that in October 1981—less than six years after his conviction for raping Renae Wicklund—Charles Campbell had been moved to a minimum-security facility known as Monroe House. He worked there as a cook, and he was still confined, but eligible for furloughs. On February 24, six weeks before the triple murders in Clearview, Campbell moved even closer to complete freedom: he was released from the prison itself and assigned to an Everett work-release residence two blocks from the Snohomish County Courthouse. This meant that he would work outside during the day, sleep in the facility at night, and had to follow strict rules. In his case, particularly, he was to abstain from alcohol and drug use.

  Even though Campbell was literally free for much of each day and within a dozen miles of the Clearview home where the 1974 attack had occurred, even though he was housed two blocks from the Snohomish County Courthouse, there was no notification to the sheriff’s office. Some might say it was like dumping a fox in the chicken house without letting the farmer know.

  On the night of the murders—April 14—Charles Campbell returned to the work-release residence obviously under the influence of alcohol. His blood alcohol reading was .29—almost three times higher than Washington’s legal level for intoxication. Tests also detected the presence of morphine, codeine, quinine, methadone, and cocaine!

  Because he had broken the cardinal rule of the halfway house, Campbell was taken back to the Monroe Reformatory. Of course, by then, Renae Wicklund, Shannah Wicklund, and Barbara Hendrickson were dead. They had neither been consulted nor informed about Campbell’s early release in February. What happened to them was shocking, but the most shocking part of the horror was that it was preventable. There were so many ways the inexorable path to violent murder could have been blocked.

  Back in the Monroe Reformatory, Charles Campbell was charged with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder on April 19, 1982. With the news that Charles Campbell had been charged with the three murders, citizens of Snohomish County—and, indeed, citizens all over the state—began to react with disbelief and anger. The owner of Rick’s Clearview Foods, Rick Arriza, placed a petition in his small grocery store, where the victims had shopped, asking for signatures from residents demanding the death penalty for Campbell if he was convicted. People came from all around the state to sign it.

  Along with the anger, there was fear. The number of women reporting rapes and other sexual assaults dropped dramatically. Women were afraid to report rapes. If they couldn’t be sure that the men who had attacked them would be put away for a long time, if they had to fear violent reprisal, then they decided that it was safer just to forget what had happened—and try to live with it.

  Sheriff Bobby Dodge, Lieutenant Mann, Sergeant Belinc, and their crews of detectives worked under great constraint. They had a job to do which required an orderly progression to bring a solid case against Campbell. They would not—could not—talk to reporters, and they took the flak stoically. Snohomish County sheriff Bobby Dodge did appear on television decrying the system that had allowed a man like Campbell, with all the crimes he’d been convicted of, back into the same community where the crime against the Wicklunds had occurred—and without any notification to law enforcement authorities.

  On May 1, 1982, Charles Campbell, now twenty-seven, appeared before Judge Dennis Britt and entered a plea of innocent. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric testing. Possibly a defense attorney would use the results later to enter a plea of innocent by reason of insanity. The hugely tall Campbell wore handcuffs and leg irons, and spectators were searched with metal detectors before they were allowed into the courtroom. Campbell wanted to go to Western State Hospital for testing, but the roster of sex criminals who had escaped from that mental hospital to do more damage to innocent citizens was too long already. Judge Britt ordered that Campbell would meet with psychiatrists in his jail isolation cell.

  The first reports on Campbell’s six years at the Monroe Reformatory indicated that he had a good record there. Parole board members were aware that Campbell had made a suicide attempt in custody in 1976, and he had been watched closely by the board, but they refused to comment on the prisoner’s psychiatric records. Campbell’s attorneys said he had acknowledged that he had a problem with alcohol and drugs and that he thought himself a “borderline case” who “snapped” when he was drinking and blacked out.

  In a case that grew steadily more bizarre, the Seattle Times reported that one of the witnesses interviewed by homicide detectives was a drug and alcohol counselor who had participated in a program in the Monroe Reformatory until about 1980. According to records of her former employer, the young female c
ounselor had resigned because she had broken one of the first rules of counseling by becoming romantically involved with her “patient.” The patient was Charles Campbell. The woman refused to comment, but a relative admitted that Campbell had been a visitor in their home in early 1982 while he was on a furlough from prison.

  Campbell’s alleged close personal relationship with the woman was borne out by a notation in the Monroe House files on January 28, 1982. Campbell had returned from a furlough and said he was in a car that had hit a pole northwest of Monroe. The car, a 1974 Volkswagen, was found, abandoned, by a Washington State trooper. It was totaled, and the pole was heavily damaged. The trooper checked with the Department of Motor Vehicles for the car’s registration and found that it belonged to the woman who had been a counselor at the prison. She later told her insurance agency that it had been wrecked, but no charges were ever brought because troopers could not determine who had been driving the Volkswagen.

  Campbell may have had charm for one woman, but another, his ex-wife, seemed unimpressed by his charisma. She reported to a detective in the town where she lived that Campbell—whom she, too, believed was still in prison at the time—had come to her home on Christmas Day 1981 and raped her. She said he had returned twice to rape her again. She had finally gone to the police on March 16 and attempted to make a formal complaint of rape against Campbell but the police had advised her the case seemed too weak to bring to court.

  This was the man who Renae Wicklund believed was safely behind prison walls. He had only been 12 miles away, working days in a landscaping firm, apparently maintaining some kind of romantic relationship with his former drug counselor and allegedly assaulting his ex-wife. There was another factor. He had come to the attention of work-release authorities on March 18 for “having possession of or consuming beer at Everett Work Release.” A female officer found a partially filled can of beer on his bed and noted that the room smelled of alcohol.

  This report enraged Campbell. He hated having the female officers at the facility write him up, and he showed his resentment openly. He argued with them about even the slightest order they gave him. He said he had much more freedom in his social outings when he had furloughs from the reformatory. He felt he should have complete freedom to do what he wanted while he was in work release.

  A hearing had been held about his “poor attitude and behavior” toward two women officers, but he was allowed to remain in work release. He was given a second chance primarily because of his good record while in prison.

  But was his record that good in prison?

  A look at Charles Rodman Campbell’s “good behavior” was startling. For some reason, when Campbell came up before the parole board seeking work release, the paperwork that came with him cited only three minor infractions during his first year at Monroe and referred to him as a “model prisoner” thereafter. The infractions mentioned were not that bad: mutilating a curtain; possessing “pruno” (an alcoholic beverage that cons distill from yeast and any fruit or vegetable matter they can get their hands on: potatoes, apples, oranges); and refusing to allow a guard to search him for a club he had hidden under his jacket. He said he carried the club to ward off attacks by bullies in the yard.

  After these minor incidents—more indicative of the behavior of a bad boy than a dangerous con—the superintendent of the state reformatory indicated to the parole board that Campbell’s record was spotless.

  Not quite.

  After Campbell had won his furloughs and his work-release assignment, after Renae and Shannah Wicklund and Barbara Hendrickson had their throats slit, and after Campbell was charged with those crimes, the head of the guards’ union at the reformatory said that Campbell had used drugs as recently as the year prior to his work release.

  It was obvious that someone had been covering up for Charles Campbell. Shortly after Campbell was transferred to the work-release program, the Washington State parole board discovered that the Monroe Reformatory had failed to forward copies of prison infractions to them. Hundreds of prisoners had been released without having their behavior in prison evaluated. And Charles Campbell was one of those prisoners who had slipped through the fissures in the justice system.

  KIRO-TV in Seattle managed to obtain additional infraction reports on Campbell, incidents that occurred between December 31, 1977, and June 13, 1978; these infractions were never revealed to the parole board beyond a cursory notation in a counselor’s report, which mentioned that Campbell had threatened a nurse and gotten into a beef with another inmate. According to the records, the huge bushy-haired con had lunged at the nurse on New Year’s Eve 1977, when she refused to give him his medication because he was an hour late reporting to the hospital. “When I refused to give him the medication late,” the nurse had said, “he jumped to his feet with his fists clenched and moved toward me in a threatening manner, as though he intended to hit me.”

  A staff member had stepped between Campbell and the female nurse, and a guard had dragged Campbell away while he shouted obscenities at her. On May 8, 1978, Campbell had kicked another inmate in the groin and ignored a guard’s order to move on in a standoff that lasted until additional guards arrived. Later that month, Campbell had cut into the chow line and angered other prisoners. He refused to move on and broke a tray in half in his hands. The situation was fraught with tension in the mess hall full of convicts. On May 24, Campbell was discovered high on drugs. He fought guards like a tiger until they got his jacket off and found an envelope in it containing three empty yellow capsules.

  A month later Campbell again balked at a body search and tossed an envelope to another con. Guards recovered it and found a syringe and needle inside. He was punished with the removal of privileges for these infractions, but even his guards were afraid of him. They asked administrators to transfer Campbell from Monroe to the state penitentiary at Walla Walla. Nothing came of this request.

  None of this information was available to the parole board when it came time for Campbell’s parole hearing.

  When the news of Charles Campbell’s actual prison behavior reached the media, Washington State legislators immediately scheduled an investigation. One state senator put it bluntly: “Somebody obviously held back information that caused the death of three people.” Prison administrators argued that the parole board had asked not to see all the minor infractions, and that they had held back the reports for that reason.

  Charles Campbell apparently scared the hell out of a lot of people, guards and fellow prisoners alike. He was so big, so muscular, and so quick to erupt into rage. Guards who had reservations about Campbell’s suitability for parole didn’t want their names published, but said off the record that they thought he should have been sent back to prison.

  Even more frightened of seeing his name in print was an ex-convict who had served time with Campbell; the label “snitch” is a sure way to commit suicide in or out of prison for an ex-con. But the anonymous man recalled that Charles Campbell had ruled his fellow inmates with terror, forcing the weaker cons to obtain drugs for him and to submit to sodomy. Prison “prestige” belonged to the physically strong.

  It is quite likely that no one will ever know what really happened on April 14, 1982. The victims are dead, and the murderer chose not to speak of his crimes.

  Charles Campbell went on trial in November 1982. If he was convicted of aggravated murder in the first degree, he could be sentenced to death. To accomplish that, the state had to prove that Campbell’s crimes fit within the parameters of the statute as follows:

  He was serving a prison term in a state facility or program at the time of the murders.

  The victims had previously testified against him in a court of law.

  Campbell allegedly committed the murders to conceal his identity.

  There was more than one victim and the murders were part of a common scheme or plan.

  The murders were committed along with other crimes, including first-degree rape, first-degree robbery, and first-degree bur
glary.

  They were all true. Renae Wicklund had been raped as her stalker wreaked his revenge. Her jewelry was stolen. Allegedly Charles Campbell attempted to sell the missing jewelry hours after the slayings. The burglary charges would indicate that the defendant made illegal entry into the home—by force or subterfuge.

  Charles Campbell asked for a change of venue to another state, claiming that he could not receive a fair trial in the state of Washington because of the media coverage. His request was denied.

  On November 26, 1982, the day after Thanksgiving, the jury retired to debate the question of Campbell’s guilt or innocence. They returned after only four hours. They had found the defendant guilty. Guilty on three counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

  In the penalty phase of his trial, Charles Campbell was sentenced to death. At first he refused to cooperate with his attorneys’ efforts to have his life spared. They appealed, but he said it was against his wishes.

  He would spend years on death row in the Washington State penitentiary in Walla Walla, a fearsome figure who spat at Governor Booth Gardner when he had the temerity to peer through the bulletproof-glass window in Campbell’s cell. For a man who one day soon might beg Gardner to stay his execution at the last minute, it was an incredibly stupid show of temper.

  Campbell was visited regularly by his mistress, the ex-alcohol counselor and her child—Charles Campbell’s son. They seemed a strangely mismated couple.