Mortal Danger and Other True Cases Read online

  She walked over to the basement garage to put her machete down, and to pour cat food out for Mittens. She was dusty and soaked with sweat from her yard work, and she wanted a shower. She headed toward the stairs but he called her over, asking if she wanted to sit with him. Kate knew this mood he was in all too well, and she didn’t think he meant it; even though their lawn chairs had been stuck together, he had obviously disentangled them and only carried one chair down from the deck.

  “No,” Kate said. “I think I need to head for the shower. I don’t want to sit down right now.”

  “That figures,” he said sarcastically.

  Kate knew better than to argue with him when he was like this. She took care of Mittens, then walked over to John and stood beside him.

  Suddenly, John’s hand reached out and held hers fast. He looked her directly in the eyes, and she saw someone she didn’t know, someone so cold that she wondered if he even recognized her.

  “You’re going to die tonight.”

  And she knew he meant it this time. “His eyes were always safe until that night—and then they weren’t….”

  Chapter Six

  John explained quite calmly that with his training in karate, he could kill her with his bare hands. He could do it with a “chicken chop” to her neck and break it instantly. “You can scream,” he warned, “but it won’t do any good. No one will hear you.”

  He began to muse about the way she would die, and how easy it would be for him to explain her death. He mentioned the barbecue they had planned for the next day with friends, and said he would tell them that he and Kate had gone hiking up Cape Sebastian and that she had slipped and fallen to her death in the ocean. John kept up a hissing, guttural stream of ugly words, telling her that he would, of course, throw her off Cape Sebastian. No, he decided, he would chop up her body and throw it off in pieces.

  There it was again. For the third or fourth time. He had dreamed of her death and obviously thought of ways to kill her, most of them grisly. There was no question; John had been intent on totally obliterating her, and she hadn’t realized it until this moment.

  She tried to reason with him, but he said, “There’s nothing you can say—you’re going to die tonight,” which he repeated over and over, like a mantra.

  Kate’s thoughts raced. What could she do to save herself? She prepared to fight for her life. She would knee him in the groin and put her fingernails in his eyes if she had to. He wasn’t a big man, but he was very strong, and now he seemed possessed of inhuman strength. There was madness in John’s eyes.

  He cocked his fist and hit Kate squarely in the mouth, and then on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. He spit on her. She tried to kick him in the groin, but that only made him more determined. Kate was no longer in much of a position to fight. He was straddling her, and choking her with both hands. She tried to wrestle away from him, but they tumbled around on the ground, his grip never loosening.

  Another scene flashed through her mind. She thought of Nicole Brown Simpson. This is how she must have felt when a man who professed to love her was killing her, Kate thought. She tasted blood trickling down from her nose and teeth, and she knew she had to keep her brain intact if she hoped to have any chance of surviving. “I had to get him to stop beating me in the head. I was running out of air, so I lessened my struggle.”

  Somehow, she managed not to pass out, but her eyes bulged and her ears rang. When John saw the blood, he said, “Now, you’ve ruined it. There’s no going back now.”

  She’d ruined it by having the temerity to bleed? As always, he was blaming her for anything bad that happened. They hadn’t had sexual relations for a long time, and he told her he planned to “finally have sex with you after you’re dead.” However, he’d decided he would also take her while she was still alive.

  He tore her panties and one shoe off in the yard, throwing them somewhere among the pink blossoms that had fallen on the ground next to the fire pit. Then he dragged her into the basement and up the steps to their living room. She either had to crawl on her knees or stumble on the stairs as he held one arm tightly in his grip.

  “Get down on the floor and take your clothes off.”

  “I’m cold. I’m cold,” she said. And she was—from shock, from the sudden chill that blew off the ocean now that the sun was gone.

  “I don’t care,” he said flatly.

  Kate’s mind searched desperately for a way to survive. Why hadn’t she kept the machete with her? What could she do to snap him out of the weirdly icy mood he was in? He looked at her but didn’t make eye contact.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. Maybe she could lock herself in and somehow wriggle through the small bathroom window.

  “It won’t matter.”

  She had no doubt that he meant it wouldn’t matter because she would be dead soon.

  John explained to her that he was going to rape and kill her mother when he was through with her, and kill her father, and her best friend, Michelle, and Michelle’s daughter, Missy. He promised to find Kate’s niece and keep her captive for a week until he had her completely addicted to cocaine. He was going to find Paula Krogdahl and kill her, too, because she had supported Kate’s stay at Oasis after his January attack on her.

  It was as if the top of John’s brain had opened and all the pent-up violence and ugliness inside had spilled out; Kate had never seen such a depth of depravity in him before. She doubted that he used cocaine; she’d certainly never seen it, but he was possessed with something that had taken over his mind.

  Maybe it had been there along, and he’d been able to hold it inside until now.

  He had a knife against her throat now, sometimes moving it to her breast. It was one of their knives from the butcher block in the kitchen. She had used it a hundred or more times when she’d cooked for him. She kept asking to go to the bathroom, and he finally relented, but he went with her, standing a few feet away from her, blocking the door. She knew she had no chance to escape before he stopped her.

  He led her back to the living room, the knife pressed against her flesh. He was going to rape her. As he forced himself into her, he held the knife in one hand. She didn’t dare fight back. Bizarrely, he used herbal lubricating jelly from their bathroom. She was in the middle of menopause, and even if she had wanted to have sexual relations with him, her vaginal tissues were dry. He was going to kill her at any moment, but he apparently didn’t want to hurt her as he raped her. Or—she quickly corrected herself—probably he didn’t want to hurt himself.

  Kate kept looking into his eyes. “I tried to find ‘John’ in those eyes—but he was gone.”

  His hands moved over her insistently as he interrogated her about everything she had done since she’d reported him to the police in January. For the first time in a decade, he hadn’t been with her continually, and his jealousy and possessiveness raged. She hadn’t been with any other man, but this crazy John didn’t believe her.

  They were on the rug on their living room floor, next to a futon where they had had consensual sex dozens of times. Ironically, in the late seventies, Oregon was the first state where a husband was charged with the rape of his wife while they were still living together. The Greta and John Rideout case generated huge media interest, and even though he was acquitted of the charges at trial, most people don’t remember that. (Kate and John weren’t married, but everyone in Gold Beach thought they were.)

  The attack went on for a long time—probably hours—or maybe it only seemed that long. He raped her endlessly, thrusting with each question he asked. Nothing he did to her seemed to satiate him. This ending was her fault. “I’ve lost everything,” he said. “There’s no way out. I’ve lost everything, and you are going to die.”

  She marveled that she was still alive.

  Now he told her that he was going to have anal sex with her, but first he needed to go get a condom. To be sure she couldn’t get away from him, John ordered Kate to flip over on her
stomach. He attempted to tie her hands behind her back with his handkerchief, but it wouldn’t stretch that far. His hernia truss was hanging from a chair, and he grabbed it and bound her wrists with that.

  Kate’s mind raced. She knew that John had had several guns, including an AK-47, in the room over the garage. She’d found out that he’d brought them back without her knowledge. He liked guns. He’d brought another gun up from California in April, and she’d demanded then that he give her the clip. She didn’t know if those weapons were still in the house. Was he really going to get a condom, or was he going to get one of his guns?

  Testing, Kate realized she could wriggle her right hand free, and she worked her bound hands inside the hernia belt, frantic to get them out before he came back. She wasn’t sure exactly where he was. She knew she would have only one chance, and that it would be gone within a minute or so. She would have to run across a room where she thought he was. If he saw her, she had no doubt he’d kill her with the knife.

  But she had to try.

  Suddenly, she was on her feet, running through the living room and kitchen. Thank God, the safety bar wasn’t in the track of the sliding glass doors yet, but the door was locked. She eased the lock open, holding her breath. She didn’t see or hear John.

  Their deck was creaky. She was sure he’d hear her, and she wondered if she should make an attempt to cross it.

  “I heard God’s voice, saying, ‘Go!’” Kate recalled. “And I did.”

  It was pitch-dark outside, save for one outside light. She didn’t know where Mittens was, and she didn’t dare stop to find her kitten; she prayed Mittens was hiding somewhere in the garage where John couldn’t find him.

  Kate ran up a strip of grass between the two graveled ruts in their driveway. The closest neighbor was downhill, but Kate’s friend there was a single woman with little children, and Kate felt she couldn’t expose them to a man gone mad, a man who had a butcher knife, and probably a gun, too. Instead, she headed uphill, trying to stay in the shadows of trees and bushes and out of the moonlight, where John could see her.

  Another driveway met theirs in a V, but she decided against taking it. Her goal was to somehow get to the highway and attempt to get someone to stop. It didn’t matter that she was naked. Better to be naked in front of strangers than dead.

  She was sure that John was close behind her, but when she paused, there were no sounds except for her own ragged breathing.

  She turned left and into another driveway. It led uphill to where friends of hers—a man and wife—lived. They usually rented out their mobile home, which sat at the bottom of their driveway, but she thought the tenants had moved out. There weren’t any lights on inside. Not daring to delay, she raced on up the steep driveway.

  Kate ran diagonally across the yard of her friends’ bright blue bungalow and was relieved when she saw several cars parked there, although there were no lights on. She darted along the side of the house, trying to keep out of sight, and rounded a corner, heading for the front door.

  She tried the door. It opened. She closed it behind her and quietly locked it. If anyone was home, they were asleep. She didn’t know what time it was—the evening had been endless; it could be two o’clock in the morning. Now she faced another danger. She was the intruder, and Mike, the husband who lived there, probably had a gun. He would be within his rights to shoot her if he didn’t recognize who she was.

  And John was probably just outside, looking for a way to get in.

  As Kate’s eyes adjusted to the dark inside her neighbors’ house, she saw a child sleeping nearby. A television was on somewhere in the house, and she saw the screen flicker. As gently as she could, she eased a sleeping bag off the bed where the child was sleeping and wrapped it around herself, calling out for her neighbors—Mike and Maria—in a whisper.

  No one answered.

  But then she saw they were sleeping on a porch next to the room she was in. She raised her tortured whisper a little. “It’s Kate,” she called. “John’s trying to kill me. Call 911!”

  Finally Mike woke up. They all huddled in the hall, where they wouldn’t be open targets if John had grabbed one of his guns. Apparently, John didn’t know which house Kate had gone to for help.

  Mike saw him on another neighbor’s porch, banging furiously on their door. The resident who lived there had a police scanner, and it was quite possible that John had heard the dispatcher sending units to the cottage. At that point, it seems that John had either returned to his cottage or to Kate’s car. The headlights were off, so it was difficult to see if anyone was in the car.

  Three law enforcement agencies had responded to the 911 call for help. It was 10:30 p.m. when central dispatch in Brookings directed Curry County Sheriff’s Sergeant John Sevey to an address on Bellevue Lane. He was joined by Oregon State Police Trooper Dan Stennit and Officer Wally Hartman of the Gold Beach Police Department. Records show that they arrived at 10:49 p.m.

  As Hartman left his patrol car and walked toward Mike’s house, the officers saw headlights sweeping the driveway. At the same time, Kate saw other headlights dim, move out of the neighbors’ driveway, and head toward the highway. It was John, driving her car. He must have known the sheriff was coming, and he’d been biding his time so he could escape without running into them.

  Kate wondered where he was going.

  Hartman and Stennit raced to their units and attempted to catch up with John, but his head start was just enough to let him disappear before they got to Highway 101. They couldn’t tell which direction he’d turned there.

  Inside Mike’s house, Sergeant Sevey looked at Kate, and she could see the concern in his eyes. She was naked, except for the sleeping bag she’d wrapped herself in. There was dried blood on her mouth, her lips were badly cut and swollen, particularly on the right side, and her entire face was puffed up and scratched.

  And, of course, she was in shock. “Jewell was extremely frightened,” Sevey wrote in his report. “To the point of near-hysteria. She was cowering in the corner of a hallway, afraid Branden was going to see her from outside and come inside and get her. She would cringe at every sound she didn’t recognize.”

  Even though she had seen John drive by and head toward the highway, she was terrified that he would come back to kill her.

  Sevey called the lieutenant and asked for assistance with the investigation. Deputy John Ward was then directed from Brookings to be present for an interview with Kate at the hospital.

  After taking a brief statement about what happened, Sergeant Sevey called for an ambulance at 11:01 p.m. and requested that Kate be transported to Curry General Hospital. Deputy Ward followed in his patrol car behind the ambulance just in case John should double back and try to cause an accident on the way.

  Once Kate was safely on her way to the hospital, Sevey and Trooper Stennit entered the cottage she’d fled from. It was midnight, and they entered cautiously, wondering if John Branden had returned on foot and was hiding there. They were also looking for weapons, but they found only one handgun that Kate told them she had hidden a few days before. Lieutenant Boice joined them, and they found some items outside—including Kate’s key ring. She had told them she believed John’s arsenal of guns was in a locked loft over the bathroom.

  None of the keys on her key ring opened that lock. She had given them permission to force the door if necessary. They did, but whatever guns had been in that room were gone.

  They took photographs of the crime scenes and gathered items that might serve as physical evidence later, bagging and initializing them.

  At the hospital, Kate’s horrible night continued. The doctor who was called in to do a vaginal exam for the rape charges did that, but grudgingly.

  “He treated me as if I was immoral, and he obviously resented being bothered. Although I asked him to look at my facial injuries and the contusions on my head, he wouldn’t do it. He actually told me to take two aspirin! He didn’t seem to care if I had a concussion or other injuries. T
here was a nurse there, but she had no experience at all with the rape kit, and I left there feeling even worse than when I went in.”

  It is an attitude evinced by some physicians—fortunately fewer than in the past—and it makes women hesitant to report sexual attacks, particularly by someone they know.

  Kate couldn’t go back to the cottage. She had no idea where John was, and she was frightened that he might come back to finish killing her. She believed there was one reason only that he wouldn’t return: He didn’t want to be arrested. Bill and Doris insisted that she move in with them until her father arrived to stay with her. The sheriff’s office ordered her not to go back to the cottage alone. They would provide an escort for fifteen minutes a day so she could go back and feed Mittens, who was in hiding, too.

  Mittens was living in the bushes, smart enough to stay invisible, as if he knew that John might come back.

  Oregon authorities moved swiftly. On June 1, 1999, two days after the attack on Kate—the first business day after the Memorial Day holiday—the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon, County of Curry, issued a warrant for John William Branden’s arrest. He was charged with four felonies and three misdemeanors: rape in the first degree, kidnapping in the first degree, attempted murder, attempted sodomy, menacing, and harassment.

  His bail was set at one million dollars.

  John’s name, aliases, and the warrant information were entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).

  Whatever trouble he might have fled from in Florida a dozen years earlier surely paled in comparison to what had just happened in Oregon. Or did it? Kate still didn’t know what had happened there.

  But once again John Branden had escaped punishment, and Kate Jewell spent her days and nights wondering what he was planning next. She was afraid. More than that, she was angry. He had pushed her to the wall, to a place where she could either give up or fight back. And even though she was frightened, she chose to fight back: Curry County Detective Dave Gardiner was assigned principal responsibility on her case, and she knew he was doing everything he and his department could to find John. Sometimes, however, she felt that she was the only one who could locate him, and stop him from hurting her—or anyone else—ever again.