Body Count. Burl Barer
and over the curb. It was easily seen that the victim was murdered elsewhere, driven to the parking lot, dragged up the embankment, and dumped as refuse.
“The body is decomposed to the point that we’re not even certain if it is male or female,” said Lieutenant Jerry Oien, the commander of Spokane’s Major Crimes Unit. “We’re also not sure of the nationality.” That is how the day began. From there, it only got worse.
Several hours later, on a Mount Spokane farm, Kevin and Cindy Kailin hurriedly bailed alfalfa in a heated rush against oncoming rain. Kevin Kailin sensed more than the breath of a storm. He smelled death.
“At about five-twenty P.M., my wife, Cindy, and I were in a field to look at a hay bailer,” recalled Kailin, “and we smelled something. I followed the smell to the body—it was in tall grass about thirty feet east of a tree with a No Trespassing sign on it.” The Kailins hauled off three hundred bales of alfalfa before calling the Spokane County sheriff. At 6:30 P.M., Detective Rick Grabenstein was dispatched to the crime scene, where Sergeant Martin O’Leary was the on-scene supervisor. Also waiting for Grabenstein was the homicide’s lead investigator, Detective Fred Ruetsch.
The body was located on a brush-covered side road that descended about two hundred feet into an alfalfa field. “There was a lone large pine tree on the bank a short distance west of the body,” reported Grabenstein. “Other than this tree, and the dense brush, the area was open and devoid of any vegetation that would provide shade.
“The body appeared to be that of a female, but was badly decomposed. The skin appeared leatherlike,” he noted, “and the body was infested with maggots. Although the race could not be initially determined, facial features suggested partial and/ or full African-American, Indian, or Asian descent.”
The body was faceup, arms extended above the head and somewhat outward. The legs were nearly fully extended straight out from the body. “There was no indication of the body being posed,” said Grabenstein. “The body was surrounded by the brush, which had been crushed by the weight of the body, and the surrounding brush restricted the view of the body to a distance of about fifteen feet and offered some degree of concealment. However, there was no apparent attempt to cover, or further conceal, the body.”
The victim’s clothing included a long-sleeved blouse or dress, unzipped and pulled up to the shoulder area, and a black brassiere. The bra had been pulled up over the victim’s head, and the body was unclothed from the chest area on down.
“The area east of the body appeared as if it were a trail from the roadway to the field,” Grabenstein said. “At the top of this trail, marks in the grass and brush, which had been bent over, indicated a probability that the victim’s body was dragged up this trail into the brush where the body was subsequently located.”
Clothing that remained on the body was drawn up around the shoulder area, consistent with the victim having been dragged by the ankles. The trail into the brush, however, indicated that the victim was dragged headfirst.
Identification Officers Carrie Johnson and Julie Combs arrived on scene at 7:50 P.M., and the entire area was photographed. Due to impending darkness, detectives suspended further investigation until the following morning at nine o’clock. The scene was left intact, and patrol officers kept it secure throughout the night. Everyone except security deputies cleared the area at approximately 9:30 P.M.
The body, true to professional crime-investigation protocol, was not removed. “All professional law-enforcement personnel know that you don’t move the body until you absolutely have to,” commented Sergeant Walker. “You only get one chance to study the victim’s body in the context of the crime scene, and once the body is moved, that opportunity is lost forever. You secure the scene, you guard the scene, and you process the entire crime scene, including the body, in the clear light of day.”
Key to the investigation of a violent sex crime for which there is no known perpetrator is the science and art of profiling both the crime scene and the offender from the physical and psychological evidence. The methodology is based on Locard’s Principle of Exchange: “Anyone who enters the scene both takes something of the scene with them and leaves something behind.” The crime scene is a living document, and preservation of the scene’s purity is critical. After securing and preservation comes processing; this includes documenting the physical evidence, being attentive to detail. Even the smallest item, such as a red fiber from a car rug taken off the victim’s body, can provide valuable insight.
Each law enforcement agency has its own crime scene protocol. An essential factor is consistency of protocol. Planned consistency is simply good investigative practice. Detectives always consider whether a scene is primary or secondary. If the body is in an isolated location, a spiral search pattern using the body as a starting point will often be utilized.
According to forensic scientist Brent Turvey, profiling the crime scene may give investigators a more narrowed pool of suspects, insight into motive, and linkages of a given crime to other similar crimes. “The opportunity to profile an unsolved crime,” insists Turvey, “is not to be ignored or wasted.”
The crime scene investigation on Forker Road resumed in earnest the following morning, August 28. Additional evidence was located along the south side of the dirt access road just to the south of where the body was located. These articles included a yellow condom, one pair of size-seven black high-heeled shoes, a pair of black underwear, and one broken auto radio antenna.
After the location of the body was recorded, investigators approached the north side of the body through the brush. The bushes were initially checked for any trace evidence; then they were cut away as the search continued toward the body.
“The only evidence located on any of the brush north of the body were possible bloodstains,” reported Grabenstein. A sample of the apparent bloodstains was collected, as were samples of the brush and vegetation. As the brush was cut away from the north side of the body, articles near the victim’s left arm became visible: a pair of zippered-front black pants (size small) and a bloodstained towel.
“The body was now noted to have long dark hair believed to be black or auburn,” said the detective. “The hair was so matted with body fluids and foreign material that making a precise color distinction was somewhat difficult. The body appeared to be that of a person of small build, although decomposition made estimating a weight difficult.”
The victim wore pierced earrings and two finger rings. On the left middle finger was a thin plain gold band. On the right ring finger, a gold ring with a setting including a single white pearl in the center with a small green stone on either side. “The body was noted to have purple nail polish on both the finger- and toenails,” Grabenstein recalled, “and the toes had what appeared to be fine particles of silver or white ‘glitter’ on the polish.”
Degradation of the body made it near impossible to immediately identify any trauma wounds. Large areas of flesh were missing, destroyed or damaged. However, there was a defect noted in the left shoulder area of the blouse, as well as a round perforation in the back of the left shoulder with a smooth edge, indicative of a bullet wound.
Detectives could not know, prior to autopsy, that this was indeed a gunshot wound. Even with an autopsy, they would have no way of knowing that this body’s wounds were almost identical to those inflicted over twenty years earlier on Susan Savage of Walla Walla, Washington.
Within twenty-four hours, the two homicides were high-profile cases dominating newspaper headlines and television news. Spokane’s city and county detectives were under more pressure than astronauts.
Dr. George Lindholm and PA Randy Shaber performed autopsies on both bodies in the Holy Family Hospital morgue. Detectives Ruetsch and Grabenstein, plus Identification Officer Julie Combs, attended the 10:22 A.M. autopsy of the body found in the Kailins’ alfalfa field.
“Doctor Lindholm noticed that the blouse worn by the victim still had a mother-of-pearl right-wrist cuff button present,” said Ruetsch, “but the left-wrist cuff button was missing.” Also missing was one of the victim’s false eyelashes. The victim, shot in the chest and the left shoulder, died from a gunshot wound