Vicious. Kevin O'Brien
abducted from her summer home in Cullen, while vacationing there with her 8-year-old son. Syms’ body was discovered 36 hours later in some woods near her home. She had been strangled. Syms is believed to be the seventh known victim in the Mama’s Boy murders that plagued the Seattle area from November 1997 through October 2000. The vicious serial killer is believed to have strangled at least 13 women, all mothers who left behind sons. Mama’s Boy was never captured, and his identity remains a mystery.
“They keep searching the area over and over for clues to Wendy’s disappearance,” said longtime Cullen resident, the Rev. George Camper of First Episcopal Church. “These are the same woods, streams, and ravines the police were combing ten years ago for Stella Syms. It’s hard not to remember the Mama’s Boy slaying. But no one wants to say it out loud. No one even wants to think something similar has happened….”
Hands tight on the steering wheel, Susan watched the winding road ahead. She remembered Mama’s Boy, too, and shuddered. He’d killed most of his victims that first year, 1998, when Susan had been a new mom. In fact, her son, Michael, was the same age as the baby boy left behind when the fourth victim was abducted in Volunteer Park. That literally hit too close to home for Susan, Walt, and Michael. They lived five blocks away from the park.
Susan had read The Seattle Times’s accounts of each new murder, the endless speculation from police and forensic psychologists, and the warnings. She remembered the widely released police-artist’s sketch of the suspect—based on vague descriptions from the surviving sons and other witnesses. The result was a creepy half-photo, half-cartoon of a man with dark hair, thin lips, and a dead-eyed stare. It gave Susan chills to look at it. The image burned in her head. Some nights, she imagined a stranger with that stark, caricature-like face quietly sneaking into their home while she was looking in on the baby. She could almost see him, with those cold, lifeless eyes, glaring at her from the doorway of Michael’s nursery.
By the end of 1998, he’d killed eight women. He’d broken into the homes of two of them. Walt installed a home security system and fit dead-bolt locks on both the front and back doors of their duplex. He insisted she buy a cell phone and got her a small canister of industrial-strength pepper spray. Susan wasn’t the only one taking precautions. Seattle mothers armed themselves with handguns, switchblades, or knitting needles. Police encouraged women to have whistles or alarms on their key chains whenever they stepped out with their sons. Playground dates became group excursions. Police beefed up security at playgrounds throughout the area—ironically, more for the safety of the mothers than their children. Whenever Susan needed to go somewhere with little Michael, she called her neighbor, who was also a new mom, and they went out as a team.
It should have been an idyllic time for Susan, with her first baby. In so many ways, it was. She felt lucky to work at home with the part-time consulting-nurse job. Walt was a great dad, very doting. He was an engineer for Boeing, and every afternoon, when he returned home from work, he’d look after Michael so she could have a run, go to the store, or just steal some alone time. Susan remembered many an afternoon, handing the screaming baby to Walt before he even made it through the front door.
Walt. If someone had ever told her she’d end up marrying a man who was follicularly challenged, she would have told them they were crazy. She usually liked a guy with a nice, full head of hair. But Walt was practically bald on top. He had a handsome, chiseled face—with intense blue eyes and thick, dark brows. Both of his sons had inherited his long eyelashes. Walt was a fitness nut, and he had the lean, wiry body to prove it. As soon as Michael could sit up, Walt regularly took him out in the special jogger’s stroller—or he set him in the little canopied attachment that trailed after his bike. Susan couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk going out alone with her son.
She remembered one case in particular in November 1999, because she’d planned to take Michael to his first movie, a matinee of The Borrowers. But then she read about Dianne Rickards, thirty-nine-year-old Bellevue stay-at-home mom, who took her seven-year-old son to see the same movie at Factoria Cinema. During the film, she left her coat on the seat and went to use the restroom. Dianne’s son never saw her again. In the pocket of his mother’s coat, police found two slightly banged-up Matchbox trucks. Dianne’s son remembered a man sitting behind them, but he’d never gotten a look at his face in the darkened theater. An engineer with the Burlington Northern Railroad spotted Dianne’s bruised and battered body in a marsh beside the railroad tracks in Kent two days later.
At Walt’s urging, Susan postponed taking Michael to the movie. Mama’s Boy often waited just long enough between victims so that mothers let down their guards—and then he’d strike again. And everyone would be on edge once more. Sometimes, Susan got fed up always looking over her shoulder, and she’d resolve not to let this creep scare her. But then little things would happen—like someone calling and hanging up, or a piece of trash that mysteriously made its way into their backyard—and suddenly she’d feel hunted.
One solace: at least none of the victims’ sons had been harmed, not physically anyway. But Susan often worried that if anything were to happen to her, Michael wouldn’t have any memory of her.
It was strange, after all the precautions they’d taken, they still couldn’t escape tragedy. But it was Mattie who couldn’t remember his father or older brother. Susan kept plenty of framed photos of them at home to help her son feel connected to them. She didn’t want to lose that connection either.
She still needed it—even now, with Allen in her life.
“You know, maybe Allen will rent us a boat tomorrow,” Susan said, with a glance at Mattie’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “We could go sailing. Your daddy used to take us sailing all the time. Do you remember going out on a boat with Mikey and Daddy?”
Her son let out a long sigh. “Mom, I gotta go now!”
“Okay, honey, okay.” Biting her lip, Susan slowed down for another curve in the tree-lined road. She considered taking him out to the woods and letting him go there. But she thought about Wendy Matusik, and the notion of venturing into those woods with Mattie right now gave her the willies.
Wendy’s wasn’t the only recent missing-person case in Cullen. In her Web search, Susan had found a link to a brief story about a thirty-six-year-old woman from Vancouver, British Columbia, who had been camping with friends in Cullen earlier in the summer. Monica Fitch had gone hiking in the woods by Skagit Bay one morning and never come back. A weary rescue worker on the unsolved case said he believed Monica might have attempted to go swimming in the bay and drowned.
None of those “Best Places to Visit” articles that Susan read had mentioned any casualties among Cullen’s hikers and campers.
After another curve in the road, she noticed an intersection up ahead. At the corner stood a slightly run-down, one-story cedar shaker with an illuminated sign over the front porch. ROSIE’S ROADSIDE SUNDRIES, it said between twin Coca-Cola logos.
“Hallelujah,” she sighed. “Hold on just a little longer, sweetie. We’ll stop in here. I’m sure they have a bathroom. That’s my good boy….”
As Susan pulled into the gravel lot, she noticed a neon sign for Rainier Beer in the front window. A sandwich board by the screen door advertised:
Gourmet Deli & Snacks! – ATM
Beer & Wine – Fresh Coffee – Ice Cold Drinks
Camping Supplies & Live Bait
RESTROOMS
“Thank God,” Susan whispered as she read the last line.
Also on the porch, on the other side of the door, was an old-fashioned, coin-operated bucking bronco for the kiddies to ride. Someone had tacked a faded, weather-beaten handwritten placard on the front porch post: THIS IS A KID-FRIENDLY ZONE—WATCH WHEN YOU BACK OUT!
Susan parked beside a dark green Honda Civic, the only other vehicle in the small lot. Switching off the ignition, she glanced up at the illuminated sign again and remembered the Bellingham Herald news article: Wendy Matusik was last seen that Friday afternoon around 2:30 at Rosie’s Roadside Sundries in Cullen.