Broken Doll (12 page)

Richard Clark went into the kitchen to speak with Wendy's husband, Andy. “I heard him ask Andy if he had any money for gas, and Andy told him no. Richard kept asking for money, and Andy said maybe come back tomorrow. Then Richard asked him if he had any beer, and Andy said that he didn't have any beer. ‘Are you sure? I really need something—money, beer.' He was very persistent.”

Wendy heard Clark say that Jimmy was drunk and passed out in the van. “Richard told me that on his way back from Everett he picked up Jimmy hitchhiking,” said Andy. “I looked out the kitchen window, but it was dark, and I didn't stop to look outside my shades or anything. The only thing I noticed different about him was that he was wearing glasses. He left a little later than ten-fifty.”

“Richard didn't seem to be really intoxicated or anything, not that I noticed,” said Wendy. “But I've only met him briefly a couple times in the past. Richard was wearing glasses,” she said. “I had never seen him wear glasses before. He was just in and out, and acted somewhat nervous. He didn't appear to be drunk or high, and was quiet and soft-spoken, but persistent.”

Not long after leaving the Urness home, Richard Clark returned Jimmy Miller to the Tulalip Indian Reservation just past eleven o'clock. He was there about forty-five minutes, according to Vicki Clark.

“I can't say exactly when,” remarked Detective Herndon, “but sometime between when he left the Casey residence at nine-fifteen to nine-thirty
P.M.
, and when Gail Doll returned at midnight, Richard Clark raped and killed Roxanne Doll. As for Jimmy Miller, even he doesn't know where he was or what he was doing that night, or what time he went anywhere. He was pretty much passed out on his feet even when he walked into the Dog House Tavern.”

“Jimmy Miller was bombed,” agreed Neila D'alexander. “He even passed out with his face against the van window on the way to the Dog House.”

“One thing we know timewise,” asserted Herndon, “is that Richard Clark was dumping the body of Roxanne Doll in the blackberry bushes below East Grand at quarter to one, the early morning of April first. We know that because the van was brought to a woman's attention by, of all things, a cat.”

“I watched a cat run right behind the tire of a rusty yellow-colored older American-made van parked on East Grand,” said Janice Cliatt, an employee of Safeco in Seattle's University District. “There were no lights on in the van, and no movement that I could see.” Cliatt got off work at 12:15
A.M.
The Safeco building is only a block or two from the I-5 Freeway entrance. “I takes me twenty-six minutes to reach Marine View Drive in Everett, from where I enter the I-5 freeway when I get off work,” she said. “I got on the freeway at exactly twelve-twenty, took a right turn off the Marine View Drive exit, and I was going south on East Grand. Before I reached twenty-third, a cat ran from the west side of the road to the east side and went right under that van.”

 

 

 

First-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping charges were filed against Richard Mathew Clark in Everett District Court. “We are waiting for the results of blood, fiber, and hair tests,” said Jim Townsend, chief deputy prosecutor, “before making decisions on additional charges such as rape. Roxanne Doll died of multiple stab wounds to the neck that were probably inflicted the night of her abduction.”

As for facing the death penalty, the prosecutor explained that it was too soon to determine whether Clark would be charged with aggravated murder, a death penalty offense. “Clark is currently being held on one-million-dollar bail on a witness-tampering charge,” said Townsend, referring to the allegation that Clark asked his “brother,” Elza, to lie to police regarding bloodstains in his van.

The day after Richard Clark was charged with murder was the day that Detective Herndon heard important news from the Marysville Crime Lab.

 

 

 

“The bloodstains on the socks, the ones taken from the van,” Mike Grubb of the Marysville Crime Lab said to Detective Herndon, “the balled-up socks, you know, with the bloodstains on them, and the sleeping bag—well, the blood didn't come from Roxanne Doll. She has a very rare blood type.”

According to Grubb, Roxanne Doll's rare blood type was similar to two other groups. Based on early results, they had eliminated approximately 97 percent of the Caucasian population as a source of these stains.

Herndon was instructed to call back later in the afternoon to find out if semen had been located on the socks, which also contained what appeared to be victim blood.

“That's how the day started,” said Herndon. “Then, at four-thirty that afternoon, I made contact with Greg Franks in regards to trace amounts of semen that had been found in some socks, and also the vaginal swabs. At that time, Mr. Frank suggested that I submit these items for further DNA analysis or PCR analysis. Of course, that's exactly what we did.”

That same day, Wendy and Andy Urness met detectives at the Buzz-Inn Steak House. The motivation for the meeting: seeing Richard's van on the television news. The couple, at Richard Clark's request, provided a mattress and a sleeping bag for his camping trip with Tim Iffrig.

“I just saw it on the TV,” said Andy to detectives when he met them at the restaurant, “and that's what prompted me to call. I saw the van doors open on a TV newscast and there was my mattress and my sleeping bag.

“I couldn't believe it,” he said. “It hit me way too close to home, because of what was going on. I have two children, a little girl that's seven and a boy that's four.”

The difference between the sleeping bag when Andy last saw it, and the way it looked when detectives showed him a picture of it, was the stains. “My sleeping bag was clean, and I've never noticed stains like that. The stains were not on it when I last saw it.”

Mr. and Mrs. Urness were not the only ones shocked by bloodstains. The morning after Clark visited the Urness residence—Saturday morning, April 1—Iffrig and he arrived at Kimberly Morrill's Everett home. Morrill is Tim Iffrig's sister, and Roxanne Doll's aunt.

“I had known Richard Clark for about a year and a half,” recalled Kimberly. “I met him because I used to go out with his brother, Jimmy Miller. On Saturday, April first, my brother—Tim Iffrig—and Richard Clark came over to my house about eight-thirty in the morning. Tim's eyes looked dilated; he looked like he had been drinking, so I offered him some coffee.

“As for Richard Clark,” she said, “he was grinning like a tissy cat, and he looked like he was wired. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked like he had been up all night. They stayed at my place till about eleven-thirty.”

Kimberly confirmed that the only companion of Iffrig and Clark was a black puppy dog. “The folks who were already there was me, my fiancé, Matthew, my brother and him, and my two kids. One of the kids was in my stomach, because I didn't have her at that time. James was in his room, and my daughter was, well, in there,” she said, pointing to her abdomen.

“I do not remember what was said or what we talked about, except that at about eight forty-five. I asked Richard if I could go out to his van and get the puppy. And I went out and got his puppy and that's when I seen the blood.

“I didn't crawl into the van to get the dog,” she explained. “The dog was sitting on the mattress and I called the dog's name and the dog came right to me. That was when I saw the blood on the mattress and by the van's door.”

Neither Tim nor Kimberly knew of Roxanne's disappearance, but the fresh bloodstains disturbed Morrill. She questioned Clark about the blood, and he gave her a vague excuse about the puppy getting a scratch.

“The stains to which Urness and Merrill referred were bloodstains,” said Herndon, “the same type of bloodstains Richard Clark asked his aunt Carol to wash out of his shirt at midnight of March thirty-first. Of course, we didn't know about that until she called us up crying and hysterical on April eighteenth.”

 

A tearful and distraught Carol Clark summoned Detectives Burgess and Herndon on a matter of utmost urgency. The two men arrived at her Lombard Street residence to find Clark in a state of high emotional agitation.

“When we first met with Carol Clark, she was visibly upset, crying,” recalled Herndon. “Detective Burgess, who had communicated with Ms. Clark on most occasions, did the talking.”

The relationship between Burgess and Carol Clark was not one of mutual high regard. She often accused Burgess of harassing her, badgering her, and other appellatives of equal unpleasantness. Admittedly guarded of her personal privacy, and highly emotional, Carol's animosity toward Burgess was somewhat ameliorated by the current circumstances. Carol Clark feared she was facing arrest.

“Richard Clark was initially arrested for tampering with a witness by asking Elza to say the van's bloodstains were from a poached deer,” Herndon said. “Carol made the same request of Elza, and she thought that she was going to be arrested as an accessory for tampering also with a witness. Once we assured her that we had no intention of arresting her, and that we only regarded her as a witness, she calmed down.”

Carol provided a taped statement, remaining calm and coherent 99 percent of the time. “When she got to the point of telling us what she observed on the night of the thirty-first, or the early morning of the first, she did get a little upset, but then soon calmed down, for the most part.”

What she observed was Richard Clark dropping by her house at midnight wearing a bloodstained shirt. “The blood that you saw on his shirt,” asked Detective Burgess, “how close were you when you saw this?”

“He was in front of the washing machine and I was in front of the sink,” replied Carol. “Maybe a couple feet away.”

“And so when you saw this blood, you asked him about it?”

“Well,” Carol answered, “I asked him how he got that on his shirt and he said, ‘Well, I've been out poaching a deer.'”

“He looked like he'd been drinking,” added Carol. “I don't know if he was on any drugs, 'cause I never took drugs myself. See, I never knew what anybody looked like when they're on drugs.” She went on to tell detectives that Richard Clark put the shirt in the laundry, took a shower, changed clothes, and left.

“When she told us that,” said Burgess, “I believe it was her son Jesse who ran off into another room and he retrieved it and brought it in and she confirmed that was the shirt Richard Clark left with her to wash.”

Detective Burgess stayed with Carol Clark while Herndon obtained another search warrant. “She was going to give us consent,” he said, “but I thought, since I had the time, I was going to cover the bases and get a search warrant. Once that search warrant was obtained, I came back and gave Carol Clark a receipt for that shirt. Detective Burgess took the shirt and it was impounded. Even though Carol washed the shirt with detergent and bleach, experts were still able to recover DNA matching that of Roxanne Doll.”

The nightmare story of Clark's alleged kidnapping, rape, and murder of little Roxanne Doll was the number one lead story in the newspaper, on radio, and on television. Emotions ran high in Everett, Washington. There were those who, given an opportunity, would have gladly lynched Richard Mathew Clark.

“Well, this here country is America,” asserted an honored veteran of foreign wars, “and no matter how guilty that son of a bitch is, he's presumed as innocent as a baby lamb until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law . . . and then we can kill him.”

“There is no way Richard Clark can get a fair trial in Everett, Washington,” said award-winning broadcast journalist Chet Rogers. “Media coverage of Roxanne Doll's kidnapping and murder, emotion laden and virtually nonstop since the day she disappeared, has so saturated the community that finding an impartial jury will be an almost herculean task. Were I his defense attorney, I would, for the sake of preserving American justice, assuredly seek a change of venue.”

Richard Clark's attorneys felt the same way and petitioned the court to act accordingly and move the trial outside of Snohomish County. “There had been coverage nearly every day,” recalled noted appellant's attorney Suzanne Lee Elliott, “and in some instances, two to four stories each day. The defense argued that the venue should be changed because Mr. Clark could not be given a fair trial in light of the publicity in this case.”

Before Clark's lawyers would argue that the trial should be held elsewhere, they would argue that his van should not have been held and searched at all. The warrants issued for the searching of his van, they asserted, were illegal.

“They argued that the physical evidence seized from his van and residence should be suppressed because his van was impounded without a warrant,” recalled deputy prosecutor Seth Fine. “They also argued that there was not probable cause to impound his van because Detective Herndon performed a search of the van the previous day and found nothing obviously incriminatory.”

The warrant issued subsequent to the impounding lacked probable cause, according to the defense, because Detective Herndon's sworn affidavit supporting the warrant merely mentioned that Clark had a previous criminal history involving a similar crime, and that Clark had failed a polygraph test with respect to the Doll disappearance. It was further claimed that the affidavit contained intentional or recklessly made material omissions, was merely a boilerplate affidavit, was overbroad, and lacked particularity with respect to evidence to be seized.

Clark's defense attorney wanted every piece of physical evidence tossed out because the evidence was seized based on an illegal search warrant. “Since there were four search warrants in total related to evidence seized from the van, and all had supporting affidavits indistinguishable in basic form from the first warrant,” explained Fine, “the defense argued that virtually every piece of physical evidence found should be suppressed as tainted fruit of the illegal van search.”

The state challenged each of these assertions with respect to the first affidavit because the validity of the subsequent affidavits would stand or fall with the first. In order for a warrant to be issued, there has to be “probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The concept of probable cause required “the existence of reasonable grounds for suspicion supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to warrant a man of ordinary caution to believe the accused is guilty of the indicated crime.”

“It is only the probability of criminal activity,” explained Fine, not actual proof, that determined whether probable cause existed. “The judge is entitled to draw reasonable inferences from the facts and circumstances set forth in the affidavit, and the affidavit must be read in a commonsense manner.”

When Herndon telephoned Judge Fisher, he mentioned Richard Clark's 1988 conviction for unlawful imprisonment of Feather Rahier. He also told the judge about the polygraph test given Clark and that the FBI agent who administered the test believed that Clark was “clearly deceptive in his denials.” Herndon also stated to Fisher that if Roxanne Doll was removed from her house in the van, there would be trace evidence.

The trial court found that although Detective Herndon did not use the word “kidnap” during the telephone conversation with Judge Fisher, the latter “knew the crime with which he was dealing. The police knew that they were restricted to searching for trace evidence left behind after a kidnapping.”

Clark's lawyers argued that just because Clark was near the victim's house on the night she disappeared, had a prior conviction, and supposedly failed a polygraph examination were insufficient bases for probable cause. However, under Washington State law, “prior convictions of a suspect are a factor which can be considered in determining whether probable cause exists.” In this situation, Clark's prior conviction was for unlawful imprisonment of a young girl for ostensibly sexual purposes.

“When I got the warrant by telephone,” confirmed Herndon, “my affidavit set forth that after binding her in his garage with a pair of socks, Clark groped this girl's vaginal area outside her clothing.” This was a crime of the same general nature as that in which Detective Herndon was attempting to uncover evidence, and therefore was not only proper but helpful in establishing probable cause.

“Polygraph results are not admissible at trial unless stringent conditions have been met,” said Seth Fine, “but the judge can take those results into consideration when making a determination of probable cause. Here Clark's polygraph performance was deemed deceptive by the administering FBI agent.”

Clark challenged the conclusion of the FBI agent because Detective Herndon's affidavit didn't give the agent's qualifications or any other reason to assume the agent's conclusions were reliable or accurate. (Information from a reliable informant has corroborative value even if the informant's basis of knowledge is not specified.) Here the FBI agent's basis of knowledge was the administration of the polygraph and his clinical and commonsense observation of Clark's performance.

“Clark seemed to be claiming that no foundation was laid in the supporting affidavit to support the agent's qualifications,” explained Seth Fine. “But the FBI agent wasn't required to submit a résumé or his curriculum vitae to Detective Herndon in order for the agent's conclusions and opinions about the polygraph results to be of value to Judge Fisher in determining whether or not to issue the search warrant.

“It may be correct that, taken individually, these things may not have been enough to establish probable cause,” Fine acknowledged. “But taking this information on the whole, Judge Fisher could form reasonable belief that Richard Clark was probably involved in the criminal activity under investigation.”

Clark, via his lawyer, also claimed that Detective Herndon made two material omissions or misstatements to Judge Fisher. The first was Herndon not mentioning that he had made a brief but inconclusive search of the van prior to applying for the search warrant. The second was failing to mention that Gail Doll told him she thought she saw Roxanne in bed with her sister when she returned at midnight of April 1, 1995.

Clark contended that had these facts been included in the affidavit, no reasonable magistrate could have found probable cause to issue the search warrant.

In order to invalidate the warrant on this ground, Clark had to show evidence of deliberate material omission or statements made in reckless disregard of the truth. “Allegations of negligence or innocent mistake are insufficient,” explained Fine. If Detective Herndon himself had serious doubts about the truth of his own affidavit, or if he had obvious reasons to doubt the honesty or accuracy of an informant, but asked for the warrant anyway, that would be “reckless disregard for the truth.”

The trial court ruled: “The omission of details regarding Ms. Doll-Iffrig's statement of her observations is not material. The statement in the affidavit that Ms. Doll-Iffrig was ‘unsure' of whether she saw Roxanne is truthful. This was the substance of oral statements made to Detective Herndon by Gail Doll. The progression of Gail's thought processes was indicated by the fact that her second written statement is more vague than her first statement.”

The court ruled that Herndon's failure to recite all of Ms. Doll-Iffrig's statements to him was not an intentional or reckless attempt to mislead Judge Fisher. The fact that Herndon also didn't mention his previous quick search of the van on April 3 was, the court decided, not relevant.

“The purpose of the April 3, 1995, search warrant,” explained Herndon, “was for trace evidence. During my search on April 2, I didn't notice anything remarkable—I was looking for maybe a tennis shoe or an item of clothing, or something obvious. Just because I took a look in the van doesn't mean that there would not be trace evidence in there.”

The court decided that Detective Herndon did not attempt to deceive the judge by purposely leaving out information. “It was like I was being accused of being a liar,” said Herndon later, “but any error on my part didn't have any sort of nefarious motive. I was just doing my job to the best of my ability.”

With respect to Detective Herndon's statement that Doll-Iffrig was unsure whether Roxanne was in bed at midnight on April 1, 1995, it was an accurate summary of statements on the matter. Gail Doll turned the light on in her daughter's room only momentarily, and was, upon reflection, unsure whether she saw Roxanne or a large doll.

“If the court ruled that Herndon should have included those pieces of information,” explained Fine, “then what you do is add the omitted facts to the affidavit and subtract any misstatements. If probable cause still exists after you do that, the warrant stands.”

Given the difference between a search for trace evidence and the simple search for blatant evidence conducted by Herndon, and given Doll-Iffrig's numerous statements as to her uncertainty whether she saw Roxanne in bed, the court upheld that there was still probable cause to issue the warrants to search Clark's Dodge van.

There was still another lingering and unresolved issue regarding whether or not the search warrant was legal, and it was a question that struck to the heart of what makes America “the Land of the Free”—the Bill of Rights.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” states the Fourth Amendment, “shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”