Broken Doll (7 page)

“Clark had been instructed by his aunt and his father to call me as soon as possible,” Herndon said. “Clark told me that he was at his aunt's house and would wait there for me.

“The first thing I noticed when I met him,” said Herndon, “was that Clark had my name and pager number written on his hand. I asked him why he didn't come to the residence like he was asked to, and he told me that he did not stop because he was low on gas and could not make it out to the house. Then I asked him why he didn't page me. Clark responded he did not want to hassle with the police. I asked him if I could search his van, and he said it was okay with him, so I took a good look. I didn't see anything obvious that would belong to Roxanne.”

Herndon said years later, “I admit that I had tunnel vision in that search. I wasn't looking for trace evidence. I was looking for something more substantial—shoes, clothes, toys—something that belonged to Roxanne. And I didn't find anything of that nature. I saw two black puppies. There was a small portion of feces on a mattress that was located in the back of the van. The van was also loaded with sleeping bags and camping equipment, which apparently belonged to both Clark and Iffrig.”

In recounting his activities the night of March 31 and on April 1, Richard Clark said that the only time he left the Casey residence during the “party” was when Pat Casey and he went out to Casey's garage and looked at an airplane that Casey had disassembled.

“Me, Tim, Shawn, and Pat partied until approximately seven-thirty in the morning,” Clark said. “But Shawn's kid woke up and it was time for us to leave. Tim and I walked back to Tim's house and I sat on the couch while he said good-bye to his wife and collected his camping gear. Gail Doll's eight-year-old son, Nicholas, came out of his room and sat on the couch with me,” said Clark. “The door to the girls' room was shut and Nick was the only kid I seen. Tim and I left and drove to the north Everett area looking for Neila D'alexander, Tim's mom, who was going to go camping with the rest of us.”

“Richard Clark told us,” recalled Herndon, “that he and Tim Iffrig had planned a camping trip the following morning and that he was to pick up his brother Jimmy Miller, who was now out on the reservation; Jimmy's girlfriend, Lisa, and Vicki Smith, who was Richard's aunt. They were also supposed to pick up Tim Iffrig's mother, Neila. According to Richard, they could not find Neila D'alexander, so they drove to the Indian reservation, where they picked up Vicki Smith, Jimmy Miller, and Lisa Rader, who is Jimmy's girlfriend. After waiting around at Vicki Smith's for several hours, all drove to the Everett area in Richard's van, where they picked up Vicki Smith's check at Carol Clark's house on Lombard. They then drove to U.S. Bank on Hewitt and cashed the check. After stopping at Rocky's Gas and Grocery for beer and gas, Richard drove to the campsite.”

Herndon admitted years later, “I was suspicious of Richard Clark. Everyone was a suspect, and we hadn't eliminated others, of course. But I had strong suspicions of Clark, and not just because he didn't show up at the Doll residence like he was supposed to, or just because he didn't page me. When I ran a check on him, I found out about the incident with Feather Rahier back in 1988. Now that fact wasn't evidence against him in any way. It also wasn't any indication that he was involved in the disappearance of Roxanne Doll. It just gave me what you might call stimulus for reasonable suspicion.”

Herndon asked Clark if he would be willing to take a polygraph test concerning the disappearance of Roxanne Doll. “Yeah,” said Clark, “but I promised to help my friend Andy do some landscaping in the Marysville area later this afternoon, but I can do it tomorrow.”

“I asked him how I could contact him if the polygraph examiner was available later in the afternoon, and he didn't hesitate to tell me that I could contact his aunt Vicki or his father in Marysville, who lives nearby. They could get him a message about the polygraph test.”

A quick conversation with the polygraph test administrator revealed that April 3 actually would be more convenient, since the examiner was going to speak to the parents first. At 11:00
A.M.
, the detectives returned to the Doll-Iffrig residence, and Kiser took extensive photos, including the interior and exterior of the home. Herndon also took VHS video recordings of the residence and surrounding area.

“If you look at the videotape,” said Herndon, “you'll see one part where the camera comes around into the girls' room and Roxanne's sister is holding a doll that's almost the same size that she is, and it has lifelike hair. It would be very easy to mistake that doll's head in the bed for another child—specifically Roxanne.”

Looking over the photographs of the home's interior, Herndon noticed a smoke detector in the hallway just outside Roxanne and Kristena's bedroom. “I went back to the house specifically to see if that smoke detector was operational,” said Herndon.

If the smoke detector was in working order, it should have awakened Tim Iffrig and his children when the house filled with smoke from his burned steak. “The family never mentioned a smoke detector going off,” Herndon said. “Well, if someone is sleeping on the couch and steak is burned on the stove, you think a smoke detector would go off and wake that person up.”

Standing on a chair, Herndon took the cover off the smoke detector. “There was no battery in it, and it was obvious the battery had been out for some time. The whole inside of the smoke detector had sooted over, or had that nicotine brown residual-type coating on it. And I asked Neila D'alexander about it; she really couldn't provide me with any information with regards to when it was last in operation. But Nicholas said that his father had taken the battery out of it over a year prior, after it had gone off from steam coming out of the bathroom. When that sort of thing happens, it's not uncommon for folks to forget to put the smoke detector back in working order.”

Gail Doll and Tim Iffrig were escorted to the Everett Police Department at 1:00
P.M.
for polygraph tests. Detective Barry Fagan of the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office interviewed Tim Iffrig; Special Agent Ray Lauer of the FBI interviewed Gail.

While Tim and Gail took polygraph tests, specialist Kelly Bradley interviewed their five-year-old daughter, Kristena. “Kristena was accompanied to the police station by her grandmother Neila,” Bradley noted, “and her brother, Nicholas. They were not present, however, during the interview.”

Bradley asked, “Can you tell me your full name?” The child answered, “Kristena.”

“Do you know your last name?”

“No,” she replied, but she was aware that she was five and lived in a blue house with her mom, dad, grandmother, and brother. She also knew that Roxanne was gone.

“Is there anything that happens in your house that you wish you could stop?” Bradley asked.

“I don't know what it is,” said Kristena, playing with Bradley's marking pens, “but this color smells good.”

“What's the best thing about your daddy?”

“He plays Barbies with me. We play house. He's the dad and I'm the mommy.”

“What happens when you play house with your dad?”

“We take care of the kids. Feed them and dress them.”

“What is the one thing you don't want your dad to do?”

“Get mad,” said Kristena. Asked what happened when Tim Iffrig got mad, his daughter answered, “You go to your room and wait awhile.”

Bradley also questioned Nicholas Doll. Neither child gave any indication of unpleasant or inappropriate behavior in the home.

“Kristena's parents were polygraphed that day, as were Kim Hammond and William D'alexander,” said Herndon. “I was very eager to hear the results.”

Gail's polygraph test lasted much longer than Kim's. “It seemed to me,” said Gail, “that Kim's took fifteen minutes and mine took three hours. That might be an exaggeration, but if so, it's not much of one. The guy interviewing me seemed obsessed with the erroneous concept that I kidnapped my own daughter and had her stashed somewhere. They even speculated that I had her hidden her with relatives in Nebraska.” Recalling, the event in 2003, Gail Doll shook her head in disbelief. “I leave the house at nine-fifteen and return at midnight, and I'm supposed to have spirited her out of state? The guy kept insinuating that I was lying about Roxanne's disappearance. Maybe that is the technique they use or something, but I found it insulting and offensive.”

The polygraphists reported to Herndon that Gail and Tim were both truthful, as were Kim Hammond and William D'alexander. Four individuals were thus eliminated as suspects.

“I contacted Pat Casey and Shawn Angilley, the next-door neighbors, at about six
P.M.
,” recalled Herndon. “They were very cooperative and terribly concerned.”

“Tim and his friend Richard returned to our house between twelve-twenty and one
A.M.
,” Angilley told police. “We sat and talked for about forty-five minutes to an hour about Pat's plane. Then Pat and Richard went to the garage to see it. They were out there for about a half hour while Tim and I sat inside and talked. When Pat and Richard came back in, we all sat around talking until around six-thirty in the morning. We were kind of loud, and we woke up my son. Once he was up,” she said, “we asked them to go.

“When they left, Pat locked the door behind them. We then went into our room to watch TV. Pat fell asleep and I was watching TV until about eight-thirty when Gail called to see if Roxy was here playing with my son, Chris.”

Twenty minutes later, Gail was knocking on Angilley's door. “Again she was asking about Roxy. I called her back in a half hour to make sure she found Roxanne, but she hadn't.”

“Casey and Angilley suggested I talk to a thirteen-year-old boy down the street,” reported Herndon. The youngster was known as “Bad Boy Roy” and was not welcome at the Casey residence.

Detectives Herndon and Kiser met with the boy briefly and quickly determined that he was not involved in the incident. Returning to the Iffrig residence, evidence was gathered from the victim's bedroom. Detective Kiser was able to lift three latent prints from the exterior of the victim's window located on the North side of the residence.

“Gail Doll took me into Roxanne's bedroom,” recalled Kiser “and I observed some things in the bedroom. She pointed out a nightgown that Roxanne had been wearing and some other items.”

“I was one of the responding officers that met detectives at the residence,” recalled Sgt. Boyd Bryant. “Gail Doll told us that Roxanne regularly wet her bed in the middle of the night. I reached down and felt her mattress. It was dry to the touch. From that, we reasoned that unless she remained dry that night, she had been missing for several hours.”

“A couple of hours later,” added Kiser, “we began searching around the outside. I believe it was Detective Herndon that decided that maybe we should try to collect some fingerprints, if there were any available, and then we went to the back side of the house, which would be the north side.”

It was already dark outside when Herndon and the other detectives made the fingerprint discovery. “Herndon had his flashlight with him—he carried the flashlight, and together we went to the back of the house, on the north side.”

A large friendly dog, tethered with a rope, wagged its tail at the officers while they examined the rear of the house. “The dog's presence explained all the muddy smudges on the wall below the kid's bedroom window,” said Kiser. “There are four windows on that side of the house. Two of them slide open. The far left window was Roxanne Doll's bedroom window, and we carefully examined it for fingerprints.”

Kiser noticed a clear print on the outside of the bedroom window. “Once I noticed it, I took out the fingerprint powder and a brush—it's a very fine brush. And you sprinkle powder, it's a black powder on the area you want to lift the print from, and that's what I did in this case.

“Sometimes when I dust a print,” explained Kiser, “I can actually make two lifts from the same print because there is enough powder on there, and that's what I did—I made one lift; then I decided that I would try it again to see if maybe the next time it will be more clear. I was able to make the same lift twice of that one individual fingerprint.”

Detective Kiser's fingerprint proficiency ended with efficient recovery. “I don't have any expertise in reading prints,” admitted Kiser. “I submit the fingerprints to someone else. In the Roxanne Doll investigation, as with all others, we submitted the fingerprints to someone especially trained in that science.” The “someone else” was James Luthy.

Hired by the Washington State Patrol in May 1988, he classified, compared, and searched fingerprints via the automated fingerprint identification system. “That's a computerized system that allows for rapid searching of fingerprints,” he explained. “Also, at that time, I began assisting latent-print examiners with processing evidence in crime scenes for latent prints.”

In March 1993, Luthy was assigned to the missing and unidentified persons unit, where he assisted coroners and medical examiners in identifying the deceased. One year later, he was assigned to the Latent Print Unit. Latent means hidden.

“A latent fingerprint generally means a fingerprint left on an object when that object is touched,” explained Luthy. “It generally requires processing with powders or with chemicals or with alternative light sources before it can be seen. That doesn't have to be done all the time, but that's typically what needs to be done, and that's why they call it latent.

“There are a variety of methods used in retrieving and comparing fingerprints,” said Luthy. “One way is to just photograph it, and then you have a permanent record of it. You can also process it with powders, lightly dusting it with powder and then lifting it, or putting a piece of tape over it, lifting the tape and placing that tape on a white card that would provide for you a permanent record of that impression. You may also develop it with chemicals so it can be enhanced, so you can photograph it and record it that way.”