Empty Promises (21 page)

Tando took Polaroid pictures of Pat Lehn, including close-up shots of his hands. They could see that his huge hands were swollen and red around the knuckles, and that he had long fresh scratches on both forearms. Lehn wore a round ring studded with small diamonds. He also told them his right foot hurt.
"How did that happen?"
"I might have kicked them, I guess— but I think it's from an injury on the job."
The county jail was across Cherry Street from the
Public Safety Building, but it was accessible through a tunnel. Tando and Boatman walked their prisoner over to the jail through the tunnel. The sun had yet to come up on that Sunday morning before Pat Lehn was booked without bail on suspicion of homicide.
At 6:50 A.M., Tando and Boatman returned to Harborview to collect the clothing that Kathi Jones had worn. She was still alive but in very critical condition, still in the operating room. The detectives were now into a new day, a day where sleep would be forgotten. They checked Pat Lehn's bloodstained clothing and noted that his right shoe was dented at the toe. That spot on the shoe was covered with dried blood which had blond hairs caught in it.
Thus far, Sergeant Don Cameron's team had one homicide victim— the three-year-old son of Pat Lehn's estranged lover— and they had been told that if Kathi Jones lived, it would be a miracle. They believed they had good solid physical evidence in Lehn's clothing, not to mention the bruises and scratches on Lehn himself, and they had his vague statement about "the incident." Now they needed to find out more about the suspect himself. He was a handsome man who had a good job, a nice apartment, and a new car. But something about his emotional affect was skewed; his responses to their questions had been strangely flat and deceptively mild, given the violent nature of the attack they were discussing.
Homicide detectives Gary Fowler and Danny Melton took over part of the investigation at 7:30 A.M. when they reported for duty on the day shift. They located Kathi Jones's red Mazda just where Pat Lehn said it would be— in the parking lot of a supermarket some blocks away from the scene of the beating. There were
bloodstains on the right front wheel. A great deal of blood had splashed onto the hubcaps and then it had dissipated over the metal in droplets when the wheel turned as it was driven away. They could see blood inside the car too, on the gearshift lever, on the seat, and on a woman's white sweater that lay on the seat. From all appearances, the evening before had begun in a totally normal fashion for the victims. Kris Haugen's tiny tennis shoes and a bag of groceries were still inside the sports car.
Fowler and Melton canvassed the building where the victims lived to see if perhaps the argument had begun in Kathi's apartment, but no one had seen or heard anything the night before. So that much of Lehn's story was probably true: He had encountered his former girlfriend outside her condo as she drove up after picking Kris up from his baby-sitter and shopping for groceries. She must have been upset because the lug nuts on her wheels were loosened and she was probably anxious to get home safely.
A call came in to Homicide from a man who lived in the north end of the county. He said he had been dating Kathi Jones sporadically for several years, and when he learned about the attack on her and Kris, he became afraid for his own safety. He said that Kathi had broken up with Pat Lehn two or three months earlier, but Lehn wasn't letting go gracefully.
"She still saw him occasionally because he had some diamonds that belonged to her," the caller explained. "She thought she had a better chance of getting them back if she kept in touch with him. Pat had those stones set into a ring for himself, but she still hoped to get them back."
The caller said that he had told Kathi all the diamonds in the world weren't worth it. He warned her to
avoid Lehn completely, but she believed she could handle him.

* * *

Kathi Jones survived surgery, but her condition deteriorated throughout the day until it was listed as "very grave." Her life was being maintained only by artificial means, with machines breathing for her; the damage to her brain was profound. Brain scans showed that she had suffered such massive trauma that she was clinically brain dead. So with her family's permission, her respirator was disconnected. She breathed on her own for a very short time and then died.
Patrick Lehn was now charged with a double homicide.

* * *

A check of records in Lynnwood, Washington, showed that Lehn's rage toward women was not something new. He was already on probation following a series of threats and instances of malicious mischief against another woman in that city. Lehn reportedly had been living with the woman in Lynnwood at the time of those charges and was physically abusive with her. She left him after he beat her, but then he encountered her in a local club and became enraged to see her sitting with two men.
When she went to the parking lot later, Lehn's ex-girlfriend found that three tires on her car had been flattened. Someone had methodically gone through her car, disabling it. The spark plug cables had been cut, and so had the fan belt, the alternator wires, and the pressure gauge wires. An attempt had been made to cut the fuel line, the brake line, and the transmission vacuum line. She told the Lynnwood police that she was sure the vandal was her former lover, Pat Lehn.
Two weeks later the woman was terrorized with
anonymous phone calls, where either no one spoke at all or the voice was clearly disguised. Fed up, she'd finally screamed into the phone, "I know it's you, Pat!" She told police he'd admitted it was him. He had also admitted to vandalizing her car and promised to pay to have it fixed if she would move back in with him. She refused.
Lehn had been right when he told Tando and Boatman that Kathi Jones's father didn't like him. The older man, actually Kathi's stepfather, confirmed this. Kathi had started a relationship with the suspect the previous fall, and things seemed fine at the beginning. It wasn't easy for a single mother who worked long hours, but Kathi was happy— at least for a while— when the tall, good-looking construction foreman came along. He gave her a diamond ring to show his good intentions. "It wasn't long before she told me that she felt stifled," her stepfather recalled. "The guy was extremely possessive."
Lehn started to haunt the French restaurant where Kathi worked, watching to see if any men came on to her. The man who at first seemed so perfect had become a nightmare to deal with. Kathi was afraid she would lose her job because of Pat's lurking around the restaurant. He would stare at her and listen to any conversation she might have with a stranger. It was part of her job to make diners feel welcome, but Pat was primed to discourage any men who approached her.
Lehn had given Kathi some "diamonds," but she and her stepfather had begun to wonder how he could afford expensive gems on his salary. She had the stones appraised, and both turned out to be fakes. In fact, everything about him was either threatening or phony. Kathi was miserable in the suffocating affair, and she
tried to break it off only to find out, too late, that it was almost impossible to get free of Lehn.
Her stepfather verified that she was sure it was Lehn who damaged her Mazda, especially since Kathi knew he had almost destroyed his former girlfriend's car when she had attempted to break up with him. "I thought she'd broken off with him completely," Kathi's stepfather said. "But I saw Pat at Kathi's condo about two weeks ago." And Kathi assured her stepfather that she wasn't afraid of Pat Lehn; she was positive she could defuse his anger. She said he had some of her things and she had worked too hard to just let him walk away with her possessions.
Don Cameron studied the results of the postmortem examinations on the two homicide victims. Three-year-old Kris Haugen had succumbed to massive head injuries that were consistent with his having been kicked in the head. The homicide sergeant sighed when he read that there had been six separate identifiable blows to the youngster's head and neck. The imprint on his forehead had probably been made by a ring with a distinctive pattern.
Kathi Jones had sustained fatal brain-stem injuries and facial fractures. Like her son's, her neck appeared to have been stomped on as well as kicked. She had been hit or kicked so many times about the head and neck that it was impossible to count the blows; Dr. Eisele was able to isolate only eight to ten areas of trauma.
Neither Kathi nor her small son had a chance of survival once their attacker had started to pummel and kick them. The child must have run after his mother when she fled her car. She was probably trying to lead Lehn away from her little boy, even if it meant losing her own life.
Now that the detectives knew they were dealing with the aftermath of the jealousy and rage exhibited by the classic stalking ex-lover, they set about reconstructing the last evening of the lives of Kathi and Kris. It wouldn't change the ending, but the full scenario might help a judge or a jury to decide the fate of a heartless killer.
They talked with the owner of L'Tastevin, the restaurant where Kathi worked on the last night of her life. Her employer recalled that her shift as a hostess at the front desk ended at 12:30 A.M. She had received a phone call around 7:00 P.M., and the co-owner of L'Tastevin had overheard her side of the conversation. He recalled that Kathi seemed quite upset, but he wasn't sure why. She couldn't hide her distress, but she hadn't confided the details of the call to the owner.
"Did she talk to anyone here— any of the other employees?" John Boatman asked.
"No, she wasn't close enough to anyone here to share really personal things," the co-owner said. He also said that Kathi parked her car in the restaurant lot, but to his knowledge, no employees or diners had witnessed the removal of the lug nuts from her wheels while she was at work inside. At least, nobody reported it.
Kathi's sister told the detectives that she always took care of Kris while Kathi worked. On March 29, Kathi took her little boy to her sister's home a little before 4:00 P.M. She returned to pick him up at 1:10 A.M. "She said she was late because the lug nuts had been taken off her wheels and she had to get help to put them back on," the victim's sister said. "Kathi said she hoped Pat wasn't up to his stuff again."
"Did she say anything about receiving a phone call
at work that upset her?" Detective Boatman asked. "Did she mention Pat again?"
"No. Nothing about a call. Nothing more about Pat. She just stayed to visit for a while, and then they left to go home."
Apparently Kathi Jones had been angry over the missing lug nuts, but she was not overly frightened. She had bundled up her little boy in clown pajamas, packed him and his overnight bag into the car, and driven to a convenience store to get milk and eggs for Sunday breakfast, a breakfast she would never cook.
Another former boyfriend of the striking blonde told detectives: "I was at Kathi's about four months ago, and someone threw a rock through Kris's window. About fifteen minutes later, some guy named Pat called, and he was very irate. Later that night somebody vandalized her car, and she said there was $4,000 damage done to it."

* * *

Kathi Jones didn't want to be tied down to any man until she found one who would treat Kris as his own. She never talked about Kris's biological father, and friends knew he was out of her life and Kris's. Until she found someone who would be a good father, she wanted to date casually, but ever since she'd met Patrick Lehn the previous autumn, she had found herself boxed in by his possessive jealousy. No matter what she did, she couldn't escape. She was a strong woman, however, and for a long time she was unaware of Pat Lehn's jealous tenacity. At first, she was more annoyed with him than afraid; she thought she could handle him, play along with him until she got her things back. She had told friends that she planned to break up with him for good, but she hadn't been able to do it yet. She had no idea what a dangerous game she was playing.
Lehn himself admitted to running into Kathi and Kris on the dark side of Bitter Place North late that night, but he said that when he left them, they were "outside the car." There were witnesses who had seen the couple during their screaming argument and who had seen the bloody bodies of the victims afterward, lying on the grassy slope as a large man bent over them, still beating them. They saw a tall man who "looked like Bill Walton" driving away in the little red sports car that Kathi Jones had prized so much.
Why did Lehn think he could get away with murder? Maybe because he had barely gotten his hands slapped after destroying his last girlfriend's car. Maybe because his constant harassment of any woman who dared to break up with him had caused the woman far more trouble than it had ever caused him. Perhaps he thought he could walk away from a double murder too. But the ring on his hand matched the mark on his smallest victim's forehead perfectly, a brutal piece of physical evidence that inexorably tied Pat Lehn to the scene of the crimes.
On April 4, 1980, Patrick David Lehn was charged with two counts of murder in the first degree, and his bail was set at half a million dollars. On September 24, he was sentenced to serve a minimum of fifty-four years and two months for the murder of Kris Haugen and a minimum of ten years for the murder of Kathi Jones. Lehn is now housed in the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe. His earliest possible release date is November 19, 2016.

Young Love

Unrequited love can be as painful as an abscessed tooth. The pain is throbbing, searing, and anyone who has suffered from it remembers the wakeful nights when sleep would not come. But there is nothing more agonizing than the loss of first love. Those of us who survive that initial heartbreak learn that love can— and will— come again, but try to tell that to a teenager who has lost that first, flawless love. Young people believe that there will be no tomorrow, and all you will get is an incredulous look if you try to tell them otherwise. When you are eighteen, you can visualize only endless years of aching loss. Most of us do get over it, and live to enjoy mature relationships. Some of us do not.
A lifetime relationship was never going to happen for eighteen-year-old John Stickney and Leigh Hayden, * but John refused to accept reality. He stubbornly believed that he and Leigh belonged together forever, and he was determined to do whatever he had to do to see that they would never part.
Mercer Island, Washington, is to Seattle what Grosse Point is to Detroit, what River Oaks is to Houston, and what Beverly Hills is to Los Angeles. Located near the south end of Lake Washington, Mercer Island is among the more expensive and desirable suburbs for those who can afford the good life. The lushly vegetated island was once almost inaccessible, but the construction of the first floating bridge across Lake Washington sixty years ago made Mercer Island ripe for a building boom. The first homes, naturally, were built along the waterfront and have their own docks to moor sleek cabin cruisers or high-masted sailboats. Many of the homes here have swimming pools and tennis courts. Even as construction moved farther inland, a sense of forest remains. Row houses have no place on Mercer Island. Homes here are built to accommodate the trees and native vegetation and are painted in earth tones. There are bicycle paths and jogging trails, and the residents, many of them doctors, lawyers, computer entrepreneurs, and CEOs, use the floating bridge to escape the city to this suburban paradise in only fifteen minutes.
Most Mercer Island kids grow up in affluent families. High school parking lots are filled with late-model cars belonging to students. There are the usual police problems caused by teenagers who are bored because
they don't have to work after school, kids who sample drugs, kids who get drunk and drive too fast. But if one could choose a place to raise children, Mercer Island would be it. No ghettos. No high crime neighborhoods. Only parks and discreet shopping areas.
John Stickney grew up in a rural region on the southern end of Mercer Island. At eighteen, he was 6 feet 1, a handsome blond boy who excelled in athletics. The neighbors liked him; his friends liked him. He and his family were solid members of the Mercer Island Covenant Church, a Fundamentalist church that promoted the tenets outlined in the Old Testament and whose members eschewed alcohol and tobacco.
John seemed to be the kind of boyfriend that all parents would want for their daughter. But it was pretty Leigh Hayden he fell in love with. The attraction was mutual, and people smiled to see them together. They started going steady when they were fourteen years old; indeed, neither had ever known another love. Had it been another time, another place— perhaps back in the days of the pioneer settlers who homesteaded in Washington— they might have married when they were only sixteen and grown old together. But it wasn't 1850; it was 1979. John wanted to marry Leigh. He had no plans for college. In fact, he had dropped out of high school. But Leigh had plans and was nowhere near ready to get married. She was a good student and had been accepted at Washington State University in Pullman. "Wazzu," as Washington State was called, was 300 miles east of Mercer Island and a world away from John.
He couldn't bear the idea of Leigh going away. They had been attached at the hip for four years. Sure, they had broken up for short periods, but he'd always been able to persuade Leigh to come back. He couldn't re
ally believe that she would actually pack up and move clear across the state from him. And he was afraid she would meet someone else or that she would change and they would no longer have anything in common.
John was a bright young man, but he suffered from learning disabilities. His schoolwork had never mirrored what he really knew, what his IQ really was. He was one of thousands of kids hampered by dyslexia and therefore unable to read well; words appeared backward or upside down or jumbled to him. As a result, there was no question of John's going to college with Leigh. The experience would have been frustrating for him. He thought about getting a job in Pullman so he could be close to her, but he sensed that might be even more painful. He would be on the fringe of her life, and he already had a good job at home, which he didn't want to risk leaving. His family cared deeply for John, as did his church congregation. They tried to help him, prayed for him, hoped that his life would straighten out, and that he would fulfill the promise he had shown.
John's job was with the Industrial Rock Products Company, a firm that specialized in rock blasting. Freeways were being widened, and it was necessary to literally blast away sections of mountain rock to accommodate them. There would be ongoing demand for skills in this area, so John's community felt that his future was off to a good start.
Blasting with explosives is precise and terribly dangerous work, but John proved adept at it, even when he was in his mid-teens. Many of the men he worked with in this hazardous occupation had known him since he was only twelve years old. They liked the kid who was always cheerful, who never seemed to lose his temper, no matter how difficult a task. By December 1979,
Stickney had worked in the rock quarry for a few years, and his boss considered him "one of the old-timers."
But John Stickney's fascination with explosives continued after he left his eight hours on the job. A friend who attended school with John recalled, "He liked to blow things up. He was always blowing something up— a tree, or whatever. He'd blow things up just for the hell of it."
The fall of 1979 was bitterly lonely for John Stickney. Leigh was so far away, caught up in the excitement of college life, going to football games, participating in dorm activities. She had told him that she planned on dating other men. That was the most agonizing part for him to accept. John was handsome, and he had a job that paid well; plenty of Mercer Island girls would gladly have dated him. But he wasn't interested. He wanted only Leigh. Every night he was on the phone calling her, trying to persuade her to come back to him. His constant calls only made her pull away more. What he had feared most was coming true: Leigh was interested in another man.
John's calls continued. Finally, Leigh's roommate complained to the dorm adviser that she couldn't use the phone because John called so much. The phone rang constantly whether Leigh was in her dorm room or not. When John did catch her in, he dragged out the conversations as if he could bind her to him with a telephone cord.
Several times during the fall, John drove to the Washington State campus, deliberately arriving unexpectedly. Each time, he convinced himself that everything would be all right again. And sometimes Leigh seemed glad to see him. But there were also times when she tried to tell him that it was really over between them and that he had to stop coming to Pullman.
It was a twelve-hour drive round-trip, which gave him time to obsess about what he had lost.
John was on an emotional yo-yo. Of course the more he tried to hold on to Leigh, the more she pulled away. She felt suffocated. One can only imagine his thoughts as he made the grueling trip— up over Snoqualmie Pass, where the blizzards piled up drifts of snow from November to May, and then across the endless rolling wheat fields of the Palouse country. There weren't many towns along the way to take John's mind off his mission.
As Christmas neared, John began to realize that Leigh really
was
leaving him. He had tried pleading and cajoling. Worse, he'd even tried physically forcing her into his car when he saw her walking on campus. Her reaction was to pull even further away from him. Any love she'd had for him was now gone. Leigh was only eighteen; she wanted to be free. At first, she thought John would give up peaceably. She was as deluded as every other woman who realizes too late that she has become the focal point of a man's obsessive love.
Leigh Hayden began to be frightened. She no longer wanted to see John at all. Leigh tried to focus on her new world. She told Janet McKay, a senior who served as a resident adviser in her dorm, that John had been bothering her. She wanted to make it official that he was not a welcome visitor. If he came around to surprise her, she didn't want to have to talk to him.
Lovesick boyfriends aren't that unusual in college dorms. Leigh's friends and counselors realized that John always seemed to be shadowing her, but they all assumed he'd give up sooner or later. Leigh and her roommate lived on the fifth floor of the Streit-Perham Dormitory in the middle of the Wazzu campus, near the Performing Arts Coliseum. The dormitory, which was
built in 1962, consisted of two six-story towers connected by a common lounge and dining room. Approximately 550 students were housed in the towers, and 46 of them lived on the fifth floor of Perham Hall where Leigh Hayden lived. It was a coeducational dorm, a circumstance which would have horrified the parents of college students two decades earlier, and John Stickney hated the arrangement.