Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (41 page)

“Your dad’s all torn up,” he responded, “and your mom told me to get you because I can get you there quicker than the police.”

“Who
are
you?” she asked, more awake now from the cold night air coming in her window.

“I was at a party with your mom.”

Nadine was puzzled. His clothing certainly wasn’t what people wore to parties. Her mother had been all dressed up when she left. This man wore dark blue pants and jacket and a light blue shirt. His outfit was like a gas station attendant would wear. There was a patch over his right breast pocket that said
HUSKY.

He was staring at Nadine now, especially as they passed under streetlights. “Your mother talked about her beautiful daughter.”

Nadine didn’t say anything. The man made her nervous.

They drove south first, and then eastbound for several miles. She looked for a hospital, but she didn’t see any, or, for that matter, any signs that had a hospital image on them.

Suddenly the pickup pulled into the parking lot of a veterinary hospital. Once the man had parked, he dropped all semblance of being a messenger sent to take Nadine to the hospital. He stared at the pretty blond teenager who was cowering against the passenger door.

And then he told her in gutter terms what he was going to do to her.

He reached for her breasts and touched them roughly, telling her he’d heard she was very well endowed. She screamed as loud she could, but the stranger quickly clamped one hand over her mouth, and slapped her with the other.

“I will kill you,” he growled, “if you don’t stop screaming.”

Nadine was virtually immobile from fear, and she didn’t fight back any longer. The man took off all of her clothes and attempted to have intercourse with her. Not surprisingly, the girl barely in her teens was a virgin, and his efforts to penetrate her failed. Disgusted, he ordered her out of the vehicle.

“Lie down there,” he ordered.

She looked at the spot he indicated and saw a pile of rough boards, studded with nails and filthy.

“There’re too many boards,” Nadine protested.

“Well, move them!” he said.

“I can’t move them,” she sobbed. “There’s too many.”

“Well, then suffer.”

And suffer she did, subjected to various deviant sex acts that probably have given her nightmares ever since. Now her terror was mixed with pain and her mind mercifully blanked out many of the details of the attack. ER doctors who examined her later would detect signs of gross perversions inflicted on the helpless thirteen-year-old.

Nadine was sure the man would kill her when he was finished with her, so she was surprised to find that he was going to allow her to get dressed again. He ordered her into the pickup. Huddled in her corner of the front seat, she wondered where he was taking her next.

The man’s voice was gentler now. He seemed almost solicitous for her well-being. He asked her if she was going to tell her parents. That was the first hint that she might see her parents again. She knew that a “yes” answer might mean her death, so she lied and said, “No.”

Her answer elated the man in the blue shirt. He told her she was “simply outrageous!” a then-current compliment.

“You’re really sharp,” the man continued. “Will you forgive me?”

“Maybe,” she hedged, knowing she’d never forgive him but afraid to say so.

Encouraged, the rapist said, “I’ll be your man if you want to be my girl.”

The very thought of any continued relationship with this man unnerved Nadine. She burst into tears. He didn’t press the matter but apparently he believed her when she said she wouldn’t tell anyone because he drove her to the front of her apartment building. When he let her out, he asked again if he could call her up sometime.

She said something under her breath and ran as fast as she could for the front door.

It was 3
A.M.
Nadine’s mother had been home for only a few minutes. She was beside herself after hearing Hank’s chilling description about how Nadine had left with a man to go to the hospital because of an “accident.” Horror-struck, Jesse Jenner* had been debating what to do when Nadine, sobbing and hysterical, burst in.

Her mother called the sheriff and then drove Nadine to Holladay Park Hospital. Deputy Tim DeBauw met them there. The ER crew at Holladay told Debauw that Nadine hadn’t been damaged physically except for the cuts on her back from the scrap, nail-studded lumber on the ground where her abductor initially attempted to force intercourse, and a number of purpling bruises.

They were more concerned about Nadine Jenner’s emotional state. They were having difficulty quieting her hysteria. She was in no condition to be questioned at the moment. Jesse Jenner comforted her daughter.

And then Nadine seemed to pull herself together through force of will. She wanted to help the investigators find the man who had lied to her and then attacked her.

She described the man right down to the
HUSKY
emblem on his shirt. She knew that his pickup truck was either an El Camino or Ranchero, red with a dark interior. It had a bench seat in front and a “crummy” tape deck mounted in the glove compartment.

“The same tape played the whole time,” she said. “It was kind of a country-western and rock-and-roll combination.”

Nadine was sure there had been no canopy on the pickup’s bed, but she thought she’d seen a tire in the back.

“It wasn’t too dirty inside—but it didn’t smell new,” she said. “You know, like a new car smells.”

Detective L. Pike worked on a composite picture from Nadine Jenner’s later description. She was able to take Deputy DeBauw and Detective Pike to the exact location behind the veterinary hospital where the attack had taken place.

“Right there,” she said, pointing. “That’s where he hurt me.”

They saw the boards she was forced to lie on, and marveled that Nadine hadn’t been cut more than she was.

There were tire marks in a grassy area nearby that confirmed that a vehicle had been parked there recently, but grass isn’t conducive to clear, identifying photographs or moulages.

They found a damp cigarette butt next to the tracks. The investigators bagged and labeled it, but, again, this was long before DNA could be extracted from any body fluids left behind by a criminal.

Although she felt safe when the detectives were with her, Nadine was desperately afraid the rapist would come back. She said he seemed to know everything about her family.

“While he was hurting me,” she said, “he even threatened me that if I didn’t cooperate, my little sister, Reecie—she’s only four—would be next.”

Detective Walliker and his team were gearing up to canvass all the Husky gas stations within a ten-mile radius when another report came in at 8:30
A.M.
This was only five hours after Nadine’s report. Deputy Frank Hannah had taken this latest complaint, and the modus operandi, the attacker’s description,
everything,
matched what Nadine Jenner had told the sheriff’s men.

The newest victim was nineteen-year-old Sonia Lindell.* The strawberry blonde reported that a man had followed her car as she drove home from a babysitting job at 5:15 that morning. He had pulled his red pickup into her driveway and parked behind her.

“The driver got out,” Sonia said, “and he followed me to my front door. I wasn’t aware how close behind me he was—not until we were just inside my own doorway. He asked me if my husband was home. I was startled and I answered too quickly. I told him that I didn’t have a husband. That was the wrong thing to say.”

Evidently, that was all the man needed to know. “He put his hand over my mouth when I started to scream and grabbed me in a headlock. I think that’s what it’s called. And then he said he would break my neck if I didn’t do what he said.”

The man ordered her to remove her clothing, but she stalled, saying an elderly relative lived with her and might come downstairs any minute.

Her ruse didn’t work. Instead of leaving her alone, the stranger grabbed Sonia and forced her to go with him.

“I only weigh ninety-two pounds, and I had no choice but to do what he told me,” she said. “He led me out to his El Camino pickup, and told me to crouch down on the floorboards.”

Sonia Lindell was a victim of odds; lightning isn’t supposed to strike twice in the same place, but Sonia Lindell had been raped once before. And now it looked as if it was going to happen again. For her, a sexual attack could be fatal. Her health was not good. She had painful rheumatoid arthritis
and
a skin condition that resulted in hemorrhaging if even slightly more than normal pressure was exerted on her skin’s surface. Doctors had told her that she had to avoid any trauma or else they couldn’t promise her survival. If somehow, some way, she couldn’t talk this huge man out of hurting her, she was as good as dead or disabled.

As they drove along, the man looked sideways at her and said, “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

“No,” she lied.

“Are you sure you don’t know?” He was having fun playing with her like a cat with a mouse.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m just going to rape you,” he promised, as if such a statement would ease her mind.

The man pulled over to the side of the street a few blocks from her home and parked, and, true to his pattern, he told her to remove clothes.

Sonia decided to try the truth on him; she had nothing to lose. She told him she’d been raped before, and that she had a medical condition that would be serious if she even tried to resist him.

Suddenly his attitude changed. He seemed to believe her and questioned her closely about her condition, which she explained to him. He appeared to be concerned.

“The only reason I have to rape you,” he said, “is because I’ve never raped anyone before. I guess I was curious.”

Sensing the change in his attitude, Sonia pressed her advantage, asking him about his problems. He responded to her concern and asked her if she would mind going to a restaurant to have coffee and talk. He smelled slightly of alcohol but didn’t seem to be intoxicated. And Sonia Lindell had little choice. At least they would be around other people in a café.

She quickly agreed and they drove to a Fancy Dan’s restaurant, where they talked about her abductor’s marital problems. Bizarrely, the stranger seemed to Sonia to be a completely different person now. He talked on and on about his ex-wife, and his disappointment that his marriage had broken up.

He apologized for threatening to rape her and she accepted his apology, wondering what was going to happen next.

“He told me first that his name was Tom,” Sonia told the investigators. “But then he told me his name was Ernest. He said he worked at a Husky truck stop near Troutdale. And then he actually asked me for a date tomorrow night!”

Strange as it seems, it isn’t that unusual for a rapist to convince himself that his victim will want to see him again. It may be a manifestation of ego, or only a reflection of what detective Bob Walliker called “the male chauvinist rapist.”

“These guys seem to believe that women are ‘just asking for it’ and will naturally be more than glad to see the attacker again.”

“Tom/Ernest” had seemingly forgotten how he had “met” Sonia and had become quite charming.

It was daylight now. Sonia debated running to the ladies’ room and hiding, but there were only a few women working in the café. He could easily overpower any of them.

She didn’t recognize it, but Sonia Lindell was suffering from shock and her thinking was skewed. In that blurred shock state, she contemplated how normal her captor now acted, even convincing herself that he hadn’t
really
intended to rape her.

Incredibly, she took a chance and let him drive her home. He made no attempt to harm her and went directly to her apartment, even opening the car door politely.

Once she was safely inside with a locked door between them, Sonia realized what a stupid choice she had made; she felt lucky that Tom/Ernest hadn’t driven her out into the country, raped her, and possibly even killed her. She waited until she stopped shaking before she called to report her strange and terrifying night. Deputy Hannah responded at once.

Hannah, aware of the first report that DeBauw had handled, now contacted his fellow officer and told him that a very similar suspect had told one victim that he worked at a truck stop in Troutdale.

The “team policing” approach gives field officers more responsibility in investigative work. The deputies follow up on complaints in many instances instead of referring all investigative work to detectives in the Investigation Unit. DeBauw and Hannah contacted the truck stop manager and learned he did have an employee named “Ernie” who drove a red El Camino.

“Ernie called in sick this morning,” his boss said.

The suspect’s employer told the detectives that “Tom” was actually Ernest Leroy Donatelli Jr.,* twenty-four. The investigators obtained his address from the station manager, drove there immediately, and located Ernest Donatelli Jr. He matched the descriptions given by the three victims they knew about. Advised of his rights under the Miranda rule, he agreed to be transported to precinct headquarters for questioning.

Donatelli seemed completely baffled that Sonia Lindell had reported him. “I followed her home early this morning, and I asked her out for coffee,” he said easily. “I can’t understand why she would say I raped her or anything like that. I wasn’t rough with her at all.”

Bob Walliker arrived to continue the interview and Donatelli agreed to have it taped. Walliker began by questioning the suspect about the most recent complaint, the one filed by Sonia Lindell.

Donatelli continued to appear shocked that Sonia had reported him.

“I just saw her driving and she waved and smiled at me. She seemed so friendly that I followed her all the way home. I wasn’t looking for sex, and all we did was have a conversation. When I went to her front door, I asked her if she was hungry and invited her out for a bite to eat.”

As Walliker’s questions grew more intense, however, Donatelli grudgingly admitted that perhaps the woman had been frightened, and that the thought of sex with her might have crossed his mind.