Mortal Danger (26 page)

But Jager had plans. He returned to Seattle on June 5, a Saturday, and surprised Amy’s sister Jill at work. He said he’d just arrived by bus from California and needed a place to stay. Jill arranged for him to go to the YMCA and surreptitiously listened on a phone extension as he placed a call to Amy.

She heard Amy explain to Heinz that she had purchased a plane ticket for him and made reservations for him to fly out of Sea-Tac Airport the next day. His destination would be his home in Switzerland.

Jill was at a disadvantage because she could not understand the language Heinz spoke as he talked to Amy. But she could discern easily that he was angry and upset. Still, he left to stay at the Y without commenting to Jill about his phone call with Amy.

Amy and her family spent the night with ambivalent feelings—anxiety mixed with relief that Jager’s visit was
almost over. They agreed that Amy, Jill, and the girls’ brother, who was a golf pro at a local country club, would all go to the airport with Jager. That should prevent a terribly emotional good-bye. Even so, Amy’s brother—who had never owned a gun in his life—was worried; he arranged to borrow a small handgun, a .32 automatic, and placed it under the driver’s seat of the family’s green 1973 Fiat station wagon just in case, although he prayed he would have no reason to use it.

Heinz’s moods were like clouds sweeping across the Alps. Amy had explained to her family that he was always like this—sunny, cloudy, stormy, calm, bleak, and back to sunny again. She herself had come to a point where she didn’t really know who he was, but the doctors in Switzerland had diagnosed him as bipolar and manic-depressive.

Sunday morning, June 6, dawned bright and clear. By 8:30 a.m., the green Fiat, loaded down with Jager’s skis and belongings, stopped to pick up Jill for the trip to Sea-Tac Airport fifteen miles south of Seattle. Amy sat in front next to her brother, and Jill climbed in the backseat with Heinz. She could see that he was very upset and had been crying. As they backed out of the driveway, he continued to plead with Amy, saying that he could not go back without her or everything would go “kaput.”

That word Jill understood and it frightened her.

Heinz asked Amy to switch places with Jill and come sit in the back with him, but she refused, giving him one excuse after another. They didn’t have time to stop and change seats because they’d left a little late. As they neared the airport, Heinz became more and more agitated.

Sea-Tac Airport is a huge complex that sprawls over
hundreds and hundreds of acres in the South King County area. With its shops and restaurants, and with the thousands of travelers who pass through its gates every day, it is a small city in itself. The Port of Seattle Police Department had ninety-six officers in 1976 and was the fourth-largest municipal police department in the state of Washington. It was the law enforcement agency responsible not only for the airport but also for the shipping docks along Puget Sound and Elliott Bay. Then headed by Chief Neil Moloney, onetime assistant chief of the Seattle Police Department, the Port of Seattle Police Department was kept busy with cases much like those of any big-city police department: burglaries, forgeries, stolen cars, narcotics, sex crimes.

Even in the midseventies, the Port of Seattle Police Department didn’t handle the minimal airport security that existed then; that was the province of private airport security firms hired by the airlines, although, in case of trouble, Port of Seattle officers assisted.

The role of police officers at Sea-Tac had evolved from what had once been essentially “tour guides” to full-time law enforcement work. Homicide, however, wasn’t something anyone expected to encounter in the airport.

On this Sunday morning in early June, the airport was alive with travelers and airline personnel, and every few minutes or so a huge jet taxied down one of the runways and took off for Portland, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Juneau, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, and other hubs of the major airlines.

At the passenger drop-off area just in front of the revolving doors to the Northwest Airlines ticket counter,
Amy’s brother maneuvered carefully into a spot next to the curb. He pulled on his parking brake, grabbed one of Heinz’s bags and his skis, and headed into the airport. Annoyingly, Heinz followed him, snatched his bag back, and took it to the car, placing it just inside the open tailgate window.

The two sisters had quickly exited the Fiat and remained outside the car. Amy looked beautiful, clad in light slacks, a sheer blouse tied at the midriff, and platform sandals, with her dark chestnut hair flowing over her shoulders. Jill wore a similar outfit. Both young women were nervous but were determined to carry off the good-byes with a minimum of emotion.

Frustrated by all of Heinz’s delaying tactics, Amy’s brother discovered to his chagrin that he had been successful in making them arrive too late to board his scheduled flight to London.

The jet’s doors were closed, the steps rolled away, and it was already taxiing out toward the runway. The ticket agent explained firmly that they could not call it back at this point.

Amy’s brother stepped to another desk to try to get Heinz on one of the next flights that would end up in Switzerland. There would probably be several hours’ wait, and he worried that his determined brother-in-law might leave the airport and make his way back to their home, looking for Amy. He didn’t want that to happen. If need be, he would wait at the airport with Heinz, after sending his sisters someplace safe.

At two minutes after 9:00 a.m., the dispatch switchboard in the Port of Seattle Police headquarters at the airport began to light up. The first call came from a maintenance man who said someone had yelled, “Help! Attempted murder!” The man was so excited that he failed to give a location.

One minute later, a Northwest Airlines ticket agent called the radio dispatcher to say that there was “a fire” right in front of the building and requested an ambulance.

The profusion of calls tumbled one after the other—all requesting either an aid team or an ambulance to respond to the area just outside the Northwest Airlines entrance.

The dispatcher requested that Sergeant L. L. Quein and officers J. E. Baertschiger and D. G. Krows respond to the scene of a “possible fire.” They arrived in two minutes, expecting to find a car fire. There was no smoke visible, or even flames. Instead, they saw two men struggling to pin a third man to the pavement in the middle of the five-lane passenger loading road. One of the men said that the subject on the ground had just “stabbed someone.”

The tall, bearded man on the ground was still struggling as the officers separated the tangle of arms and legs. He wore a light jacket, soaked with bright red fluid, and they recognized the metallic smell of blood. He did not appear to understand English, and he didn’t stop fighting them until the officers had handcuffed him.

Officer Krows looked toward the railing near the curb. He gasped as he saw a pretty young woman sitting there, half doubled over, holding her abdomen. Her breasts and midsection were stained crimson. Nearby, a taller woman held tight to her own left hand, which Krows saw was almost cut in two.

It was difficult to take it all in—they had come to fight afire and instead found two terribly injured young women and a battling foreigner who seemed unable to understand what they said to him.

The bearded man, whom many bystanders insisted was the attacker, was taken to a holding cell. The officers on the scene were given a large bloodstained Buck knife by Sergeant Quein, which they bagged into evidence.

There was no time to find out just what had happened; the witnesses assured the officers they would wait in the squad room until the victims had been rushed to the hospital.

Baertschiger and Krows rode with the ambulance carrying Amy and Jill. Valley General Hospital in nearby Kent had already been alerted that a red-blanket case was coming in, and Jill ignored her own wounds to try to comfort her sister. The ambulance crew administered lactated Ringer’s solution to Amy to keep her veins open, but they silently shook their heads. She had no blood pressure and a fluttering rapid pulse. Her pupils were already beginning to dilate.

By the time Amy Jager arrived at the emergency room, she was in severe shock, near death, and she no longer had any pulse at all. She was breathing only in sporadic gasps. She had no heart sounds. ER doctors inserted an airway and tried everything in their power to bring Amy back, but their efforts were in vain.

Five minutes later, Amelia Jager was pronounced dead at the age of twenty-seven.

Jill, who was left-handed, had suffered lacerated tendons in that hand. Her cuts were so deep that she could not
flex her fingers. She would require extensive surgery to try to bring her hand back to any kind of normal functioning.

The Port of Seattle Police Department had four detectives, and Detective Sergeant Dave Hart was on call that Sunday morning. Hart, who retired as a lieutenant from the Seattle Police Department to join the Washington State Patrol Drug Control Assistance Unit, came to Chief Moloney’s department with a wealth of experience. Now he would try to piece together the events leading to the incredible stabbing that had left one woman dead and another terribly injured.

He talked to an airport shuttle driver who had seen a tall, bearded man struggling with Amy. Before this witness could react, the attacker had suddenly stepped behind the dark-haired woman and placed his left arm around her neck while he grasped a large knife in his right hand. Pulling her tightly against him as the shuttle driver watched, horrified, he had made a sweeping left-to-right movement across her stomach and the driver saw blood gushing out. The driver had leaped from the bus and called for help on his walkie-talkie as he raced to stop the awful struggle. By the time he reached them, the woman was down on the pavement, while the man still held her around the neck.

“He was kneeling, still trying to hurt her,” the driver recalled. “I jumped on his back but I couldn’t get a good grip. I grabbed his left arm and we both fell backward. I pinned his left arm and pinioned his legs with mine. Then a soldier ran out to help us and he started choking the guy. Both of us together couldn’t get him off her.”

Heinz Jager had continued to fight them, and the soldier had growled, “Knock it off!”

There had been no lack of good Samaritans trying to save Amy Jager. The soldier was Sergeant John Dimsdale of North Carolina, who had been sitting inside with Sergeant Leonard Tatum of Georgia. Dimsdale told Dave Hart that he had watched the silent tableau through the window.

The women standing there were both pretty, both dressed in slacks and light blouses. “I saw the man try to kiss the smaller woman, and she stepped back away from him.

“He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her toward the car. The other woman came to help and both women tried to push him away. He hit the little one with the flat of his hand. When I rushed out, I saw the knife had blood on it. The shuttle driver ran to help and I grabbed the guy’s throat and held him till the police came.”

Sergeant Tatum had somehow managed to extricate Amy from the struggle and had led her to the sidewalk. She could walk at that point, but he’d seen the blood just above her navel and between her breasts.

“Another guy grabbed the knife,” Tatum said, “and threw it out into the middle of the road.”

Amy’s brother told Dave Hart of his sister’s attempt to escape her life with her jealous husband.

“We all went to the airport to protect Amy. Heinz was talking to her in French. He was crying and pleading with Amy, grabbing her by the shoulders and begging her to go with him, saying he couldn’t live without her.

“I was afraid to leave Amy with him near the car but there were so many people around that I chanced it.”

He had made what seemed to be the best decision, and
he agonized that he hadn’t stayed with his sister to protect her. But he was trying to get Jager on another plane and out of their lives for good. Suddenly, he’d heard the screams and had run out to see Amy and Jill and Heinz grappling on the pavement.

“Amy was on her back and Heinz was choking her while she tried to pull his hands away. I helped the others to pry Jager’s hands off Amy’s neck.”

Heinz had seemed to have the strength of three men. Crazy strength, as he was determined to destroy Amy if she wouldn’t go with him.

Finally, Amy and Jill had been helped to their feet and walked over to the curb, where passersby tried to comfort them. He was unaware that his sisters were grievously injured.

“I talked to Amy but she didn’t respond, although her eyes were open.”

Dave Hart interviewed Jill at Valley General Hospital as she awaited surgery. The brave woman knew Amy was dead, but she had tried with all her might to save her. She told Hart that, as soon as their brother was inside, Jager had tried to drag Amy back into the car. He had reached into the bag he had grabbed from their brother.

“He pulled out a long silver knife. He knew exactly where it was. He was sort of standing alongside Amy and holding her with one hand. He stabbed her in the stomach. We both started to scream. I grabbed for the knife with my left hand and held on as hard as I could. He moved the knife back and forth to get it out of my grasp—”

Jill had clamped her bare hand around the razor-sharp blade to try to save Amy, and Jager had deliberately sliced
the tendons in her hand in his frenzy to kill the woman he professed to love.

Detective Dave Hart found the red zipper bag in the back of the Fiat wagon. A black leather knife sheath stood upright in the bag. Jager had only to reach in and pull out the knife. He had to have planned that ahead of time, a last-ditch effort if his pleading didn’t convince Amy to leave with him.

Booked into the King County Jail, Heinz Jager was provided with interpreters from the Seattle Language Bank to inform him once again of his Miranda rights and to ask him questions. He refused to talk to the police or anyone else—he said his attorney was in Switzerland. He whined, however, that he’d been injured by the bystanders who had pulled him off of his dying wife and complained that the jail doctors would not treat his injuries properly.