Worth More Dead: And Other True Cases (29 page)

Deputies were dispatched to meet with the paramedics, and other units were sent to the address given in Issaquah. As they began to sort things out, they realized that the woman, who had died of exsanguination (blood loss incompatible with life), had apparently called her friend and business partner for help, gasping that there was trouble at her house. Unaware that anything more than one of her partner’s increasingly common verbal confrontations with an ex-boyfriend was taking place, the friend sent her husband to the victim’s house, the same house in Issaquah, where deputies were sent.

The woman, a nurse, was alive when her friend’s husband reached her home. But she had been savagely stabbed, and her throat was sliced open deeply from one side to the other. As they headed for the hospital, she somehow managed to grip the edges of her slashed neck, trying to stop the flow of blood from her severed arteries. As a registered nurse, she would have known full well that she had to stop the bleeding and that she needed emergency care immediately. She had indicated to the man who’d come to help her that he must keep driving.

He drove as fast as he could, but even if the paramedics or the emergency room doctors had been right there fighting to save her, she was so terribly wounded that it would have taken a miracle.

The word was that she died in her friend’s husband’s arms before they could get medical help.

Deputies back at her house opened the front door and began a search of the downstairs rooms. From the saturation of blood, they knew that something disastrous had occurred there. During a sweep of the downstairs, they discovered a man wedged between the tub and toilet of the bathroom. There were indications of an immense struggle in the bathroom, and there was no question that he, too, was dead. He had probably attempted to lock himself in the bathroom, then barricaded the door against his attacker. He had been stabbed an estimated 180 times, too many times for a pathologist to get an accurate count. Even for trained and experienced police officers, the interior of this lovely home, the sight of the dead man, and the pools and sprays of blood throughout the house were almost too much to take in. This was shocking, senseless overkill.

They immediately called for backup and also requested that detectives from the Major Crimes Unit respond. Then they set about stringing yellow “Crime Scene: Do Not Cross” tape to guard the scene from contamination.

At the same time, other deputies walked cautiously through the strangely silent house. They had located the deceased man there. A few miles away, paramedics confirmed that they had declared a woman dead. According to the male friend who tried futilely to save her, she had lived in that house and her name was Debra Sweiger. The officers had no idea what her relationship to the dead man was. First word was that this house belonged to her. They didn’t know yet who had done what to whom—or, more ominously—who might still be inside the house.

They searched the downstairs area and determined that there was no one hiding there. They headed up the stairs, their guns in their hands, expecting some madman to leap out at them at any moment. Then, as they opened the bathroom door, they found another man. He was in the tub, submerged in bloodied water. Dead.

This appeared to be a triple homicide or perhaps a double homicide and a suicide. The deputies and their supervisors knew that radio and television reporters monitored police calls, but it was difficult to call in over their police radios without giving details. Inevitably, by the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 1, the rumor that there had been three violent deaths in Issaquah had leaked to the media.

Media cars, their station’s call letters visible on the sides, crept up as close as they could to the crime scene, only to be prevented from getting near enough to find out much before they were turned back by deputies stationed to guard the perimeter of the scene.

The Seattle stations KOMO-TV, KING-TV, and KIRO-TV (ABC, NBC, and CBS, respectively) all had their newsrooms on alert, standing by to get the first news of the rumored murders in Issaquah. Phil Sturholm was the news editor for KIRO, and he waited at the television station near the Space Needle in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. From the rumors, the Issaquah situation sounded as though it would be a top-of-the-hour story for the noon news. Bombarded by bad news and tragedies, radio and television newsmen and women learn quickly to grow a thick hide so that they won’t take it all home at the end of a shift, but most of them do feel the pain. Field reporters have to knock on the doors of people still in shock from hearing that they have lost someone they love to violence. Reporters come to learn that life is ephemeral. They also lose some of their own to helicopter crashes and vehicular accidents as they race to where news is happening.

More than those in most occupations, media personnel are well aware that it can happen to them or to someone they love, too. But there was nothing about the first reports emanating from police radio transmissions to make anyone think that this incident was anything more than a huge crime story.

At the perfectly appointed home on the east side of Lake Washington, there was no longer any need to hurry. Although an aura of violence and terror still hung in the air, the King County detectives, led by Joe Purcell—who became the lead detective on this horrific case—worked slowly and methodically inside the murder house. They photographed the quiet rooms and drew sketches and measured so they could re-create the placement of the bodies and possible physical evidence later. They also tried to identify the three people who died the night before.

Joe Purcell looked for evidence in the upstairs bathroom where the corpse of the second man still lay in the tub full of bloody water, water that was quite cool now. As Purcell knelt to examine something, he thought he heard the sound of water splashing behind him. Of course, that could not be. A prickling ran up his spine, and he turned slowly around to see what had to be impossible.

The body in the tub had just sat up.

There is such a thing as bodies reflexively moving as dead muscles contract during rigor mortis, but this couldn’t be caused by that. The guy was sitting straight up.

The dead man wasn’t dead at all. He had bled quite a bit from where he’d slashed his neck and wrists in a suicide attempt, more than enough to turn the water in the tub crimson, and, as blood chemistry tests later showed, he had also taken an overdose of sedatives, enough he evidently believed would kill him. But he had not cut himself deeply enough to bleed to death nor taken enough pills to suppress his lungs’ ability to draw breath. As the hours passed after the murders were discovered, the temperature of the water in the tub cooled enough to wake him from his drugged sleep.

It would be a long time before Joe Purcell, having experienced the sight of a body that almost literally rose from the dead, would be able to turn his back on a corpse. Indeed, he was never again able to work a homicide crime scene without a sense of trepidation.

Who were the three people who had come together so violently?

Records showed that the house was owned by Debra Sweiger, 36, a registered nurse. She was also the head of a corporation. In the past few years, she had turned her knowledge of nursing into an extremely successful enterprise, enough to buy this house, the fabulous wardrobe in her closets, and the sports car in her garage.

In the mid-eighties, there was a severe shortage of highly skilled nurses in America, partially brought about by their low salaries, long hours, and the lack of respect accorded them. Despite the lack of financial rewards, nurses were also expected to take on huge responsibilities for the welfare of their patients. For a decade or more, registered nurses had complained about the inequities in their careers. It came to a head in the eighties. Many of them simply quit their profession and found something that paid them a living wage.

The lack of top nurses that affected patient care the most were those RNs who were particulary skilled in the ER, ICUs (intensive care units) and in CCUs (coronary care units). No one could blame them for giving up on nursing when their requests for salary raises were ignored. The nurses who remained were in high demand.

Debra Sweiger was one of those highly trained nurses. So was her friend Joyce Breakey.* Debra and Joyce put their heads together, and came up with the idea for a referral service where they would link the top echelon of nurses to medical facilities willing to pay them what they were worth. Cascade Nursing Services was an idea whose time had come, and the women incorporated in 1987.

Joyce and Debra each had her own skills: Joyce was the hands-on person in the actual business; Debra gravitated more to public relations. In the early days of their business, they had only ten to twelve nurses to place in jobs, and the demand was great for “super nurses.” Debra and Joyce took shift assignments themselves. They worked really hard, but they had faith that the day would come when all they had to do was run Cascade.

And it did. Debra brought in business and was the one who lobbied to state senators in Olympia to establish that Cascade’s policies on taxes and unemployment compensation met existing statutes. A friend recalled, “Debra really enjoyed the schmoozing and dealing with things in the political arena. The whole ‘who’s who’ was really important to her. She was a socializing machine, and she was very good at it.”

Debra was married twice at a young age and she had two children, who didn’t live with her full time. At 35, she was a divorcée making up for the years when she had too much responsibility and missed out on having fun. A man who was married to one of Debra’s clients recalled his impression of her. “Debra was like a young college student who went off to school and had never experienced drinking and went to every sorority and frat party around. She was definitely a fun-loving person and enjoyed herself.”

Debra was a slender blonde, very attractive. Originally from the South, she still spoke with a charming honeyed accent. She was about five feet ten inches tall and would have been hard to ignore, even if her looks hadn’t been so dramatic. She was usually the center of attention wherever she was. She dressed impeccably and a friend recalled that she had “big hair” and “great clothes: party dresses.” No one ever saw her looking less than perfect.

“Debra was professional, self-confident, a flirtatious woman with a lot of nerve and energy,” one platonic male acquaintance said. “She was boisterous and not afraid of embarrassment; she spoke loudly at a restaurant telling an inappropriate joke. Others might look on in disbelief, but it was all in good fun. Lots of fun, in fact.”

Not surprisingly, Debra Sweiger attracted men. It wasn’t unusual for her to have at least “three serious dates” with three different men in a week’s time.

As their corporation thrived, the State maintained that nurses could not be classified as
professionals
while Cascade paid them as
independent contractors.
That was the whole point of Cascade’s existence: highly capable nurses who were tired of being treated as nonprofessionals and being paid low wages had found their niche with Debra and Joyce and were loath to give it up. Washington State wanted to reclassify Cascade’s nurses as Cascade employees. A lawsuit was filed, and, after a long struggle, Cascade won. They wouldn’t have to pay business taxes, social security withholding taxes, and other fees the IRS and the state charged employers. The nurses, working as independent professional contractors, would be their own bosses, a big step upward for their bargaining powers in wage demands.

Joyce and Debra enjoyed a newfound sense of power, power for women and power for nurses. To celebrate, they bought matching Jaguars. They hosted lavish black-tie parties for their contractor-nurses, and they lived far more carefree lifestyles than they had known in the days when they were simply nurses with tired feet and never enough money.

The two women upgraded their computer system, and their office procedures became even better organized. They prepared to start branches of their business in other cities. A Kansas City franchise was their first goal.

They deserved their success; they had worked tirelessly. Joyce and her husband, Mark,* were like a sister and brother-in-law to Debra. Debra was the one who gloried in being the hostess of their upscale parties and in the social life at the state capital with the movers and the shakers. She did most of the traveling, but she found time to have fun. This was probably the best part of her life.

Those who knew her well believed that Debra dated only casually, but they were concerned because many of the men she met wanted more serious commitments than she did. She had had that. Now she was enjoying a carefree life. While many women in their mid-thirties want to settle down, Debra Sweiger didn’t. That only made her more attractive and more of a challenge to men.

One man fell totally under her spell, becoming besotted with her to the point that he was willing to give up everything he had going for him just to be with her in a committed relationship and, hopefully, in a marriage. His name was Bill Pawlyk, he was 48, and he had a great deal going for him. He had a master’s degree in business, and he was a highly respected business leader in the Tri-Cities area of Washington (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland on the east side of the mountain passes that divide Washington). He was the chairman of the Richland Economic Development Board, a highly placed executive with the Boeing Company’s Computer Services Division, and a high-ranking naval reserve officer who was cleared to command submarines.