I (29 page)

After I mailed my letter, I called my voice mail and told my boss that I didn't trust him anymore and I wouldn't be driving to Phoenix. The way my voice sounded, he probably thought I'd lost it. I was sure on the verge.

I looked at the map and found a side road toward the Chiricahua National Monument. I parked in the foothills and set my keys on top of the front tire to see if anybody moved it while I was gone. These are the crazy things you do when you're not thinking straight. I never intended to come back, so what difference did it make?

I hiked up a faint trail and kept looking around for cops. Nothing moved, not even a roadrunner or a jackrabbit. It didn't take me long to make the climb, but it turned out to be a false summit. I had to double back down to a creek and climb up the other side. I finally reached the snow line about 3:00
P.M
. I sat on a rock, looked down the trail and saw something move.

It was headed in my direction. At first it was just a speck. Then it turned into a horse and rider.

There was no doubt in my mind that the guy was following me. He pulled up for a few seconds, then nudged his horse into the brush. I was sure he was the local law.

But after a few minutes I realized that he was working some stray cows. I figured it would be just my luck to go to sleep for the last time and wake up in front of a campfire that this cowpoke had built to thaw me out. I was beginning to wonder if God wanted me to die. I thought about Selah and wondered if I would ever see it again. In a month or so the trees would start to bloom—miles of red and golden Delicious apples, Fuji, Braeburn, Bosc pears, Tilton apricots, bing cherries. Selah farmers said if you dropped a peach pit, you better stand back.

A few more breaths of cool mountain air cleared my head. I decided to act like a man for a change. Let the police and the state kill me if they wanted to. They could only do it once.

 

I jogged back to my truck, drove to Exit 378 and placed a collect call to Detective Rick Buckner in Vancouver, Washington. I halfway hoped he would refuse to accept the charges—that would be another friendly sign from God. But he answered right away and told me he'd call me right back. He wanted to get to a phone with a tape recorder.

When we spoke, I told him I was ready to confess killing Julie Winningham. I described it as a “passion killing” after an argument in my truck. I left out that I raped her, and I didn't mention my other victims. One murder sentence would be bad enough.

He told me to wait in the restaurant till he could find somebody to pick me up. I didn't want to make a scene in front of a dozen customers, so I wrote my name on a piece of paper. When the Arizona deputies arrived, I handed them the paper. They handcuffed me in front—very courteous—and drove me to the sheriff's office at Willcox. On the way they asked if I'd ever tried suicide.

“Sure,” I said. “Three or four times in the last two days. But I'm over that now. That's why I'm here instead of the morgue.”

They put me on suicide watch.

The next morning I was shuttled with other debris to the county jail in Bisbee. I wondered if it had been a mistake to turn myself in. I was chained at my ankles, hobbled like a horse, shuffling along in little mini-steps. The waist belts that held my arms to my side were cinched so tight that they cut my skin, and the ankle chains dug into my ankles. I was issued a bedroll and led to a cell.

 

Suicide watch meant that the light would stay on all night. The shouting and screaming never stopped. Most of the county inmates were Hispanics. We had no TV or radio, just a few ratty paperback books to pass the time. I tried to read, but I couldn't concentrate.

I thought a lot about driving truck and how I'd messed up my life. I worried about not being able to see my children. Without me sending child support, how would Rose and the kids make it? I got mad and punched the wall. With no one to talk to or hear the other side of the argument, I ganged up on myself. It made me wish I'd done a better job with the pills.

 

When the county shrink asked how I was doing, I lied and told him I was fine. So they moved me to a pod with other jailbirds. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut in jail. But at my extradition hearing in downtown Bisbee, some of the inmates overheard the charges: rape, kidnapping, murder. I wondered where they came up with kidnapping and rape. I certainly hadn't confessed to anything like that. I was getting a look at the unfairness of the justice system.

On the way back to jail, the other inmates cut me dead. When I asked what was going on, they told me they didn't talk to rapers. The kidnapping charge didn't bother them. Murder didn't bother them. But they didn't approve of rape.

 

I was moved to a one-man cell. Every time I was let out, I heard the yells of “rape-o” and “freak.” But I thought we were all innocent till proven guilty! Why were these guys against me? It wasn't fair.

My size intimidated the guards, and they chained me up whenever I was moved. I explained that I wasn't going to harm anyone, but they'd heard that story before. It didn't matter how nice and polite I acted, I was assumed to be a cold-blooded killer who would murder anyone he could get his hands on. This took some time to get used to. But after I became accustomed to my reputation in jail, I learned to live with it. I put out word that I'd beaten a man to death. After that I got respect.

I decided to use my jail time to better myself. I watched my food intake and began to exercise again. If anybody made a move on me, I would be ready.

Three days went by before Rick Buckner and another detective arrived to take me back to Washington. At first Buckner treated me like a decent guy for turning myself in. He went to great lengths to tell me that the justice system wasn't as harsh as I thought, that I might be able to serve my time and still have a bit of life outside of prison after twenty or thirty years.

My mind was on another tangent. I thought about those Happy Face letters and my letter to Brad. If I could just get him to burn it, the cops wouldn't have anything on me except Julie, and no way that was first-degree murder. I would be spared a lengthy prison sentence. I could fish with my kids someday or take them for hikes. But if the cops saw my letter, I might never get out.

I barely listened as Buckner changed his tone and talked about being my enforcer. He tried to get me to admit to other crimes, but I didn't bite. His style was to talk down to me, to patronize me with goo-goo talk like I was his little son. He told me about the badasses he'd had in the same handcuffs I was wearing, like I should be honored.

“Westley Allan Dodd once wore those cuffs,” he said.
⁷
When he mentioned being Dodd's detective, I remembered being in Portland at the time Dodd was caught. I thought,
If you knew what I've done, man, you'd faint.
But I kept quiet. My court-appointed attorney in Arizona had told me to shut up till I had a chance to confer with a lawyer up in Clark County, Washington.

 

The two detectives drove me to the Tucson airport in a Cadillac. For some reason airport security ordered them to remove my cuffs before we boarded the plane. We had a two-hour lay-over in Phoenix before we were scheduled to catch a nonstop ride to Portland. I sat in the empty plane under airport security guard while Buckner and the other detective got out and stretched their legs. I thought about making a move but gave it up fast. I just wanted to go back home and get it over with. I was resigned to the idea that I was going to prison no matter what. So why make a fuss?

 

On the Phoenix-Portland leg Buckner didn't bother to cuff me. He acted friendly and told me that I might get off with five to ten years because of the nature of the offense. It looked like he believed my lie that the killing resulted from an argument. That would make it manslaughter or second-degree murder. Maybe a five-to-ten-year sentence—out in three or four years with good behavior.

I couldn't stop thinking about my letter to Brad. It wasn't bad enough that I'd admitted to being a serial killer, but now the forensic guys could compare the handwriting to the Happy Face letters and verify my confession. I decided to call him the first chance I got. Brad and I had our problems while we were growing up, but I knew I could trust him. After Dad he was the smartest of all the Jespersons. He once lent me fifty thousand dollars on a truck-leasing deal that didn't work out. When we were little, he helped the other kids to tease me, but he grew up to be an okay guy.

At Portland International Airport I was surprised that no film crews met us. I thought there might be coverage because of the notoriety. But to the press I wasn't a big-time story. Just another sleazebag sex-murderer.

I absorbed every detail of the car ride across the Columbia River to Vancouver and the Clark County jail. As we drove up the interstate, I missed being in my own semi, maybe my purple Pete or that umber-and-bronze Freightliner that Dad and I drove. I was just a passenger now and someone else was in control. I never liked that. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, like the time I got a ride with a drunk and he played chicken with the telephone poles and I closed my eyes so I wouldn't see the pole that would finally kill us. Sitting in the Clark County police car, I closed my eyes again, but even with my eyes closed I could feel all the familiar bumps and potholes that I knew so well from driving truck. It made me want to grab the wheel.

As we passed other drivers, they stared as though to say, “There goes a no-good murdering son of a bitch.” I tried to look the other way so they couldn't see my face. I felt they knew all about me.

 

At the Clark County jail they put me in the rape pod, C-1. I heard that the newspapers already had convicted me, but—of what? I tried to remember how Washington executed killers. Electric chair? Gas chamber? They hanged Westley Dodd. I thought,
My God, can they hang a guy six-foot-six?

 

They finally let me call Brad. I told him to be sure to destroy my letter. His response was so shocking that I thought I'd heard wrong. He repeated that Dad made him turn the letter over to the Selah police.

I was stunned. I guessed it was more important to suck up to his cop pals than it was to save his brother's life. He said Dad's reasoning was that he could go to jail for withholding evidence. I told him it wouldn't be evidence if he destroyed it. I was his big brother, slept in the same room with him. He should have done what I said. I wonder if he has any regrets over that.

 

Back in my cell I was pissed at myself for getting into this situation. My fifteen-year-old son Jason and fourteen-year-old daughter Melissa visited me through glass, and it only made things worse. The phone connection was bad and the guards rushed me away before we really started talking.

I cried as they led me off. I felt sorry that my kids had to see me this way. I couldn't even tell them I loved them. I had a feeling I wouldn't see them again.