In early February of 1981, authorities from Salem flew down the Interstate 5 corridor and assembled with detectives and law officials from northern California and southern Oregon. Each detective had a crime, or two, in their jurisdiction matching a particular modus operandi, and the list of incidents just kept growing. When they gathered, they had no idea the scope of the mystery they were unraveling or just far it was going to reach.
It started with a robbery. On December 9, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington, a gas station was held up at gun point, the female attendant left alone in the store. A man entered wearing a brown coat and a fake beard. He demanded cash and brandished a small, silver gun to prove he was serious. The cashier obliged.
It started with a robbery. On December 9, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington, a gas station was held up at gun point, the female attendant left alone in the store. A man entered wearing a brown coat and a fake beard. He demanded cash and brandished a small, silver gun to prove he was serious. The cashier obliged.
A few days later, in Eugene, Oregon, on December thirteenth, a Baskin-Robbins was robbed by a man holding a silver gun and wearing a fake beard and a band aid across his nose.
In Albany, Oregon, a drive-in was hit on December fourteenth by a man flashing a silver gun.
On the twenty-first of December, a man in a fake beard followed a young woman working at a Church's Chicken in Lake Forest Park, just north of Seattle, into the bathroom. Pulling a silver revolver from his pocket, he forced the twenty-five-year-old to remove her shirt and bra and to masturbate him. After he finished, he left the restaurant, telling her to stay in the bathroom for five minutes before coming out. She obeyed, waiting the longest five minutes of her life before running to find a co-worker and call the police.
Not more then ten minutes away, the same man went into a Baskin-Robbins in Bothell, Washington and ordered a cone. He lingered as the two girls closing the shop waited for him to leave so they could lock the doors. They giggled and joked about how he might be planning on robbing the store, but moments later he came to them and requested a paper bag. Then he demanded they fill it with cash. His silver revolver urged them on.
Over the holidays, everything settled. The Washington and Oregon communities calmed; each individual jurisdiction working on catching their bandit, no idea the range of his crimes. It wasn't until January 8, 1981 that the terror began again. A man walked in to the same gas station as almost a month before, though the clerk behind the counter was a different person. This time, though, he wanted more from the young woman than just the cash in her till. Brandishing his silver pistol, he had her empty the register before he ordered her to sit on the floor and remove her shirt, then lift up her bra. He stared at her for several minutes, appraising her breasts. He muttered something she couldn't quite make out, she guessed either "okay" or "ugly," but, seemingly satisfied, he told her to count to fifty and he left.
Three days later, a grocery store in Eugene, Oregon was robbed by a bearded man with a band aid over his nose.
Within the following twenty-four, he was in Southerlin, Oregon, holding up a market. The young cashier, twenty-year-old Susie Benet, thought at first he was joking when he told her to give him all of the money in the register. She joked back and received a bullet in her right shoulder from the silver gun. Ordering her to the floor, he took all of the money from the till. She hid as best she could behind the counter, hoping not to be shot again, and waited until she heard him leave before calling emergency services. Detectives were able to retrieve a single bullet from the scene which had blown through the woman's shoulder and bounced behind a shelf.
In Corvallis, on the fourteenth of January, two young girls, ages 8 and 10, were left at home alone after dinner by their mother, who often took that time in the evening to workout at the local gym. Corvallis is a small college town, comfortable and safe. In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon to leave children at home for long periods of time. These girls, however, were only going to be alone for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. But he didn't need that much time.
About fifteen minutes after their mother left, there was a knock at the door, interrupting the girls' TV show. The eldest went to the door and flipped on the porch light, but it did not illuminate. She opened the door and a man with a beard and the hood of his brown jacket pulled over his head walked into the house. She hadn't invited him, he had just pushed past her, stating he needed to use the phone. Since he was already there, she told him he could use the phone in the kitchen to dial someone for help with his broken down car. She watched him dial, but she could tell he was faking.
He told them he would sit and watch TV with them until their mother came home, but the little girl was firm in her dismissal of that idea. She wasn't going to let him stay. She didn't know how to make him leave, but she knew she couldn't let him stay in the house. He made another phone call that sounded fake to her as well and once again told the girls he would sit with them and watch TV. When she refused, he pulled out a small, silver gun and ushered both girls into the bathroom.
He made them strip and then fondled their small bodies, the girls terrified and sobbing. Then he took out his erect penis and made them preform fellatio until he climaxed, forcing the ten-year-old girl to swallow his ejaculate. She was terrified and confused, clinging to her little sister as the man toyed with his gun and watched them tremble. Eventually, he told them to redress and to remain in the bathroom. He left them quavering on the floor. Ten minutes later, their mother came home and found them still crouched on the bathroom floor.
The two girls gave an excellent description, the eldest certain that the beard was fake and pretty sure, since they had both survived, that the gun was, too. But, it wasn't a toy gun, it would be used a few days later to murder and assault Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot in Salem, Oregon. And the composite created from the little girls' memories would add to a pile of nearly identical composites, all pointing to one man, yet detectives still didn't know that they were not alone in their hunt for the I-5 Killer.
When Beth got out of the hospital, Dave Kominek's family took her in, since she was now alone in Salem. They worked on their composite of the killer with hypnosis and a very brave Beth even returned to the scene of the crime to try and knock loose any more memories of that night. She couldn't come up with much more after that, but what she had managed to remember and the courage she had already shown was going to be enough, if they managed to make it to trial. Along with the head wounds and trauma, Beth also received a sexually transmitted disease from her attacker, herpes. Another reminder she would have to carry for the rest of her life.
On the day following the murder in Salem, Oregon, January 19, a robbery occurred in Vancouver, Washington. A composite was drawn of a dark man. Seven days later, on January 26, a robbery in Eugene, Oregon occurred. A fresh composite was drawn of a dark man. By January 29, 1981, he had headed further south, committing multiple robberies and assaults in the Grant's Pass and Medford areas in a matter of hours. In Grant's Pass, he sexually assaulted two women. The bandit escaped and more composites were drawn.
On February 4, 1981, Shasta County detectives contacted Marion County detectives to discuss the similar cases of Shari Hull and Beth's attack and the murders of Donna Lee Eckard and her teenage daughter Janell Jarvis, raped and killed in their northern California home. But, the detectives had more to talk about than the Eckard murders. And detectives from all over Washington, Oregon, and northern California were calling up Kominek's office in response to the teletype he'd sent out just the day before. Attacks had been building up for months now, a robber and a rapist prowling the I-5 corridor. A few days later, several jurisdictions came together to collaborate, the detectives, district attorneys, and crime labs of the three states Interstate 5 runs through began to share their information and pool their ideas. They were certain this was the same man committing all of these crimes, a man they named the I-5 Killer.
They knew a few things about him already, including his penchant for wearing a band aid or tape over the bridge of his nose. They knew he was a secretor, meaning that the lab could tell his blood-type from secretions found in his body fluids. From the semen swabs they took on all four victims, the found the presence of type B blood. They new he was infected with the STI, herpes. They knew he took a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson from the Eckard home. They knew he drove a Volkswagen Beetle. They knew he was tall and very well-built, his broad shoulders and wide chest indicative of someone who spends a lot time working out. They knew he carried a silver .32 caliber gun.
The very next day, February seventh, when the report came back on the bullets found in the bodies of Janell and her mother Donna Lee, the suspicion that this bandit, rapist, and murderer was all one just one man was confirmed with real, physical evidence. The bullets were a match for the bullets used to kill Shari Hull. They had been fired from the same gun.
As the task force was coming into being, the I-5 Killer continued to stalk the region.
Most serial killers are creatures of habit, who like to savor their kills for weeks to months on end, taking a break between each one to relive the thrill of the kill and derive sexual pleasure from their memories of murder. They have a victim type, very rarely straying outside of their own race, or a certain age group. Pedophiles don't assault older women, and typically someone who shows preference in older women, don't hunt for little girls. They stick to their habits, their motivation, their type. After a while, their attacks will accelerate, but in several instances, have been known to slow down as well, even stopping for years on end. Sexually sadistic rapist and murderers are typically very organized and very interested in maintaining the order of their ritual.
Spree killers are often very disorganized, moving quickly from kill to kill, taking who they can in their path. They don't have a ritual so much as have been triggered by an event that led them to begin their killer career for seemingly no reason. There isn't a pattern or a design. They kill for a different reason.
The I-5 Killer wasn't exactly a typical serial killer, often committing multiple crimes in one day, but he also wasn't a typical spree killer. Though his choice of victims were wide-ranging in age, they were all female, and they were all sexually motivated. He attacked them in the same way each time, forcing them to remove their clothing, fondling their breasts, making them bring him to climax with their hands or their mouths. He taped up arms and legs with surgical tape and executed
The very same day Donna Lee Eckard and Janell Jarvis were murdered, February 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer was making his way north on the interstate through northern California. Just an hour before the Eckard murders, in Redding, California, two women were robbed and assaulted, forced into the bathroom by the barrel of a silver gun. The younger of the two was orally and anally raped in front of her boss. He left them alive only because he was interrupted by the elder woman's husband. He fled the scene and found two new victims just north on the highway. The next day, in Yreka, California, another woman was kidnapped and raped. Jessie Clovis, 21, was getting into her car when a man came upon her with a gun and forced her to scoot into the passenger seat so he could sit with her in the cab and drive the car. He drove her away and pushed her head into his lap, forcing her to unzip his pants and to fellate him while he fondled her breasts. He seemed very wrapped up in needing her approval, asking her if he could touch her, but touching her anyway, not really looking for permission. He asked her if she liked what he was doing, if he was bigger than her boyfriend. He pulled over and had her strip and get in the backseat. He raped her, asking her where she wanted him to finish so he could gauge what would be the worst for her and do that instead. Then, when he was done, he asked her if it was good. She agreed, terrified to be shot with the silver gun. Her attacker drove her back to the parking lot in which he had hijacked her car and left here there. When she was sure he was gone, she threw on her clothes and rushed to call the cops. Another composite was made of the dark man.
The same day, farther north on Interstate 5, in Ashland, Oregon, there was another robbery by a man wearing a band aid over the bridge of his nose.
On the way home from the first task force meeting in California, Dave Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, each took a guess on where the killer would hit next. Weirdly enough, they would split the difference.
On February 9, he resurfaced in Corvallis, Oregon, to rob a fabric store. He took the clerk and her customer into the back of the shop, using the silver gun to threaten them, and bound them with surgical tape, including their mouths. He assaulted them and masturbated to the sight of them, ejaculating on the clerk's face.
The same night, just ten miles east in Albany, Oregon, he bound a raped two women at a laundromat.
On February 12, he headed north, stopping first in Vancouver, Washington to rob a dress shop, leaving the elderly clerk bound with tape. Ninety minutes later, he had slipped up the I-5 to Olympia, where he forced two teenagers into a drive-thru restaurant's freezer. He robbed the store and sexually assaulted the two teens, leaving them locked in the nearly-airless deep freeze. Finally, around ten at night, as a Bellevue Dairy Queen was closing shop, he barged in, gun in hand, and emptied the registers. He forced the male employee into the freezer and then sexually assaulted his female coworker. All three composite sketches for each of his Washington crimes were nearly identical. They were added to the growing list, Polaroids of each one tacked up next to a long map Detective Kominek crafted himself of the entire I-5 corridor. Each Polaroid a composite, each composite a crime.
Julie Reitz body was found in her Beaverton townhouse by her mother the day after Valentine's, 1981. Her naked body was strewn across the stairs. She'd been shot in the back of the head, execution style, by a .38 caliber bullet as she had been fleeing from her killer down the stairs and had fallen dead where she stood. She had been raped.
Beaverton Detectives Dave Bishop and Neal Loper knew quite a lot about the I-5 Killer. In the ten days since the creation of the task force, departments in the area were flooded with information about him, the composite drawings, his MO. But, Beaverton was west of Portland, and fairly far off the I-5. Only one woman had been attacked. She'd been shot only once in the head, and not by his standard .32 caliber bullet, but by a .38. They just didn't think this was the work of the I-5 Killer. It was horrific, but it wasn't him,
Within days of beginning their investigation into Julie Reitz's death, they learned of Randall Woodfield. Randy was known by most of the women they spoke to about Julie. He was known to a lot of women. He had spent Valentine's Day sending out hundreds of cards, dozens of flower arrangements, and invitation after invitation to spend the day with him at the Marriott in Portland. He'd driven up from his current home in Eugene, expecting to have the time of his life, but was disappointed when no one showed to his party and no one opted to spend the most romantic of days with him. When the detectives heard Randy's name come up three times during the early days of their investigation, they decided to focus on him.
They learn from Randy's parole officer--a woman whom he rarely communicated with because of his deep resentment of women in authority--that he had moved out of Portland without telling her. Also, that he had been the suspect in two murders that took place last fall. The murder of Cheryl Ayers, a high school friend of Randy's, in October and the double homicide of Darcey Fix and Doug Altig the weekend of Thanksgiving. Randy had been questioned in both investigations and had refused a polygraph, but was eventually ruled out due to lack of evidence. All three deaths were still unsolved.
Bishop and Loper headed south on I-5 to meet with Randy in Eugene.
That same day, March 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer task force was assembling in Eugene for their third meeting on the case, a brainstorming session they hoped would light up a few light bulbs. The I-5 Killer had kept on through the end of February, hitting two places in Eugene. On the eighteenth, a young woman was found bound in tape in the back room of a 7-11. She had been assaulted and the place robbed. Then, an attempted robbery at a Taco Time was thwarted by a young woman who ran for help, on the twenty-first. On February 25, he cornered a young woman in the bathroom of the restaurant in which she worked in Corvallis and sexually assaulted her in his usual manner, leaving her bound with tape on the floor. Frustrations were mounting within the task force.
Randy didn't show to the meeting, so Bishop and Loper, with the permission of local cops, swung by his house and picked him up. Randall was cool, collected, but he lied about knowing Julie. He consented to a search of his room he rented at Arden Bates' home. They collected sheets that held several head and pubic hairs, a mattress pad with a dried blood stain, a receipt for a .22 caliber pistol, though he had claimed during their interview that he owned no weapons, a paper bag containing a handgun cleaning kit, and, most telling, rolls of white athletic tape.
The tape stood out to Loper. It was a box of six rolls, one of them missing. As soon as he saw it, his mind made the connection to the I-5 Killer. The task force had collected tape just like this from nearly all of their victims and the lab had been able to confirm the tape came from the same roll, the torn edges tediously approximated, but a perfect fit.
They let Randy go, but kept an eye on the house. When Arden Bates returned home, they quickly moved to question her.
Arden had been suspicious of Randy for a long time. He was a strange roommate. Occasionally, he would bring very young women home, which upset her because she had a young son also living in the house. He didn't have a job and claimed he took home $90 in unemployment weekly, but was somehow able to pay his share of everything, including his astronomical phone bills. Randy loved to talk, he was always calling someone, one of his many girls, he was always charging the long-distance calls to Arden's bill when he was away from home for several days at a time, which was often. But, despite his lack of obvious income, always paid the bill. She had suspected he was the I-5 Killer, but had been too afraid to say anything.
Curious, Bishop asked to see Arden's phone bill. He scanned the bill and something caught his eye--a long-distance call charged to Arden's phone, place on February 3 near Mount Shasta, California. Bishop took the phone bill, told Arden to take her son and leave for a while, and called Dave Kominek.
Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, were already home from the task force meeting in Eugene when they got the call from Bishop and Loper. They sped back down to Eugene to meet with the Beaverton detectives and discuss Randall Woodfield.
He was a damn-near perfect match. Kominek was ecstatic. Bishop laid out what they knew about Randy, including his B negative blood type, his Volkswagen Bug, and the long phone bill that showed Randy's movements all across the Pacific Northwest and California--phone records that showed him stopping to make calls in or around several of the cities in which I-5 attacks had taken place. Kominek wondered why he hadn't heard of Randall Woodfield before, but saw in his record that the oral sodomy charges from his Duniway Park robberies had been dropped before his sentencing. He didn't come up in their search of western state sex criminals because he had never been charged as one. He had slid right under the radar.
Springfield PD put a team on Woodfield and the task force began to assemble.
There was a dispute for days over who had jurisdiction. The detectives, Kominek from Salem, Bishop from Beaverton, and the DA of Lane County, Pat Horton, went head-to-head for two days. More cops from all over Oregon began appearing in Springfield, each one with a charge for the I-5 Killer. By March 4, the media had caught on to the building frenzy.
Monty Holloway flew out to Spokane, where Beth Wilmot had returned to her family home, to see if the witness could identify Randall Woodfield in a six-photo lineup. She was unsure, but agreed to take a bus down to Eugene and look at a real lineup. She believed if she saw him in real life, she would know it was him.
The media began to stake out Randy's home along with the police. It was getting out of hand. After it was announced on the evening news that police were looking for a man named Randy in the I-5 killings, Bishop and Kominek had had enough. On March 5, 1981, they went around DA Horton. Kominek and Eugene detective Ron Griesel walked up to Randell Woodfield's front door and rang the bell. Kominek was not surprised to see a near exact match of the composite image that had been haunting him for over a month answer the door.
Randy let them in. He was weirdly casual, just a guy having friends over. He gave them a tour and answered their questions. But Kominek noticed something when they asked questions specific to the I-5 incidents. Randy tensed up, just a little. He became uncomfortable. He began to lie.
Kominek and Griesel arrested Randy for violation of parole. It was a pretty weak charge, but it meant they could keep him in custody for a few days. The detectives began calling in the witnesses and victims of the I-5 Killer's crimes, bringing detectives up from California and down from Washington to escort those few people who could identify their attacker.
The line-up began, Randall Woodfield labeled number five. Over and over again, as the six men stepped into the viewing room, brave victims stood in front of the man who so viciously interrupted their lives and identified subject number five.
On March 16, 1981, multiple indictments from several Oregon and Washington jurisdictions for murder, rape, armed robbery, attempted kidnapping, illegal possession of a firearm, and sodomy. In late June, Randall Woodfield was convicted for the murder of Shari Hull and the attempted murder and rape of Beth Wilmot. Beth testified against Randy in court. He was sentenced to life, plus ninety years.
Later that year, in October, Randy was tried again in Benton County for the Grants Pass assault and robbery. He was convicted and received another 35 years.
California attorneys never charged Randall with the Eckard murders or the assaults, robberies, and kidnappings. There is a chance Randy will be eligible for parole, and if that happens, California detectives will be waiting with two counts of murder and an extradition order.
In 1987, Randy filed a lawsuit against Ann Rule for her book, The I-5 Killer, for $12 million. In January of 1988, the lawsuit was dismissed by the court.
With the rise of DNA technology in the early 2000's, new evidence linked Randall to three more deaths.
Cheryl Ayers, 29, was a long-time friend of Randy's, having known him since the second grade. She worked as an X-Ray technician in Portland, Oregon. She was raped brutally bludgeoned to death on October 9, 1980. Her family suspected Randy and told police to look into him. He had corresponded with her frequently during his time in prison, and several letters from him were found in her residence. Though Randall was questioned and refused to sit for a polygraph test. Though detectives found him sketchy, the semen present in Cheryl's body did not match Randall's blood type and he was dropped as a suspect. DNA tested in 2001 connects him without a doubt to her murder.
Darcey Fix, 22, had recently ended her relationship with one of Randy's closest friends. When Randy visited that friend in Tacoma in late 1980, he was infuriated, despite his friend finding the breakup fairly amiable. On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1980, Darcey was found executed in her Portland home along with her new beau, Doug Altig, 24. Randy was questioned, but there was no evidence linking him to the murders, so he was dropped as a suspect. In 2009, when DNA was tested again, it matched Randall Woodfield to the double homicide.
Curiously, missing from the Fix home was a .32 caliber, silver pistol.
***
Thanks so much for reading you guys! I know this took longer than I said it would, but it was a lot to compile! I can honestly say I am so glad to have it off my chest. What a fascinating case, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that Randy spent his time after prison trying to meet and sleep with every girl on the West Coast, keeping a huge diary of their names, numbers, and addresses. He called constantly, wrote letters, sent gifts. He forced himself in more than one way on every young woman he saw. And those actions came to bite him, hard, in the end, because each of those women could and would identify him. They saw what he was, and they stood up to him and in the face of evil, shown a light for all to see what he was, a monster.
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Sources:
The I-5 Killer. by Ann Rule
Wikipedia
KATU News
OregonLive
Within the following twenty-four, he was in Southerlin, Oregon, holding up a market. The young cashier, twenty-year-old Susie Benet, thought at first he was joking when he told her to give him all of the money in the register. She joked back and received a bullet in her right shoulder from the silver gun. Ordering her to the floor, he took all of the money from the till. She hid as best she could behind the counter, hoping not to be shot again, and waited until she heard him leave before calling emergency services. Detectives were able to retrieve a single bullet from the scene which had blown through the woman's shoulder and bounced behind a shelf.
In Corvallis, on the fourteenth of January, two young girls, ages 8 and 10, were left at home alone after dinner by their mother, who often took that time in the evening to workout at the local gym. Corvallis is a small college town, comfortable and safe. In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon to leave children at home for long periods of time. These girls, however, were only going to be alone for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. But he didn't need that much time.
About fifteen minutes after their mother left, there was a knock at the door, interrupting the girls' TV show. The eldest went to the door and flipped on the porch light, but it did not illuminate. She opened the door and a man with a beard and the hood of his brown jacket pulled over his head walked into the house. She hadn't invited him, he had just pushed past her, stating he needed to use the phone. Since he was already there, she told him he could use the phone in the kitchen to dial someone for help with his broken down car. She watched him dial, but she could tell he was faking.
He told them he would sit and watch TV with them until their mother came home, but the little girl was firm in her dismissal of that idea. She wasn't going to let him stay. She didn't know how to make him leave, but she knew she couldn't let him stay in the house. He made another phone call that sounded fake to her as well and once again told the girls he would sit with them and watch TV. When she refused, he pulled out a small, silver gun and ushered both girls into the bathroom.
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| Composites of the I-5 Killer. |
He made them strip and then fondled their small bodies, the girls terrified and sobbing. Then he took out his erect penis and made them preform fellatio until he climaxed, forcing the ten-year-old girl to swallow his ejaculate. She was terrified and confused, clinging to her little sister as the man toyed with his gun and watched them tremble. Eventually, he told them to redress and to remain in the bathroom. He left them quavering on the floor. Ten minutes later, their mother came home and found them still crouched on the bathroom floor.
The two girls gave an excellent description, the eldest certain that the beard was fake and pretty sure, since they had both survived, that the gun was, too. But, it wasn't a toy gun, it would be used a few days later to murder and assault Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot in Salem, Oregon. And the composite created from the little girls' memories would add to a pile of nearly identical composites, all pointing to one man, yet detectives still didn't know that they were not alone in their hunt for the I-5 Killer.
When Beth got out of the hospital, Dave Kominek's family took her in, since she was now alone in Salem. They worked on their composite of the killer with hypnosis and a very brave Beth even returned to the scene of the crime to try and knock loose any more memories of that night. She couldn't come up with much more after that, but what she had managed to remember and the courage she had already shown was going to be enough, if they managed to make it to trial. Along with the head wounds and trauma, Beth also received a sexually transmitted disease from her attacker, herpes. Another reminder she would have to carry for the rest of her life.
On February 4, 1981, Shasta County detectives contacted Marion County detectives to discuss the similar cases of Shari Hull and Beth's attack and the murders of Donna Lee Eckard and her teenage daughter Janell Jarvis, raped and killed in their northern California home. But, the detectives had more to talk about than the Eckard murders. And detectives from all over Washington, Oregon, and northern California were calling up Kominek's office in response to the teletype he'd sent out just the day before. Attacks had been building up for months now, a robber and a rapist prowling the I-5 corridor. A few days later, several jurisdictions came together to collaborate, the detectives, district attorneys, and crime labs of the three states Interstate 5 runs through began to share their information and pool their ideas. They were certain this was the same man committing all of these crimes, a man they named the I-5 Killer.
They knew a few things about him already, including his penchant for wearing a band aid or tape over the bridge of his nose. They knew he was a secretor, meaning that the lab could tell his blood-type from secretions found in his body fluids. From the semen swabs they took on all four victims, the found the presence of type B blood. They new he was infected with the STI, herpes. They knew he took a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson from the Eckard home. They knew he drove a Volkswagen Beetle. They knew he was tall and very well-built, his broad shoulders and wide chest indicative of someone who spends a lot time working out. They knew he carried a silver .32 caliber gun.
The very next day, February seventh, when the report came back on the bullets found in the bodies of Janell and her mother Donna Lee, the suspicion that this bandit, rapist, and murderer was all one just one man was confirmed with real, physical evidence. The bullets were a match for the bullets used to kill Shari Hull. They had been fired from the same gun.
As the task force was coming into being, the I-5 Killer continued to stalk the region.
Most serial killers are creatures of habit, who like to savor their kills for weeks to months on end, taking a break between each one to relive the thrill of the kill and derive sexual pleasure from their memories of murder. They have a victim type, very rarely straying outside of their own race, or a certain age group. Pedophiles don't assault older women, and typically someone who shows preference in older women, don't hunt for little girls. They stick to their habits, their motivation, their type. After a while, their attacks will accelerate, but in several instances, have been known to slow down as well, even stopping for years on end. Sexually sadistic rapist and murderers are typically very organized and very interested in maintaining the order of their ritual.
Spree killers are often very disorganized, moving quickly from kill to kill, taking who they can in their path. They don't have a ritual so much as have been triggered by an event that led them to begin their killer career for seemingly no reason. There isn't a pattern or a design. They kill for a different reason.
The I-5 Killer wasn't exactly a typical serial killer, often committing multiple crimes in one day, but he also wasn't a typical spree killer. Though his choice of victims were wide-ranging in age, they were all female, and they were all sexually motivated. He attacked them in the same way each time, forcing them to remove their clothing, fondling their breasts, making them bring him to climax with their hands or their mouths. He taped up arms and legs with surgical tape and executed
The very same day Donna Lee Eckard and Janell Jarvis were murdered, February 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer was making his way north on the interstate through northern California. Just an hour before the Eckard murders, in Redding, California, two women were robbed and assaulted, forced into the bathroom by the barrel of a silver gun. The younger of the two was orally and anally raped in front of her boss. He left them alive only because he was interrupted by the elder woman's husband. He fled the scene and found two new victims just north on the highway. The next day, in Yreka, California, another woman was kidnapped and raped. Jessie Clovis, 21, was getting into her car when a man came upon her with a gun and forced her to scoot into the passenger seat so he could sit with her in the cab and drive the car. He drove her away and pushed her head into his lap, forcing her to unzip his pants and to fellate him while he fondled her breasts. He seemed very wrapped up in needing her approval, asking her if he could touch her, but touching her anyway, not really looking for permission. He asked her if she liked what he was doing, if he was bigger than her boyfriend. He pulled over and had her strip and get in the backseat. He raped her, asking her where she wanted him to finish so he could gauge what would be the worst for her and do that instead. Then, when he was done, he asked her if it was good. She agreed, terrified to be shot with the silver gun. Her attacker drove her back to the parking lot in which he had hijacked her car and left here there. When she was sure he was gone, she threw on her clothes and rushed to call the cops. Another composite was made of the dark man.
The same day, farther north on Interstate 5, in Ashland, Oregon, there was another robbery by a man wearing a band aid over the bridge of his nose.
On the way home from the first task force meeting in California, Dave Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, each took a guess on where the killer would hit next. Weirdly enough, they would split the difference.
On February 9, he resurfaced in Corvallis, Oregon, to rob a fabric store. He took the clerk and her customer into the back of the shop, using the silver gun to threaten them, and bound them with surgical tape, including their mouths. He assaulted them and masturbated to the sight of them, ejaculating on the clerk's face.
The same night, just ten miles east in Albany, Oregon, he bound a raped two women at a laundromat.
On February 12, he headed north, stopping first in Vancouver, Washington to rob a dress shop, leaving the elderly clerk bound with tape. Ninety minutes later, he had slipped up the I-5 to Olympia, where he forced two teenagers into a drive-thru restaurant's freezer. He robbed the store and sexually assaulted the two teens, leaving them locked in the nearly-airless deep freeze. Finally, around ten at night, as a Bellevue Dairy Queen was closing shop, he barged in, gun in hand, and emptied the registers. He forced the male employee into the freezer and then sexually assaulted his female coworker. All three composite sketches for each of his Washington crimes were nearly identical. They were added to the growing list, Polaroids of each one tacked up next to a long map Detective Kominek crafted himself of the entire I-5 corridor. Each Polaroid a composite, each composite a crime.
Julie Reitz body was found in her Beaverton townhouse by her mother the day after Valentine's, 1981. Her naked body was strewn across the stairs. She'd been shot in the back of the head, execution style, by a .38 caliber bullet as she had been fleeing from her killer down the stairs and had fallen dead where she stood. She had been raped.
Beaverton Detectives Dave Bishop and Neal Loper knew quite a lot about the I-5 Killer. In the ten days since the creation of the task force, departments in the area were flooded with information about him, the composite drawings, his MO. But, Beaverton was west of Portland, and fairly far off the I-5. Only one woman had been attacked. She'd been shot only once in the head, and not by his standard .32 caliber bullet, but by a .38. They just didn't think this was the work of the I-5 Killer. It was horrific, but it wasn't him,
Within days of beginning their investigation into Julie Reitz's death, they learned of Randall Woodfield. Randy was known by most of the women they spoke to about Julie. He was known to a lot of women. He had spent Valentine's Day sending out hundreds of cards, dozens of flower arrangements, and invitation after invitation to spend the day with him at the Marriott in Portland. He'd driven up from his current home in Eugene, expecting to have the time of his life, but was disappointed when no one showed to his party and no one opted to spend the most romantic of days with him. When the detectives heard Randy's name come up three times during the early days of their investigation, they decided to focus on him.
They learn from Randy's parole officer--a woman whom he rarely communicated with because of his deep resentment of women in authority--that he had moved out of Portland without telling her. Also, that he had been the suspect in two murders that took place last fall. The murder of Cheryl Ayers, a high school friend of Randy's, in October and the double homicide of Darcey Fix and Doug Altig the weekend of Thanksgiving. Randy had been questioned in both investigations and had refused a polygraph, but was eventually ruled out due to lack of evidence. All three deaths were still unsolved.
Bishop and Loper headed south on I-5 to meet with Randy in Eugene.
That same day, March 3, 1981, the I-5 Killer task force was assembling in Eugene for their third meeting on the case, a brainstorming session they hoped would light up a few light bulbs. The I-5 Killer had kept on through the end of February, hitting two places in Eugene. On the eighteenth, a young woman was found bound in tape in the back room of a 7-11. She had been assaulted and the place robbed. Then, an attempted robbery at a Taco Time was thwarted by a young woman who ran for help, on the twenty-first. On February 25, he cornered a young woman in the bathroom of the restaurant in which she worked in Corvallis and sexually assaulted her in his usual manner, leaving her bound with tape on the floor. Frustrations were mounting within the task force.
Randy didn't show to the meeting, so Bishop and Loper, with the permission of local cops, swung by his house and picked him up. Randall was cool, collected, but he lied about knowing Julie. He consented to a search of his room he rented at Arden Bates' home. They collected sheets that held several head and pubic hairs, a mattress pad with a dried blood stain, a receipt for a .22 caliber pistol, though he had claimed during their interview that he owned no weapons, a paper bag containing a handgun cleaning kit, and, most telling, rolls of white athletic tape.
The tape stood out to Loper. It was a box of six rolls, one of them missing. As soon as he saw it, his mind made the connection to the I-5 Killer. The task force had collected tape just like this from nearly all of their victims and the lab had been able to confirm the tape came from the same roll, the torn edges tediously approximated, but a perfect fit.
They let Randy go, but kept an eye on the house. When Arden Bates returned home, they quickly moved to question her.
Arden had been suspicious of Randy for a long time. He was a strange roommate. Occasionally, he would bring very young women home, which upset her because she had a young son also living in the house. He didn't have a job and claimed he took home $90 in unemployment weekly, but was somehow able to pay his share of everything, including his astronomical phone bills. Randy loved to talk, he was always calling someone, one of his many girls, he was always charging the long-distance calls to Arden's bill when he was away from home for several days at a time, which was often. But, despite his lack of obvious income, always paid the bill. She had suspected he was the I-5 Killer, but had been too afraid to say anything.
Curious, Bishop asked to see Arden's phone bill. He scanned the bill and something caught his eye--a long-distance call charged to Arden's phone, place on February 3 near Mount Shasta, California. Bishop took the phone bill, told Arden to take her son and leave for a while, and called Dave Kominek.
Kominek and his partner, Monty Holloway, were already home from the task force meeting in Eugene when they got the call from Bishop and Loper. They sped back down to Eugene to meet with the Beaverton detectives and discuss Randall Woodfield.
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| Randall Woodfield's Volkswagen Beetle. |
Springfield PD put a team on Woodfield and the task force began to assemble.
There was a dispute for days over who had jurisdiction. The detectives, Kominek from Salem, Bishop from Beaverton, and the DA of Lane County, Pat Horton, went head-to-head for two days. More cops from all over Oregon began appearing in Springfield, each one with a charge for the I-5 Killer. By March 4, the media had caught on to the building frenzy.
Monty Holloway flew out to Spokane, where Beth Wilmot had returned to her family home, to see if the witness could identify Randall Woodfield in a six-photo lineup. She was unsure, but agreed to take a bus down to Eugene and look at a real lineup. She believed if she saw him in real life, she would know it was him.
The media began to stake out Randy's home along with the police. It was getting out of hand. After it was announced on the evening news that police were looking for a man named Randy in the I-5 killings, Bishop and Kominek had had enough. On March 5, 1981, they went around DA Horton. Kominek and Eugene detective Ron Griesel walked up to Randell Woodfield's front door and rang the bell. Kominek was not surprised to see a near exact match of the composite image that had been haunting him for over a month answer the door.
Randy let them in. He was weirdly casual, just a guy having friends over. He gave them a tour and answered their questions. But Kominek noticed something when they asked questions specific to the I-5 incidents. Randy tensed up, just a little. He became uncomfortable. He began to lie.
Kominek and Griesel arrested Randy for violation of parole. It was a pretty weak charge, but it meant they could keep him in custody for a few days. The detectives began calling in the witnesses and victims of the I-5 Killer's crimes, bringing detectives up from California and down from Washington to escort those few people who could identify their attacker.
The line-up began, Randall Woodfield labeled number five. Over and over again, as the six men stepped into the viewing room, brave victims stood in front of the man who so viciously interrupted their lives and identified subject number five.
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| Randy's mugshot. |
Later that year, in October, Randy was tried again in Benton County for the Grants Pass assault and robbery. He was convicted and received another 35 years.
California attorneys never charged Randall with the Eckard murders or the assaults, robberies, and kidnappings. There is a chance Randy will be eligible for parole, and if that happens, California detectives will be waiting with two counts of murder and an extradition order.
In 1987, Randy filed a lawsuit against Ann Rule for her book, The I-5 Killer, for $12 million. In January of 1988, the lawsuit was dismissed by the court.
With the rise of DNA technology in the early 2000's, new evidence linked Randall to three more deaths.
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| Letters found addressed to Cheryl Ayers, from inmate Randall Woodfield |
Darcey Fix, 22, had recently ended her relationship with one of Randy's closest friends. When Randy visited that friend in Tacoma in late 1980, he was infuriated, despite his friend finding the breakup fairly amiable. On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1980, Darcey was found executed in her Portland home along with her new beau, Doug Altig, 24. Randy was questioned, but there was no evidence linking him to the murders, so he was dropped as a suspect. In 2009, when DNA was tested again, it matched Randall Woodfield to the double homicide.
Curiously, missing from the Fix home was a .32 caliber, silver pistol.
***
Thanks so much for reading you guys! I know this took longer than I said it would, but it was a lot to compile! I can honestly say I am so glad to have it off my chest. What a fascinating case, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that Randy spent his time after prison trying to meet and sleep with every girl on the West Coast, keeping a huge diary of their names, numbers, and addresses. He called constantly, wrote letters, sent gifts. He forced himself in more than one way on every young woman he saw. And those actions came to bite him, hard, in the end, because each of those women could and would identify him. They saw what he was, and they stood up to him and in the face of evil, shown a light for all to see what he was, a monster.
As always, if you love the blog, you can subscribe by clicking the button at the top right corner and entering an email. If you are interested in reading more of my work, I have a novel available on Amazon. If you would like to write a review, I will send you a free eBook or Kindle copy! Amazon likes books to have 50 reviews before they start advertising it, so I could really use the reviews. You can also support this blog by becoming a patron at pateron.com/Skeleton_Friend.
Thanks again! #themurderyouknow
Sources:
The I-5 Killer. by Ann Rule
Wikipedia
KATU News
OregonLive
Please start your crime blog back up again it's so good to read crime instead of listen to it on a podcast for once!! Your research and writing is excellent!!
ReplyDeletehttps://wordsandwinewithjade.blogspot.com/
HEY! Oh my god, I am so sorry I never saw this! I am going to. I also might be, in the very near future, contributing to another true crime blog on a regular basis! I'm so glad to hear that you've liked the few posts I did make. I got caught up trying to write novels and let it slip away from me, but I need to come back to it for a multitude of reasons, your comment being one of them. Thank you!
Delete- Rachel