Home Invasion

In 1997, after I had already sexually assaulted and murdered two homeless Native American half-sisters (age 9 and 11), and after I had been sent back to prison for one month to await a parole hearing on a technical parole violation (I held my brother's handgun when he was showing it to me for a moment, which I only found out later counts as «possession of a firearm»), and after I was released back on parole to Seattle, Washington, I invaded a family home one evening with every intention of raping and murdering the two very young boys that lived there. Fortunately for that family the man of the house came home and walked in the front door just as I was about to kill the boy's mother by crushing her skull with a hammer. What follows is a detailed confession of this crime, and it's not for the faint of heart. If you're looking for a reason to hate me, then you'll no doubt find plenty of reasons here. But, I'm not writing this to appeal to some deep need to be hated. Nor am I writing this as some futile plea to be «understood». I'm only conveying this experience as a matter of truth, and as an expression of the darker aspects of being human, which if ignored (or worse, condemned) will only find far more detrimental ways of expressing itself.

I first spotted the boys in a Target store that I had gone to only in order to close out a Target credit card account that I no longer wanted (for some reason I needed to visit the store in person to do this, but I don't recall why). I saw the boys with their mother in one of the checkout lines and they immediately caught my attention. I didn't stare at them though, even «discreetly» from behind a display case or something, with drooling eyes the way «sexually predators» are usually depicted in most fantasy crime dramas (a.k.a. «cop shows»). Instead I just acted normal, very nonchalant; if someone were watching me at the time --- and I always assumed that someone was --- they would not have thought I had noticed the boys at all. But, in my mind I was thrilled by every glance I could afford. The boys were perfect little cuties, slender bodies, blond hair, beautiful eyes; any pedophile's dream. I was ahead of them in another line, or maybe I was just leaving the store without checking out or purchasing anything, I don't remember. But I do remember waiting in my car in the parking lot before leaving, hoping for one more glimpse of the boys.

I didn't have to wait long. They came out of the store with their mother and to my delight got into a minivan that was directly in my line of sight. I realized immediately that it would be almost too easy to follow them. The mother, like most women, was clearly oblivious to what was happening around her, perpetually distracted by whatever thoughts seemed more important to her than her surroundings (I later made the mistake once of trying to trail a man with his children in the same way I trailed this woman home, only to be lead almost directly to a police station parking lot --- clearly the man had realized he was being trailed almost as soon as I spotted him --- I got away with no trouble, but so did he). To make a long trek short, I followed the minivan for about 20 miles, mostly on the I-5 freeway. They made a stop at a McDonald's that had a «playland», where I just waited outside (and out of sight, i.e. not in the McDonald's parking lot) until they came out again, then followed them the rest of their way home.

I lost them briefly after they turned onto a residential street, because I didn't want to risk raising any suspicions by making the same turn behind her. But, it was a simple matter of driving around the neighborhood after that until I spotted the same minivan parked in front of a house on a dead-end street. Bingo!

I pulled around a corner and parked in a place that seemed out of sight from any houses nearby, and then I got out of my car and approached the house with the minivan cautiously. My plan was to make a fast survey of the house and its neighbors, so if anyone spotted me I'd be gone before the police even showed up.

The house had an open yard, but all their neighbors' houses had fences. I made my way to the backyard, which was unlit and dark. Toys and bikes were strewn around, which made it clear that the yard was the de facto abode of children, and no doubt an annoyance to be ignored by the neighbors, which the tall wooden fences and hedges seemed to confirm.

I felt completely invisible as I crept up behind the house and approached the only lit window I could see. The window turned out to be open, and as I crouched beneath it I could hear the woman inside talking on the phone. It seemed to me that she was talking to her lover, which I took to mean that she lived alone with her boys in the house. I had all the information I needed. I quickly returned to my car, watching carefully for any lights coming on, or sounds that might indicate I had been seen along the way; there was none. I then drove back to Joe and Ed's house, where I was living at the time, and went to bed; I was up past my bedtime and had to work the next day.

I don't remember how long it was before I returned with a «rape kit» that I put together just for the occasion, but it wasn't more than a week. I brought duct-tape, rope, camcorder and lotion, amongst other things that I thought might come in handy, and put all this in a school backpack for easy carrying.

This time I parked about a block away and avoided driving down the dead-end street where the house was lest someone remember seeing my car. Instead I walked past the house to make sure everything was nice and quiet, then around a corner where the street turned just before it ended. I decided to stash the backpack in some bushes so I would be unencumbered while I approached the house, in case I had to run.

I walked casually through the front and sideyard of the house and into the backyard, reasoning that if a neighbor saw me they'd think I belonged there only if I wasn't creeping around. But, as soon as I was out of sight in the backyard I crouched down low next to the house and crept up to the sliding glass backdoor, which was partly open.

I was just about to enter when I heard the boys inside roughhousing. They ran right past the open door, the older boy (about seven years old) chasing the younger (about five) then tackling him onto a couch and wrestling the way brothers do laughing and squealing with complete abandon. The couch they landed on was practically right under my nose, and I could watch them playing just feet away as I remained completely unobserved in the shadows of night outside the window.

Shortly I heard their mother call them and they both got up and ran off to another part of the house, leaving me and the open door all to ourselves. I entered the house, still only intending to scout the territory, and thinking I should go get the backpack but not wanting to «spoil the opportunity» (i.e. I knew this part of the house was presently unoccupied).

Just inside the glass door was a laundry area, with piles of clean and dirty clothes strewn about. I picked up a pair of a little boy's underpants and put them on over my head and face, but I could still see out through the leg holes. I thought this was practical and ironic at the same time. I stupidly left the mask I had brought with me in the backpack, as well as a knife I had intended to use as a weapon.

I walked through the laundry area and into the kitchen. There I found an old rusty hammer lying on the counter. Obviously I was being provided for, so I took the hammer as a weapon and proceeded cautiously further into the house.

Most of the lights inside the house were turned off, which made it easy for me to move around secure in the shadows. From the kitchen and past the main (front) entrance there was a central hallway. Down this hall I could see several open doors, but only one with the light on inside. From that door I could also hear a T.V. playing, and the boys and their mother occasionally commenting about what was on the T.V. as they watched.

I wanted to go back and get the backpack, but I clearly remember thinking that if I backed out of the house now I probably would not be able to muster the emotional energy it took to go back in (i.e. So-called «courage» --- but, I would no longer call it that). It was «now or never»; and I knew it; so I made it «now».

I simply stood up from the crouched position I was in at the entrance to the hallway, and walked boldly into the lit room, which turned out to be the master bedroom, with the hammer raised menacingly over my head ready to strike. The mother was lying on the bed with her head propped up on pillows to watch T.V. with both boys on the other side of the bed in odd positions as children do. When she saw me she screamed immediately, but then just as suddenly fell compliant and silent as I commanded her to be quiet, «or else!» It was a good thing she fell silent on her own because I had every intention of silencing her with the hammer if she hadn't.

I told her that I only wanted her car as I threw a blanket completely over the boys and told them not to move while I dealt with the mother. I ordered her out of the bedroom and back out into the living room, where I told her to get on her knees bent over the same couch I saw the boys wrestling on earlier. I used a piece of string, a shoelace I think, to then tie her hands loosely behind her back. I intended to kill her quickly, so I didn't spend a lot of time securing her.

Once she was tied I told her to not move, «or else», and then I returned to the bedroom to make sure the boys were still under the blanket. I told them, in a voice loud enough for the mother to hear in the living room, to stay under the blanket until their mother told them it was okay to come out from under it. And then I uncovered the younger (and prettier) boy and shushed him silently by putting my finger to my lips. I picked him up and laid him on the floor, unable to resist a quick look at my prize. I pulled down his pants and pulled up his shirt to expose his body quickly; I couldn't believe how gorgeous he was naked, and again, I'm not saying this to arouse myself, I'm only conveying the experience as it happened, and my reaction to it.

I fondled the boy briefly, which he seemed to oddly enjoy. I expected him to be afraid, and maybe he was, but I couldn't tell. Maybe he wasn't quite old enough to understand the threat I represented. Or, maybe he was used to being «abused». I don't know; all I know is that when I pulled down his pants and fondled him he was smiling up at me like it was some sort of game. I didn't linger though. I probably spent less than a minute total «checking» the boys. Then I covered the younger boy with another blanket, leaving his pants down for later, and returned to the living room to «finish» with the mother.

In the process of leading ehr from the bedroom to the living room she had told me that her «husband» would be back soon. I dismissed her claim as an attempt to scare me off, and ignored it. But she was telling the truth!

As I stood over her, hammer in hand, mustering my so-called «courage» to kill her (and perhaps also quickly calculating what would happen when I started hitting her in the head with the hammer) suddenly the front door behind me opened as someone with keys still jingling came in!

Without even turning to see who it was I just bolted for the backdoor, across the backyard, and in less than a minute (or so it seemed) I was at the end of the block, hiding in a shadowy flowerbed nect to another house, and watching to see if I had been seen, or followed. My car was parked just across the street from where I lay hidden, but I waited to make sure no one saw me getting in it.

After about another minute I heard a man's scream coming from the direction of the boy's house. It wasn't coherent at all, just a cathartic burst of raw emotion, no doubt frustration and powerlessness over being so violated. I assume that as soon as the man realized what was happening he must have grabbed some weapon and ran after me. But, as soon as he got outside and found that I was nowhere in sight, and having no idea which direction I could have gone, he just screamed to let me know he was there or something. I'm just supposing all this of course, but when I heard the scream I knew I had gotten away, and I remember thinking, «Now you know how it feels!» Then I got in my car and drove away with forced calmness.

As I was leaving the neighborhood I actually pulled over at one point to let a police car pass in the opposite direction with siren and lights blaring. Then after he passed me I turned immediately onto a residential street so it would look like I was «returning home» (i.e. like a local resident) and not «leaving» and parked there briefly. I still had the boys underpants that I had worn to hide my face, so I got out of the car and threw them into a dumpster behind the church. Then I got back in my car and drove home (to Joe and Ed's house).

The next day there was nothing in the news at all about the home invasion. In fact, there was never anything in the news about it at all, not even under «crime watch» in the local papers --- I checked. After my arrest in 2005 (for my current crimes) I told the FBI all about this crime (amongst every other crime I ever committed) and though they told me they «knew about it» already (I suspect they might have just said so in order to make it appear as though they knew more than they did, a common «police tactic») it for some reason never made it into the popular media reports that detailed every other crime I ever committed except this one. Because of this strange «silence» in this case I strongly suspect that the man I heard screaming that night was (or is) most likely somehow directly associated with «law enforcement». He was probably a cop, and cops know that the worst part about being a victim of a «major crime» is the media coverage. So, they routinely keep crimes like this against cops «off the public radar» to protect themselves, and their families, from the broader and more painful damage caused by the «fallout». It's one of the unspoken privileges of being a cop.

I returned to get my backpack the next night. It was very risky, I knew, but I had to get the pack before someone else found it, by accident or otherwise. I knew police procedure would be to patrol the neighborhood for a few days keeping an eye out for anyone matching the suspect's description --- in this case, white male, six foot, slender build and «on foot», which I figured they would assume since I told the boy's mother that I «needed» her car. So, instead of driving straight back to the house, I drove to a local all-night grocery store and parked amongst the other cars there. Then I crouched low in my seat and waited as I listened to a police scanner that I had «borrowed» (without them knowing) from Joe and Ed (they kept the scanner on the mantel of the fireplace in their living room, and only turned it on while they were getting high, which they did often).

It didn't take long before I heard what sounded like references to «possible suspects» matching «my» description. So I knew even more so that I was taking a big risk by just being in the neighborhood. But, I had to get that bag. I didn't think there was anything in it that could identify me, but it most certainly had my prints all over it and on the items inside.

I expected to see a patrol car before too long and I did. It came from the direction of the boy's house, so I was pretty sure why it was there (i.e. Looking for me). It drove around a corner and then passed in front of the grocery store where I was parked. Then it actually pulled into the parking lot at the last entrance, but the speed and «mode» in which it was moving (i.e. I could tell it was in «patrol mode» not «investigation mode», in other words, he was driving slow, but not «cautiously» the way cops do when approaching a possible «situation») told me that I had not been spotted. So, I watched him drive toward the front of the store, and could see that the driver's attention was on the store, not the parking lot, which appeared empty (of people). He actually drove right next to me, but by then I was crouched all the way down and completely out of sight, watching his progress in the reflection of the inside of my windshield.

He didn't stop. He just drove through the front of the parking lot and then back out onto the street and continued in the direction he had been going, away from the boy's house. I knew then that I had at least fifteen minutes (probably plenty more than that) to go get the bag before he, or anyone else, would be back. So I did exactly that. I didn't pussy-foot around about it either. I just drove directly to the house, parked in the shadow of the same hedges I had parked near on the very first night I had found the house. Got out, got the backpack, and then got the hell out of there following a route that took me away from the direction I'd seen the cop car go.

Mission accomplished.

Like I mentioned already, the home invasion was never reported in the news. Nor was I ever a suspect, as far as I know, probably not until I told the FBI about the crime (and showed them on a map where the house was). Other than the crime I am in prison for now, this was the only other «home invasion» or even «burglary» that I did after my release from prison the first time (in 1994). It was a classic «criminal learning experience» and I saw it as exactly that from the start to finish (i.e. I consciously intended to learn from it and knew I would make mistakes all along, which I carefully watched for). My biggest mistake was leaving that bag behind in the bushes. But my next biggest mistake was not surveying the house better and determining how many people would be there. There were many other lesser mistakes that I learned from, not to mention more «contingencies» that I prepared for. I read police investigation tactics, crime scene procedures, and even «Amber Alert» procedures. That's how I knew that I had gotten away with it and would never be a suspect --- as long as I killed both the children. Killing them, and their family, was never something I wanted to do; it was something I HAD to do, in order to not get caught. And not getting caught was the hard lesson I learned after being sent to prison the first time (that's the one lesson that prison always teaches, unlike what the Pharisees would have you believe).

[J.D. December 23, 2014]

P.S. I wrote this confession several months ago, but did not send it to my friends to be published because something felt «wrong» about it. I knew where it felt that way, but I couldn't put my fingers on why. It was the part where I describe molesting the younger boy in the bedroom. Something about that scene bothered me, but I couldn't say what it was.

Usually when this happens it is because something not quite honest has unconsciously slipped into what I have written. Because it is unintentional it sometimes takes me a few days to realize where the dishonesty is that is causing the uneasy feeling. In this case though, even after months, I could find nothing dishonest.

But, the feeling persisted. Until just the other day when my girlfriend asked me this question concerning another Fifth Nail confession: Do you write these confessions in order to re-live the crime through someone else's eyes?

I knew the short answer right away, «no». But, the question made me think (my girlfriend's questions often make me think, which is one of the reasons I love her). Why wouldn't I want to re-live my crimes by writing about them? Many sex criminals enjoy re-living their crimes, so why shouldn't I?

The truth is, I do. But, I do it privately and I am extremely sensitive about never letting someone else «see» me doing so. This is why I don't collect pictures of children that arouse my sexual interest (despite recent accusations claiming otherwise). It also explains my uneasy feeling about this confession.

The scene with the boy aroused me as I wrote it. And, that's why it felt «wrong». In this I wasn't being dishonest, but I was being too honest. I was «exposing» a part of myself that I don't like to expose. I don't mind telling people that I still fantasize about raping children, but I do mind making the fantasies themselves public. So, to answer my girlfriend's question more specifically, no, I do not write about my crimes in order to re-live them through someone else's eyes; and, in fact, the thought of doing so makes me uncomfortable on many levels.

Now that I understand why I felt uncomfortable about this confession I can let it go (to be published). I did not let it go now then I would not be honest (it would cross the line from not «exposing» something I feel should be private, to deliberately concealing the truth). So, I must let it go, no matter how «wrong» it feels. Being honest doesn't always mean being «right»!

[J.D. March 8, 2015]

Bicycle Ticket

While on parole in Seattle and living near downtown on Seneca street, I bought an inexpensive mountain bike off the shelf at Sears. My plan was to save a little money on my daily commute to the North end of Lake Union where I worked as a telemarketer six days a week near Gasworks park. Monthly bus passes where about $55, so the bike could pay for itself in just over a few months if I rode to work every day instead of taking the bus. It seemed like a pretty good plan since the trip to work was nearly all downhill, about seven miles, if I remember right, from my apartment. So, I'd arrive at work fresh and ready for the day, and then get a good work out on my way home each night. And the plan worked well for several months, up until the day I found the lock cut and my bike missing from the locked basement of the building I lived in (I reported the theft to the police, and never found out who took it; though I suspect the manager stole it simply because he didn't like the daily traffic up and down the stars to the basement just below his apartment).

I ride the bike everywhere and enjoyed it a lot, despite Seattle's hilly location. I didn't mind the slow low-gear trod up all the hills because for me the downhill sprints were always worth it. But, it wasn't all smooth sailing, as they say, and a couple of incidents stand out aside from the bike being stolen.

On my way home from work one day, on the front one mile stretch down Broadway Avenue after a trudguous two-plus mile hill climb, I had taken my hands off the handlebars so I could sit up and relaz a little on the flat part of my trip. Like any regular cyclist knows, riding without hands might be showing off for a child, but after a while it becomes so easy that you end up doing it without much thought and at times when you really shouldn't, like on a busy street with a lot of traffic and parked cars as obstacles.

This was one of those times. I don't remember exactly why, but for some really dumb reason I reached down and attempted to grab the LEFT handle, and apply the break, with my RIGHT hand! Well, as you can imagine this didn't work out so well for me. I immediately lost control of the bike and crashed into a parked car (in order to avoid crashing into the street and a moving car). I was unhurt, except maybe for a few scratches. But, the car I hit --- an unrestored “classic” (i.e. older car) of some sort from the 60s --- was scratched and now had a busted sideview mirror.

I thought about just riding off, but there were a lot of people on the sidewalk and they clearly saw what had happened. So I deicded to leave a note. But, as I was writing it the owner of the car came out of a nearby establishment and asked me what I was doing (I think someone told her that her car had just been hit). I admitted to what I had done and offered to pay for the damage, which in hindsight was even stupider than the stunt that caused the accident in the first place. She ended up bilking me for about $500, which is what she claimed it cost to fix the damage. And to make things worse, I found out later that my renter's insurance would have covered the accident with only a $100 deductable payment.

Well, the real reason I'm relaying all this now is not about the accident at all, but because of the ticket I ended up getting as an indirect consequence. Here's how it happened...

After that accident I started riding my bike to and from work on side streets, with far less traffic so I didn't have to ride so close to the parked cars all the time to make room for the traffic to pass. This worked well, until one day, on my way to work, I got pulled over by a motorcycle cop and ticketed for riding my bike straight, through a “right-turn only” intersection.

The bizarre thing was that it was a side street, and there was no traffic at all. The cop had been parked out of sight, apparently just waiting for a victim to come “violate” the barely visible traffic sign marking the intersection as “right-turn only”. If I had been driving a car I probably would have observed and obeyed the sign, as I consider myself a good, and lawful, driver. But, on my bike, and with no traffic, on a side street, I honestly wasn't even paying any attention to the traffic signs. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard the police siren “bloop” and looked over my shoulder to see the cop on my tail!

I pulled aside, to let him pass, as if he really needed the room, but then he parked behind me and swaggered, literally swaggered like some T.V. motorcycle cop, wearing the tight riding pants and apparently obligatory sunglasses under his helmet.

I thought it was a joke, even though he wasn't smiling... at all! Dead serious, he asked for my license, which I produced and handed him after asking a couple of times if he was serious. He assured me as often as I asked that he was serious (and he WAS), and then proceeded to write me a ticket for a “moving violation”, insisting that because I was riding my bike on the street I was subject to the same rules and laws as any car. I could tell he hated his job, and later I came to realize that the only reason he ticketed me was probably because he was behind on his quota, and hadn't had anyone else to pick on all morning.

Well, against the advice of several friends, who all told me to just pay the ticket, I took the ticket to a judge, if for no other reason than the principle of it. I was just an honest Joe trying to ride my bike to work and not causing anyone any trouble. I thought the ticket was nuts! Apparently so did the judge, he not only threw it out, but deleted the record of it on the computer right in front of me. He said he deleted it so it wouldn't effect my driving record (it was the only ticket I had ever gotten), but even then I knew the record he was really concerned about was the city's record, and the cop's (percentage of “bad tickets” is supposed to be tracked and used to gauge performance; so by deleteing the ticket he kept it from being recorded as a “bad ticket”). But, at least I didn't have to pay for the ticket!

[J.D. February 9, 2015]

Necro-Sex

When I was still a very impressionable teen in a very unimpressionable adult prison, I heard about an inmate, in the PC (protective custody) unit of that particular prison, who had infamously kidnapped, raped, and then murdered a young prepubescent girl. But, that alone was not what made him so infamous, nor was it what made a big impression on my very impressionable mind. No. What made him famous, and “impressed” me, was the fact that he returned to where he had dumped the girl's body, and had intercourse with her again. Not just once, but, according to the other prisner who pointed him out to me and provided these details, he returned several times, over the course of several days, until he actually got caught after the girl's naked and mutilated body had been found, because he had apparently returned for one final go.

He had supposedly admitted all this to the police when he confessed to them what he had done. I don't know how much of this story was, or is, true, but I do know that it was the most bizarre thing I had ever heard at the time, and consequently it stuck in my head, complete with detailed re-constructed images of this fat slobbering man humping the little girl's rotting lifeless body. And, I can tell you that for a yung teen who had just spent two years (from the age of seventeen) in an adult “sexual psychopath treatment program” (located in a state mental hospital no less) being told and forcefully convinced that I was a “sexual deviant” who could not control my own sexual behavior, these images in my mind weren't eactly “healthy” or going to help me get better!

No, they weren't going to do anything but make me wojnder, what could possibly be so gratifying about having sex with a dead child's body that would compell someone to return not just once, but over-and-over until he got caught? Incidentally this was the exact same kind of morbid curiousity that had gotten me sent to prison (and that so-called “treatment” program) in the first place. As a fifteen-year-old I had been sent to another state institution for delinquents (after stealing a car and trying to run from the police in it --- the way they did all the time in movies back then) called Dyslin's Boys Ranch. While there, a man I had met while hitch-hiking told me how lucky I was to not have been picked up by all the “freaks” out there who like to burn boys like me with cigarettes. Of course, he told me about “all those other men” after he had already talked me into taking my clothes off so he could take some pictures, and then “other things”.

That image, of “so many” other men getting enjoyment from burning a boy's naked body with cigarettes is what prompted me to touch a lit cigarette to the butt of the boy I supposedly “raped” (because I put my dick in his mouth at one point – even though I didn't even understand at the time what “oral sex” was – but, I put my dick in the boy's mouth, so that was “rape”, in the first degree no less). I made the boy flinch, but that was all. I didn't see what was so “pleasureable” about it that “so many” men liked to do it. In fact, I'd heard that getting your dick sucked was pleasurable too, which is the only reason my dick ended up in that boy's mouth at all. I was just trying to figure out what sex was based on the “best” information I had – which, thanks to our Christian moral's culture, wasn't very good information at all, obviously.

So, now, a few years later, after having been confused more than most people can even imagine from two years of being surrounded and inundated with nothing but deviant sex (and still never told what “healthy sex” was all about beyond “consenting adult”), I was still trying to figure out what sex was when I'd heard about necrophilia for the first time, and rather explicitly. In hindsight then, it seems no surprise at all that the first chance I got to find out what having sex with a dead child was like, I did it.

I didn't kidnap and murder my first two victims (girls, aged nine and eleven) so I could have sex with their bodies. In fact, I hardly had sex with them at all (the sex was auxiliary to my “revenge against society” motive). But, when I returned to bury (for concealment) the bodies on the day after I murdered them, I remembered that PC inmate, and decided to find out what it would be like.

I had already dug the obligatory “shallow grave” and put the older child's body in it before I thought about having sex with them. I had dismembered the older girl's body to fit more compactly in the grave. So, that left the younger girl for my “experiment”. I don't actually remember many details about what I did at that point, except I think I took off all my clothes (the girls were both already nude) and mounted the child's body in the grass “missionary style”. I didn't get any more imaginative about it than that, but I remember that it was difficult for me to stay hard, and even though I eventually achieved an orgasm, it wasn't enhanced at all by the fact that my “lover” was a dead little girl. It was difficult, but I was determined.

I kidnapped, raped, and murdered several more children after that, but I never had sex with their dead bodies, nor ever wanted to (though I did use the fact that I had had sex with a dead child to invoke fear in the other child victims by threatening to do the same to them – and I did get some pleasure from that). I don't know exactly why I feel compelled to share this information, I certainly take no pleasure in doing so. But, I just sense that it is important that people realize that even something as perverted and deviant as having sex with a dead child's body can be understood; and if it can be understood, and yet perfectly acceptable to ignite impressionable and vulnerable minds with ideas about rape, murder, and sex with dead bodies, the way the media does every day? If I had never heard of rape as a child, I doubt if I ever would have become a rapist, much less a “serial killer”.

[J.D. February 12, 2015]

Casper's Insanity

Shortly after I was released from prison on parole in Seattle in 1994 I got a job working as a telephone sales rep (telemarketer) for Time Life Libraries, Inc. (or TLLI, pronounced «Tilly» for short). The workplace, a large central room with rows of five foot high partitioned booths each with a phone and computer terminal (actual terminals, not real computers like nowadays), was a rumormill. So, as soon as I was hired everyone there knew that I was a «registered sex offender» and on parole. But, I didn't know that everyone knew (I certainly didn't tell anyone except the person who interviewed me for the job, I guess that was enough), and I certainly didn't understand back then the effect such information has on the type of friends I would meet. Nobody wants to be a «sex offender's» friend for the sake of friendship alone; everyone who spoke to me at work did so because they had to (as part of the job) or because they wanted something, usually sex (of the three men and four women I met at TLLI who were willing to associate with me outside of work, all but one man and one woman wanted sex), including Casper. But, the kind of sex that Casper wanted she never got; at least, not from me. Casper wanted to be raped.

She didn't tell me this herself. In fact, I didn't find out that this was the real (and only) reason she befriended me at all until long after she physically attacked me in my own apartment one day after which I stopped associating with her. I found out about her true motices from another friend I met at TLLI named Dee (who initially befriended me because she wanted to get pregnant, so we had lots of sex, but ended up becoming good friend, too). I thought Casper was just a naive young girl who needed a mature friend to help her along in the world, so that's what I tried to be for her.

To be honest, that wasn't all I tried to do. Casper was not only young (22 years when we met) and pretty, she was also very innocent looking and spoke with such a soft unassuming voice that it made her terrible at selling books and CDs over the phone, but excellent at seducing men, which she admitted to me on several occasson that she did frequently. So naturally I wanted to have sex with her. And I thought I might actually have a chance if I was patient enough. And yet, I was perfectly willing to accept our friendship as platonic, if that's what she wanted. And according to her, it was. At least, that's what she kept insisting when the subject came up, and somehow it came up at alot --- more than I should have expected if I had been only a little wiser.

The first day we met she had invited me to accompany her to her bus stop downtown after work, which was no trouble for me since I lived within a ten or fifteen minute walk from there and her stop was not out of my way at all. Besides, I didn't know that she knew I was a «sex offender» (i.e. I hadn't told her, yet), so I thought I was making her feel safe by seeing her onto the bus that would take her out of the city safely to a residential neighborhood in Bellevue (if I remember correctly) where she lived with room and board in exchange for chores and babysitting services for a family there (according to her). But, when her bus came she suddenly started screaming and hitting herself on her head with her fists for no apparent reason. As I got to know her better I learned that this was basically how she reacts when she's not getting waht she wants, or things otherwise aren't going her way, a classic tantrum, only bizarre for the fact that she was twenty-two, not three.

At the time, though, I didn't know what to think. I stayed with her though and smiled reassuringly at all the people around to let them know everything was okay while Casper calmed herself down. I could tell this was not new behavior for her (it was clearly something practiced) so I was careful not to respond with alarm or judgement. Instead, as soon as she appeared coherent again I simply asked if she was okay. She claimed that it was an «attack» she has sometimes and has no control over when it happens. I asked if there was anything I could do to help, and she suggested innocently that if I accompanied her home on the bus it would make her feel much better. So I did.

We had to wait for the next bus though because her «tantrum» had caused her to conveniently miss the one that had already come. I rode with her to her stop in Bellevue, then got off the bus and walked her to the house she was staying at. It was well after dark, and the route she took me on to the house followed many dark streets, an abandoned playground, and even a short stretch of trail through some woods. When we got to the house she assured me she could let herself in but didn't want the family to see me so I should go, which I did. I killed a little time wandering around the neighborhood while I waited for the return bus and found an easier (and better lit) route back to the stop, where I eventually boarded the bus and went back to Seattle and home to my own apartment, much much later than usual, but feeling like I had done a good deed and maybe even made a new friend. Boy, was I naive.

After that first time I ended up walking with Casper to her bus stop many times, often making deturs to shop, or get something to eat, and lots of conversation. I soon learned that she had come to Seattle from some small mid-Western city against her parents wishes in order to pursue a «relationship» with the drummer of Nirvana (the popular rock band based in Seattle) who she had «made love to» after a concert near her own home town. The only problem was that the drummer apparently wasn't interested in a «relationship» at all. She was convinced that she could find a way to change his heart and make him fall in love with her, if she could just get his attention somehow.

So, many of our walks together ended up being expeditions to various locations related to her Nirvana quest. She gad read that they rehersed in a private studio that overlooked Lake Union (the TLLI offices also overlooked Lake Union at the time, just above Gasworks park, though they've since been moved to a new highrise downtown). So some of our earliest walks together were around Lake Union in search of the Nirvana studio. One time she took me into an alley behind the offices of the record company that produced Nirvana's albums while she climbed on top of a dumpster to look through the windows. The significance of the fact that she often lead me to secluded locations that were near places where her beloved drummer might be, or at least had been, was lost to me. In hindsight I came to realize that she probably thought that if she got raped near a Nirvana «hotspot» that word of the rape would reach the drummer and she'd win his sympathy and attention that way, or maybe «guilt» him into at least acknowledging their «relationship». But, at the time, I just thought it was like a hobby for her to track down the drummer, so I ignorantly went with her anywhere she asked.

I remember once I even rented a car and paid for a fairy trip across the sound with her and to a rural residence where she said the drummer's parents lived (and where he grew up). It was after dark when we got to the property and watched as she climbed a low fence and disappeared into a field by herself (she insisted on going alone). She was gone for about thirty or forty minutes, which seemed like a really long time as I waited in the car parked by the side of a secluded and unlit road. When she finally came back she was out of breath and seemed exasperated. I asked her what happened but she didn't say much except, “He's not here,” implying that there was no reason for us to stick around, so we left.

One day she called me and said she had found the studio where Nirvana rehersed. She was very excited and wanted me to come with her to «check it out». She said she had learned from a music magazine interview that the studio was in an old real-estate office. So she went to the library and asked for old phone books from the reference desk and looked for real-estate offices that overlooked Lake Union. She found one, and quickly confirmed that it was no longer a real-estate office by checking an updated phone book.

I was doubtful that she had really found their private studio, but went along just to spend time with her, which I always enjoyed doing. When we got to the location (by bys) she lead me into some bushes (unkept hedges) next to a small fenced-off residence-like office building that appeared abandoned, especially if you were just driving by. But, I could clearly see a sophisticated alarm panel through the glass next to the main entrance with flashing LEDs indicating something important was being protected. Casper was 100% certain that this was Nirvana's secret recording studio, but I wasn't convinced yet.

I told her to wait there (in the bushes) while I looked closer. I approached the chainlink fence, which was almost brand new, and followed it along the North side of the building to a point where it, and the building, stopped at the edge of a cliff. I could see from there that on the side of the building face out over the ciff (and looking over Lake Union) was a large picture window. Because of the cliff I was able to lean out and look up into this window.

It was mostly dark inside, but in the back I saw a light on, and a man sitting in front of a computer and lots of other electronic equipment. I also saw other band quipment, like microphones and instruments. This was definitely a music studio! I was shocked, and excitedly returned to Casper's hiding place and told her what I saw, with new respect for her sleuthing abilities.

There were no cars parked near the building, so Casper wanted to hang out for a while to see if anyone showed up. But no one ever came or went, so we eventually left.

Once, I asked Casper if she'd like to come with me fo ra drive (in a rental car) up to Snoqualmie Falls to see the waterfall at night when it is romantically lit by large spotlights. To my delight she agreed to come, but when we actually got on the road (it was about a forty minute drive to the feet of the Cascade mountain. Northeast of Seattle, if I remember right) she began acting strangely.

She said she wanted to go with me to the falls, but in the car she kept saying things like, «I'm not sure this is a good idea...» and, «I'm not comfortable with this...». Then when we actually got to the town of Snoqualmie, just a few miles shy of the falls, she suddenly said she was about to have an «attack», and asked me to stop, so I did.

I pulled into a marked parking space along the main street. It was a well lit shopping area with modest traffic. I asked her if she wanted me to drive her back, but she said no. Then I asked if she still wanted to see the falls, and she said yes, but quietly and uncertainly. So, I suggested that we continue on then, assuring her that the falls were very close, but she said, no, again!

After several more minutes of this confusing and indecisive behavior I made the decision for her, and without announcing my intentions I simply put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the road heading toward the falls. I remember thinking that once we got ther eand she saw how beautiful the falls were (and, perhaps, that they really existed) she would feel better. She didn't seem to resist my decision at all; if she had I would have turned around and driven her home. So we drove the rest of the way to the falls as I reassured her that soon she would be happy she came when she saw the falls.

When we got there we got out and walked part of the way along the well lit scenic path that lead to several semi-private alcoves with views of the falls. She seemed a little impressed and less anxious when she saw other people around. But she was still unusually nervous for some reason that she still wouldn't divulge, and before long she said she was ready to go. She seemed eager to get home, so I suggested we take the less scenic freeway back to Seattle, which was much quicker than the route we had taken to get there. When she didn't argue I assumed that was what she wanted, but after we got back in the car and I headed off further into the hills away from Snoqualmie, which was necessary to get to the I-90 freeway, she started acting even stranger than before.

She started asking a bunch of nervous questions that to me made little sense; things like (but not exactly this, because my memory isn't THAT good)...

«Where are you going?»

… «I told you, to the freeway, it's quicker.»

«Why are we driving into the woods?»

… «This is the way to the freeway.»

«Are you sure?»

… «Yes, I've been here before.»

I again offered to turn around, sensing she didn't trust me as she proclaimed, but she still refused to make any kind of clear decision, so I just drove on.

It was about ten minutes through the wooded hills on an unlit and twisting road to the freeway, and Casper seemed on the verge of completely freaking out the entire way.

From the freeway it was a twenty-minute shot to Seattle (or fifteen to Bellevue) and as soon as we got on it and headed west she got very quiet. But as soon as the freeway windened to five lanes in order to accommodate city traffic she suddenly had one of her «attacks» right there in the car (i.e. she decided to throw a tantrum). Of course, in hindsight it seems clear that the tantrum was because she once more wasn't getting what she so desperately (and secretly) wanted; to be raped in order to get sympathy (not just from the Nirvana drummer, but also from her parents, who refused to support her financially when she left home chasing after him). But, at the time I just thought it was strange.. and dangerous. It clearly wasn't safe to be driving on a busy freeway with her freaking out like that in the seat right next to me. So, I pulled over to the emergency lane and turned on the blinkers.

Apparently that wasn't the reaction she expected. Her «attack» suddenly ended and she asked, «Why did you pull over?» I told her that it was unsafe for me to drive while she was freaking out like that, not only because of the obvious distraction, but she could also easily crash the car if she panicked and grabbed the wheel, or me for that matter. She seemed to concede my point ad told me she was okay so we could continue, which I did.

She remained quiet for the rest of the way «home». Wherever that was I don't recall --- she never lived in any one place for very long. She was kicked out by the family she was staying with for reasons I can only guess, though it'd probably be a good guess to say it was somehow related to her «insane» behavior. She bounced around a lot, staying with various «friends». And, twice while I knew her, she actually rented her own apartment, but then lost them the first time rent came due.

I frequently encouraged her to find her «passion in life» and had hopes she would when she once invited me to go with her as moral support to an interview with an enrollment counselor at the Seattle Art Institute. I sat and listened as she was told in no uncertain terms that she could start classes almost immediately and the school would make all the financial arrangements (i.e. loans and grants). But, she never returned to the school; so I'm not even sure why she went to the interview in the first place, or asked me to come along. Perhaps it was merely to appease me (I don't think she expected to be accepted so easily).

She was a terrible telephone sales rep, so couldn't make much more than minimum wage at TLLI. So, I also encouraged her to find a job that paid better (non-commission), and she did get hired to work at a small futon sales store. I helped her «move» (if you can count two suitcases and a small box of stuff as «moving») to an apartment near the store that she «rented» somehow. It was a potentially sustainable arrangement for her (i.e. she should have been able to make rent and support herself easily if she kept the job) so I once more had hope. But, the first day that she was supposed to open the store for business (they only had a handful of employees and each apparently took their turn opening the shop throughout the week) she failed to show up and consequently got fired. I remember this clearly because for some reason (guess) she made sure I knew she was supposed to open the store and would be «all alone» there for several hours until the other employees arrived. She even pointed out how easy it would be for someone to take her into the back of the store and rape her, and asked if I would come help her on that day to open up (the store). I assured her that her «fears» were completely irrational, and told her I had other obligations, which I did (I had gotten a new job myself in Bothel by this time and was no longer working at TLLI either). So, I didn't show up to «help» open, and she for some reason decided not to show up either.

She soon lost the apartment and was once more looking for a place to crash. It seems the hospitality of her «friends» (whom she never once introduced me to) had worn thin, so she asked if she could stay with me, «for a few days». Of course I said, Yes! I thought that maybe she was finally learning that she could trust me, as a friend. But, the more likely truth is that moving in with me was just her final desperate attempt to get me to rape her. It didn't work any better than any of her other attempts, though it did finally end up ending our friendship, and breaking my heart in the process.

She only brought one suitcase with her. The rest of her stuff was stashed at one of her «friend's» house. Our first and last night together started out peaceably enough, she seemed happy to have someplace to stay, and I did everything I could to make her feel comfortable and safe. My apartment was only a studio though, so I offered her the queen-size hide-a-bed and told her I'd be perfectly comfortable sleeping on the floor using the sofa cushions for a bed. But she insisted that the bed was big enough for both of us. I stammered, of course, if only out of propriety. It didn't take much for her to convince me though.

Was it possible that she wanted to have sex? The possibility excited me, even though she had told me over and over that she was not interested in having sex with me, and she even reaffirmed this before she came to my apartment. But, maybe having sex with me was her way of showing her appreciation; I certainly saw nothing wrong with that! And then when she stripped down to only a T-shirt and panties (or maybe bra and panties, I don't remember exactly, except she definitely took her pants off) and climbed under the covers I thought for sure, «this is it!»

But, of course, it wasn't. With Casper I had learned that I could never be sure about anything, especially sex. So, after I took my own pants off, and keeping my underpants on, I climbed into bed on my side and waited for her to make her move. I don't remember exactly what happened next anymore --- whether or not she asked me to «hold her», or if I asked her and she merely consented, for example --- but I do remember that even though she consented to spooning, in our underwear, she still insisted that she was not interested in having sex with her. Needless to say (I hope), I was more confused about sex at that moment than I had ever been in my life (and I served an extra seven years in prison because the parole board thought I was «confused» about sex!). Rape was the last thing on my mind though. In fact, the entire time I knew Casper I never once thought about raping her. I mostly just wanted to be her friend, even more than I wanted to have sex with her. So her «consent» was the most important thing to me at that moment, and I couldn't tell what she wanted at all.

So, after several minutes, after she seemed to have fallen asleep, I got out of bed quietly, put on my pants, then sat silently in my favorite reading chair which I also used to meditate (remember, there was no other room for me to go to, or I would have). I put on the pants simply because it was more comfortable for me to be dressed, and I sat in the chair because I needed to sort out my feelings about what was happening (i.e. meditate).

But, a moment later my respite was interrupted when Casper woke up for no apparent reason (she didn't stir when I got out of bed and got dressed, and when she seemed to wake up I was just sitting quietly with my eyes closed --- perhaps the silence is what woke her up). With a practiced soft and innocent voice she asked me if something was wrong; why was I just sitting there?

I remembr considering my answer for several seconds, then deciding to just tell her how I honestly felt; which was completely confused by her seemingly seductive behavior and contradictory intentions.

I don't remember exactly what I said, but I clearly remember that she did not respond well. She jumped out of bed, still half-dressed, and started yelling and screaming about how all men are only interested in the same thing; namely sex. I was hurt by her accusation, especially after putting so much effort over the entire time I had known her into assuring her that her friendship --- even if it remained completely platonic --- was the most important thing to me. But, I kept quiet and let her vent her feelings, which I thought was better for her than beating herself in the head with her fists.

At some point I must have moved from the chair to sit on the floor. I don't remember why (possibly to be less threatening), but that's where I was (sitting on the floor) when she tried to kick me. But, before she did that she had flipped over my coffee table, almost breaking its glass top against the metal frame of the hide-a-bed. It seemed she was doing all this to get some kind of reaction from me, but I wasn't reacting, at least not until she actually tred to hurt me physically.

I loved her enough to let her hurt my feelings; enough to let her accuse me of only caring about sex; enough to let her totally embarrass me in earshot of all my neighbors; and even enough to not get mad when she tried to break my furniture; but I guess I didn't love her enough to let her kick me in the fact while I sat and did nothing. I wasn't afraid of her hurting me --- if she did so accidentally I would have instantly forgiven her. But, it was the deliberate attempt to cause physical harm at which I drew the line with anyone.

I was able to deflect the kick with little effort. It wasn't very powerful, but it was enough to get me to react. I got up and grabbed both of her wrists so she couldn't try to hit me, then I pushed her down to the floor, still holding her wrists, and held her there. She suddenly got quiet and became completely submissive; she must have thought I was finally going to rape her. But, instead I just told her --- with as much ice in my voice as I could muster over my emotions --- «Get your stuff and get out!» (And I do remember those words clearly, because it hurt a lot for em to say them.)

It must have taken a moment for my words to sink in, but eventually I could tell that she understood, and seemed willing to comply. So, I let go of her wrists and let her get up. I don't remember if either of us said anything as she got dressed and gathered her things. But she did just that and then left my apartment without further incident.

I was instantly worried about her safety at that time of night in the middle of the city. So, a few minutes after she left I left too, and followed her without letting her see me for several blocks. She made a beeline for downtown, the least safe direction she could have chosen. I soon lost sight of her and returned to my apartment. I then became more and more worried, especially by the direction she took. Seattle is a city that sleeps at night, so the streets downtown are mostly deserted and relatively unsafe, especially for a young and attractive woman. Maybe she was still hoping to get raped, if not by me then by some stranger. I don't know, but I was sincerely concerned about her, so I called 911 and tried to ask for the police to make sure she got someplace safe.

The police came to my apartment building instead, so I met them out front in order to avoid bothering my neighbors. I told them there had been an altercation, but no one was hurt. But when they questioned why I had called the police if no crime had occurred I started to cry and it became hard for me to speak without choking on my words. I just wanted them to make sure Casper was safe, because I couldn't protect her myself any more. But they started treating me like a suspect, especially after I started crying. When I realized that they thought I had hurt her and were now trying to solicit a street confession I told them that I had nothing else to say and returned to my apartment, where I probably cried myself to sleep with a badly broken heart.

I didn't see or hear anything about Casper again after that until more than a year later when I returned to TLLI part-time for extra money after I was released back on parole after a completely unrelated parole violation. She had gone back to work ther ealso, and one of the floor managers told me that when she saw me being interviewed she threatened to quit if I were hired. Well, I was hired, but she didn't quit. But, neither did I pay her any attention. I spent most of my breaks with my lady friend, Dee, who had become a good friend by then. When I told Dee about Casper she told me what she heard about Casper's ploys to get raped. Casper herself had apparently told several people that she wanted to get raped when they tried to warn her away from me because I was a sex offender. But nobody ever tried to warn me about her!

I was lucky that Casper never realized how easy it would have been to just falsely accuse me of raping her. Such false accusations are far more common than the System would have you think, because it completely undermines their whole, «we protect the innocent» facade. And for a «sex offender» on parole, like me at the time, the words, «innocent until proven guilty» are completely meaningless. I would have been arrested and returned to prison without even a trial. And even if she recanted her accusation I still would have been found guilty of some parole violation just to prevent me from filing a civil action. That's just how the «System» works, and anyone who thinks not is plainly ignorant.

 

[J.D. January 3, 2015]

Sex With Gigi

The oldest of my three older sisters once “caught” me trying to have sex with our family dog, Gigi, in the bathroom. The truth is that I didn’t even know what “sex” was at the time. I was thirteen years old, but because of what that doctor did to me during his “medical examination” I thought that my penis got hard so I could pleasure myself, not to have intercourse.

In other words, yes, I had my pants off in the bathroom, with Gigi between my legs. But, I wasn’t trying to have intercourse with her; I didn’t even know what intercourse was (and even if I did know what it was then, I realize now that it physically wouldn’t have been possible because Gigi was too small of a dog for that). All I was doing was masturbating, the same way the doctor had masturbated me just months before, introducing me to the perverse world of deviant sexual pleasure; this world.

My sister, of course, assumed otherwise. I had no idea at the time what she must have thought I was trying to do to Gigi. She hollered and screamed about me “trying to have sex with Gigi!” But, the word “sex” itself was still pretty much a mystery to me. I knew it meant something shameful, and that it involved the penis. Other than that I basically had no clue.

Most children know more about sex at age eight than I did at thirteen. They learn it from other (usually older) children, and combine that with what they hear from adults, see on T.V., and learn in school. But, this culture of sexual mystery doesn’t always result in adequate education for all children (in fact, studies have shown consistently that it rarely results in adequate education at all). In some cases, by mere chance, a child is left so confused about sex that masturbating on the back of a dog seems like a reasonable thing to do. And then when an older sister comes along and physically attacks such a boy for “hurting” the animal, the confusion only becomes worse, exacerbated to the point of desperation.

I’m writing this now in order to offer a glimpse into the confusing world of my youthful experiences that ultimately lead to my seeking “sex” with other children against their will. To call it “evidence” of “early sexual deviancy” is like calling a sweet tooth evidence of “latent obese tendencies”. It’s just silly. Except in this case it is a silliness that eventually ended up getting seven people murdered, when just a little understanding (i.e. non-silliness) could have so easily prevented the cycle of ignorance from coming full circle to its inevitable violent outcome. (see note).

[J.D. September 12, 2014]

(Note: If someone had taken the time to just talk openly with me about sex, and taught me what I wanted so desperately to know, I would have never felt the need to impose my confusing onto other children. Where were all the loving pedophiles when I needed one?)

What Happened In Prison – Part VI: The Streets

After over 15 years of imprisonment and psychological torment for doing to a younger boy the same thing that older boys and men had done to me all my adolescent life, I was paroled at last. But, I wasn’t free, and knew I never would be. My rage was my prison. It took a lot of effort to keep it hidden. But, I’d been practicing for several years, preparing explicitly for this very opportunity. Soon I would make society pay for what it did to me, but first I had to make sure I could hit them without getting hit back. I had to make them unwary of my intentions, and I knew exactly how.

I was the model parolee. I got my first job within days of my release, as a telemarketer for Time Life Libraries, Inc. I never missed a rent payment for my room at the Interaction Transition (I.T.) House in Seattle, and even saved up enough money within just three or four months for first, last, and deposit on an apartment of my own near downtown in a newly renovated complex, called the Tuscany, with all brand new appliances, carpeting, and bathroom fixtures. I especially liked the large mirrored closet doors that made my new studio apartment look twice as big as it really was.

I registered as a “sex offender” on my first day in Seattle, right after my older homosexual friend --- and soon to be lover --- Dave, picked me up at the Sea-Tac Airport. My mother was with him, and after a quick stop at the City-County building downtown (so I could register), we all three went to the Seattle Centre to celebrate my release. Nothing could have been more surreal than that day, especially looking up at the Space Needle with my mom by my side --- as I once did as a child only 17 years hence.

But, the unrealness of it all didn’t distract me for a moment. Most of my life had been one unreal/unbelievable moment after another. So the surrealness of my first day on parole was taken in stride. I hit the ground running without even giving any of it a second thought. I had a clear goal in front of me, and until I reached it little else mattered to me.

Of course I couldn’t let the obsession show, so on the outside, for my mother’s sake and for Dave’s sake, I was like a kid on his first visit to a Toys-R-Us store. Not that I didn’t feel the excitement that I projected --- feeling it was part of the art --- but deep inside, in the part of myself that I ended up referring to as “the dungeon”, I sat coldly watching myself pretending on the surface, knowing it was all just for show; knowing nothing was real, not my mom, not Dave, not my excitement, not even the city. Only one thing was real: my rage. It was the only thing in my life that never changed; the one constant that kept my head above water, and the only part of my reality that made any sense to me. It was my raison d’etre, and my love.

Everything went as I planned. I avoided all the traps and pitfalls layed out by the system to keep people recycling through the system once they are caught up in it; like the narc dressed like a hippie on the busride to work one day who asked me where he could buy some weed. If I had so much as just mentioned the part of town he should go look in then I would have violated my parole. So I said, honestly as it turned out at the time, “I have no idea, sorry I can’t help you.”

Traps like that are what account for the extremely high recidivism rates for parolees, not actual crime. Not that I didn’t commit a crime or two while I was on parole. I just never did anything “stupid”, like buying drugs from someone I didn’t know, or dropping my pants in front of someone in the park who wasn’t already hard and waiting for me to do so. Once I went so far as to steal a boy’s underpants out of an unlocked locker at a public swimpool, but I never said as much as “hi” to the boy himself, nor did I let him see me checking him out as he dressed into his swim trunks. In fact, I was always extra careful around children at all times. Aside from the underpants, which I only kept for a few days before I got rid of them as “too risky”, I never did or kept anything questionable in that regard. Unlike “stupid” pedophiles, I kept my obsession hidden deep in my dungeon, and very very rarely ever let it manifest on the surface of my reality.

That’s why I never got caught. People who “knew” me “knew” that I was not a pedophile, or otherwise sexually interested in children. I never sought children out in parks, or stores, not even just to look. I did not keep child related items or pictures in my apartment (again, with rare and extremely limited exceptions, like those underpants).

Once I was using the men’s room at the Jack In The Box restaurant on Broadway and a gorgeous little boy, no more than six years old, came in all by himself. I could have easily pretended to wash my hands while I checked him out and no one would have been the wiser. But instead I did what most men would do; I hurried up and got out of there before anyone thought it was even a little strange that I didn’t hurry up and got out of there. As it turned out the boy’s mother was waiting just outside the door, and she actually smiled at me when she saw me rushing out just seconds after her boy went in. I understood “the cod” of “expected behavior” around children the way most pedophiles never do.

I later reported this “incident” to my parole officer, who in turn reported it to the polygraph examiner, who in turn included it in my bi-annual parolee polygraph exam; I passed with flying colors when he asked, “Did you attempt to peep on a boy in a public restroom?” (or something like that). It was because of this nearly complete detachment of my “dungeon” from my surface reality that allowed me to convince so many people, including my parole officers, and psychologists, that I was not interested in children for sex at all.

In fact, I even started to fool myself, in a sense (actually, I had to fool myself first if I really wanted to fool anyone else). Only by fooling myself could I fool others without even thinking about it. But there still had to be at least a thin thread of truth that ran up from my “dungeon” or else I wasn’t fooling anybody. Without that thread of malice then I would have nothing to hide, and I would have been exactly what I pretended to be; an honest to God repentant rapist who never wanted to hurt anyone. But my act was so good that after a while I started to question my need for that thread. And that question ended up becoming a major source of stress and internal conflict for me.

Did I really need vengeance? Could I not live out my life without ever again thinking about all “they” took from me, and all the pain they cause me and my family? Couldn’t I just become the content, if not happy, person I pretended to be? Must I rape and kill, as I had for so long planned, in order to avenge my years of degradation, humiliation, pain, and fear?

I asked these same questions over and over so often that it became almost a melody of desperation in my mind. I honestly did not want to rape or kill anyone. I was searching for the way to an answer that would let me out of my real prison; my “dungeon”, as it were. But no amount of pleading, or rationalizing, or even good reasons could dissuade me from the one answer that overcame all attempts to change the course I was on. That one answer was simple and pure: I swore to myself that I would have my revenge, that I would make “them” pay for what they so ignorantly and so callously had done to me. It was that oath that gave me the will to live, and the desire to prosper, just so I could hurt those who hurt me, and my family. Justice is a cruel and demanding god, and one that is impossible to reason with. No real evil is ever done in the name of evil.

I was doing so well. I was honored as Rookie of the Year at Time Life Libraries. It seems I had a real knack for salesmanship. I averaged over $12 an hour with commissions, which was pretty good for someone fresh out of prison and no job history to speak of.

I also applied for a job with a Temp agency, and eventually got placed doing tech support for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator over the Christmas rush. My employer reports were so positive from that job that I got placed again almost immediately doing inside sales support for a medium sized software company in Brothel (just North of Seattle). They hired three temps to help with a new version release of their “Laplink” software, but they kept me on and even assigned me to a cubicle in with the regular sales staff after they let the other temps go. Amongst other things, I became the technical liaison between the sales staff and the new company-wide database technician. My job was to train the sales staff on how to use the new database software, and also relay the sales staff requests for changes and updates to the I.T. staff. This, and other aspects of my job, required me to communicate frequently with people from several different departments, including the CEO on at least one occasion. I was even invited once to a sales staff meeting in hopes that I could provide some “fresh input” of ideas (I didn’t), which really made me feel out of place, though honored at the same time. I never got invited again after that, but I did get invited to join the company softball team, which I did, and played several games that summer as a fielder.

Because of the increased income from the inside sales job (I never did any actual sales, I was more like support for the sales staff), I was able to afford a car. I bought a used (’87) Buick Skylark at a big used car sales event at the Northgate mall. Of course I did it by taking out a high-interest auto-loan, but I had a car! My first! (A week later I got a notice from the bank demanding a larger down-payment; money I didn’t have, and I almost died from the heartbreak of it. But my friend Dave bailed me out, not by loaning me the money for the larger down-payment, but instead by co-signing for the car, which satisfied the bank with his credit. Of course Dave got burned when I absconded with the car about a year later, but he was able to save his credit by just paying off the loan, and I eventually, though slowly, paid him back after I got out of prison and moved to Fargo.)

I loved my car, it had power everything, A/C, and the larger six-cylinder engine. The previous owner, literally a little old lady, who I met when she handed me complete service records from the day she bought it brand new, right down to every scheduled oil change and tired rotation. There was a design flaw in the engine mounts that caused the larger engine to vibrate the car at certain speeds, but other than that the car was in perfect condition. It was also the last piece of my plan that I needed to enact my revenge against society, and as such marked the beginning of the end of my parole.

With a car I had the mobility I needed to carry out my plan. And my plan was to establish a base of circumstances that would allow me to seek out and take advantage of any stray child I came across. This “stray child” strategy is a classic in the annals of nature making it a tried and true technique. I knew from studying police tactics and procedures that it is also almost impossible to get caught so long as you maintain stealth and distance (i.e. lack of connection to the “crime scene” and/or victim). The police rely on pure chance to solve crimes of opportunity like this. So, my plan was to reduce the odds; and a car was a huge odds reducer.

Another part of my plan was to act as soon as practical. I knew that the odds of completing my parole successfully were already against me. Being a model parolee helped reduce the odds of my being violated, but those odds were still high and against me. So, I knew I had to act quick, or lose my chance, possibly forever (note: I am relaying the frame of mind I was in at the time; the truth of all this is only relevant in so far as it is what I believed at the time – even though my current beliefs and understanding are quite different).

Interesting enough, though my focus back then was clearly on enacting my revenge much of the time, I still had a very active and sophisticated life in many other regards. Dave and I joined a club of gay couples that met monthly for social functions. I visited my mother in Tacoma often, and my sister in Poulsbo a little less often. I sometimes attended parties where I was invited by co-workers (at Time Life Libraries), and even got involved with a couple different women and lots of different men on occasion.

One of my parole conditions was that I enroll in an outpatient sex offender treatment program. At first I attended some weekly meetings held by a company that was founded by an x-con who got a doctorate degree in psychology and then started his company catering to sex offenders who were required (like me) to receive “sex offender treatment” as a parole/probation condition or court order. It quickly became clear to me that this was just another scam designed to get money for simply writing meaningless reports; in this case the reports were “treatment” reports to the parole/probation officers or court judges.

I never actually met the x-con himself. Even though he signed off on all the reports, they were actually written by one of several “therapists” who worked (or rather, did all the work) for him. In my case the therapist was an extremely manipulative and domineering woman with (to me at least) very obvious dominance issues over men. She ran the group meeting like a psychological dominatrix, controlling every aspect, and even steering the conversations with obvious manipulative tactics in order to get the men to say what she needed them to say for her reports. If anyone failed to cooperate, like me for instance, she would stir the group into a frenzied and practiced attack on that person’s position, whatever it might be.

I couldn’t believe the kind of garbage therapy she was dishing out for those men. Just for example, I remember one man disclosing to her (in group) that he had had anonymous sex with men in a public park. Her advice was to seek anonymous sex at a sex club instead. She referred to this as a “responsible alternative”.

At the time I had never heard of either (public sex or sex clubs; yes, I was that naïve; remember, I had been incarcerated since I was 16, and a very inexperienced 16 at that). So for me it was all food for my own perversions (i.e. it made me “sicker”).

I ended up getting permission from my parole officer to change to a private therapist who specialized in therapy for gay men, not sex offenders. His rates were a bit higher, but the sessions were one-on-one, much closer to where I lived (the previous meetings were in Bellevue, a long bus ride at the time for me, and late in the evening so if I missed my bus I wouldn’t be able to get home), and less frequent (monthly instead of weekly).

Most parole officers would never have approved such a change. But my first parole officer in Seattle was close to retirement and more interested in treating his charges like human beings than x-cons. I really respected him for this. I had to switch to a downtown parole officer when I moved out of the I.T. House into the Tuscany apartment, so I only had him for short time. But I honestly believe that he was the one who really made me question my need for revenge against society. Not that I ever spoke to him about it, but the way he spoke to me, and treated me, made me feel welcomed and wanted. I really think that if I could have kept him as my parole officer that I might have actually successfully completed my parole (i.e. gave up my desire for revenge and become a “responsible” member of society). I make this claim based on the fact that every time I chose the path of revenge (or, “justice” as it is often called from the other side of the fence) I did so as a direct consequence of some major rejection. So, feeling wanted and accepted, especially by an official officer of society, really made a big difference in how I felt in general, the choices I made, and in my overall reaction to any rejections I experienced.

The subsequent parole officers I was assigned to treated me like an x-con, always with suspicion and cold detachment. Shortly after my move to the Tuscany and getting a new parole officer (my first parole officer actually vouched for me so I could get into the Tuscany, and the manager --- a restricted marine who, along with his wife, became my friends and invited me over for dinner on occasion --- told me later that when he found out I was a sex offender he was going to reject my application, until my parole officer convinced him to give me a chance; any other parole officer would have remained “neutral” in a situation like that and I would have been rejected once again) I was soon visiting public parks at night looking for some anonymous “acceptance” that I desperately needed just to feel “normal”. I did this, of course, without telling anyone, not even my lover, Dave. I always used “protection” at least, and the cops, undercover or not, were always so obvious I could avoid them easily. The only real threat was getting mugged or otherwise assaulted, but that was a threat no matter what I was doing (and it only happened once, when a man decided he wasn’t finished pleasuring himself after I was, so he grabbed my privates to prevent me from leaving and I just coldly told him, “If you don’t let go, in three seconds I’m going to break your neck.” He calculated the threat for two seconds, then let go, and that was that). I never took risks with STDs, by not using a condom for example, and I always made sure there was enough light so I could inspect the bodies I had sex with before doing so. And I never caught so much as crabs or anything else, which I admit was some luck, but mostly caution (you might be surprised to learn how cautious most other men were as well, the in-cautious ones don’t last long by virtue of simple natural selection at work).

I got along so well with the “gay therapist” that he invited me to attend an annual retreat that he held for select clients, all expenses paid! This was shortly after I had bought my car, but still living in the Tuscany apartment. The therapist convinced me to leave my car in the garage (a small parking space that cost me an additional $120 a month in the basement of the Tuscany) and car pool with another one of his clients, Dave “Wingy” Wingert, who turned out to be a popular day-time radio show host for one of the biggest stations in Seattle. I had never heard of him before (I wasn’t much into day-time radio) but he was nice and we got along famously (get it? “famously”?). He had just bought a “pre-owned” Lexus, and was happy to take it out for a stretch, and “share the wealth”, so to speak, with someone less fortunate. (Actually, for what he told me he paid for the only slightly used Lexus I wasn’t very impressed. It seemed to me that the main “feature” of the car was the name, “Lexus”. My Buick Skylark had everything his Lexus had, except the price tag and the name brand.)

The retreat was on the Eastern slopes of the Cascade mountain range, in a modern cabin next to a stream set in the forest, but with several other similar cabins all neatly lined up in a row along the stream; extremely bourgeois. We slept in our own sleeping bags (one of the “must bring” items) on narrow bunks that seemed to occupy odd places throughout the cabin (like along the stairs, and in the upstairs foyer). There were about ten or eleven other “clients” in attendance, and the activities as I recall centered around group meetings in the cabin dayroom (though instead of sitting around in chairs arranged in a circle like some typical therapy group we sat on far more comfortable cabin furniture arrange haphazardly).

Aside from “Wingy” and the therapist (whose name I just remembered was Glen), there were only two other men at this retreat who stand out in my memory. The first was the top psychiatrist from the University of Washington’s psychological trauma research center, who despite the retreat “rule” of no sex, screwed my brains out several times over that weekend (when I tried to apologize to Glen later about so flagrantly break the rules he said, “No problem”. The other retreat members, who couldn’t avoid knowing that we were having sex every chance we got, thought it was “very romantic”. Glen was referring to the fact that on the second night of the retreat, the professor and I shared the same sleeping bag outside on the back porch, “under the stars”. Of course the real reason we slept “under the stars” was so we could have a little privacy to do, you know what!).

It seems I have a thing for successful doctors, as I’ve had flings with several over the years. Or, maybe it's they who have a “thing” for me; I don’t know. All I know is that when someone tells me they’re a doctor I become like putty for them to do with what they like. (I wonder now how much that has to do with the fact that my very first orgasm, at the age of thirteen, was at the hands of a doctors as I lay with my pants down on his examining table while he masturbated me. When it happened I had no idea what an orgasm was, so I had no idea I was technically being “molested”: all I knew was that it felt good; very, very good.) Needless to say, I didn’t initiate anything with the doctor at this retreat, I just went along with whatever he wanted, and that seemed to turn him on more than anything. I admit though, I was certainly turned on as well. Not only because he was a successful doctor, but also because he was tall (taller than me by several inches; hence over 6’3”), muscular, and good-looking, which made him practically irresistible to my libido (which he seemed to know well). I saw him a couple of times more after the retreat, but as it turned out our personalities clashed (we were both sexual narcissists), so it never went any further than that.

The other man that I remember from this retreat was a short overweight balding man. He was also, I found out later, the wealthiest man there. I was told that he was the owner and CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company in Seattle with over a thousand employees. But that’s not the reason I remember him (money has never impressed me much, especially not at that point in my life). What I remember about him is what he said to me during a trust-building exercise that Glen asked us to do as part of the retreat.

It was in the afternoon of the second day (a Saturday), before the doctor and I had had a chance to get really steamy (that happened Saturday evening). Glen had asked everyone to pair off in twos, and I was approached by this fat bald guy and asked I I’d be his partner for the exercise. I agreed for no particular reason, and then Glen instructed everybody to find a private space to talk, and to share a secret with each other.

My “partner” and I headed out back down toward the stream. I honestly don’t remember what “secret” I shared with him (though it certainly wasn’t anything about the contents of my “dungeon”) but his “secret” stands as one of the many shocking revelations I received relatively late in my life. This man, this multi-millionaire and CEO of his own successful company, told me, the x-con/sex offender (by this time I had already voluntarily disclosed that information), that he secretly wished he could be a popular and likeable person, like me!

Like me?!

I was flabbergasted! Everyone else at this retreat were very successful gay members of society. I was a social outcast invited on a whim by a therapist who probably just wanted to fill an empty bunk (that’s what I thought at the time, but I realized later that Glen genuinely respected me as a person and knew I would be accepted by these men for who I was, which he thought would be “therapeutic” for me; Glen was one of those rare souls who understood naturally what a person needs to “heal”). Once more I was learning that the negative way in which I saw myself wasn’t how other people saw me. I grew up believing I was an ugly child, but all my childhood pictures show a genuinely beautiful and healthy boy! I thought I was stupid too, and a slow learner. But even though I had only completed the ninth-grade when I got to prison all the academic level tests showed me to be at college levels for all categories! And now, after believing all my life that I was an unlikeable “dork”, I was being told by a man with no ulterior motives that I was popular, and likeable! Wow!

I actually ended up consoling this guy with platitudes that emphasized the fact that I did not see myself as popular at all, and if I were, then there was certainly nothing to be desired about it since I could perceive no benefits from being so. But his “secret” stuck with me, and has helped open my eyes to how I so often deceive myself, both positively and negatively, ever since.

As I already mentioned, throughout all my adventures on parole in Seattle I was constantly struggling with the “monster” that lurked menacingly in the dungeon of my mind. I had never anticipated such a struggle to ensue and was quite unprepared for it. The question remained: Should I compromise my private principles by breaking such a sacred promise to myself; the promise that “kept me alive” all those years of unjust torment, the promise to get even? Or, should I take my revenge as planned, without remorse, and with clear conscience? There were a couple of incidents that finally pushed me over the ledge of retribution, but in hindsight I was destined to be pushed over that ledge one way or another by sheer proximity alone. It’s one thing to visit the edge, look down, then back away. It’s completely another to just stand there, looking both ways over and over, trying to decide whether or not to jump, until it’s too late.

Well, not surprisingly, I didn’t jump. I got pushed. And one of the people who pushed me was the new polygraph examiner. He was an x-cop, and unlike the previous examiner, who seemed to actually want to help a parolee pass their routine exams, this pig clearly brought his “good guy, bad guy” attitude with him into the exam room, and all x-cons --- as far as he was concerned --- were the bad guys.

I only ended up being examined by him twice, and both times he pushed and pushed and pushed, until he had what he wanted; proof that I was a “bad guy”.

The first time he examined me caught me completely off guard. Though I had been struggling with my conscience, I had not yet done anything that could seriously be considered a real violation of my parole. This x-cop decided otherwise. During the pre-exam interview I disclosed to him (thinking he’d be on my side) that I had accidently picked up my brother’s handgun, which he had removed from his belt and set next to the computer in my apartment during a visit. I explained that the holster it was in looked like a triangular wallet, and completely concealed the weapon inside. I told the examiner that I didn’t realize it was my brother’s gun (which I knew he was licensed to carry concealed) until I felt the weight of it in my hand, at which time I scolded my brother for even having it in my apartment, and asked him to take it out and lock it in his car.

Now, I’m tempted here to leave my story about “the gun incident” just as I told that x-cop examiner. But, the truth is that in an effort to befriend my brother during the visit I had expressed an interest in his gun, that I knew he was very proud of and always had on him. I asked him to show it to me, at which point he removed it from the holster, ejected the clip, insured the champer was empty, then handed it to me unloaded. I feigned fascination for his sake, then handed it back. I then explained to my brother that even being near a gun could potentially get me in trouble, and asked him not to bring it, or at least not mention it, when he visits. The only reason I told the polygraph examiner anything was to avoid a “fail” on a question like, “Have you touched a gun or any other weapon in violation of your parole?”

Well, I actually passed that particular polygraph exam, but that oinker filed a report about the “gun incident”, calling it a “parole violation” and possible criminal offense. The exam was on a Friday evening, so I had to go the entire weekend thinking I would be arrested on the violation on Monday, as soon as my parole officer saw the report. That was all the “push” I needed. Even though on Monday, when I called my P.O. to get the bad news, she told me not to worry about it. She said she had to submit the report to the parole board, but that she was recommending no violation. I thought I “skated” on that one, but the close call only reminded me of how terribly easy it would be for me to get violated for some completely stupid and unexpected reason at any time, in spite of all my efforts to be a model parolee.

When the parole board saw the report they ordered that I be arrested and held for a violation hearing. But, that was many months (as I recall) later. In the meantime I had gotten the push I needed to step up my plans for personal justice before I lost my chance, possibly forever. (A “deadly weapon” possession charge could send me back to prison for at least ten years, or more, and Washington state was notorious for taking criminal charges to the extreme limits. They once convicted a man for manslaughter after he was arrested for eluding the police, because one of the “investigating officers” at the arrest scene walked off a cliff in the dark and fell to his death, while the suspect sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car! And that’s just one example of the state’s insane lust for what I calls “justice”. So in my mind I had good reason to fear being arrested at any time for almost anything, just because in the state’s mind I was a “criminal” and therefor fair game).

Consequently I redoubled my efforts to find a vulnerable child to kidnap, rape, and murder (because that’s exactly what I felt was “expected” from me, or at least “feared”; thus making it the most potent “punishment” I could invoke personally against my most feared and hated enemy, the “faceless” society that condemned me as a child and took my life away before I even understood what life was) as my “poetic” revenge. Any question of ever being able to forgive “them” and move on with my life was answered by that x-cop polygraph examiner’s accusations: NO! He made it imminently clear that I could never have my life back, that I would never be accepted by society no matter how hard I tried to be “normal”. And worst of all, that I would always be forced to live in fear of my prison nightmare happening all over again, at any time, for any reason. That “pig” being the pig he was, accomplished exactly what he wanted, to make me feel HIS power and control over my life, and my lack of power and control over my own life. That’s what pigs do, ignorantly believing that their imposed dominance will somehow make things better, and completely ignoring the so very obvious fact that it consistently only makes things worse. (My first parole officer was no such pig. More people like him in positions of “authority” in this world would make for far fewer people like me.)

(I should emphasize again, that I am relaying my thinking at that time as best as I can, and that this is not necessarily my thinking now; i.e. I have since broadened my understanding, to say least.)

I got my chance on July 5^th, 1996. It was just a week before I was planning to move in with a couple of gay meth-heads, paying them $250 a month for an extra room in the house they rented together right on the North Seattle city limit line. The move was meant to save money. Rent had gone up at the Tuscany, and the expense of a parking space, not to mention the car itself, was a little more than I could afford; I had bit off more than I could chew, and this move was my first step backward from all the progress I had been making until then.

Joe and Ed tried real hard to be accepted as a regular gay couple. My friend, Dave, had met them, apparently the same way he met me, through a personal ad in the Seattle Gay News (I don’t remember ever asking whose ad it was, but I’m sure it was Dave’s). I never used meth with them, and they kept their meth use to themselves. But we smoked a lot of pot together.

But, before I moved in I was in their neighborhood visiting my lady-friend, Dee. I picked her up at her home, took her to a Dairy Queen restaurant, and bought enough ice cream for her and her family (two young girls and estranged husband, who stayed home) and a sundae for myself. When I dropped her off back at her house (she lived about five blocks west of Joe and Ed’s house just across Aurora Avenue) her husband, Lee, came outside and started yelling at me for taking Dee away from her family obligations. Instead of just driving away, as Dee tried to get me to do, I rolled down my window and invited him to say his piece.

Apparently he, Dee, and the girls, had planned to watch a rented movie together as a family when I showed up “out of the blue”; and ran off with the children’s mother. I listened to his complaint patiently, but instead of defending myself, or Dee, I simply told him that his was a grown woman responsible for her own choices, and if he had any issues with her decisions then he needed to talk to her, not me. I have to give the man some respect though, because as clearly offended as he rightfully was, he was still able to see the logic in my reasoning, and promptly aborted his verbal assault on me and went inside, presumably to finish the conversation with Dee. (I actually spoke to Dee about this whole incident later, and told her that I had to take sides against her in that case: she should have put her family ahead of me, and I made sure she understood that in the future I hoped she would.)

So anyway, after dropping Dee off I drove onto Aurora Avenue, but instead of heading home downtown I decided to find someplace to pull over so I could eat my ice cream before it melted. I spotted some children out in front of a motel at the same time and decided to park across the Avenue in an empty parking lot from where I could see the motel as I ate my ice cream. By the time I had parked in a secluded enough spot I could no longer see any children at the motel, but the main reason I stopped was to enjoy my sundae, so that’s what I did.

What happened next was a point of no return in the tragic course of my life. My struggle to decide if I would take revenge, and become the child rapist/killer that society feared and expected at the same time, seemed to finally resolve itself (though, as I have admitted many times since, I actually made the decision long before it became evident to me).

As I sat quietly enjoying my ice cream, I saw two young girls suddenly appear out of nowhere and dart across the five lanes of Aurora Avenue almost directly in front of me. They crossed the road coming in my direction, but then quickly passed out of my view to my right because I was parked right next to a building (to be in its shadow). But, it was clear to me that they were unescorted and up to some sort of mischief.

I remember clearly the thought that went thought my head at that very moment: “You stupid little girls!”

I opened my door and dropped the remains of the sundae on the concrete, then started the car and pulled onto Aurora in their direction. I saw them walking hurriedly on the shoulder and then as I drove past they veered off the road completely and into the shadows between two closed business buildings. I knew if I could catch them there they’d be mine, free and clear; nobody would see anything.

Everything seemed to just fall into place for me to kidnap those girls. I pulled around the block and parked in the shadows of some tall bushes on a side street behind the businesses where I saw the girls disappear. Then I got out and walked half a block to where I thought they’d be. But, when I got there the girls were nowhere in sight. So I quickly gave up and headed back for my car, and that was when I spotted them climbing over a low concrete wall coming out from behind another closed business. They were directly in front of me and I had caught them in the act of trespassing; stupid little girls indeed!

No planned kidnapping could ever have worked out so perfectly. I had only tell the girls that I owned the property that they were just caught trespassing on, and that gave me all the “authority” I needed to accost and question them. I ordered them back behind the building that they had just come from, under the pretense that I wanted to see what they were doing back there. Then I asked several questions to determine exactly how vulnerable they were: Where do you live? At the motel across the avenue. Why are you here? Our brother sent us out to buy cigarettes from the vending machine in the lobby, but we wanted to explore. Where is your mother? She’s playing bingo. What are your names? I’m Carmen, she’s Sammiejo. We’re half-sisters (though Carmen was clearly the younger of the two, she was the dominant and assertive one). How old are you? I’m nine; I’m eleven. Do you realize how much trouble you are in right now? No answer, just wide eyes.

It so happened that I had parked my car directly next to the place where the narrow alley behind the building (where the girls were) came out to the side street, and in a shadow, so it was easy to get the girls into my car with no chance of anyone seeing anything. I told the girls I was only going to teach them a lesson, but I already knew by this point that I was going to rape and kill them both, all according to plan. Justice was to be had after all!

I drove the girls --- both crouched on the floor of the car --- out to a location in Bothell near to where I worked for the software company. It was an abandoned farm house that I’d found on a lunch break once while driving around for the fun of it. I parked behind the house, then told the girls they could get up off the floor. Sammiejo sat up front with me and Carmen was in the backseat. I remember there was a full moon that night and as I sat waiting to make sure all was quiet (and that I hadn’t been followed by the cop car I saw a few moments before), Sammiejoe asked some childish question about the moon and I answered as if she were a niece and we were just spending some family time together.

At one point Sammiejo insisted that she saw someone, “or maybe a ghost” in a darkened window of the house out in front of the car. I thought it was just her childish imagination at the time and completely dismissed the notion that we weren’t alone. I found out years later that there was in fact a homeless woman in the house at the time, and she saw me in the car but thought only that we were young lovers looking for privacy from our parents. She gave the police a very vague description of me and my car when she came forward after seeing the publicity about the bodies being found in a shallow grave over a year later by a construction crew that was clearing the land for a new office building.

After I tried (and failed) to rape the girls inside the abandoned house (still oblivious to the woman inside also), I masturbated to achieve climax, then took the girls into a patch of trees next to the house and killed them as quickly and cleanly as I could. Then I hid their bodies in some berry briars, wrapped the VHS-C tape I had made in an oily rag and hid it in the engine compartment under the hood (in case I got pulled over on the way home – a pretty stupid thing to do I realize now), then drove back to my apartment at the Tuscany. (I hid the video tape under a false step in my apartment, but only kept it a few days before I destroyed it in the microwave and threw it away). I didn’t keep any other souvenirs.

The next day was a Saturday. I drove back out to Bothell to make sure there was nothing happening around the abandoned farm house. Then I stopped at a Home Depot and bought and pick and shovel (again, stupidly). Then I drove home and waited until the wee hours of the next morning (2 or 3 a.m.) before driving back to the farm house, and burying the girls beneath a pile of old rotting wood. (I used the pile of wood to cover any signs of that something had been buried there.) Then I hid the shovel and pick in the abandoned barn that stood about 50 yards from the house, and went home again, exhausted.

The missing girls were in the news, but there was a lot of speculation that they had run away. That week my parole officer came to see me at work (something she had never done before) and she brought a “trainee” with her for the interview. We met at a cafeteria near the officer where I worked and she asked me a bunch of questions about why I had asked permission to visit my father in Nevada on short notice. I told her that my grandmother had fallen ill (she had) and I wanted to offer help and support during the crisis. Of course the real reason I wanted to go was to get as far away from the crime scene as possible (another stupid move), which I knew she suspected. I also knew that the man with her was no trainee. He sat quietly the whole time, clearly paying careful attention to me, but not acting nervous or apologetic the way a normal trainee would. Besides, I had never heard of parole officer trainees, and doubted if there even was such a thing. Of course he was a detective, and they we rechecking me out as a possible suspect. I’m sure that if they knew how close we were to those little girls’ bodies as we ate lunch that day I would have been more than a casual suspect. But, they didn’t know, and my nonchalance about the whole meeting seemed to put them both at ease. I know now, from Federal court proceedings more than ten years later, that I never became a serious suspect in this case, not even after the bodies were found (at which time I was in the King County jail, in Seattle, for absconding parole, and they “investigated” me again as a possible suspect, again under a transparent “cover”, (i.e. pretending to be another inmate that I could tell was a cop almost as soon as I saw him because of the way he acted all wrong), and I again played it off nonchalantly and this never became a serious suspect).

A couple of weeks later I moved in with Joe and Ed and gave up my Tuscany studio. This was a definite step backwards that totally disrupted all the progress I had been making before. I started getting high with my new roommates almost every day, which of course resulted in my getting a “dirty U.A.” (urine analysis) for cannabis (I’ve never used meth in my life, despite what some of my “official” records assume), which in itself is not enough to get my parole revoked, but the gun incident with my brother was.

Joe and Ed, as I have already mentioned, were a gay couple. I’m not really sure about what that means though. I only actually had sex with them once, upon Joe’s invitation. But, I’m not really sure if I’d call what we did “sex”. They were into weird stuff that I’d only read a little about in novels once in a while, but never took an active interest in myself. They must have sensed my disinterest, because I never got invited to have “sex” with them again.

Because I now lived about 20 miles from downtown, and away from all of my favorite anonymous sex parks, I started frequenting a nearby park, that was usually completely deserted at night when I liked to go. I would park in a secluded location then go into the woods and take off my clothes then run around naked and masturbate to fantasies of letting men I meet use me for sex. It remained a mere fantasy, for that particular park at least, but it was more than enough to keep me sexually satisfied.

On Halloween my “girlfriend” Dee stopped by Joe and Ed’s house so she and her girls could show off their costumes. They came inside and visited for less than ten minutes in the living room only. Apparently because I stayed (and didn’t run out the back door or something) after the children arrived I had violated another condition of my parole (i.e. no contact with minors without prior approval). Actually, the violation hinged on the fact that I greeted them and complimented them on their costumes. My parole officer had told me previously that some brief contact with minors was okay, as long as I did not initiate it or prolong it. I felt well within those limitations during this visit, but that pig polygraph examiner apparently felt otherwise and put it down as another violation in his report.

So, one day I got a call at work from my parole officer asking me to come to her office that afternoon. I had to leave work early to make the unusual appointment, which I did. And when I arrived at her office two policemen were waiting to arrest me for violating parole. My parole officer apologized for the arrest explaining she got orders from the parole board against her recommendations, to have me arrested. She said I would be held until I could have a parole hearing (about a month), and she assured me that she was on my side.

I was held in the King County Jail for one day, and then, to my great surprise, and horror, I was unceremoniously transported on the prison bus to the Receiving Center in Shelton, Washington. That was the place where the nightmare of my incarceration really began, where I was beat up and repeatedly raped as a kid, and where I first discovered the true meaning of despair. It was the place where the very foundation of my rage was laid, and returning me there now was like pouring gas on an ember that I had hoped to let die after I’d killed those girls and vented the bulk of my rage against society. It seems now, in hindsight, as though some sinister plan had been laid and my rage was intentionally refueled by sending me to Shelton for that month to await my fate once more before the parole board. Being there made me feel like the nightmare was starting all over against from the beginning, and that it would never truly end.

But, I kept calm, and stayed out of trouble, even passing up a pinner (marijuana joint) that someone offered me out of sheer respect for the queen they knew me to be (I wasn’t being flamboyant at this point, nor even looking for sex, but I was well known throughout the state prisons as “Jazzi” and my reputation apparently carried in my absence).

They moved a man into my cell the first week I was there whom I knew to be an informant from my connections in the past. But, he didn’t know that I knew, so when he started pumping me for information about my activities on the streets I kept the information I gave him on the up-and-up, and “confessed” to things that weren’t really illegal in order to make him think he had my confidence. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance that the whole “violation” arrest was a ploy on part of the police and parole office just to get me in a cell with this rat so he could feel me out on the two girls who were still missing. He was obviously pumping me for information, and the story he gave for why he himself was violated was obviously contrived (I didn’t ask, but he insisted on telling me, a sure sign that he was on the make).

But, I was well aware of such tricks, and whether he was on an assignment specifically aimed at me, or just pumping me for info on G.P., didn’t matter because I didn’t tell him anything genuinely incriminating. And when I saw the parole board after one month they reinstated my parole, with some superficial new conditions (to make it look good I suppose) and let me go. The only problem was now I was so angry, and terrified at the same time, that there was no chance in hell I was gonna finish my parole.

From the very moment I walked out of that jail (they’d brought me back to Seattle for the parole hearing, so I was released from the County Jail immediately, after the hearing) I knew I wasn’t going to stick around, and I knew that another serving of “justice” was in order.

Because of the parole violation I lost my job as an Inside Sales Rep Liaison at the software company. But the Temp agency quickly placed me with another Web-based software company called iCat (which has since gone defunct and now a new and completely different company has that same name) located on two floors of the Seattle City Centre Building downtown, one of the most beautiful office buildings in the city! The new job didn’t pay as much, but I was very proud to work in that building. I was hired to process data from customers that the company collected from their Website, and to call and interview customers about their use and satisfaction with the company’s flagship product (Internet Catalog software, thus the name iCat, pronounced “eye-cat”). I was actually given responsibility for the entire interview process, including what questions to ask. I used my telemarketing skills to develop a fixed script that I typed up and submitted to my supervisor. They were so impressed by the job I did, and the results I was getting (i.e. useful customer feedback), that they brought in two more temps from the temp agency and put me in charge of them. I trained them, much as I had been trained at Time Life Libraries, and supervised their calls fulltime (i.e. I no longer made customer calls myself) and collated the data they generated. I was also given more responsibility for generating other reports from the web data that went straight to the sales V.P., which I handed to him personally once a week. I actually improved the report in ways that got me some kudos from the V.P. himself.

But, the job still didn’t pay much (only about ten dollars an hour if I remember right), so I decided to go back to Time Life Libraries part time as well, so I’d have enough income to build the capital I needed to abscond (I figured I needed at least a few thousand dollars if I wanted to make a good run for it, i.e. last long enough to complete my revenge!).

Of course, I was still getting high (marijuana only) almost every day with Joe and Ed, even though one of the new conditions of my parole said that if I got another dirty urine test I would be automatically violated. But, I had no intention of sticking around long enough to get another piss test. But my parole officer must have sensed my skittishness --- it couldn’t have been too hard for her to miss --- and she ordered another U.A. sooner than I expected.

I had only been back out for a couple of months and had only saved up just under two-thousand dollars from working two jobs. I pissed dirty on a Friday, and by the time my parole officer showed up at Joe and Ed’s house with two cops to have me arrested on Monday morning I was no longer even in the state of Washington.

Once I left the state without permission I was officially an escape and no longer considered to be in custody. So everything that happened next, including the kidnap, rape, and murder of a ten-year-old Southern California boy named Anthony, won’t be included in this “What Happened In Prison”-series. Instead, I’ll pick up again, with Part VII – The Last Laugh, when I am arrested again in Missouri and taken back to prison in Washington to skip through the last three years of my 20-year-sentence, and “maxing out” to be released with no more parole. I call it “The Last Laugh” because I knew I had taken my revenge and killed three innocent children, and yet I was released after just three years with no parole!

Even one day of freedom after the crimes I had committed would have been enough to make me laugh victoriously; I had almost five years of underserved freedom before the system once more reminded me that laughing was not allowed for people like me, and I lashed out once more…

But, that’s another confession altogether.