UBC: Rule, A Rage to Kill

A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases by Ann Rule

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Even if you don't want to read about this handful of sociopaths, go take a look at the Fremont Troll.


"A Bus to Nowhere": Seattle 1998: Silas Cool, who shot the driver of an articulated Seattle Metro bus just as it was starting over the Aurora Bridge (awesome and tangential sidebar: the Aurora Bridge may have my favorite public sculpture EVER: the Fremont Troll)
"The Killer Who Planted His Own Clues": Tumwater WA 1976: the murder of Sharon Mason by Charles "Buddy" Longnecker, who is the perfect stereotype of the sociopathic sexual predator.
"Born to Kill?": Seattle 1961, Walla Walla WA to McKees Rocks PA 1977: the dreadful career of Michael Andrew Olds, who shot Blossom Braham in a grocery story robbery in 1961 for no reason; convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, he was a model prisoner in the Washington State Penitentiary for thirteen years and was paroled in 1974. Sociopaths do very well in environments with external controls on their behavior. In 1977, he robbed his place of employment, murdered a taxi driver, kidnapped a series of elderly people, murdering one, as he veered on an erratic course across the US, and finally, having taken a seven year old boy hostage and missed shooting a police officer by a hair, was apprehended in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. This time, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
As Close As a Brother": Seattle 1969, Kent WA 1972: Bernie Pierce, kind and considerate and trustworthy . . . until he starts drinking. Murdered his girlfriend in 1969, raped and murdered a young woman he claimed to consider a sister in 1972.
"Profile of a Spree Killer": Miami FL, Coral Gables FL, Daytona Beach FL, Merritt Island FL, Tallahassee FL, Beaumont TX, Oklahoma City OK, Grand Junction CO, Las Vegas NV, Torrance CA, Gary IN, Victor NY, Colebrook NH 1984: the loathsome Christopher Wilder, who preyed on teenage girls by pretending to be a professional photographer--the list of his victims is probably a lot longer than just those raped and murdered during his last spree, but since he killed himself rather than letting police apprehend him, no one's ever going to know for sure. His seven million dollar estate was divided among the families of his victims. One of his probable victims, Colleen Orsborn, is the subject of Disappeared 4.9, "Spring Break Nightmare"; Wilder is also the subject of The FBI Files 2.1., "A Model Killer."
"The Lost Lady": Alderwood Manor WA 1979: the strange, strange case of Marcia Moore, heiress, psychic, astrologer, yoga teacher, ketamine "researcher." She disappeared in 1979; her remains were found in 1981 less than fifteen miles from her home. There wasn't enough left to determine how she died. Rule hints strongly that she was murdered by her fourth husband, although she clearly doesn't have enough evidence to present to a metaphorical grand jury. He certainly seems like a plausible suspect, but it also seems not improbable that Moore's long term ketamine habit finally caught up with her and she simply wandered out into the winter night and died of exposure.
"To an Athlete Dying Young": Olympic National Park 1979: Jane Constantino, in the wrong place at the cruelly wrong time, crossed paths with Dale Harrison on the day he was looking for a woman to murder.
"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town": Des Moines WA 1974: the horrible truth that if someone is determined to kill his ex-wife (or her ex-husband or any combination of genders and relationships), he'll do it. This pseudonymous murderer, *Eric Shaw, is one of the most hateful people in this book, and that's saying something.
"That Was No Lady": Seattle 1976: file this under "that was another country and besides the wench is dead" for its clumsy treatment of transsexuality. The murderer in this case was a sociopath; that's why the victim ended up dead. Transsexuality or transvestitism (and whenever this story was actually written, Rule clearly didn't have a grip on the difference between a homosexual transvestite man and a male-to-female transsexual--her subject may not have had, either), that's not what was wrong, although it was very clearly what the murderer was hiding behind, just as other sociopaths hide behind other problems (Ted Bundy "confessing" the night before his execution that he was made into a serial killer by pornography and true crime magazines springs immediately to mind).
The Killer Who Talked Too Much": Seattle 1976: Another man raping and murdering a woman he claimed to consider a sister--and then raping and murdering another woman he barely knew, who happened to be his alibi for the first murder. He tripped himself up in talking to police by knowing about a split-leaf philodendron that his second victim hadn't been given until after the last time Jones claimed he was in her apartment.
I remind myself again that for every person like Longnecker or Olds or *Shaw, Jones or Wilder or Harrison, there are a dozen people like the police officers who caught them, people who can see outside themselves, whose empathy isn't broken off below the skin, who are as driven to protect as these men were driven to kill.



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