A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (46 page)

The paramedics and Riehl stared at the wild-eyed young soldier.

Could this be true, or was he in the grip of some delusion?

Honegger said he had thrown on his clothes, and then he had driven the stranger's black van until he found a house. "I was so scared I drove right through the gate. Then I found I couldn't find a road in so I parked the van and walked down. This man let me in." Riehl advised Niels Honegger of his rights. He had just admitted to shooting a man to death, and it was procedure that he should be read his rights under Miranda.

Honegger shook his head impatiently and said he understood all of that and waived his right to counsel. He repeated his story again, and it was exactly as he had told it before. More deputies arrived and looked for the area where Honegger said he had left two bodies one his captor's, and another that had been there when they drove in at dawn. The woods were so thick on the property, which was owned by the Weyerhauser Lumber Company, that they doubted they could find the location of the attack without help from Honegger. "I marked it when I left," the soldier told them. "I took an empty six-pack out of the van and put it by the road so I could find it again." The medics nodded when asked if Honegger's condition was stable enough for him to give assistance in searching the area. They drove over the narrow roads in Deputy Riehl's patrol car until Honegger spotted the six-pack marker he had left. "They're in there," he said quietly.

Deputies went over a deadfall fir tree that blocked access to a dirt road that wound up and then disappeared into the woods. When they returned a few minutes later, they looked sick. "He's right," one said.

"There are two bodies back there. I've never seen anything like it."

Detectives Walt Stout and Mark French were notified at sheriff's headquarters in Tacoma and they left at once for the site. They arrived at the Brand farm as Niels Honegger was being loaded into an ambulance for the trip to Madigan Army Hospital. A full statement would have to wait, the young soldier was clearly going into shock. Briefed by Riehl, Stout and French accompanied him and the other deputies deep into the woods and the body site. The area was thick with new-growth timber and crisscrossed with logging roads. Each one looked much like the last, and it seemed a miracle that Honegger had been able to find his way out and to the Brand farm. It was a brilliantly sunny spring morning may Day, in fact and birds sang in the grove of fir trees, an ironic contrast to the grotesque scene the investigators found. Detective Walt Stout came upon the first body which lay sprawled in the undergrowth of Oregon grape, sword ferns, and salal. The body was that of an extremely short white male, he was so chubby that he looked oddly like an overgrown infant.

But there was nothing childlike about the man's outfit. He was dressed entirely in black leather: a motorcycle jacket, pants, pull-on boots, gloves. Even a billed cap of black leather lay near the body's head. A black turtleneck sweater completed his grotesque outfit. Although he was clothed from head to foot in leather, the dead man's genitals were exposed. His tight pants had a square of black leather which could be unsnapped at the crotch, not unlike the codpieces worn by men in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Pierce County detectives had heard of this kind of gear, but they had never Black Leather actually seen it before. The body's penis and testicles had a kind of' penis ring" or "penis harness" looped around them, a strange rig of black leather thongs. The man had been shot many, many times in the head and body and had apparently had his skull cracked by blows from a blunt instrument. The investigators found a second body twelve feet away from the first. It was that of an extremely tall and lanky man who was completely nude. His general physique was all they could tell about him.

Most of his face and head had been obliterated, probably blown away by a large caliber weapon. The dead man had a second wound to the left groin area which had torn away much flesh from his genitals and his thigh. The second body had obviously been in the grove of trees for several days.

The detectives gazed at an assortment of macabre equipment that lay scattered in the undergrowth. This was gear that could only have been intended for bondage and torture: handcuffs, leg irons, several dogs'

choke chains on black leather leads, a billy club. Walt Stout and Mark French had no trouble now believing the strange story that Niels Honegger had told. This quiet woods had been turned into a torture chamber for someone whose sexual fantasies were apparently fulfilled through sadomasochistic rituals. After measuring the scene, the investigators began to pick up and bag items into evidence. There were enough weapons scattered around for a small revolution:

a Winchester double-barreled shotgun, a Colt Python. 357 revolver, a Smith & Wesson Airweight 9men revolver, a Smith & Wesson. 44 Magnum revolver, another Smith & Wesson. 44 Magnum, and a Browning. 25 caliber automatic. The body in black leather still wore two gun belts, two holsters, and a handcuff case and ring for the nightstick that dangled from one belt. Almost all of the torture gear was bloodstained, the nightstick bore bits of hair and blood, and one of the dogs' choke chains appeared to have been tightened around the neck of someone who was bleeding profusely. Stout and French found a pair of silver-colored opaque sunglasses lying near the leg irons, all of the items bloodflecked and resting under a sword fern. As the detectives worked, they didn't talk much. Sadomasochism was something they had learned about in training classes on abnormal psychology, but they could never recall actually seeing anything as grotesque as this. They marveled that the stocky young soldier had ever emerged from this thicket of torture alive. When Pierce County Deputy Coroner Casey Stengel arrived, a closer examination was made of the two bodies. The squat, little man in the black leather suit had a smashed nose, bullet wounds to the left ear and temple, and there were also numerous bullet holes in the leather jacket.

The second victim lay on his back, his legs straight and together, his arms behind his back as if he had been handcuffed when he died. Marks around his ankles indicated that his legs had been shackled for some time. After the bodies were removed to await autopsy, Deputy John Mcdonald arrived with his K-9 dog, Duke, and worked the entire area to see if there might be more physical evidence hidden in the woods, but nothing more was found. Detectives Stout and French left to look at the black 1978 Dodge van that Niels Honegger had driven in his desperate escape. It was still parked on a hill overlooking the Brand residence.

Identification Officer Hilding Johnson processed it as the detectives looked on. They found a registration slip which showed the vehicle was being leased by a Larry Hendricks at an address on North G. in Tacoma.

Johnson photographed the rig inside and out and dusted for latent prints before the trio moved in to check for more evidence. Inside the van, Stout and French found a brown leather bag jammed full of ammunition, some live and some spent cartridges. There was also a black leather hood much like the kind that executioners wore in days of old. The hood had snaps on the front where covers for the eyes and mouth could be attached. The blinder attachment and the mouthpiece were nearby. The mouthpiece had a hard rubber Black Leather protuberance designed to effectively gag the person who wore the hood. The hood, which had a label from "The Trading Post" in San Francisco, could be laced tightly up the back and secured at the neck. The traveling torture chamber also held a black dildo and a black crotchpiece, probably from the leather pants the short dead man wore. There were some "normal" things too, that seemed out of place:

empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, cigar butts. ID Officer Johnson moved along with Detectives French and Stout, filming every step of the processing. Then he went to the morgue to fingerprint the near-headless corpse in an attempt to identify the man. Detective John Clark was dispatched to Madigan Army Hospital where he would wait until medics gave the okay for him to take a complete statement from Private Niels Honegger. In the meantime, Stout and French drove to the apartment house on North G. where the man named Larry Hendricks had lived. They were sure now that Hendricks was the man in the black leather suit. When his clothing was removed in the coroner's office, his driver's license was there, and the picture on it matched. The round, almost childish face was the same. Hendricks was thirty-two years old. If they had been expecting to walk into quarters designed by the Marquis de Sade, they were to be surprised. Using keys they found on a ring in the van, they entered an immaculate apartment furnished entirely in exquisite antiques. There was nothing at all that might indicate that the apartment's occupant was into kinky sex. Rather, it looked like the home of a wealthy interior decorator. There were pieces of perfectly restored furniture, tapestries, paintings, silk rugs, vases, and lamps. The place might well have come right off a page in House Beautiful. They looked further, however. There was a black vinyl case on a desk in the two-room apartment. Inside, they found nine one-hundred-dollar bills. And, when they opened a closet door, they found a number of items that suggested they had the right man. Either Larry Hendricks had unusual sexual hang-ups or he owned several dogs. There were three black leather dog collars on choke chains in the closet, but no dog dishes, no dog hair on the plush furniture, nor any other sign that Hendricks had pets. The detectives also found a vinyl shoulder weapon case that would fit the Winchester shotgun found at the scene, and a box of. 38 caliber ammunition. There were no kinky magazines in the apartment, but there were two issues of Soldier of Fortune, a somewhat militant paramilitary publication for avid gun collectors. Tenants had storage lockers in the basement of the building, and Larry Hendricks had kept some of his possessions there. Walt Stout and Mark French found several holsters for handguns both hip and shoulder type, another billy club, and a box of 1

6-gauge shotgun shells.

What a paradox a man living in delicate luxury in an antique collector's paradise but also a man who collected guns and ammunition as if he expected a civil war. At Madigan Hospital, Detective John Clark was finally allowed to enter the emergency room where Niels Honegger was being treated for his extensive wounds. The youth's broken right arm was splinted and in a sling, and the thick turban of bandages around his head was stained with still seeping blood. His back was covered with ugly red welts from a beating and burn marks, round and vicious looking dotted his skin. Honegger's ankles and wrists had abrasions where the handcuffs and leg irons had cut into the skin. While a military policeman stood by, Niels Honegger agreed to a tape recording of his statement. He told John Clark that he had gone into Tacoma the previous evening sunday nightto see friends, but he hadn't found them at home. He had had one or two beers and then gone to an all-night grocery store where he called a cab to take him back to Fort Lewis. "I was standing out front, waiting, when this black van pulls up and the driver says, Well, what are you doing?"" I As Honegger had peered into the van, he said the driver had pulled a gun and ordered him inside. "He made me lie down in the back and he put handcuffs on me. I wasn't about to argue with him. He had the gun. He drove for a while and stopped someplace and he put some manacles on my ankles, and then this black leather hood over my head. He tried to put that mouthpiece thing on, but I fought him." Honegger said that the gun the man had pointed at him in the kidnaping had been one of the. 44s. "My arms were cuffed behind me. I tried to work out of the cuffs, but they were too tight.

The manacles had about eighteen inches of chain between them so you could walk, but then he had this little bar with hooks on it and he fastened that on and you couldn't move your legs more than six inches apart." Honegger said that his captor had driven him around for a long time, until he could see daylight through the eye holes of his mask. He couldn't be sure but he thought it had been about 5:30 A.M. when they arrived on the lonely logging road. He had heard the stranger moving his guns around, and then the sound of him uncapping a beer bottle. Next, the man in the black leather suit had come back into the van and demanded that Honegger strip, all the while holding a gun on him. "He unlocked the manacles on my feet, took off my shoes and socks, and then pulled my pants off. Then he locked those manacles back up, unlocked my handcuffs, and held the gun to my head, telling me to take my shirt off.

Then he handcuffed me again." The man in black leather had then loosened the leg irons so that Honegger could walk and forced him out of the van.

He had placed the dog choke chain around his neck, pulling it tight, and prodded Honegger deep into the woods, all the time holding the shotgun to the back of his head. "He made me say sir' all the time' yes, sir,'

and No, sir." He told me where to go and I guess we walked about twenty-five meters back into the woods. We ended up right by the other body. I thought it was a dog at first, and then I realized it was a man.

He wanted to shock me. I was scared as hell, and shivering from the cold. He told me I was going to die and he kept calling me Punk.""

Honegger said that his captor had begun to beat him with the nightstick and that he had been helpless to resist because he was still handcuffed and shackled. Even though he was much bigger and had had combat training, he had been caught and bound up by the little man in black leather before he was aware of what was happening. "I thought my arm was broken," Honegger said. "He hit me on the head too. He hit me a couple of times in the stomach but I've been trained how to take a stomach punch and I breathed out when I saw it coming so it didn't hurt."

Honegger said that he had tried to make his captor believe he had passed out from the pain, but that had only infuriated the man in leather. "I lay there and he started burning me with cigarettes and cigars.

He put them out on my back and on my nipples. I just couldn't take the pain so I had to get up." During all this time, Honegger hadn't really seen the other man's face. The black leather cap was pulled down over his eyes and he had worn dark sunglasses that were like mirrors.