A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (52 page)

Lia and Brook drove back to camp and immediately called the Snohomish County Sheriff's office. They made excellent witnesses, they could describe the man perfectly. They remembered every one of his tattoos, his T-shirt, the way his blond hair flopped across his forehead. He was back in the woods, but he was going to have to come out at some point.

The sheriff's department made sure that every law enforcement officer in the county, every state trooper, and every city patrolman working along Highway 2 had his description. Mark Ericks, then a deputy marshal in the tiny hamlet of Gold Bar, Washington, in the foothills of the Snoqualmie Mountain Range, was patrolling along Highway 2 when he saw a hitchhiker just west of town. Ericks felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He knew who that hitchhiker was. "You couldn't miss him," he remembered. "He had the T-shirt, the tattoos. He was the guy." The young deputy marshal whipped his car around and headed back.

The blond man with the glasses knew he had been spotted. "He started pulling his gun to shoot me," Ericks recalled. "But I already had my gun on him and I'd made up my mind I was going to shoot." For seconds that seemed like hours, the two men looked at each other, and then the hitchhiker threw his gun down. It was a. 36 caliber Navy percussion pistol, an unusual gun that was a cap and ball replica, but it was fully capable of firing, and it was loaded. The prisoner said he used it only l Mirror Images for target practice. A search of his belongings also produced several joints of marijuana. And his name. Carl Lowell Harp.

Interviewed in the Snohomish County Jail, Harp vehemently denied that he had raped the camp counselors. He remembered meeting two girls at the May's Creek Falls, but said they were mistaken in thinking he had been a threat to them. "I was cleaning my gun at my campsite and it was lying on the ground when they walked by." Harp said it was the women who had talked to him, asking questions about the area. Yes, he had walked a short ways with them along the trail, talking. If they had been raped, he insisted he wasn't the man who had done it. "I did see a guy farther up the trail that day he looked a lot like me, you know height, weight, coloring, even had glasses. He's your rapist, not me." Detectives weren't about to buy that convenient explanation.

What surprised the Snohomish County investigators and Bellevue Police and the Washington State Patrol, however, was that Carl Harp had had a very good reason to be camping out in the woods. When the news of his arrest on rape charges hit the media, Harp's ex-wife came forward with shocking information. She led authorities to a. 308 bolt-action rifle that belonged to him.

Tests on the weapon, which was perfectly oiled and ready to fire, proved that it was the same gun that had been used by the "Bellevue Sniper."

Carl Lowell Harp aka Troy Asin aka T. Asian aka Carroll Lowell Trimble, who had once been a little boy nobody wanted, was paying the world back both individually and collectively. The odd story of two men from such similar dysfunctional backgrounds seemed to be winding down. Both halves of "Troy Asin" were now behind bars. James Ruzicka was convicted in Oregon on rape charges involving the thirteen-year-old. He received a ten-year sentence. He then went on trial in Seattle in August 1975, on charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of Penny Haddenham and Nancy Kinghammer. King County Senior Deputy Prosecutors Jon Noil and Ron Clark had a powerful battery of physical and circumstantial evidence to present to the jury in Judge Horton Smith's courtroom. There was the fishing knife, the moldering white draperies which had served as Nancy Kinghammer's shroud, the towels all taken from Ruzicka's former wife's house all identified by her in court. And there was devastating testimony from a cellmate of Ruzicka's during his stay in jail. The witness recalled a conversation with the defendant when Ruzicka bragged of raping and killing two girls. The defendant had told him, he testified, that he liked to "collect" knives. Ruzicka had said that he had hung one of his victims from a tree after he raped her, and that he had lost his knife at that scene. But, according to the witness, Ruzicka had not been concerned about the knife because it had tape on the handle and he knew no fingerprints could be gleaned from tape. Ruzicka himself did not testify. He sat quietly throughout the trial twisting a gold ring on one finger. He was considerably discomfited by the presence of one of his former victims in the courtroom. Nina Temple, the pretty store clerk whose jaw he had broken when he had tried to strangle her two and a half years before, sat in the gallery section, listening to every word of testimony. Ruzicka's defense counsel cried "Foul" at the girl's presence and asked to have her barred from the courtroom.

However, Judge Horton Smith ruled she had the right to stay. It took the jury only four hours to find James Ruzicka guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. After his conviction, Ruzicka granted an extensive interview to a Seattle reporter. Chain-smoking, he commented that no one really knew him as a person, that he was actually shy and lonely. He said he had placed ads in underground publications seeking pen pals. He said he was currently corresponding with nineteen women and sixteen men.

He readily admitted that he was a sexual psychopath and had difficulty relating to women, yet he hoped one day to marry again and have children. He had met a blind woman, a woman who loved him devotedly, and she was a faithful presence in the courtroom for all his legal proceedings. "She's very nice," he said. "I felt the least I could do, out of respect for her, is learn Braille." James Ruzicka continued to see himself in a rosy light that had little to do with reality. He said he was positive that even if he were to be released immediately, he would not be dangerous. "I wouldn't rape anyone," he said. "I'd try to get into some kind of treatment program. I want help." He denied adamantly that he killed either Penny Haddenham or Nancy Kinghammer. He claimed that the thirteen-year-old girl rape victim in Oregon was a willing participant. "There was no knife." The tragic fact remained that James Ruzicka had been granted an opportunity for help given counseling, understanding, trust, freedom, in the sexual offenders program. And he walked away from it. Fifteen days later, Nancy Kinghammer died a horrible death and her body was cast aside on a junk heap. Twenty-one days later, Penny Haddenham was raped and hung from a tree like an abandoned rag doll. Their parents successfully sued the state of Washington for allowing James Ruzicka a second chance and an unsupervised leave from the sexual offenders program. The Haddenhams and Kinghammers gave a large portion of the proceeds of their suit to the Families and Friends of Victims of Violent Crime and Missing Persons.

Families and Friends had helped them survive emotionally when they lost their daughters. Ruzicka's self-serving version of his life and crimes, which appeared in Seattle papers, omitted a great deal. Chuck Wright, a veteran of the Washington State Department of Corrections and an expert on human sexuality, did the pre sentence report on Ruzicka. The convicted rapist/ killer was. nore expansive in discussing his activities with Wright than he was with local reporters. Chuck Wright found James Ruzicka a fascinating study in denial.

Ruzicka listed fourteen former employers on his questionnaire, but said he had never worked for any of them long enough to get a social security number. He said he was "definitely" not a criminal, although he admitted to using many more aliases than "Troy J. Asin."

"I think I'm getting screwed," Ruzicka insisted. "I didn't get a fair trial. I am determined to get out, get a job, and settle down. I want to get married." James Ruzicka was attempting to portray himself as just an ordinary guy. But he was striving to con the wrong man. Wright knew that Ruzicka had demonstrated a bizarre and precise MO in his sexual attacks.

Beyond the use of a knife held against his victims' throats and his ruse about his "wounded brother," he usually removed one of the victim's shoes. He had bragged to fellow inmates that he was a necrophile who revisited the bodies of the girls he had killed. Assuming that Wright's nonjudgmental facade indicated approval, James Ruzicka bragged that he had had "sexual contacts" with at least three hundred different women.

He was vehement that he had never had any homosexual encounters beyond his molestation of his younger brother. As far as other crimes went, Ruzicka admitted a thousand shoplifting episodes, a hundred burglaries all unsolved. He said that knives had always been important to him. He had needed to have a knife under his pillow when he was a child or he couldn't sleep. For Chuck Wright, who had evaluated countless convicted felons, James Ruzicka was one in a thousand, dangerous beyond reckoning.

Wright sought to find some treatment which, while it might not change Ruzicka's mindset, might at least protect future victims. "I brought up the question of the possibility of his being castrated," Wright recalled. "He appeared to be very angry and stated, They can try. If they do that, I'll do myself in. I'd rather rot in prison." I informed him there was a process in which an individual can be chemically castrated and that it was reversible.... I informed him that we would probably be recommending that he serve two life sentences to run I consecutively, and that he be chemically castrated. He seemed quite calm at that time." On September 30, 1975, Judge Smith ordered Ruzicka to first serve his sentence in Oregon and then to begin serving two consecutive life sentences in the killings of Penny Haddenham and Nancy Kinghammer. "I just do not believe this court should operate a bargain basement for murder allowing two murders to go for the price of one," Smith commented. He said that when Ruzicka arrived at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, he would be placed among the one hundred most dangerous criminals, for whom maximum security was paramount to all other considerations. Consulting psychologist Dr. John Berberich had found Ruzicka "extremely dangerous and untreatable" and, like Chuck Wright, he thought that castration might be wise. Chuck Wright had fought hard to have chemical castration considered in James Ruzicka's case, mindful of Ruzicka's history of escape. sruzicka is like a lot of cons," Wright recalled. "He always denies everything. I can't emphasize enough that if this man ever gets on the street, he will kill someone. He is very devious and life means nothing to him. He lied to us from the time he walked in the door to the time he left." At this writing, James Ruzicka is still locked up in the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. He is now forty-six years old. There was massive publicity at the time of his sentencing in the midseventies.

However, other murderers have supplanted his image in the minds of the public and it is important that the memory of his crimes remain fresh.

Although it is extremely doubtful that James Ruzicka will walk the streets again until he is an old man, it is not impossible. It is still questionable whether chemical castration (with the administration of female hormones) can achieve the desired effect, some of the most vicious sex killings in modern history have been accomplished by men who were physically or psychologically impotent. Their anger at their inability to perform only increased their homicidal rage. In several cases, their victims made the fatal mistake of laughing at them. And chemical castration only works as long as the subject takes the hormones meant to quell sexual violence. One wonders how long a rapist, once free, would choose to continue taking female hormones. Carl Lowell Harp, the "other" Troy Asin, was convicted on counts ranging from first-degree murder to sodomy/rape to felon in possession of a weapon. The maximum he could have received was five life sentences, one twenty-year and two ten-year sentences. After a number of violent and obscene outbursts particularly at female parole officers Harp admitted that he acted "crazy" because he wanted to go to Western State Hospital so he could be examined by experts and proven "a normal person." Instead, Carl Harp went directly to the penitentiary at Walla Walla to begin serving consecutive life sentences. Because, at that time, a "life" sentence in Washington usually meant thirteen years, four months, the "consecutive"

stipulation assured he would never be free. A new statute was enacted after Carl Harp carried out his "sniper"

crimes. If a future sniper should act "with utter disregard for human life" as Harp did, he would be tried for first-degree murder. Carl Harp was not out of the headlines long. In May 1979, he and two other inmates took ten hostages and held them inside a prison office, rigged with two pipe bombs made with plastic explosives. Harp and the other convicts convicted kidnapers were armed with knives. Their hostages including three women were eight prison counselors, a guard, and a legal aide who worked outside the penitentiary. Harp listed thirty grievances the prisoners had and said the captors would give themselves up if at least three were satisfied. The prison maximum security unit was overcrowded, Harp maintained, and prisoners had no due process for their complaints.

Harp's insurrection was short, the hostages were released at one A M. on May 10 after they had been held for eleven hours. They were not injured. But Carl Harp was a constant l thorn in the side of prison officials. Calling himself an "anarchist," he said, "I am nonviolent.

I'm not out to be a hero. l abhor violence. I've been treated like s.

I've been beat, tortured, and maced. I'm not a slave. I'm not an animal and I'm not subhuman." Of all the men in the world who might have an opportunity to find romance, one would think that Carl Harp, a convicted rapist and sniper, sentenced to life-after-life sentences, locked away in maximum security, might be far down on the list. But that wasn't true. Carl Harp wrote letters constantly, and one went to an "underground" newspaper in Bellingham: Northwest Passage. A pretty eighteen-year-old college student had read Harp's letter in 1974 and begun a correspondence with him. "I wanted to offer friendship and moral support," Susan Black*

said later. She had believed what Harp said in his letter that he had not been given a fair trial. Susan and Carl began to write to each other often. They exchanged literally hundreds of letters and poems. It was a platonic relationship at first. When Susan got married to someone else, Carl Harp sent one of his drawings as a wedding gift. Susan's marriage only lasted two years. When she was divorced in 1979, Harp asked her to marry him. It wasn't a very romantic proposal, given the location. They were having a "no contact" visit, separated by thick wire mesh. Harp didn't know if he would ever live to be out of prison, he told Susan that he was afraid he might be killed by enemies inside. But she loved him, and she agreed to marry him. He was thirty and she was twenty-three. She had dark sloe eyes, perfect features, and shimmering long black hair. He was the same bland-looking man he had always been, she adored him and believed that he had never hurt anyone. After the hostage situation in Walla Walla, Carl Harp was transferred to San Quentin prison in California. On September 2, 1980, Susan went to San Quentin to marry him. They lived for the possibility that they might be allowed conjugal visits so that they could consummate their marriage.