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Detective Roger Johnson responded to a call from the Cascade Valley
Hospital in Monroe, Washington. The sheriff's dispatcher had radioed
that a young girl suffering from several bullet wounds had been brought
into the hospital a few minutes before. She was in the emergency room,
and it was questionable that she would live.
The officers looked suspiciously at the nervous man who had driven her
to the hospital. He identified himself as Alf Johansson* and said he was
a farmer who lived by himself out near the Jordan River Trail Estates
between Arlington and Granite Falls. He said that he'd heard a faint
pounding on his door, thought it was his imagination, and then heard it
again. "I'm so far out in the country that it startled me, The Girl Who
Fell in Love with Her Killer you know? I just don't get that many people
knocking on my door after dark, and I hadn't heard a car engine or
footsteps or anything. Then I heard this little voice crying, I've been
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shot and raped. I looked out and here's this girl real young girl and
she's got blood all over her."
"You ever see her before?
" Eiden asked, sensing truth in the man's voice. "No, sir.
Never have, " Johansson said. "But if I had, I wouldn't have recognized
her the way she was. I guess I should have run out and picked her up but
I was so shocked myself to see her that way. I grabbed my keys and a
blanket and told her to get in the truck. I feel bad about that now, but
she was sitting up in the cab of the truck when I came running out. I'll
tell you I just got her in here as quick as I could." The ER physicians
told the sheriff's men that the victim appeared to have two bullet
woundsone in the scalp and one in the right cheek. Amazingly, she was
still conscious. "You can talk to her, if you keep it brief." Johnson
and Eiden looked at the trembling young victim. She had suffered a
bullet wound in her right cheekbone and there were black powder burns
around the wound. This gun barrel debris indicated that someone had held
the weapon virtually against her cheek and fired.
She told the investigators that her name was Barbie Linley* and she was
fifteen years old, "but put down sixteen because it's almost my
birthday. This guy picked me up while I was hitchhiking.
And then he raped me, " she said tearfully. "After that, he shot me.
" It seemed impossible that she was still alive, and the Snohomish
County investigators were careful to keep their own horror at what had
happened to her out of their voices. She could go into shock at any
moment. "You didn't know this man? " Johnson asked. "You're sure it
wasn't the man who brought you into the hospital? You're safe here,
Barbie. You can tell us the truth.
You're sure you've never seen him before? "
"No, " she shook her head faintly. "That man was helping me. The other
guy stopped when I was just hitching a ride up to look for my dad in
Marysville. And he picked me up." It was a familiar story to the
Snohomish County officers, as it was to almost every lawman in the
country. The first thing most parents teach their youngsters is, "Never
get in a car with a stranger." Yet, in the seventies, America's
teenagers had embraced hitchhiking wholeheartedly. In most states,
hitching was legal, and the kids translated that to mean safe. In many
cases, they got into cars with exactly the kind of people their parents
had warned them about. One detective sighed in frustration. "We're
working on the murder of a teenager who was last seen hitchhiking. We
put out a teletype asking for information on cases with similar MOS. We
got back a dozen answers just from the Northwest. It's an epidemic. But
the kids keep right on hitchhiking. They don't think it's going to
happen to them. There are guys out there just cruising around looking
for a girl hitching." The Girl Who Fell in Love with Her Killer Barbie
Linley was lying on her stomach in the emergency room as the deputies
talked to her. The doctor treating her pointed to her wounds and said
that, despite the copious blood, there were only three. They all looked
as if they had entered from the front.
"One bullet's still lodged in her cheek and the others exited out the
back of her head." He showed them the X-ray film, and they could see the
large bullet probably a . 45 caliber slug clearly.
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Barbie's right cheekbone was shattered. Detective Jerry Cook arrived at
the hospital and joined the investigators talking with the critically
injured girl. "Do you know who shot youi mean, do you know anything at
all about him? " Cook asked. "Yes, " was the amazing reply. "He told me
his name was Easy. I laughed, and he said people called him that, and
then he said his regular name was Brandon Oakley.
* He picked me up in Everett, but then he drove me down a dirt road out
in the country." Barbie turned her face away and took a deep breath.
"Then he he raped me, and he shot me. I remember I felt three bullets.
" Barbie Linley was very brave and very observant. By all rights, she
should have been dead, but almost miraculously none of the . 45 slugs
had struck her in a vital spot. She said that the man called "Easy"
drove a fairly new Camaro and that it was either green or blue. "I think
he's about eighteen years old, probably about six feet one inch tall,
and he has a big nose." The doctors ended the interview then.
Barbie had L to be transferred to Providence Hospital in Everett for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]