Spokane: Portrait of a Murder Scene

SPOKANE, Wash. â€”  Blinking in the soft light that spills out of the corner tattoo parlor, she backs into the street, pulling the darkness like a blanket around her. Soon, only her wispy blond hair and the tip of her cigarette--held provocatively to her lips with a hand that’s trembling--can be seen.

“I got somebody watching me,� she says in a small voice. “Everywhere I go.� She points the cigarette over her shoulder, out where her protector is supposed to be. But there is only a dark sidewalk, and beyond that, the barking of a dog. “I’m not alone here,� she says.

But she is very much alone on this street, which these days may be one of the most dangerous in America. A serial killer is at work in this crossroads town, and nearly all of his victims--at least eight, possibly as many as 22--have been the women down on their luck who frequent this three-mile stretch of taverns, pawnshops and small appliance repair shops east of downtown.

Prostitute killings have been a fact of city life for years. What is chilling about the women’s bodies dumped in Spokane in recent months is the fact that a uniquely urban form of terror has struck in the middle of the American wheat belt--with a seemingly relentless vengeance.

Despite the efforts of a police task force working since November and a $10,000 reward fund, the killer has struck four more times--most recently on July 7--preying on the same relatively small population of prostitutes and drug abusers who frequent a neighborhood along East Sprague.

“Right now we’re looking at anything and everything,� said Spokane County Sheriff’s Capt. Doug Silver, co-chairman of the task force.

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To think of Spokane, a town of 188,300 perched amid the ranches and low hills of eastern Washington, as a rural community would be to commit a grave error of geography: Although isolated, Spokane is the largest city between Minneapolis and Seattle, planted along the interstate highway that plumbs much of the northwestern United States.

For half of Washington state, all of northern Idaho and even parts of Oregon and Montana, Spokane is the city, the place where nearly everyone goes when they want to shop at the mall, or get a job when a farm fails or a timber mill closes. The castoffs of welfare reform, which is hitting hard in rural America, drain into Spokane.

Like many small cities across the country, Spokane has been hit hard by methamphetamine use and a heroin epidemic that has seen methadone treatment center populations double in the last few months.

“In the last couple years, it’s been more and more violent,� said Edweena Skinner, a social worker with the Spokane Regional Health Department. “More crack houses, more meth labs, more people holding guns when you walk in the door.�

And now this, this methodical killer who is plucking some of the city’s most vulnerable off the streets.

Theories abound: A sex killer. A neighborhood vigilante. An angry ex-cop. With no suspects, all scenarios are possible.

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An idea of just how rough these streets are became clear when the health department recently asked prostitutes working the East Sprague neighborhood to submit a list of “bad Johns� for their colleagues to beware of.

“It started off on 8 1/2-by-11 paper. And then we put it on legal-size paper, and then we put it in smaller print. Now, it’s on 11-by-17 paper,� said Lynn Everson, a county health worker in the neighborhood.

The list speaks for itself: “White car, newer, 4-door. Driver is Asian male, uses a knife, likes to cut.�

“White Chevy truck. White male; wants to ‘butcher’ a prostitute.�

“White Chevy minivan, new California plates. Latino (?) Robs, rapes, strangles.�

There are 105 entries on the bad John list. Is one of them a killer?

Police have traced as many as 22 killings, some going back as far as 1984, that seem to fit the profile: a woman with drug or prostitution connections, shot, stabbed or strangled, body dumped out in the middle of nowhere.

The latest round began in November, a series the authorities are relatively certain is the work of the same killer or killers who shot three Spokane-area women in 1990. All of them, eight including the three in 1990, were shot. All but one were found clothed, their bodies dumped in remote locations on the outskirts of town, in places with names like Hangman Valley.

In early July, the body of 47-year-old Michelyn Derning, an on-again, off-again drug user who lived in the East Sprague neighborhood, was found in a vacant lot.

Derning had moved up to Spokane not long before from Oceanside, Calif., trying to kick a drug habit. She applied for a job at a local horse ranch, run by fellow ex-Californian Michelle Wallace.

“She had no experience, but she came to me with a spirit of excitement and enthusiasm, and I hired her on the spot,� Wallace said.

In the months to come, Wallace heard stories about the boyfriend Derning had fled, who allegedly beat her and allowed her to shower only once a month.

“Michelyn was afraid,� she said. “She would have flashbacks. She was so afraid somebody was going to hit her. Sometimes, she would come in my arms and just cry.�

Derning, friends said, hoped to get her life arranged well enough to regain custody of her 13-year-old son, who was living with her parents while she battled her drug addiction.

“We would have hoped that everything was going to go right,� said her father, Edward Derning. “I don’t pretend that I understood her. Of course, I don’t know if any parent can say that.�

Shawn McClenahan was another one who was hoping to turn her life around. Battling heroin for years, McClenahan, 39, had grown distant from much of her family and sold herself near the Kmart on East Sprague to buy drugs.

But she remained close to her sister, Kathy Lloyd, a Spokane Head Start teacher, who would gossip with her for hours and go shopping to collect the Winnie the Pooh trinkets McClenahan adored.

The heroin was ravaging her, Lloyd said. “I went one time when she was working, and I found her and got her in the car,� she said. “This was not what you see in TV land, with the nylons, trying to be outgoing, friendly. She had on jeans and a cruddy old sweatshirt. No makeup, looked like she hadn’t had a shower for days. I told her to be careful. I told her I was worried. It was just, ‘I’m very careful. Don’t worry about me.’ �

For her birthday a month later in December, Lloyd got a card from her sister with a long message. After years of despondency, it was a testimony of hope. McClenahan said she had made her way through the long waiting list--67 days--and was about to be admitted to a methadone program.

“I have never been so lonely as I have these last four months or so,� McClenahan wrote. “I’m still using heroin daily, still prostituting to pay for it. But the good news is a week from this coming Monday, I stop the heroin and go on methadone. God, I’m soooo happy, Kathy. This nightmare is almost over now.�

A week or so later, on the night of Dec. 17, she left the house where she baby-sat, going out with a few girlfriends. The next morning, she phoned, saying that she would be “a little late,� but added, “I’m on my way.�

She was never heard from again. They found her body in a gravel pit nine days later.

Now, Lloyd spends her days retracing her sister’s trail, finding old clients from the street, interviewing friends who knew her and passing on tips to the police.

“She was so much a part of my life. The loss, the loss is horrendous, and it’s not getting better,� Lloyd said. “Every new body makes it worse.�

On Thursday, there was a new grim discovery, perhaps from the killer: a scalp, with long strands of dark hair attached, found in a wooded area near Mt. Spokane, where three bodies have already been found. There were no other clues.

*

In some ways, the East Sprague neighborhood was a battleground even before the killer began striking. Residents long ago had gotten fed up with the prostitutes and drug dealers who haunted it by night.

Now the neighborhood has upped the ante, figuring the night walkers have lured a killer into their midst.

Carol Taylor, a grandmother who lives a block back from Sprague Street, leads an army of neighbors who go out each night and follow the prostitutes with bullhorns. “You better let her off,� she screams at men when they pick up a hooker. “We’ll call your license number into Crime Check.�

One recent night, one of the prostitutes rushed up to Taylor’s niece, Cori Bains, reached through the open window of her car and grabbed her hair.

“She was like, ‘Ha ha ha, what do you think of that?’ I Maced her,� said Bains.

“This is the third time now they’ve assaulted us,� Taylor interjected. “The second time, one Maced me in the face after wrecking my car. She threw this huge rock . . . and broke the windshield, and when I got out, she Maced me. I screamed for my husband, and he shoved her back into a plate-glass window at the Dogbone Pawnshop.�

Neighbors complained to police about used condoms and needles in their front yards, but got little response.

“It’s getting scary now,� Taylor said. “There’s violence now, because the prostitutes are getting killed. And one day, maybe it’s going to be some young girl walking down the street that isn’t a prostitute getting killed. It’s just got to stop. We don’t even want our kids outside.�

The Coalition for Women on the Streets hopes that a shelter will help. So far, there is nowhere in Spokane for women with drug or alcohol problems to go to pay for food and a bed.

“There are women who are homeless and on the street, who may not be real prostitutes, but who will go home with a man just to have a bed to sleep in and something to eat. And then a lot of them will have sex with the guy and still get thrown out in the middle of the night,� said Skinner, a member of the coalition, which is seeking donations and grants for the $150,000 a year needed to open and operate a shelter.

Giving up the street, even in the face of a serial killer, is not an option for most of the women whom county health worker Everson counsels. One teenage girl says she was thrown out of her house by her mother after telling her that her father had molested her. Many are desperate to earn enough money for a motel room so they won’t have to sleep in a crack house, where they are considered prey for any man around.

For now, Everson says, outreach workers are trying to counsel women on how to stay safe on the streets. Work in groups, they are advised, and have a partner take down license plate numbers. Tell clients that someone is watching out for you and will know if you don’t come back.

“The women out there are in a terrible situation,� Everson says. “There’s a serial killer out there. There’s almost no way to keep people safe. What they’re doing is illegal. But I don’t think they ought to have to die for it.�