The Pacific Northwest Drives People Crazy

I go through phases of what type book I read. Like I came home from a road trip where I'd been to many battle sites of the Indian Wars and started reading books like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. If you've not read that one, you should. It tells you what really happened during the settlement of the west, not the propaganda version we learned in grade school.

And then there was my WWII phase, mostly books about the Nazis, like Inside The Third Reich.

A constant genre for me is the true crime book. My favorite true crime writer is Ann Rule. With Jack Olsen a close second. He's dead now, and was never as prolific as Ms. Rule, but his way of telling the story varied from book to book, like last month I read Jack Olsen's Rat Dog Dick. It seemed more like a novel than a non-fiction true story.

Currently I'm in the middle of Jack Olsen's "I" The Creation Of A Serial Killer. It's the story of yet one more Pacific Northwest serial killer, a Canadian named Keith Hunter Jepperson. Apparently the Jepperson serial killing took place while I was still living in the Northwest, but I've no memory of this particular story. Jack Olsen was allowed to interview the killer at length. Much of the book is written in the first person in the voice of the killer. I've not seen this in a true crime book before. It's kind of creepy.

If one were to extrapolate from my personal experiences it would seem if you live in the Pacific Northwest you likely have had personal connections to serial killers.

I was going to school at Central Washington State College when Ted Bundy took Susan Rancourt from the school library and killed her. That was near the start of Ted Bundy's serial killer career.

Spokane had a serial killer, that I also don't remember, that took place while I lived in the Northwest. This killer operated during the same time frame, sort of, as the Green River Killer. With so much killing going on it's easy to see why one can't remember them all. Anyway, the Spokane Serial Killer's name is Robert Lee Yates. I have a personal connection to him too. He grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington. That is a short distance from where I lived. He went to SVC at the same time I did. But I don't recognize either his face or name. And one of his earliest murders took place in the Skagit Valley. I lived in Mount Vernon in the Skagit Valley.

And then there is the Green River Killer, the worst serial killer in United States history, with at least 71 victims. The Green River Killer is a sicko named Gary Leon Ridgway. He worked at a truck parts manufacturer called Kenworth. My oldest sister worked there with him. Kenworth had a company party for workers and their families at this theme park called Enchanted Village. I was at that company party. So was Gary Ridgway. This was well before he began his killing spree.

Geez, I'm being as absurd as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram with these "personal" connections to serial killers. Well, at least I'm aware that I'm being absurd, so I guess that makes me less absurd than the Star-Telegram.

Speaking of absurd. I had no idea that the world is suffering from an epidemic of serial killers. Wikipedia has an article listing serial killers by country. I was surprised by how many Canadian serial killers there have been. I was not too surprised to see that the United States had the longest list of serial killers. With, I am assuming, the majority coming from the Pacific Northwest.

Rat Dog Dick

Last night after suffering through American Idol I got to the end of Jack Olsen's true crime book, "Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation". This was a very interesting true crime book in that it seemed more like a novel than non-fiction, what with the main character being this femme fatale detective named Fay Faron who runs a detective agency with her dreadlocked dog, Bean, called the Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency. Now, there is a strange personal note here. My eldest sister has 2 dogs, one is called Rosie the Rat Dog and the other is named Bean. But my sister is no femme fatale so the eerie coincidences don't go beyond similar names.

Oh oh. I thought of another similarity between this book and my sister.

This book was about Gypsies taking advantage of elderly people and getting the old folks to put the Gypsies in their wills, or sign over their houses or their investments, like stocks and bonds and properties. Murder was also involved. Now my sister has never taken advantage of anyone, but she did manage to get involved with an elderly person. Or two. And somehow inherited all sorts of things. Cars, houses, property, bonds, cash. I am almost 100% certain my sister is not a Gypsy.

Now that I'm thinking about it I've got another acquaintance who made a minor sideline out of being the last surviving member of her clan and thus inheriting all sorts of things; money, houses, property, bonds, bank accounts, furniture, chickens, cars, cows and who knows what else. Sadly, this acquaintance slowly squandered all her ill-gotten gains, except for the cows, and now survives as a modern day junk collector/peddler. Yikes. That almost sounds like she's a Gypsy. She does sort of dress like a Gypsy, with colorful big skirts and garish jewelry and a fascination for the supernatural.

Anyway, Fay Faron and her Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency finally got the police to put an end to the Gypsie's reign of elder abuse. Incidentally, these Gypsie's were from the same branch of the Gypsy Mafia tree as the ones portrayed in the movie King of the Gypsies.

Fay Faron was so appalled by the lack of protection of the elderly from predators that she formed another agency called Elder Angels tasked with investigating financial crimes against the elderly.