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are middleagedover the hill you may." And now, Turfy Pleasant is
forty-two years old, one year younger than Gabby Moore was when he
declared that Jerilee was the only trophy that mattered to him. Does
Turfy understand? Perhaps. Perhaps not. No one would blame him for being
bitter toward his old mentor.
Gabby, at least, had a life, a wife two wives children, a magnificent
coaching career. Turfy, who "hurt" when Gabby "hurt," has had twenty
years behind bars. How many times must he have realized that "The Man"
cared nothing at all about his future or his dreams? Out of prison, but
on probation, Turfy scarcely resembles the perfectly muscled young
athlete he once was. Twenty years of prison food and confinement have
piled on untold pounds. No one looking at his newspaper photographs in
1976 could recognize Turfy Pleasant today. Probation authorities have
noted Turfy as "a good candidate for rehabilitation," and have
recommended schools and programs. Olive Blankenbaker lived to see her
son's killer sentenced to life in prison. She had not asked for any more
time than that. In trying to convince me to write this book, she gave me
a number of her precious photographs of Morris. I accepted them, but I
told her I didn't think I would be able to sell a book to a publisher as
I had no track record. She said she understood.
I didn't hear from Olive over the next few years, and I concluded,
sadly, that she had succumbed to lung cancer, I knew she had accepted
her "terminal" diagnosis. Ten years later, I was giving a lecture at
Yakima Valley Community College. By that time, I had published six books
and I spoke often on topics such as serial murder and high-profile
offenders. Afterward, I was signing books in the school library when I
glanced up to see a woman who looked quite familiar. I stared at her,
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thinking, "No, it can't be. She looks so much like Olive Blankenbaker."
As the woman came up to the table, she smiled at me and said, "Yes, it's
me. I didn't die after all." Olive had one request beyond a signature-
she still wanted me to write the story of her son. I promised that I
would try. Over the last ten years, I have visited with her often in her
mobile home in Yakima. She still grows flowers and she pampers a family
of cats. Olive and Jerilee have long since made their peace with one
another. Jerilee, Rick, and Amanda are in close contact, worrying about
her and helping out when they can. When Amanda moved back to Yakima, she
became her grandmother's strongest support. Mike Blankenbaker still
drops by often to see Olive, and pictures of Mike in his Yakima police
uniform sit on Olive's piano next to wedding pictures of Olive and Ned,
childhood photos of Morris, and photographs of Olive's grandchildren.
Nevertheless, Olive never forgot her pleas to me to write "Morris's
story." And so, at last, I have kept my promise. After twenty years, it
wasn't easy to track down people who once lived in Yakima, Washington,
some scattered to the four winds. For this book is not just Morris's
story it is the story of many others as well. Yakima's houses,
buildings, and streets are all still in place some a little shabbier
some freshly painted. Only last week, I walked down the alley behind the
big frame house on North Sixth, walked south from where Turfy Pleasant
parked his car on Lincoln, past the window where Gerda Lenberg heard the
hollow heels of a running man, and into the backyard where Morris
Blankenbaker died in the snowstorm. The wire fence where Vern Henderson
found the vital bullet casing is, amazingly, still there. I could almost
hear a voice calling, "Morris! Morris. .."
Olive Blankenbaker is eighty-five years old. I am grateful to her for
waiting for me. This is for you, Olive. The Highway Accident There is
such a thing as a perfect murder.
Any detective will admit that some homicides are never recognized for
what they are. All of the popular sayings such as "Murder will out" and
"There's no such thing as a perfect crime" are the stuff of fictional
mysteries. Although the advent of the space age of forensic science is
shifting the odds to the side of law enforcement, there will always be
murderers who are never caught. And there will always be murders that
are written off as something else. The rule of thumb followed by an
experienced homicide detective investigating an unexplained death is
that he must look skeptically at what may very well be a crime scene.
First, he must suspect murder, and next suicide, and then accidental
death. Only when he has exhausted all other eventualities should he
decide he is looking at a natural death. Even so, some cases of murder
do slide through savvy investigators' tightly woven nets of suspicion.
The case that follows, one of Oregon's most memorable investigations,
might never have come to the attention of homicide detectives if
sharp-eyed state policemen and apprehensive neighbors had not raised
questions. The incredible story that evolved shed harsh light on a
marriage that seemed happy despite the fact that its very fabric was
riddled with lies and betrayal. The sounds coming through the bedroom
wall in the duplex apartment in suburban Salem, Oregon, were too loud
and too disturbing for anyone to sleep through. It was very early in the
morning on February 25, 1976, when both Marilee* and Doug Blaine* had
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