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Darren Dee
O'NEALL
Classification:
Serial killer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims: 6 +
Date of murders: 1987
Date
of arrest:September 22,
1987
Date of birth:
February 26,
1960
Victims profile: Young
women
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife / Hitting with a hammer
Location: Washington/Oregon/Idaho/Utah, USA
Status: Sentenced to life in prison in Washington on January
1989
Born on February 26, 1960, in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, O'Neall grew up a pathological liar with a taste for violent
sex. He travled the western United States reading the novel's of his
favorite author Louis L'Amour. He would assume alias' of his favorite
character from L'Amour's books.
On March 28, 1987, Robin Smith left for a party with her new friend
"Herb Johnson". The police found Johnson's car abandoned near
marysville, north of Seattle, on May 31. A search of the trunk found
Robin's bloodstained jacket, and several teeth. A check on the vehicles
registration revealed it had been stolen two weeks earlier in Nampa,
Idaho.
The owner, a trucker, recalled the thief in detail. Young, blonde,
and the word "JUNE" tattooed on across his knuckles of his
left hand. The trucker had picked him up and offered him a place to stay
the night.
The next morning he was gone, along with the truckers car,
and a .357 magnum revolver from the truckers home. The tattoo made law
enforcement lead to a drifter who was running from child support
payments after abandoning his wife and child six years earlier.
On April 29, 1987, Wendy Aughe disappeard after leaving a night class to
keep a date with the bartender from a local restaurant in Bellingham,
Washington. It was the bartender's first day of work, and last. He would
never return to pick up his paycheck. Fingerprints taken from the
bartenders application identified him as O'Neall.
By this time, another woman in Colorado Springs, Colorado, had
identified O'Neall as the man who sexually assulated her. On June 9,
1987, Lisa Szubert disappeard from a truck stop at Mountain Home, Idaho.
She was last seen with a young man with the tattoo "JUNE"
across his knuckles.
Her body was found on June 13, outside of La
Grande, Oregon. A week later, O'Neall was linked with the abduction of a
woman in Idaho, and his name was added to the FBI's "Most Wanted"
list.
Three more deaths in Salt Lake City, Utah, were linked to O'Neall as
well, after each was seen with a man with the "JUNE" tattoo,
and was all shot with the same small caliber gun. O'Neall was eventually
caught in Florida, on February 3, 1988 and returned to Washington for
trial.
FrancesFarmersRevenge.com
O'Neall, Darren Dee
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 26, 1960, O'Neall grew up a drifter and pathological liar with a taste for violent sex. He traveled widely, favoring the West and avidly devouring the novels of best-selling Western writer Louis L'Amour. On the road, assuming various identities, O'Neall frequently lifted his latest alias from favorite L'Amour characters.
On March 28, 1987, 22-year-old Robin Smith left a Puyallup, Washington, tavern to attend a party with new acquaintance "Herb Johnson." She never came home, and police were alarmed when they found Johnson's car abandoned near Marysville, north of Seattle, on May 31.
A search of the trunk turned up Robin's bloodstained jacket, plus several human teeth; a check on the vehicle's registration revealed it had been stolen two months earlier, in Nampa, Idaho. The owner was a trucker, who recalled the thief in detail. Young and blond, with the word "JUNE" tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand, the drifter had been thumbing rides when the truckdriver picked him up and offered him a place to spend the night.
Next morning, he was gone, along with his benefactor's car and a Ruger .357 magnum revolver, stolen from the trucker's home. The "JUNE" tattoo rang bells with law enforcement, leading to identification of the drifter as Darren O'Neall, a fugitive from child support payments after abandoning his wife and child six years earlier. His whereabouts was presently unknown, but officers suspected he was hunting other female victims.
On April 29, 1987, Wendy Aughe, 29, disappeared after leaving her beauty school night class to keep a date with the bartender from a neighborhood restaurant in Bellingham, Washington. It was the bartender's first day of work, and he never returned to pick up his paycheck, but fingerprints lifted from his job application identified the man as Darren O'Neall. Wendy's car turned up days later, outside a tavern in Eugene, Oregon, and federal warrants were issued charging O'Neall with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for murder.
By that time, there were other warrants pending, including a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for sexual assault, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A female victim there identified O'Neall as her assailant, and the list of charges grew longer when skeletal remains of Robin Smith were discovered on May 25, near Greenwater, Washington, north of Mt. Rainier.
On June 9, 1987, Lisa Szubert disappeared from a truck stop at Mountain Home, Idaho. Last seen with a young man bearing the familiar knuckle tattoo, she was found dead on June 13, southeast of La Grande, Oregon. A week later, O'Neall was linked with the bungled abduction of a woman in Burly, Idaho; his name was added to the FBI's "Most Wanted" list on June 25. In flight, O'Neall was drawing attention from law enforcement agencies across the nation.
Three women had been shot to death in Salt Lake City over the past year, each killed with the same small caliber gun, and witnesses recalled seeing them last with a man bearing the "JUNE" tattoo on his knuckles. Speculative bodycounts were climbing into double digits by the time FBI agents captured O'Neall in Florida, on February 3, 1988.
He was returned to Washington for trial on murder charges, and the disposition of his case is pending.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia
of Modern Serial Killers
O'Neall, Darren Dee
(1960-)
SEX:
M RACE: W TYPE: N MOTIVE: Sex.
DATE(S): 1987
VENUE: Wash./Idaho/Utah
VICTIMS: Six+ suspected
MO:
Transient rape-slayer of young women
DISPOSITION:
27 years with 18.5-year minimum on one count, in Wash., 1989.
DARREN DEE O'NEALL: THE MANY FACES OF MURDER
By Gary C. King
The Evergreen State
Darren Dee O'Neall, 27, arrived virtually unnoticed in the rugged
Twin Peaks backwoods of Washington State on November 3, 1986, an
unseasonably warm Monday.
Known as a drifter to his family, friends and law enforcement
agencies across the country, O'Neall had traveled extensively throughout
the United States. As the product of an Army household, his travels had
begun in his youth and continued until his father,
Darrell, finally
retired from the military and settled with Darren's mother, Christa, in
Colorado Springs, Colorado. But for reasons, dark, macabre reasons that
no one yet fully understood, Darren O'Neall continued to travel in his
adult life, out of necessity in most cases in order to stay one step
ahead of the law.
On the move almost
constantly, he never remained in one location for very long. As a result,
he did little bonding with others and knew few people whom he could
call friends. When he chose to associate with anyone, he did so mostly
with street people, “animals of the street” as O’Neall himself was known
to call them. He didn’t form alliances out of a yearning for
companionship but out of a need to score illicit drugs or to launch a
new scam of some sort.
Mostly, however, he made
contacts in the streets because he blended in so smoothly with what he
termed “society’s rubbish,” which is how he sometimes thought of himself,
and because he knew that such people would be the least likely ever to
turn him in to the law.
He was gutsy and daring, which should not be
construed as bravery or gallantry but instead should be understood in
the vein that he would do what he had to do to get what he wanted. In
that sense, some would say, he had more nerve than a government mule.
But he was a loner for the most part, afraid to face life responsibly
and on the right side of the law, and that seemed to suit him just fine.
Upon his arrival in the "Evergreen State,"
O'Neall promptly contacted an old high school friend who, O’Neall
learned, had also recently moved into the area. While renewing their “friendship,”
the old friend convinced O'Neall in short order that life and women were
indeed good there and that he should rent an apartment and stay, too.
O'Neall, apparently believing his friend and taking him at his word
decided to try out the area for a while. After settling into a shabby
duplex unit in Puyallup, a small community of 17,200 residents, he
quickly obtained work as a truck driver in nearby Tacoma.
Although his propensity for carrying out
senseless acts of violence was present early in his life and began to
manifest itself during a period of enlistment with the U.S. Army, no one,
not even O'Neall, really knew what he was capable of doing. He was
literally a ticking time bomb waiting to explode but, unfortunately,
nobody knew when, where, or by what means the detonation would occur.
The Evil Within
By January 1987 the darkness within Darren
O'Neall began to surface. O'Neall's job as a trucker took him to
Portland, Oregon, some 130 miles to the south, on the evening of January
17. Driving toward his destination, he spotted an attractive 14-year-old
girl walking across a freeway overpass on the city's southeast side on
her way to a nearby convenience store.
Driving a big rig, O'Neall's
insatiable sexual urge compelled him to turn around and drive back for a
second look, just in time to see her walk inside the convenience store.
With his libido now dictating his actions, he positioned his truck on
the side of the street along the route she had come and waited for her
to emerge from the store.
This was too good to be true, or so
O’Neall thought. After all, he had just driven south from Tacoma to
Portland, Oregon, the City of Roses, and he had already found himself a
perfect victim. While it was certainly bad luck for the girl, it was
indeed good luck for him. Rarely was finding a victim so easy. Fate was
clearly on his side once again. Thinking through a quickly made plan,
O’Neall told himself that it would all be worth it once he had the girl
under his control. He lit up a Camel filter, his favorite brand of
cigarette, and drew the harsh smoke deep into his lungs as he waited for
the girl to leave the store.
Five minutes passed. As he waited for her
to return, he became more anxious, excited, and his breathing grew
heavier, more intense with each second that ticked by. Three minutes
later he lit another Camel from the one he was smoking, and flicked the
finished one out into the street.
He continued to wait, and he took out
one of the long-bladed hunting knives that he always carried with him as
he began to fantasize about what he would soon be able to do with the
girl. He turned the knife over and over in his hands, feeling the sharp,
turned-up tip. The things he planned to do to the girl were terrible,
unthinkable by most people's values - but not to his.
People, to him,
were objects to be used for his pleasure alone, to be discarded like
garbage when he was finished with them. He didn't care whether she had
a family or what kinds of repercussions his actions would have on them
or the girl. Thoughts of decency were foreign to him. All he cared about
was himself, what he needed, what he wanted. Even more frightening,
there was a part of him that understood all of this.
Although he was not yet versed in the
legality of what he was about to do, by definition he was going to
interfere with a person's personal liberty and commit the crime of
kidnapping in the first degree with the sole purpose of causing physical
and psychological injury to his chosen victim. He was going to confine
her secretly so that he could terrorize her without being disturbed,
ultimately for his sexual pleasure and the delight he would enjoy of
having her under his power, under his total control. He knew what he was
doing, and he knew right from wrong. But he didn't care. He was evil.
Finally, there she was, coming out of the
store. She was carrying an open bottle of soda pop in one hand and a
small sack of candy and other treats in the other. There was no time to
lose. The man moved quickly into action.
He climbed out of the cab of
his big rig, the half-burned Camel hanging from his lips, and moved
toward the truck's sleeping compartment door, pretending that he was
attending to some kind of a problem with his rig. Such tactics had
worked for him before. There was no reason for him to believe they
wouldn't work this time.
When the girl was alongside the truck, the
hairy man, without any warning, pulled on the outside handle of the
sleeping compartment door and swung it open, then stepped onto the
sidewalk in front of her and effectively blocked her path, all in one
swift action. It was imperative that he move quickly. He couldn't risk
anyone seeing him kidnap the girl.
Extremes of Sexual Violence
Puzzled and somewhat startled at first,
the girl stopped in her tracks and looked up quizzically at the man. Not
wanting the girl to scream and cause a scene before he could get her
under his control, the man attempted a halfhearted smile as he leered at
her with Charlie Manson eyes. Quick as a snake he reached out and
grabbed her by the front of her nylon jacket. Terrified, the girl
stiffened and froze, unable to scream or fight back.
The man lifted her
off the sidewalk and pushed her forcefully into the truck's sleeping
compartment. He leaped inside after her and pulled the door shut behind
him, brandishing the hunting knife for the girl to see. He also told
her that he had a gun, but she didn't actually see the .357 Ruger he was
carrying.
"If you scream or try to get away, I'll
kill you," said the man, brimming with a matter-of-fact, arrogant
confidence. The girl, wild-eyed with fear, couldn't take her eyes off
the knife. The knife was having the effect that he wanted it to have,
and he seemed aroused by her wild display of fear.
Although terrified,
she kept quiet and involuntarily allowed the man to stuff a gag inside
her mouth and to bind her hands and feet. Squirming from discomfort and
crying uncontrollably, her young mind instinctively told her that it
would be futile, and possibly very dangerous, to resist. When he was
certain that the bindings were tautly in place and was confident that
she couldn't get away or cause him any trouble, the man exited the
sleeping compartment and climbed back into the driver's seat. Certain
that he had drawn no attention from passersby he calmly started the
engine and pulled unobtrusively away from the curb.
He crossed the
overpass, then took the freeway on-ramp that headed him south into rural
Clackamas County, his predetermined destination. He wanted his privacy,
and he knew that he would get it there.
Fifteen minutes later, he pulled off onto
a dark, tree-shrouded unpaved road and parked in an area not unlike that
being frequented by serial killer Dayton Leroy Rogers, also known as the
Molalla Forest Killer. O’Neall wasn’t aware of Rogers, who had not been
apprehended yet and wouldn’t be for several more months. But no one
would bother him there, of that O’Neall was certain. With steady hands
he reached into a sack on the floorboard and pulled out a lukewarm can
of Black Label beer, next to the last can of a six-pack that he had
purchased just before leaving Washington State. He lit another Camel,
climbed out of the truck, and listened intently. All he could hear was
the wind-driven rain pelting the metal of the cab's roof.
He was alone
with the girl in a silent forest, and though her tears flowed like the
rain coming down outside and he could hear her whimpering in the
compartment behind him, he made not a sound. He was feeling good,
strong, and in control. After several minutes of savoring the moment, he
climbed inside the sleeping compartment and sat down next to the
frightened, whimpering girl, a mere child who was only now beginning to
learn about life's darkest side.
Keeping the knife where she could see it,
he carefully removed her restraints. He drew back his hand at one point,
as if he was going to slap her hard across the face with the palm of his
hand. The display was to show her that he meant business. But for some
reason he didn't strike the girl.
Perhaps it was the way she had
flinched sharply in anticipation of the pain that the slap would have
caused, or perhaps it was because she had promptly nodded in affirmation
that she would do just as she was told, everything that he instructed
her to do as long as he promised not to kill her. But the only promise
he made to her was that if she didn't obey, she would suffer dearly for
it. She believed him, and slowly followed his instructions by removing
all her clothing.
The girl slowly unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off. She next
unfastened her jeans and, from a sitting position, slipped them down.
She looked at him for a moment, as if waiting or hoping that he would
change his mind.
"Go on, get the rest of those off," he commanded as he showed her
the knife again. "What the fuck are you waitin' for?"
She unfastened her bra in the back and, attempting to cover her
breasts with one arm, she removed the bra the rest of the way with the
other. She then slipped her panties off and kneeled on the floor. He
pushed her onto her back, but she remained rigid.
He ran his large, rough hands across her breasts, and took the
hunting knife and ran its tip slowly and ever so lightly across her
stomach. With careful, deliberate movements he continued dragging the
knife in a downward motion, across her abdomen and pelvic area to,
finally, between her thighs. He felt good, all-powerful. He wriggled out
of his own pants He forced himself on top of the girl and entered her
forcefully. His breath stank of beer and cigarettes, and he panted as he
continued to rape her.
His manhood was important to him, even if he really wasn't the man
he wanted everyone to think that he was. He had to maintain the image.
It was all an extension of his fantasy, which he believed he had to keep
alive to get along in the world.
The girl didn't want to take any chances of angering him by
protesting his demands that she perform oral sex on him and so she
continued the deviant act until he backed away on his own. She didn't
know what he might do with the knife.
He would continue to rape her over the next two hours. At one point,
when it appeared that he would not be able to attain another erection,
the man grabbed the now empty soda pop bottle that the girl had been
carrying when he kidnapped her and placed it angrily between her legs.
"Bet you know what I'm doing to do with this, don't you?" he laughed.
The girl remained silent, and only stared at him with wild, frightened
eyes.
He carefully, but forcefully, worked the bottle's neck into her
vagina.
When O’Neall realized that he was finished with the girl, he also
knew that he had the problem of deciding what to do with her. He had
kidnapped, repeatedly raped, and sexually penetrated the body of a
juvenile female with a foreign object, among other crimes. If he let her
go, he knew that she would likely be able to identify him at some point.
He thought and talked of killing her, but she cried and pleaded with him
to let her go.
"I promise I won't tell anyone what happened if you'll just let me
go," she cried. "Please don't kill me!"
"I could sell you to pimps in California," he said after several
minutes of silence, an evil gleam in his eyes. He seemed lost, deep in
thought for several more minutes before finally breaking the quietude.
After taunting her by telling her all of the horrible things that he
could do to her, he demanded that she promise, again, not to tell anyone
about what had happened to her. After threatening to find her if she did,
O’Neall miraculously agreed to let her go. He allowed her to dress,
drove her back to the city, and dropped her off at a location where she
could easily find her way home.
When the girl arrived home, she discovered that her parents were
still up, frantic with worry. They had already called the police, but,
they had been told, there wasn't much that they could do until more time
had passed. She hadn't been missing long enough to qualify as a missing
person. Trembling uncontrollably, she tearfully recounted to her
parents the horror she had been subjected to over the past few hours.
They reported the crimes that had been committed against their daughter
to the Portland Police Bureau, and the girl was taken to a local
hospital for examination. A standard rape kit, which includes a comb,
swabs and evidence containers, was used to collect the evidence.
Following the medical examination, Portland Police Bureau Detective
Bill Carter interviewed the girl at length. She described her attacker
as a white male, approximately 25 to 30 years of age, nearly six feet
tall, and about 160 pounds. She said that he had a thick mustache and
beard, and somewhat crooked teeth. However, despite the investigation
that was initiated as case number 87-12-37738 that evening, it would be
nearly six months before the girl would positively identify her attacker
as one Darren Dee O'Neall.
In the meantime, she would begin to despise and distrust nearly all
men because of what happened to her on the night of January 17, 1987,
and would grow up harboring such feelings despite extensive therapy. And,
like so many others who had become victims of violent crime, she would
become afraid of the dark.
O’Neall eventually would be charged with two counts of first-degree
kidnapping, three counts of first-degree rape, sexual penetration with a
foreign object, three counts of third-degree rape, and single counts of
first-degree sodomy, third-degree sodomy, and sexual abuse, but not
before returning to Washington State and murdering Robin Smith, and
likely other victims.
Following the attack on the young girl in Oregon, O'Neall, being a
master of disguise and possessing an uncanny ability to elude the law,
did not return to his job but instead changed his appearance, took on an
alias and moved from Puyallup to nearby Edgewood, an even smaller town
of only 1,600 people where he obtained a job as a laminator. As would
become a part of his overall profile, he managed to stay one step ahead
of the law.
"Rockin'"
Robin
Nearly two months after the attack on the
young Oregon girl, in March 1987, O'Neall met attractive Mary Barnes at
Baldy's Tavern in Puyallup, where Barnes worked part-time as a barmaid.
Baldy’s soon became one of O’Neall’s favorite haunts, and he began going
there almost daily. Attracted to O'Neall's ruggedness, the two
instantly hit it off and Barnes soon moved into O'Neall's apartment.
Barnes satisfied him sexually at first, but after a couple of weeks he
began to fantasize about the perfect woman he wanted for himself, a
woman he hoped he could take back into the woods and live out the rest
of his life with. It was just a fantasy, of course, one of many that he
got from reading Louis L’Amour’s western novels.
Early on Saturday morning, March 28,
shortly past midnight, O'Neall began eyeing a beautiful young woman from
across the bar. Soon afterward his fantasy state took hold, and he
immediately felt certain that he had found the perfect woman he’d been
looking for in Robin Smith, 22, at Baldy's Tavern. He found Smith, at
5-foot-3, 115 pounds with blue eyes and blond hair, very attractive.
But there was a problem, one that O’Neall became starkly aware of almost
immediately. Robin was with her fiance, Larron Crowston, 23, however,
and did not actually meet O'Neall until later that morning at his
apartment. O'Neall, it turned out, had decided early that he had to
find a way to separate Smith from Crowston, and shortly before the
tavern closed that morning he persuaded Barnes to announce to the tavern
patrons that everyone was invited to his place for an "after hours"
party. A small crowd, including Smith and Crowston, accompanied O'Neall
and Barnes to their apartment, where the drinking continued non-stop
into the morning.
At 5 a.m. Crowston suddenly left the
party, citing a previously planned fishing trip with friends that he had
committed himself to, but there was the question of how Robin would get
home. Robin didn’t want to leave the party yet, but Crowston could not
wait any longer or he would miss the fishing boat. After being assured
by O'Neall and Barnes that they would see to it that Robin got home
safely, Crowston kissed his fiancée goodbye. He didn’t know it, but it
would be the last time he ever saw Robin.
*****
Robin Pamela Smith was born
in New Britain, Connecticut, on April 4, 1965, to Edna and Stuart Smith.
A tiny baby, not much larger than a child's doll, Robin weighed a mere
four pounds, four ounces. Her mother described her as a good baby, which,
in any mother's language, translates into a quiet baby, and the
placidity that followed her into adolescence and adulthood would be but
one of several traits for which she would be remembered. Somewhat prissy
as a little girl, she borrowed her sisters' clothes all the time, and
these, too, were characteristics that she would carry with her into
young adulthood.
Robin's mother, Edna, grew up in New
Britain, having moved there when she was five, and she lived there for
approximately 25 years. Later, after marrying Stuart, her second husband,
and giving birth to Robin, Edna and her family moved to Meriden,
Connecticut, where they lived on Crown Street for 12 years and made
their living for a while by operating a restaurant and bar. Shortly
after Robin's 12th birthday, the Smiths decided to leave New England.
After considerable soul searching and planning, they packed up their
belongings and moved to the state of Washington, leaving behind their
friends and relatives to start a new life in the Pacific Northwest.
Although Robin was considered a generally
serene and private teenage girl, she liked to dance. While growing up
she often was affectionately called "Rockin' Robin" by her friends, a
nickname that was inspired by the old Michael Jackson song bearing that
same title, because she always rocked and danced to the music on the
radio. But Robin was no rocker at all, at least not in the true sense of
the word. She liked to listen to the tunes and move to the beat, but she
was not lost in the world of rock 'n' roll. She liked other music as
well, as long as it pleased her ear and she could dance to it.
On the surface Robin, in her youngest years, was not always
perceived as a friendly child, as often happens to people who are shy.
People often mistake shyness for coldness or aloofness, when it is
usually nothing of the sort. Deep down, Robin was really a very warm and
loving young girl who was devoted to her family and friends. Although
beheld by some in her later teenage years as a happy-go-lucky girl,
those closest to Robin knew her as being quieter and more reserved than
many young girls her age. The shyness, say members of her family, never
really left her, and it always took some doing for anyone even to get to
know her. She consistently moved slowly with new acquaintances,
especially males, perhaps because of the pain that she had watched her
mother go through during the trauma of divorce. It was only after Robin
had become comfortable with someone that she would open up and talk to
them, and even then only rarely would she reveal her innermost feelings
and secrets to anyone outside her immediate family.
Fear of the Dark
Like many kids, Robin grew up being afraid
of the dark. At first it seemed natural enough to her parents, as if it
was only a childhood phase that she was going through. But as time went
on she began to dwell upon her fears, and often had disturbing thoughts
that something terrible was going to happen to her. Family members
believed that might have been one of the reasons why she kept to
herself. She had friends, but she was always very selective about the
people with whom she chose to associate, and she always remained close
to her family.
Perhaps more of a homebody type than many
of her peers, Robin tried hard to be a typical teenager during her high
school years. Like most teenagers, she wanted acceptance from kids her
own age and sometimes bowed to pressure, such as taking up the habit of
smoking cigarettes. But she never did anything to cause her parents any
real problems or grief. Even though she made good grades in school, she
didn't particularly like school, and as time went on it became tough for
her mother to get her out of bed in the morning. But even that, aside
from occasionally showing up late for school, never really became a
problem for anyone. If she had a problem that she couldn't solve herself
or if something bothered her, she would always go to her mother with her
troubles, just as all of Edna's kids would. Of course, she had the usual
fights with her three brothers and two sisters, and there was a certain
amount of sibling rivalry among all of them, just as there is in any
large family, but when it came down to the nitty-gritty they were always
there for one another just as their mother had always taught them to be.
Despite the love and positive
reinforcement that Robin received at home, she did not grow up being
overly confident. She often worried about her looks and became self-conscious,
which, again, was typical for a teenage girl. She was pretty, but she
didn't really think of herself as being very pretty. She had had a
hernia on her navel when she was a baby, not a "normal belly button,"
which, even though surgically repaired when she was an infant,
transformed into a rather small line with an indentation as she grew up.
Although it wasn't particularly noticeable and didn't mar her
attractiveness, she didn't want people to see it. For reasons that no
one really understood, she developed an almost unnatural fear of having
her body exposed, perhaps because of her herniated navel. She even
dreaded going to the doctor out of fear that she would be asked to
disrobe for an examination, and would see a doctor only when it became
absolutely necessary.
There was also a certain dark or grim side
to Robin. Besides being afraid of the dark, which might have stemmed
from her fondness for a country and western song, "Jeannie Is Afraid of
the Dark," that she listened to constantly as a child, Robin withdrew
into her own little shell when her mother divorced her second husband,
Robin's father, Stuart, in 1978. As if being withdrawn wasn't a serious
enough problem for her to cope with, she began having recurring
nightmares of being held captive in a crowded, dark place, nightmares
that her mother now believes, in retrospect, were a chilling
foreshadowing of what was to come.
Within a year or so, as she began to
accept her parents' divorce, Robin started coming out of the protective
shell that she had constructed around herself. By then she had become
close friends with two other girls, Julie and Trish, and the trio was
inseparable. Together almost constantly, everybody soon began calling
them the Three Musketeers.
Then, in 1982, Trish suddenly announced to
Robin and Julie that she was moving to California. She was going to stay
with a friend there and find a job, she told her friends. Robin, then
16, was deeply saddened to see her friend leave, but she nonetheless
wished Trish luck and issued her a stern warning not to get drawn into
the nether world of drugs or prostitution. Trish promised her friends
that she wouldn't, and assured them that she would behave herself and
that she would stay in touch. Following a tearful going-away party,
Trish departed her friends' lives.
A
Murdered Friend
Two months later, however, Trish called
Robin. Robin, of course, was ecstatic to hear from her. But there was
something about the fact that Trish had called that troubled her. Robin
asked her what was wrong, not really expecting Trish to tell her but
nonetheless hoping that she would. Everything was fine, said Trish. She
had a job, she was happy, and she said she liked living in California.
But she somehow didn't sound normal to Robin, and Robin continued to
sense that something was wrong.
"Are you sure that you're not on drugs or
involved in prostitution?" Robin asked. "If you are, I'll kick your butt
because I don't want you doing things like that. Come home if things are
going wrong for you.” Still Trish insisted that everything was fine.
Two days later, while watching television,
Robin saw a news report about a girl who had been murdered at an
apartment complex down on the Sea-Tac Strip, a busy boulevard of hotels,
motels, and restaurants so named because of its close proximity to the
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Some of the establishments were
classy, but for every classy hotel or motel there were two that were
seedy. Hookers, young and over-the-hill alike, commonly walked the
Strip at all hours of the day and night, looking to turn a trick and
make a few bucks for their next fix of heroin, speed, or whatever. Some
of the girls worked independently, and others had pimps. But it didn't
matter. They were always there, rain or shine, and many of them often
fell victim to a sex criminal of one kind or another while working in
the world's oldest profession. Most were either released or escaped with
only minimal physical harm after having been forced to engage in any
number of acts of sexual fetishism, some violent. But one such sex
criminal, however, showed them no mercy. He would eventually be dubbed
the Green River Killer, a vicious psychopathic murderer who wanted more
out of the prostitutes, much more, than they were willing to sell to him.
The Strip would become the focal point of the police, from where so many
of that serial killer's street-walking victims were plucked off the
boulevard and driven to their violent, horrible deaths.
Naturally, when the girl was found dead at
the apartment complex, most people never thought much about it at the
time. By then the murders attributed to the Green River Killer had
become more or less commonplace, and the public at first just chalked up
the murder of this latest young female as another of the elusive serial
killer's victims, just another prostitute who had met an unpleasant end.
But the police knew right away that the girl wasn't a Green River Killer
victim. Although the girl was indeed quickly labeled a hooker by the
police, her murder simply did not fit that serial killer's modus
operandi, his method of operation. And when Robin saw the news reports
of the murdered girl, her thoughts turned to Trish. But she soon
convinced herself that the girl couldn't have been Trish. She was in
California.
The police couldn't immediately identify
the young girl. The news reports said that she had been raped and
murdered in an upstairs apartment unit, stabbed to death, and her nude
body had been tossed off one of the balconies. Soon, however, the police
had a photo taken of the dead girl, just of her face, and had it
published under the Crime Stoppers heading in the local newspapers. One
of the victim's former classmates recognized her, and positively
identified her for the police. It was Trish, all right, and when Robin
learned that one of her closest friends had been brutally raped and
murdered, it was almost more than she could take.
Robin literally came unglued, as did her
friend Julie, the sister of close family friend Jim Chaney. Despite
warnings from her family and friends, Robin went down to the apartment
complex where the murder occurred and started knocking on doors, asking
questions of the tenants in an attempt to find out who had done such a
horrible thing to her girlfriend. Fearing that Robin might roust the
killer out during one of her irrational outbursts, Edna called a police
friend and asked him to speak to her. Although Robin at first resisted
the police officer's efforts to talk some sense into her, he eventually
was able to convince her to let the police do their job. Even after the
case was eventually cleared, Robin and Julie would find it difficult to
return their lives to normal.
Following Trish's murder, Robin's
nightmares resumed and actually intensified. No longer did she merely
dream that something horrible was going to happen to her. Her dreams
became more specific than that and intensified to the point where she
frequently dreamed of dying at the hands of another, horribly,
just like Trish. Although everyone tried to console her and attempted to
pump positive thoughts into her mind, the nightmares only grew worse.
Concerned for her safety after Trish's murder, and seeing how adversely
the murder had affected her, Robin's brothers and sisters began
cautioning her about the many dangers lurking on the city's streets. If
anyone ever tried to rape her, they told her, just give it up if it
otherwise meant losing her life. But Robin always remained steadfast.
"Never. Over my dead body I'll fight. I'll
go down with a fight," she told them. Although she never fully got over
Trish's brutal and untimely death, she tried hard to get on with her
life. It wasn't easy, but the fact that she and Julie were there for
each other to lean on helped them both to eventually accept what had
happened to Trish.
Robin is Missing
Upon returning from his fishing trip,
Larron discovered that Robin had not returned home. He and Robin’s
mother, Edna, became exceedingly worried about her well being after
being unable to locate anyone who knew where she was. Fearing for
Robin's safety, Larron and Edna reported Robin missing to the Pierce
County Sheriff's Office.
As the missing person investigation got
underway, Mary Barnes told Pierce County detectives Walter “Walt” Stout
and Terry Wilson that she had left the apartment the morning of the
party for a few hours, but when she returned in the afternoon both
O'Neall and Smith were gone, as was O'Neall's car. After a search of
the apartment, Barnes informed authorities that O'Neall had taken food,
camping gear, clothing, and other items. She also discovered that an
electrical cord to the television was missing, which she as well as the
detectives considered very strange.
According to Barnes, O'Neall often carried
a knife on his belt and another hidden in his boot. She also said that
O'Neall claimed to have knowledge of survivalist skills obtained from
his prior enlistment in the Army Rangers and Green Berets, but the
detectives were unable to find any evidence that he was ever a member of
either of the elite military groups, only that he had been an enlistee
in the regular army. Barnes told the investigators that O'Neall dressed
primarily in western wear, including cowboy hats, boots, and jeans. In
addition to having worked as a bartender and a laminator in a cabinet-making
shop, the detectives learned that O'Neall exhibited considerable talent
in woodworking skills. Barnes corroborated information from other
sources that O’Neall was also known to frequently change his appearance
through hair growth and cutting, adding and removing a mustache and
beard, and sometimes wearing wire-rimmed glasses.
Later on the day that Robin failed to
return home, O'Neall showed up at a friend’s home at 1:30 p.m. driving a
1972 Chrysler New Yorker with Montana license plates. He explained that
he was going away for awhile, but did not indicate where he was going or
for how long he would be gone. O'Neall asked to borrow some money from
his friend for a truck that he claimed he wanted to buy, and dropped off
one of his dogs for his friend to watch for him during his absence.
O’Neall’s friend accompanied him to the car, which was backed into a
driveway across the street, and noticed while they were talking that
something was kicking hard against the back seat from inside the trunk.
When his friend asked him what was inside the trunk, O'Neall explained
that he was having difficulty with his other dog and had locked it
inside the trunk as a form of punishment.
"I told him, 'That's sick. You don't put
a dog in the trunk,'" the friend explained later when he talked to the
police. "Then I walked away without writing him the check, and he drove
off."
O’Neall’s friend told Detective Wilson
that O'Neall had seemed very nervous, like he was hiding something, and
stressed that he had not heard any dog barking from inside the trunk.
Later, Robin's relatives discovered that the second dog, the one that
was supposed to have been in the trunk, was still at O'Neall's apartment,
apparently abandoned.
Later that night at a nearby hospital
emergency room, a man requested treatment for facial cuts and scrapes.
The man fit O'Neall's description: a teardrop mark on his cheek and the
word "J-U-N-E" tattooed across his knuckles. The following morning a
man walked into the Safeway grocery store in Enumclaw, Washington, a man
believed to be O'Neall. He purchased pastry, cigarettes, and Black
Label beer.
Two hours later a flagman noticed someone
in a car second in a line of cars in the Greenwater area near Mount
Rainier waiting to get past roadwork. Unlike the others, the man did not
have skis, even though he was headed toward the mountain. Also unlike
the others, the man drove on by, pulled off the road, waited for twenty
minutes, then returned the way he had come. The investigators
eventually believed that the man seen by the flagman was none other than
Darren O'Neall. It was at that time, they eventually theorized after no
sign of Robin was ever found, that he pulled off the highway onto a
rugged logging road and disposed of Robin Smith's body.
Robin's relatives, friends, and
acquaintances soon told the investigators that it was completely out of
character for Robin to just leave with O'Neall, especially since she was
engaged to Crowston, and a missing person report was finally filed when
deputies followed up on the initial reports called in by Edna and Larron.
In those reports Robin was described as wearing blue jeans, a pink-and-white
shirt, purple coat and white tennis shoes. She had a quarter-inch scar
above her left eye. Similarly, an APB was issued for O'Neall, in which
he was described as 5 feet 11 inches, 170 pounds, medium build, blond
hair, blue eyes, and a light complexion. It also described a vertical
scar on his right cheek, a six-inch surgical scar on his abdomen, a
small, barely visible five-point-tip star tattoo below his left eye, and
the name "J-U-N-E" tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand. Though
there was no sign of O'Neall or Robin, Robin's family and fiance did not
give up the hope that she was still alive.
Another day passed, and on Monday, March
30, 1987, the dark yellow Chrysler O'Neall was known to drive was found
abandoned at a rest stop 15 miles north of Everett, Washington, north of
Seattle, along the northbound lanes of Interstate 5. Though the car was
the clue that almost got away, it was eventually linked to O'Neall and
investigators opened the trunk. Inside the detectives found the blood-soaked
jacket that belonged to Robin Smith, two teeth, a bone fragment, and a
heavily blood stained interior. The cops suspected that Robin had been
beaten severely with a hammer or some other heavy instrument while held
captive in the trunk of O’Neall’s car. No longer did the detectives
hold out much hope that Robin was still alive. Nonetheless, Edna
continued to grasp a thin thread of hope and refused to believe that the
worst had happened.
Louis L'Armour
When he searched O'Neall's apartment,
Detective Stout found a clue in O'Neall's own handwriting. It was an
outline of his future plans and ultimate goals, plans that emphasized
living in a secluded cabin in the wilderness with minimum assistance and
only the bare necessities. Among those necessities that he included in
his writing were a copy of the Bible and Louis L'Amour novels,
specifically L'Amour's books on the Sackett family of the wild west.
Stout also found dozens of L'Amour's western books as well as western
magazines scattered about the apartment. Stout soon learned from his
colleagues in Idaho that O'Neall, while living in Idaho, went by the
name Larry Sackett. And still more evidence of the L'Amour obsession
and of yet a second alias was a medical card, allegedly used by O'Neall,
in the name of Zebulan J. Macranahan. O'Neall, Stout learned,
purportedly told friends that the names Sackett and Macranahan were
names of characters in some of L'Amour's books, which was why he chose
them as aliases. Police now believed that O'Neall's fantasies might
help explain Robin's disappearance.
"We believe that it does," said Detective
Terry Wilson, "and that he actually intended to go into the woods
somewhere and live like some of the characters in L'Amour's books."
Despite the intensity of the police
investigation, Edna and her family were not satisfied. In a series of
events orchestrated by Edna, family members and friends went to
O'Neall's apartment. They gained entry on their own and searched it
thoroughly. They found drug syringes and needles, paraphernalia, and
other evidence of drug use and abuse. They also found signs that a
struggle had occurred there and other evidence that was apparently
overlooked by the police. They also spoke with Mary Barnes, and soon
suspected her of hiding O'Neall in the hours after Robin's disappearance.
Still being directed by Edna, family
friend Jim Chaney, Robin’s brother, Robert Sharp, and others paid a
visit to the home of O’Neall’s friend, the friend that O’Neall visited
the day of Robin’s disappearance. They questioned him at length, and he
appeared nervous. At one point a known junkie and another man came out
of O’Neall’s friend’s place of business and began talking about the case
and the day that O'Neall had shown up there. The junkie told of O'Neall
opening the trunk of his car, and of seeing part of a naked leg. Before
being told to shut up by O’Neall’s friend, the junkie also described a
purple and white sock, the type that would eventually be found with
Robin's clothing in the forest near Greenwater. Because of the junkie's
reputation, the police, of course, discounted his story. Edna, however,
maintained that the junkie, O’Neall’s friend, and the other man knew
more than they were telling the police.
Searching for Robin
In the face of growing adversity and doubt,
Edna did not give up in the search for Robin. In near desperation, she
consulted a known psychic in the area who agreed to help her free of
charge. The psychic soon directed Edna to the Greenwater area near
Mount Rainier, and said that Robin was in or near an area where there
was running or dripping water. It was becoming more difficult for Edna
to talk about Robin's disappearance and about what she now suspected had
happened, just as it had become difficult for the rest of the family to
organize a search for what they did not want to find. More than 50 people
volunteered to search for Robin despite an overnight snowfall and
despite the overwhelming odds against finding her in the vast wilderness
where they believed her body had been dumped. Robin's sister, Brenda
Baker, five months pregnant, and Robert, her brother, were among the
searchers who had volunteered to help a determined mother find out what
had happened to Robin.
At the end of the first day’s search
effort there was still no sign of Robin, but signs of the family's hope
were seen by yellow ribbons tied to the branches of trees, ribbons
marking the places where Robin was not found to keep the searchers from
covering the same spots twice. For Edna and her family, no sign of
Robin meant that she still could be alive. They continued to cling to
that belief and to what the psychic told them: that Robin was near
dripping or running water.
"She could still be alive," said Edna
tearfully. "She (the psychic) said that it's very possible that the
feeling that she gets, which is total peace, could mean that Robin could
be in a coma. Or she could be so drugged up that she can't respond to
anything. But the other possibility is that she could be dead."
Police theorized that if Robin was still
alive, she had lost a great deal of blood judging by the carnage found
in the trunk of O’Neall’s car and that each night that she spent in the
mountains, if that was indeed where she was, lessened the chance that
she would be found alive.
Although they didn’t realize it until
later, Edna and her family had come within a few yards of finding
Robin's remains during one of the searches, which were being consumed
and scattered by coyotes and other animals. When they reflected on it
later, they were grateful that they hadn’t discovered her in that
condition.
Edna and members of her family, as well as
family friend Jim Chaney, made the drive daily to the Greenwater area
for the next two months and continued to search the vast forests and
mountainous terrain for Robin. But there was no sign of a body and no
sign of a suspect, a suspect who was by now considered by everyone
involved as an outlaw as elusive as his fantasy of the west. Police did
not yet believe that O’Neall’s trail had gone cold—they said that it
simply did not exist. All they knew for certain was that he was out
there, somewhere.
Stolen Car
The clue that eventually linked O'Neall to the Chrysler came when
the detectives finally determined that the car had been stolen from a
man that O’Neall had previously befriended in Nampa, Idaho. The man, a
long-haul trucker, was eventually traced through his employer to
Portland, Oregon, where he told investigators that he had picked up a
hitchhiker the previousOctober while driving to Nampa. The man claimed that the hitchhiker had
identified himself as Jerry Zebulan Macranahan, and had resided with the
man in his home from October 15 through November 2, 1986. On November
2, the man said that he had left for a job and had entrusted the
Chrysler to Macranahan during his absence. When he returned home on
November 4, he found the vehicle, a .357 Ruger, $200 and Macranahan all
missing. The man promptly identified Macranahan as Darren O'Neall from
a photo throw down.
The Pierce County
detectives soon turned up O'Neall's extensive criminal history, but it
would still be at least two months before they linked him to the January
kidnapping and rape charges involving the young girl in Portland. They
discovered that he was arrested on March 12, 1982, in Colorado Springs,
Colorado, for obstructing police and disturbing the peace. In September
1982 he was cited for damaging private property and committing third-degree
assault. In October 1982 he was again cited for drinking in public. In
November 1984 he was charged with first-degree sexual assault, a charge
that was later reduced to aggravated robbery. Those charges were
ultimately dismissed because the complaining witness, a prostitute,
could no longer be located. In July 1986 O'Neall committed a second-degree
sexual assault for which he was arrested and later skipped bail on.
There were also a number of public indecency offenses on his record,
such as urinating and defecating in public.
On April 24, 1987, an individual who
identified himself as Mike James Johnson was hired as a bartender at the
La Paloma Restaurant in Bellingham, Washington. It was there that
O'Neall, posing as "Johnson," met pretty Wendy Aughe, 29, a beauty
school student and mother of two young children. O'Neall and Aughe were
last seen together leaving the La Paloma on April 25 during the early
morning hours. Not surprisingly, Aughe was not heard from again, and
worried family members reported her unexplained disappearance to the
police.
A subsequent search of Aughe's Bellingham
apartment revealed signs of a struggle, pools of blood, and blood soaked
bed sheets and linen. “Peter tracks,” dried semen, was also found on
the bed sheets. The considerable evidence found inside Wendy Aughe's
apartment suggested that a sexual assault had occurred there. After an
APB was issued for O’Neall, a U.S. Customs agent soon reported having
taken a photograph of O'Neall driving Aughe's car as he came back across
the border into the U.S. from Canada, in the time frame when Wendy
disappeared. O'Neall was the only person visible in the car in the spot
check photo.
A week later, on Saturday, May 2, 1987,
Aughe's 1972 Ford Torino was found abandoned in Eugene, Oregon, and a
man later identified as O'Neall was reported as having been seen at
several locations in downtown Eugene attempting to sell a gold chain
necklace, according to Detective J.T. Parr of the Eugene Police
Department. Fingerprints taken from a food wrapper in Aughe's
automobile and from a job application submitted by "Johnson" were
eventually identified as those of Darren Dee O'Neall.
Police by now admitted that it could be
difficult to find Darren O'Neall. His history clearly showed that he
changed his hairstyle and appearance frequently, and the effect was
often dramatic. Wanted posters distributed shortly after Wendy Aughe's
disappearance expressed a new sense of urgency because the police now
feared that O'Neall had killed twice and could be ready to strike again
at any time. Both Robin and Wendy, police pointed out, were met by
O'Neall on a Friday and disappeared late on a Friday night or early
Saturday. Both cars, Wendy's and the Chrysler, were believed dumped on
a Monday morning. The two occurrences were exactly four weeks apart,
and the fourth week anniversary of Wendy's disappearance was fast
approaching.
Murder charges were filed against O'Neall, in part due to Edna's
urging the police to do something in connection with Robin's death
despite the fact that her remains had not yet been found. Police agreed
that the heavier charge of murder would help intensify the effort to
locate O'Neall. With Edna's assistance, "Wanted For Murder" posters
were distributed to all stores selling books by O'Neall's favorite
author, Louis L'Amour, and to beauty shops because O'Neall often had his
hair permed, and to other locations throughout western Washington
because of concerns that O'Neall was still in the Puget Sound area. A
possible sighting, only one of many, had been reported a week earlier
near Mount Rainier.
Skeletal Remains
On Monday, May 25, 1987, the day that
Memorial Day was officially observed that year, skeletal remains were
discovered by hikers in the same general wooded area previously searched
by Edna and her family near Greenwater. It was the same area in which
the psychic had directed Edna to search, and the remains were scattered
over an area near a running stream. Some of the remains were collected,
and several pieces of clothing and personal identification belonging to
Robin were found nearby, partially buried beneath a rotting tree stump.
Detective Stout, other investigators, and Explorer Scouts went out to
the site and searched the area. Edna was notified that the remains
could be those of her daughter's after a Pierce County medical examiner
concluded that the bones belonged to a Caucasian female in her early 20s
with blond hair.
After being told that more bones were
needed, specifically jawbones and teeth, to make a positive
identification, Edna again pushed the issue with the sheriff's
department and insisted that a more thorough search of the area be
conducted. She was told that searchers would go back out and excavate
the wooded area just as soon as time and manpower allowed. But Edna
couldn’t wait for the sheriff's department, which was already overworked
and understaffed due to budget cuts, and took it upon herself to go to
the location to dig and search for the additional bones and teeth needed
to make a positive identification. As a result of her efforts, which
consisted of hands and knees searches over nearly a two-week period, she
found the additional bones that were needed, including a jaw bone.
After a dental comparison of the jawbone was conducted, the authorities
positively concluded that the remains were indeed those of Robin Smith.
Robin, said the police, had been beaten to death, likely with a heavy
object such as a hammer. An additional search of the area turned up a
rusty hammer in the nearby stream.
By this time Larron Crowston became even
more despondent over Robin's death despite the fact that he had done
everything he could to help the police find her killer. He continued to
blame himself for her death, saying that she would still be alive if he
hadn't left her at O'Neall's apartment when he had gone fishing. Edna
did everything she could to try and comfort him, to no avail. He
eventually sought professional help and was placed on medication.
*****
Meanwhile, on Saturday, June 13, 1987,
while detectives in Washington and Oregon were busy running down leads
to O'Neall's whereabouts, the nude body of Lia Elizabeth Szubert, 22,
was discovered by a passing motorist along Interstate 84 in eastern
Oregon, about 12 miles east of the town of La Grande, when the motorist
stopped to relieve himself at the side of the road. Although it was
near dusk, he spotted a frighteningly familiar form lying at the bottom
of an embankment. When he investigated further he discovered much to
his horror that it was the dead nude body of a rapidly decomposing young
female. Horrified, he reported his grim discovery to the Oregon State
Police. Following an autopsy, the cause of Szubert's death was listed
as strangulation.
According to Detective James Howells of
the Twin Falls, Idaho, police department, the case involving Szubert
unfolded like this: Szubert was traveling alone from Twin Falls to
Boise on Tuesday, June 9, 1987, en route to the airport to pick up her
fiance, Duane Abbott, who was coming to visit her from San Diego,
California. Along the way she developed car trouble and called a friend
from a Gear Jammer truck stop near Mountain Home, Idaho, along
Interstate 84. This was the last time anyone heard from her, and she
was reported as a missing person later that evening. Several
individuals at the truck stop described a male individual matching
Darren O'Neall's description as having been present in the area of the
truck stop prior to Szubert's disappearance. He was also spotted
several times a couple of hundred miles to the north, in the Spokane,
Washington area, several hours after Szubert's disappearance.
Meanwhile, Edna wanted to lay Robin to
rest with a proper burial, but Robin's remains were kept in a Pierce
County evidence locker. She threatened to get a court order to enable
her to bury the remains, but was told that if and when O'Neall was
apprehended, his lawyer could request that forensic experts examine the
remains, which would mean that she would have to have them dug up. As a
result Edna decided to wait to bury her daughter, and for the timebeing began praying at a memorial, complete with a statue of the Virgin
Mary, for Robin that she had constructed in her backyard. She also
traveled to the Greenwater area where she regularly placed flowers on
the spot where most of Robin's remains were found.
O'Neall
In studying O'Neall's modus operandi,
investigators saw that he has had considerable success at being able to
obtain his victims from country and western bars, which he liked to
frequent. Some witnesses described him as a compulsive liar and a
braggart, while others said that he appeared complimentary and charming
to women. He was portrayed as a heavy drinker, a cocaine user, and a
Percodan abuser, and was known to take drugs orally as well as
intravenously.
Background also showed that O'Neall was
born on February 26, 1960, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents,
Darrell and Christa O'Neall, resided in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
O'Neall has two older brothers, Michael and Kevin, and one younger
sister, Kristen. Since O'Neall's father was an Army career man, O'Neall
consequently had traveled extensively in his youth. He was in Bad Tolze,
Germany, until 1976, thereafter moving with his family to Fort Polk,
Louisiana.
The detectives discovered that he had been
looked at as a suspect in sexual crimes in Germany and other locations
where he lived while both living with his parents and while he, himself,
served out a term of enlistment in the Army.
O'Neall attended high school in the Fort
Polk area and later married his high school sweetheart, June Hodges.
O'Neall has one son by June, Christopher O'Neall, born November 20,
1981. Christopher was being raised by O'Neall's parents while O’Neall
was on the run, who legally adopted him after O'Neall ran afoul of the
law, in Colorado Springs. Although O'Neall was not formally divorced
from June, he had a common law wife who resides in Levittown,
Pennsylvania. From that relationship another son, Jason, was born.
Jason continues to live with his mother in Levittown. After O'Neall
enlisted in the U.S. Army, he served for a short time in Bremerhaven,
Germany. He was discharged on February 28, 1982. Thereafter, O'Neall
returned to Colorado Springs and began his known criminal history.
At one point Detective Terry Wilson and
the Pierce County Sheriff's Department asked the FBI's Behavioral
Sciences Unit to develop a psychological profile of possible
characteristics of their suspect, and the FBI complied. He fit their
classic profile of a serial killer, and they theorized that he might
have been acting out a fantasy that stemmed from his affinity for Louis
L'Amour's westerns when he abducted and killed Robin Smith. Additional
witnesses told the police that he frequently fantasized about living in
the wilderness.
Because of O'Neall's captivation with
Louis L'Amour's writing and because he had written several letters to
the author, Pierce County authorities at one point asked author L'Amour
for his help in their search for O'Neall, to no avail. Apparently
L’Amour had never heard of O’Neall and had not been contacted by him.
Also, as a result of the FBI's profile and O'Neall's fascination with
the outdoors, the Green River Task Force also looked closely at O'Neall
as a possible suspect in the Green River serial murders before ruling
him out.
As their hunt for O'Neall continued, the
investigators learned from witnesses that O'Neall actually knew very
little about the outdoors despite the fact that he fancied himself a
rugged outdoorsman. They uncovered information that showed that O'Neall
claimed to have worked on a relative's horse ranch in Montana and often
spoke about moving to Alaska, Montana, Colorado, or Canada, but they
could find no trace of him in any of those states.
After moving throughout the Midwestern and
southern states and living under a number of aliases throughout the
summer of 1987, O'Neall's growing notoriety and suspected crimes got him
a place on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. At one point he assumed the
name "John Mayeaux," and found himself a new girlfriend in Tennessee.
He lived with the woman for a while, and ditched her in Louisiana. He
stole her car and fled to Lakeland, Florida, where he settled briefly.
Following a high speed and eventual foot chase following a traffic
violation, O'Neall was arrested on September 22, 1987.
It was after his extradition to Louisiana
that authorities learned his true identity, thanks in part to the
astuteness of a rookie female officer who took the initiative to have
his prints examined by the state Bureau of Criminal Identification in
February 1988 after acting on a hunch that "Mayeaux" was a fictitious
name. Investigators from the Pierce County Sheriff's Department,
Bellingham Police Department, and the Oregon State Police promptly
traveled to Louisiana to try and talk to O'Neall and to plan their
strategy in the complicated cases they were investigating. However, he
refused to talk to any of them.
Nonetheless, O’Neall was eventually
extradited to Washington state, but not before Edna Smith put up a major
fight to bring him back. Louisiana wanted to keep O'Neall until after
his trial on the stolen car charges, but Edna wouldn’t stand for it.
She hounded the authorities at every turn, even sending letters and a
petition to Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer until she got what she
wanted: O'Neall's return to Washington to stand trial for Robin's
murder.
At another point, Deputies Ed Troyer and
Ben Benson videotaped an interview with O'Neall as part of a weekly
public service show they were involved with on KMO Radio in Tacoma that
was used to educate the public about police procedure. After waiving
his Miranda rights and agreeing to talk freely, O'Neall acknowledged
that he had murdered Robin Smith. He refused, however, to say anything
about Wendy Aughe and Lia Szubert.
A short time before O'Neall's trial was
set to begin, tragedy struck again when Larron Crowston, Robin Smith's
fiance and the state's star witness against O'Neall, unexpectedly died
from ingesting an overdose of prescription drugs and alcohol. Although
Crowston's death was officially ruled an accident, Crowston, according
to Edna Smith, never got over Robin's murder and "died of a broken heart,"
after more than a year of being depressed and despondent.
Aftermath
On Wednesday, January 4, 1989, during jury
selection, O'Neall abruptly and to the surprise of everyone, announced
that he wanted to plead guilty to murdering Robin Smith. To Edna's
dismay, after being robbed of the right to a trial in her daughter’s
death, O’Neall received a life sentence, which in Washington amounted to
a maximum sentence of 27 years and 9 months. He is now serving his time
at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
O’Neall can, however, be released after
serving as few as 18 years with time off for good behavior. The police
felt cheated, and Edna was of course disappointed in the system because
she had wanted him to stand trial and was pushing the prosecutors to
seek the death penalty. She viewed O'Neall's actions of pleading guilty
as an attempt to keep the sordid details of his crimes from becoming
public knowledge.
In May of the following year, O'Neall was
brought to Portland, Oregon, to face trial for the kidnapping and rape
of the 14-year-old girl, to which he maintained his innocence. After
attempting to shift the blame onto the girl for what had happened to her,
he was convicted of most of the charges.
At his sentencing hearing in August 1990,
defense lawyer Scott Raivio claimed that there was a connection between
O'Neall's criminal history and his abuse of cocaine and methamphetamine.
Whenever he is away from drugs, said Raivio, O'Neall has "polite middle
class values." Despite Raivio's efforts, O'Neall was sentenced to 135
years in prison on a variety of charges stemming from the abduction and
rape of the teenager, and Judge Kimberly Frankel ordered that the
sentence run consecutively to the life sentence he had received for the
murder of Robin Smith in Washington.
To date, the whereabouts of Wendy Aughe
remains unknown, though investigators feel certain that she fell prey to
O'Neall's murderous impulses. Similarly, the Lia Szubert murder remains
on the books due to a lack of physical evidence linking O'Neall to the
crime, though detectives are equally certain that he killed her, too.
There are also other unsolved homicides in a number of states that
authorities believe he may have committed. O'Neall has expressed no
remorse for any of his crimes, and reportedly has resigned himself to
spending the rest of his life in prison.
Bibliography
Official Sources:
Pierce County Sheriff’s Department case files
Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Terry Wilson
Pierce County Public Information Officer Curt Benson
Additional Personal Interviews:
Edna Smith
Laurie Garl
Robert Sharp
Albert Smith II
Deana Smith
Brenda Baker
Mike Baker
James M. Chaney, Jr.
