A Rage to Kill

by Ann Rule

  The answers came swiftly. “Just before she vanished,” Barbara said, “she received a long-distance phone call from a woman concerning a contract in which a lot of money was involved. There is a man involved, too—a man concerned about a real estate contract on which a great deal of money hinged.”

  According to the cards, Marcia Moore’s marriage had been in trouble, and she was in the process of making a decision to get rid of emotional ties that had never worked. She had been very disappointed and frustrated. Moreover, she had recently heard from a man out of her past and received an invitation which had made her happy.

  “The cards tell us that she wanted a divorce—even if no one was aware of it,” Easton said, shaking her head.

  Easton spread the cards four times, and each time the ace of spades (the death card) appeared side by side with the nine of hearts (the wish card).

  “I think she’s dead,” Easton sighed. “Someone wished her dead, but the cards indicate that she was also blessed with very good women friends who were lucky for her, women she had turned to in the past for help.”

  Easton also picked up repeatedly on “hospital” and “court (or trial)” as she did further spreads of cards. Could Marcia Moore be in a hospital some place where no one knew who she was? Could there eventually be a trial for her murder?

  The blonde psychic explained that, although death showed repeatedly in Marcia’s cards, these could also be interpreted as the death of the personality as it has been known. “She could have been so enlightened by the drug that her known personality died—leaving her body. There’s possibly a five percent chance that she’s hospitalized or sitting on a mountain top some place—meditating,” Easton said. “It’s called going to the void.”

  The elements of Marcia Moore’s disappearance, then, that Easton elicited from the cards again and again were:

  Marital problems, disappointments, frustration.

  A renewed relationship with an old love.

  A real estate transaction involving a lot of money.

  Concern over another woman.

  Phenomenal success ahead for Marcia in her work.

  A hospital.

  Death. Violent death.

  A court trial.

  “I think the decision was made for Marcia Moore to die,” Easton summed up flatly.

  Another popular psychic based in the Northwest, Shirley Teabo, read Tarot cards. Like Easton, she had a high success rate.

  Shirley Teabo was not told about Barbara Easton’s reading on Marcia Moore, nor did she know more than the bare facts about the woman’s disappearance.

  Could a second psychic home in on whatever astral projections Marcia Moore’s entity was sending? Would Teabo’s interpretations be entirely different from Easton’s?

  Teabo was able to pinpoint the date of Moore’s disappearance (without knowing when it was) as between December 20 and January 20, 1979. “At that time, there was a passage away from difficulties—a journey over water,” she said. “A journey over water far enough to leave the state of Washington. I see her on a ferry boat and I see the rays of a lighthouse crossing over her. She has—or had—a woman friend who was very good for her, someone from the past.”

  Teabo picked up a “retreat, a meditative state, a convalescent state after much anxiety.”

  “For some reason, I pick up the San Juan Islands. She has ties there, but I pick up a sunny day and she is happy. It may be something that has happened in her past.”

  The next card was not so cheerful; it was a coffin, a sarcophagus—a sign that someone is buried. “Sheets and things are wrapped around her,” Teabo said. “Her ‘fear’ card revolves around a real estate transaction—something involving a great deal of money.”

  The psychic spread cards asking about what had happened in Marcia Moore’s home on the last day she was seen. These cards showed the end of a cycle, a finishing-up. “She was preparing for a change, and she was well able to protect herself.”

  Oddly, Teabo, too, saw trouble with another woman—a woman of a violent nature who could have caused Moore real problems. “One woman is her friend—the other was a danger to her.”

  According to Teabo’s reading, Marcia Moore had been about to advance tremendously in the world of her art. The books she was working on would have been highly successful. “But I see an illness . . . a hospitalization. She may be in an institution.”

  According to Shirley Teabo, Marcia Moore had been subjected to great stress. “Quarrels over money, over land, and someone was trying to make away with something that belonged to her.”

  Marcia’s brother Robin had theorized that, if she had been kidnapped, it would have been because of the “unorthodox spiritualism” she was involved in. Teabo turned up cards that indicated that this might very well be true. Twice in succession, the anti-religion and cult cards turned up side by side. “She was at a crossroads and the path she chose was faulty, dangerous.”

  Marcia’s marriage had not been serene, according to the Tarot cards; the couple had each felt bondage and restriction, frustration in the marriage.

  As Barbara Easton had, Shirley Teabo saw violence on the last day of Marcia Moore’s known existence. She picked it up again and again. “Oddly, I don’t think she’s dead . . . but I don’t see her alive, either. It’s as if her mind isn’t hers any longer. If she is dead, she’s earthbound.”

  A summary of Teabo’s reading has many points of similarity with Easton’s.

  Trouble in the home.

  A real estate transaction involving a lot of money.

  Great success ahead in Moore’s career.

  Concerns about another woman who was dangerous to her.

  Hospitalization.

  Violence.

  A “death” state.

  If Marcia Moore was alive, the cards of both psychics suggested that she was incapacitated to the degree that she couldn’t let anyone know where she was. If she was dead, her body had been secreted so carefully that it might never be found.

  While Lieutenant Darrol Bemis and Detective Doris Twitchell worked the case from the scientific viewpoint of trained police officers, Dr. Walter Boccaci tried to reach his wife through less orthodox methods. After fasting all day and doing yoga, he injected himself with ketamine at midnight.

  “The sole purpose of this is to reach my wife. We were telepathic. We were soul mates. Ketamine is the only way I can get out of my body. And I have been reaching her. I see her so clearly. She’s sitting in a lotus position, lovely and beautiful. But she doesn’t talk to me. I know why. She’s amnesic. That’s the only possibility, don’t you see. The only way that makes sense.”

  Dr. Boccaci published one last issue of “The Hypersentience Bulletin,” the newsletter he and Marcia had mailed to their followers. He wrote a “Final Note” to Marcia: “When you walk along the beach and listen to the sound of the waves, listen also to the roar of my voice, reverberating, ‘Marcia, I love you. I’ll always love you . . .’ ”

  Despite his protestations that his life was over now that his wife was gone, Boccaci remained a suspect in her disappearance—or death . . . or transformation, whatever had happened. He told Erik Lacitis, a Seattle Times columnist, about his troubles. “The tragedy of this whole thing is what’s happened to me. I am just hanging on by the skin of my teeth. I am destitute. I’m surviving by selling furniture and other personal possessions.

  “I just spent a whole year of my life devoting all my energy to trying to find my wife . . . I tried everything. There’s nothing more I can do to find my wife. Now, I’m trying to pick up the pieces of my life. I am forty-two, and I have another forty-two years ahead of me. And I can’t get a job. I have been blackballed.”

  Although Boccaci said he had never lost a patient because of anesthesia or even had one with an adverse reaction, he felt he had been unable to find work in his profession because of all the publicity about Marcia’s disappearance, and, perhaps, their ketamine research.

  Boccaci left Washington S
tate and took a residency at a Detroit hospital where his story was not so familiar. At length, he did find a job as an anesthesiologist at a tiny hospital on the Washington coast. Happy Boccaci wrote to Marcia’s friends that he was finally doing well, jogging five miles a day, and feeling much better.

  Marcia Moore’s family members were divided in their opinions of what had become of her. Her daughter recalled how often Marcia had spoken of her dread of growing old. “It bothered her a lot. What do I think really happened?” she asked. “I would have to say that she committed suicide in some way.”

  But committing suicide without leaving a body behind is not easy to do. If Marcia Moore had leapt from a ferry boat on its way to the San Juan Islands, her body might have sunk—but, more likely, it would have eventually washed up on some spit of land.

  It would be two years after Marcia Moore vanished before those who loved her and those who sought her would have at least a partial answer to a seemingly incomprehensible mystery.

  A property owner was clearing blackberry vines from a lot he owned near the city of Bothell on the first day of spring 1981. He reached down and almost touched a partial skull that lay hidden there. There was another bone, too. The site was less than fifteen miles from the town house where Marcia and Happy had lived. The skull had well-maintained teeth, and that would help in identifying the remains.

  When the Snohomish County investigators asked a forensic dentistry expert to compare Marcia Moore’s dental records with the teeth in the skull, they knew, at long last, where she was.

  A meticulous search of the area produced nothing more, however. No clothes. No jewelry. No hiking boots.

  Could Marcia Moore have walked so far on the freezing night she vanished? Possibly. But she would have had to skirt a busy freeway and pass any number of areas where people lived, shopped, and worked, and no one had ever reported seeing her. Could she have been murdered, and taken to this lonely lot? Possibly. Although the detectives didn’t release the information, there was profound damage to the frontal portion of her skull.

  One of Marcia’s close women friends made a pilgrimage to the spot where her last earthly remains had lain. She wrote to a mutual friend who also mourned for their dear friend, and it was both a comforting and a disturbing letter.

  “I went over and saw the exact spot where the skull was located,” she wrote. “And it was a beautiful place, on top of a bed of soft, dry leaves, encircled by some very large trees. And growing all around the circle were trilliums beginning to come up. Of course not in bloom yet. My first thought was, ‘Marcia would have loved this place!’ It was almost like a gigantic fairy ring, those big trees in a circle. A little boy showed me the place; he is the son of the man who found the skull. The little boy said there was a hole right in the front of the skull, and I said, ‘That sounds like a bullet hole,’ and he agreed.”

  But he was only a little boy, and the investigators were never convinced that Marcia Moore had been shot in the head; her skull was so fragile and it had lain out in the elements for more than two years.

  To this day, no one really knows what happened on that Sunday night in January 1979—no one but her killer, if, indeed, she was murdered. Marcia had always longed for a glimpse into another, brighter, world. Once there, she sent no messages back to the friends who waited for some sign.

  Had she lived, Marcia would have been seventy years old now. Her last husband is sixty-one, but no one has heard from Happy Boccaci for a long time.

  To an Athlete Dying Young

  Many athletes pursue an inner radiance that comes only when they exceed what they believe their bodies can do. The young woman in the following case was a tremendous athlete, and she had realized many goals she had set for herself, often against great odds.

  She had seen many dreams come true. But dreams can be addictive, especially when they come true. She wanted to crowd as many into her life as she could before time and fate ended them. The last dream seemed, in many ways, the easiest to bring to life.

  Sadly, even though she accomplished the task she had set for herself, there was someone determined to smash her triumph even as she exulted in success.

  It is a bleak commentary on society that city parks have become dangerous places for women. They may be safe enough in the daylight, or if one is accompanied by a large dog. But the isolated trails of city parks have gradually become off-limits for women when shadows grow long. Too often these parks are oases within the inner city, bordered by streets filled with predators. The next case deals with the dangers women face when they venture too far off the beaten path—even in cities.

  The huge sprawling national parks of America once seemed safer than metropolitan parks—at least when it came to human predators. Although there have been horrendous headlines about women who were dragged off and mauled to death by grizzly bears, man remains the deadliest creature of all.

  Jane Costantino was a beautiful, vibrant woman with masses of long blonde hair, and a perfectly toned body. She considered the world her home, particularly the outdoors. She had always met life head on, and never used the fact that she was a female to avoid hard work and daunting tasks, but sometimes it seemed that Jane almost dared the fates to challenge her. She was an adventuress not unlike Amelia Earhart, another independent woman who came of age in her thirties, and who broke barriers that most women were afraid to challenge. Jane would brook no fear in herself; she liked to say she wasn’t afraid of anything. Of course, that was an exaggeration. Like everyone, she had her fears, but when something frightened her, she set out to conquer it.

  Jane was an easterner by birth. She grew up on Long Island, attended Fordham University in New York City, and worked for a few years as a social worker there. But she felt confined in the city so she went west. She sought hotter deserts, higher mountains, broader prairies. But before relocating to the west, she went first across the Atlantic to Europe.

  During her tour of Europe, Jane Costantino met a Colorado man who seemed to share many of her interests. When he told her he owned a string of pack horses in his home state, she was hooked. She married him and moved with him to Denver. Their marriage survived only two years, but Jane loved Colorado and she stayed on in the Denver area. Still, she used the mile-high city only as a home base. She would always be a traveller at heart who couldn’t resist the call of the road.

  Jane wasn’t wealthy, and she had to plan carefully to be able to afford the trips she took. She had to work seven days a week for most of the year as a waitress to save money for each new summer’s adventures. She lived, if not frugally, sparely, during the eight or nine months she was in Denver. It was a trade-off that she accepted gladly. The possessions that most people sought meant little to her and she happily drove a beat-up old Volkswagen bug. She lived in a tiny apartment in an old brick apartment house in Denver. Everything extra went to buy the best in hiking and camping equipment. In an era when many women were floundering to find their identity, Jane Costantino knew exactly what she wanted and she worked hard to make it come true.

  She was a good waitress, “the best we’ve ever had here,” according to one Denver bartender. She was blessed with a great personality and a smile that went with her strong good looks. It wasn’t an act; she genuinely liked the people she waited on, and they rewarded her with generous tips that she kept in glass jars at home until she saved enough to add to her savings account.

  There aren’t many people who can quote a poem or song that absolutely sums up their philosophies of life, but Jane could. She lived by the lines of her favorite poem—Robert Service’s “Rolling Stone.”

  The mountains are a part of me. I’m fellow to the trees. My golden years I’m squandering. Sun-libertine am I. A wandering, a wandering. Until the day I die. Then here’s a hail to each flaring dawn. Here’s a cheer for the night that’s gone . . . And may I go aroaming on. Until the day I die. . . .

  Despite her sunny disposition, there was a shadow that sometimes crept into the edges of Jane Costa
ntino’s world. She had long had a premonition that she wouldn’t live to grow old. She wasn’t sure where it had come from, although it seemed an integral part of her, a kind of gut feeling that she didn’t fight. If she wasn’t meant to be an old woman sharing memories of her glory days as she rocked on a porch somewhere, that was the way the universe’s plan was designed.

  Jane had lived with an awareness of her own mortality for as long as she could remember. Maybe it was because by the time she was thirty, she had already had ample experience at jousting with death; she had come so close too many times. She took chances and she knew it. She probably assumed she would die at the hands of a capricious Mother Nature since she was a risk-taker. In the nineties, studies suggested that those addicted to danger are programmed genetically to be that way—that there exists a spot in the DNA of the mountain climber, the ski jumper and the race car driver that propels them into life on the edge. But, in the seventies, Jane Costantino’s family and friends worried and cautioned her and finally shook their heads; she was who she was, and she seemed to be living a glorious life.

  Jane was twenty-seven years old in 1974, when she was struck by lightning as she climbed the Grand Tetons. She was at the 14,000 foot level when it happened. She was hit by a powerfully searing jolt that would have knocked her off the mountain if she hadn’t clung tenaciously to her perch. Seriously burned and with her shoulder badly injured, she climbed and rappelled down the mountain and walked several miles to a ranger station. When the ranger on duty saw that the lightning bolt had burned her shoulder to the bone, he almost fainted. A lesser woman—or man—would have been dead, or at the very least, would have had to be airlifted off the mountain.

  Jane was hospitalized for a month. When she was finally released from the hospital, she carried the blazing keloid of a huge burn on her shoulder. She called the scar her “badge of life” because it served to remind her to live life to its fullest; she told friends that she knew that any day might be her last.