by Robert Scott
Darrell eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in the case and was sent to the Crystal Creek Conservation Camp in Redding. There he seemed to calm down and got along with other inmates and counselors. In a controlled environment Darrell was actually at his best.
When he got out of the facility, Darrell had to keep in contact with a probation officer. In one report a probation officer wrote that Darrell was fine when he stayed away from alcohol. In another report Probation Officer Walter Evans wrote that he found Darrell to be friendly, competent and willing to please. He has become responsible, completed his reports and gained employment.
Evans wanted Darrell to do more psychological counseling, but Darrell told him that he was okay now and didn’t need any more. In fact, Darrell told Evans, “I have my anger well under control. At the camp they taught me how to turn away from conflicts. I began taking walks, sitting for periods of time by myself until my temper cooled off.” And Darrell assured Evans that he would take it easy when it came to alcohol.
Everything went fine until July 30, 1974. There seemed to be something about summertime and Darrell Rich’s explosive temper. Perhaps it did have something to do with the heat that hovered over the upper Sacramento Valley at that time of year. It could be over one hundred degrees on many July and August days.
Darrell and a friend had been out drinking, and both young men had too much alcohol. Both began to argue and suddenly Darrell went into one of his towering rages. Darrell went at his friend with a tire iron, and the friend said later, “He was acting crazy!” Darrell kept going after his friend, even though the friend was very strong and defending himself with some kind of tool.
Someone at the residence called the police. When Darrell heard their sirens, he ran up to the friend’s house and punched out a window. Then Darrell took off in his car, but he didn’t get far before being arrested. He was taken to a medical office and treated by a man named Dr. Westphal. Still, Darrell was acting “crazy.” He attacked Dr. Westphal and kept kicking and thrashing about. He broke equipment in the office and even struggled with a police officer. Once Darrell was securely handcuffed, he became subdued and quiet.
The arresting personnel, Officer Schaefer, noted how Darrell had gone “way overboard” considering the circumstances. And Dr. Westphal thought that something more than just the alcohol was at work. He believed that Darrell had serious psychological problems.
One thing that did not seem to be a factor was the use of illegal drugs on Darrell’s part. PCP, LSD or meth could send some people into such violent episodes, but Darrell was never arrested for any of these or any other illegal drug. Alcohol was his drug of choice.
Arrested for an assault with a deadly weapon, Darrell had broken probation and was sent off to the California Youth Authority (CYA). His mother knew that he had serious mental-health issues, and she requested that he get psychological help.
Adding to Darrell’s stress that year, his father died while he was at a CYA facility. And there was another stress factor for Darrell as well. He learned that he had gotten his current girlfriend, Linda, pregnant. At least Darrell was allowed out of the facility when his child was born, and he visited the hospital. But soon thereafter he was right back behind the compound’s wire.
A counselor at the CYA facility once again stressed that Darrell needed to stay away from alcohol. Darrell promised that he would, but it remained to be seen if he could make good on his promise.
Chapter 9
“I Got a Really Strange Feeling”
Upon release Darrell went to live with his girlfriend and child. They both lived with his mother at first, and then they got a house next door. Darrell got a good job at Superior Molding, a lumber mill in the area. He worked well there with others, brought home good pay and essentially took care of his new family. He even went to the local high school and helped students and teachers on woodworking projects. Darrell was very good at what he did and took pride in his work. In fact, Darrell got the highest paying job at Superior Molding as a ripsaw operator. Things finally seemed to be on track for Darrell. Although later court documents in his criminal proceedings did not mention an exact date, apparently Linda and Darrell got married around this time.
Darrell’s probation officer wrote in one report: Darrell has worked hard to establish himself as a respected member of the community. He has maintained a satisfactory plan of continued personal and social and economic growth.
Things went along well with the marriage until October 1975. During an argument, Darrell hit Linda with an open hand—not his fist. He had never done this before and apologized to her. He even broke down and cried, saying he would never do it again.
This promise lasted until December 1975, when he struck her again with his hand. Linda took the baby and left for a week, but then she returned. From then on, Darrell was as good as his word. He did not strike her ever again. When he got mad, he left the house for a while until he cooled off. It looked as though as far as dealing with his anger, Darrell was now getting on the right track. But in spring 1976, disaster suddenly struck.
In April 1976, Darrell was involved in a very bad traffic accident. He received severe facial cuts, which required eighty-four stitches. The worst of these was a long, permanent scar to the bridge of his nose. The accident and scars left him incredibly depressed. At one point Darrell told Linda, “I don’t think anyone will ever love me again.”
She responded that the scars made no difference to her. They made a difference to Darrell, however. Darrell got plastic surgery, but he was not satisfied with the results. There was still an obvious scar on his nose.
Darrell began drinking again, and he started seeing other women besides Linda. Through the rest of 1976 and into 1977, there were lots of arguments between him and her. Then in August 1977, he got so angry at her that he told her to leave. She packed up some things, along with the baby, and did leave for good. Afterward, they divided up the property.
Darrell promised to pay child support, which he did. However, as far as work went, he seemed to be in a lot of pain from his vehicle accident. He flew off the handle more easily now than before, and he became so depressed that he stopped working on older cars, which had been his hobby.
At least there was one bright spot in all of this. He met a girl named Darlene, who was from Wyoming and had split from her husband. She was visiting the Cottonwood area. Darrell was still very self-conscious about the scar on his nose, but she told him it didn’t bother her. They originally met on August 12, 1977, at Redding Lake Park. Darrell came over and introduced himself; he struck up a very odd conversation with her. At some point he said, “The cops have been accusing me of a murder at Whiskeytown Lake.” There was no murder there, and just why he brought it up remained a mystery. Perhaps he wanted to look like a tough guy in her eyes. Or there may have been an alternative to this—there may have been a murdered victim there who was never found.
Darlene and Darrell started seeing each other for about a month and a half, until she returned home to Powell, Wyoming. Darlene did come back to visit Darrell around Christmas, 1977, but then she went back to Wyoming once again. Lonely and still depressed, Darrell began seeing his old girlfriend Mary for a while. She later said that he was very sad during this period of time. He asked her to move in with him, but she declined.
Then in May 1978, Darlene returned to Darrell with a baby in tow. Later, Darlene said that Darrell was very jealous of the baby. He was also very irritable and stopped eating very much. Darlene recollected, “He was angry a lot. He cried a lot. He got mad at little things. I was starting to be afraid of him. It seemed like he would pick fights just so he could go out alone.”
In June, Darrell started going out alone at night, heading up to the Redding area a lot. Darlene didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing. It was on June 13, 1978, that he was beginning his exploits as a rapist when he attacked Brenda Simmons at the Churn Creek Bridge.
Darlene babysat children at the residenc
e, and she quickly learned that Darrell did not like children. When she babysat, he quickly left the house and stayed away until the babysitting session was over. Obviously, Darlene paying more attention to the children rather than to him sent Darrell right back into the mode of recalling how his mother had spent more time with children in day care than she did with him.
On one of these occasions when Darrell was irritated, Darlene recalled that he did not come home until two or three in the morning. He went into the house, took a shower and went to the garage, saying he needed something there for work. When he returned from the garage, though, he brought nothing with him.
The next morning when Darlene went to the garage to do some laundry, she saw a pair of Darrell’s good jeans in the washer, and not his work jeans. She asked him why he had put his good jeans in the washer. He said he had to go up to Redding after work that day and wanted clean jeans. However, he didn’t take those jeans with him that day. Darlene also noticed he had a pair of shoes in the garage with a lot of dirt on them. Darlene wondered where he had gotten them so dirty. In actuality, this may have been after Darrell had assaulted Brenda Simmons near the Churn Creek Bridge.
Later on a Sunday, Darrell claimed the police were interested for some reason in the cars he drove. He called her from Redding and told her that he wanted to buy a used blue Celica at a Ford dealership in Redding. He asked her if she wanted to join him, and she said that she did. However, he didn’t come by to pick her up. Darrell didn’t return until three o’clock the next morning.
When Darlene asked him what had happened, Darrell came up with a “cockeyed” story. He said that he had car trouble and the radiator hose broke. He then had to walk all the way to Red Bluff to get a hose. This may have been around the time that Shannon Rodriguez was kidnapped near Red Bluff.
Later, Darlene tried raising the hood on Darrell’s vehicle to see if it had a new radiator hose. The hood wouldn’t open, probably because a lever had to be pulled up in the interior of the car, and the car was locked.
The next day Darlene obtained a key and looked inside Darrell’s car. She found an earring and a wad of pulled-out hair in the car. This was most likely from one of his victims whose hair had been pulled from her scalp. Darlene asked Darrell about this and he said that he had no idea where the hair came from, but the earring probably belonged to his ex-wife, Linda. Darlene didn’t believe him. She threw the earring into the garage.
At some point after that, Darrell’s mother met him and Darlene for dinner in Redding. After their meal Darrell asked Darlene if she wanted to go swimming. She didn’t want to, so he took off alone and was gone into the early-morning hours.
The next day Darrell took two beach towels out of his car and hosed it down. He took an inner tube and trunk mat out of his trunk and hung them on a fence. He asked Darlene to wash them. Instead, Darlene just threw them out into the backyard.
Sometime later than that, Darrell drove Darlene way out on Gas Point Road. This was after the murder of Pam Moore, which only Darrell knew about at that point. It was an odd landscape with piles of gold dredgings on the sides of the road. Darlene said later, “I got a really strange feeling, and I didn’t say anything to Darrell. All of a sudden he stopped and said it was creepy and backed out of the area. We talked about how we both had strange feelings about going out there. And I said it kind of makes you wonder what was out there. And he said he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to find out.”
On another occasion, and Darlene thought it was the third week of July, Darrell came home about four in the morning. He seemed to have been drinking a lot earlier that night. He was also very upset about something, although he wouldn’t say what it was.
On July 25, Darlene left Darrell for good. Just before she left, he told her, “I’m glad you won’t be around when all the stuff comes up.” She didn’t know what he meant at the time, other than it was probably bad.
Darrell did add one more thing: “If I had met you earlier, all of this would probably not have happened.”
But he had not met her earlier, and things were about to get a lot worse. Darrell was now starting to become more talkative to friends about certain situations, where he would have been better served being quiet.
In late July, as they were walking to a store in Cottonwood, Darrell spoke with two men he knew, Alan and Jerry. He told them he’d recently been in a fight with some guy and had lost a tire iron in the scuffle. A few days later, Alan and a man named Ron were at Red Bluff Park, and Darrell showed up. After a while, he started telling them how they could rape a girl or a woman. He said a guy could grab her by the hair, throw her onto the floorboard of the car, so she couldn’t see where they were going, and then drive off. He also said that if you peeled off real fast, the passenger car door would slam shut by itself. Then he remarked that girls in the area often wore halter tops or low-cut dresses just to tease guys.
Ron also recalled this conversation with Darrell. Ron remembered, “Darrell said you could pull up next to them, grab them by the hair, yank them in the car, hold their head down underneath your feet, and that way they wouldn’t know where they were going and you had control of them. You could drive with one hand on the wheel. Once you got where you wanted to go, they wouldn’t know where they were. Once you were done with them, you could let them go. He also said you could work them over a little bit.”
Ron remembered the recent rape at the Anderson Fair. He said to Darrell, “Yeah, like at the fair.”
At that point Darrell became very interested in the recent rape that had occurred at the Anderson fairgrounds. Alan said he had read about it in a newspaper. According to Alan, “Darrell kind of grinned, and kept asking me more and more about it. I said I really didn’t know much more than what I’d read.”
Even with this questioning about the rape that had occurred at the Anderson fairgrounds, and how you could pull women and girls into a car to take them outside in the countryside and rape them, Darrell was about to do something much worse.
Chapter 10
The Girl and the Bridge
Even while he was with Darlene, Darrell was “seeing” fifteen-year-old Lori Lewis. Darrell had bought a Toyota Celica on July 11, 1978. Within a month he put six thousand miles on the car. The reason seemed to have been that he was driving up and down the roads of the nearby counties looking for young women who were walking alone.
Sometime around then, Darrell told his neighbor Carl Frank that he was always driving around and picking up girls, here and there. He said they were all “pretty loose” women. And then he claimed half of them were “trying to sell me some tail.”
On the evening of August 13, 1978, Darrell and Lori had a date and were going to a movie at the Showcase Theatre on Hilltop Drive in Redding. While in the car near the movie theater, Darrell got into an argument with Lori. Part of the argument concerned Darlene. At one point Darrell said to Lori, “It seems like you don’t want me around. You just keep pushing me away.”
Lori told Darrell it wasn’t true, but she was angry at him. She told him off then. To Lori’s eyes, he “got a hard look about him.”
The argument continued for fifteen minutes. Then he drove toward Lori’s mom’s house. He yelled at her a lot on the way there. Lori tried calming him down, but it only made him more angry. Finally she told him just to leave her off by the side of the road.
He did, and Lori recalled, “He mellowed out and said he was sorry and acted really nice. He didn’t seem upset when he drove off.”
Darrell drove around the area for a while and then went back to Cottonwood. Suddenly he spotted a young girl walking alone down the sidewalk. He didn’t realize it at first glance, but he knew her and he knew her mother. In fact, he actually worked with the girl’s mom and her live-in boyfriend, David Tidwell. The girl walking down the street was eleven-year-old Annette Selix.
Darrell had visited the house where Annette and her mom, Sharon Selix, and David Tidwell all lived. It was not far from his own residence.
On the morning of August 13, Sharon went to visit another daughter in Jackson, California, about two hundred miles away from Cottonwood. She wasn’t scheduled to return until the early-morning hours of August 14.
On the evening of August 13, John and Buddy Wayne Tidwell, David’s brothers, were visiting the residence on Chestnut Street. It was after nine at night when Annette asked David Tidwell for some money because she wanted to go to the nearby Holiday Market to buy some milk, bread and Squirt. She wanted to go on her skateboard, but David said it was getting too dark outside for that, and it was too dangerous. He told her she could walk to the store and then come right back.
In August 1978, Darrell spotted eleven-year-old Annette Selix walking
home at night from a store in Cottonwood. He knew her and her mom.
(Yearbook photo)
Joseph Pico, a clerk at the Holiday Market, saw Annette come into the store. She purchased a half gallon of milk, a loaf of Rainbow bread, a box of Cracker Jack, a couple of cans of Squirt and two tubs of Blue Bonnet margarine. Pico recalled later it was about half an hour before closing, which made it around nine-thirty.
Annette started walking home, and Eric Creede was riding down the street on his moped. He recalled the girl carrying a couple of shopping bags. Eric went to the Holiday Market and Joseph Pico came outside to look at his moped. Annette had already disappeared from view at that point.
And then one more person saw Annette Selix walking down the street. That person was Darrell Rich. At first, he didn’t recognize her. He only knew she was a girl walking alone on the street at night. Darrell pulled over and asked her if she needed a ride.
