by Robert Scott
The doctors also repaired Frankie’s right forearm and put a metal brace on her fractured jaw. A half-inch stab wound on the right side of her neck was stitched up as well. Sergeant Pimentel continued talking to the nurses about Frankie’s condition, while Lane went into Frankie’s room. She was in and out of consciousness, her head and jaw heavily bandaged, as well as her arm. Lane photographed Frankie lying in her hospital bed, and he lifted up the bedsheet to check for other bruises and injuries. Lane said later, “I suddenly felt uncomfortable doing this. I was used to photographing dead bodies, and looking under sheets or clothing for wounds. This had always been no big deal—just part of the job. But here I was, dealing with a live victim, and I felt that I was somehow violating her privacy. I had photographed hundreds of live victims before as well, but I had always asked permission first. Frankie was a borderline case. Not dead, but not much alive.”
As Lane was photographing her, Frankie woke up. Her eyes were partially open, and her right eye was blood-red. Sergeant Pimentel came into the room, and Lane leaned close to Frankie, asking, “Who did this to you?” Frankie replied, “David.” Lane then asked, “What is his last name?” Frankie said, “Gerard.”
Lane asked Frankie what David Gerard had hit her with, and she replied, “A hammer.” All of this reinforced what Frankie had told Sergeant Fouts earlier. Both Lane and Pimentel wanted this on the record, just in case Frankie didn’t make it. And from the looks of her and the doctors’ reports, it wasn’t a sure thing that she was going to survive.
It was obvious to Lane that Frankie was in a lot of pain, and heavily medicated. He decided they had put her through enough already, and they’d gotten a firsthand witness statement about her attacker and the weapon he had used. As Lane noted later, “It was really touch and go for her. If things turned sour later, we could speak for her, to be her voice and testify in court when David Gerard went to trial. As things stood, she might not only never make it to trial, she might not be alive.”
Lane Youmans knew that in Washington State, David Gerard could be brought to trial within sixty days, unless the defense lawyer asked for more time. Because of that, the prosecution would have to be ready, just in case, and everything that Lane and the other detectives gathered now would be vitally important. They would have to get medical records describing Frankie’s injuries, search Gerard’s vehicle and apartment in Aberdeen, find the hammer he had used to attack Frankie and the clothes he had been wearing when he attacked her.
When Gerard had been picked up, he was wearing clean, bloodstain-free clothing, so he must have dumped his bloodied clothing elsewhere. They also had to find out about Gerard’s background and his relationship to Frankie Cochran. Had there been previous verbal threats by him against her? Or physical violence as well?
The detectives obtained search warrants for Gerard’s car and apartment. Sergeant Rod Johnson, Detective Gary Parfitt and Detective Ed McGowan searched his apartment, while Lane and Detective Doug Smythe examined the vehicle. The interior of the vehicle was somewhat dirty, and the passenger seat and backseat were cluttered with clothing and other items. A pair of women’s leather slippers were found on the floor on the front passenger side. A woman’s watch and makeup were found in the glove compartment.
Lane noticed several possible small blood spots located on the center console of the vehicle and in the middle of the dashboard. Beneath the driver’s seat was a partially empty jar of Vaseline. In the trunk Lane discovered a black plastic bag containing men’s clothing. One of the pairs of jeans in the bag had possible bloodstains on the pants legs. The stain was already set, as if the jeans had been washed. In the trunk Lane also found a bottle of bleach and an enlarged photo of a woman, who was not Frankie. There were two young boys with the woman in the photograph. Lane wasn’t sure how this woman and the boys were connected to all of this, but he saved the photo, anyway. And there was something about the photograph that stuck in his mind.
The clothing in the back area of the car consisted of men’s plaid shirts and sweatpants. Since they were dark in color, it was hard to tell by mere observation if there were bloodstains on them or not. None of the clothing smelled of manure, and there was no hammer anywhere in the vehicle. Lane seized the various items of clothing, then swabbed the possible bloodstains on the center console and dashboard. He also collected the women’s items found in the car, since they might have belonged to Frankie. Lane wasn’t sure how the enlarged photograph of the woman and two boys fit into all of this, but there was something about it that rang a bell in the back of his head. Something bad had happened to those individuals. But what was it that had occurred?
Lane filled out a search warrant with the items he had seized and left a copy of it on the dashboard of the car. Then he took some more photographs of the car from many different angles. Lane didn’t mind taking lots of photos. He knew that even just one photo might lead to a key piece of evidence or be a solid documentation of some aspect of the case.
Lane took the evidence from Gerard’s Ford Escort to the sheriff’s office in Montesano; by then, Sergeant Johnson and Detective Gary Parfitt had completed their search of Gerard’s apartment and had come up empty. No hammer or bloody clothing was found there. All the detectives knew that Gerard had had about two and a half hours after attacking Frankie Cochran to drive away, wash up and change his clothing, disposing of any bloodstained items. And with a large county full of creeks, ponds and rivers, there were any number of places Gerard could have jettisoned the incriminating items. The detectives also surmised that Gerard had tried implementing an alibi when he phoned Polly Miller from Forks. But Gerard hadn’t known about the landslide near Shelton, so his alibi had been foiled.
Lane Youmans and Detective Smythe went back to Clark’s Dairy, because Lane wanted to take more photographs of the crime scene in the daylight. Lane also wanted Smythe to take a look at the bloodstains on the wall of the milking parlor. Since Smythe had been to “blood spatter school,” he was the GHSO’s expert when it came to reading and documenting bloodstain patterns. Smythe knew about how blood patterns differed depending on what caused the injuries, the force of the blow and angles at which the wound had been inflicted. Blood patterns and blood pools told their own stories, even when a victim was no longer there to explain what had occurred.
About the same time Detectives Dave Pimentel and Tony Catlow arrived at the dairy and began searching the brush alongside a road leading to the dairy. They were looking for the hammer used in the attack and any other kind of incriminating evidence. Even though they searched for hours, they located nothing of interest.
In the milking shed Detective Smythe discovered a number of medium-velocity blood spots around the doorway, leading to the milking parlor, that were consistent with hammer blows to a human head. His expert opinion confirmed what Lane had already surmised about the crime scene. Indications pointed to where the victim had stood and where the attacker had performed his assault.
After they left Clark’s Dairy, the detectives began looking into the relationship between David Gerard and Frankie Cochran. David and Frankie had shared an apartment in Aberdeen, but recently they had a falling-out. They had both worked at Clark’s Dairy, she as a milker and he as a handyman. A week before the hammer assault, the detectives learned, Frankie and David had both arrived to work at the dairy in Gerard’s Ford Escort. While they were sitting in the car, parked by the milking parlor before the workday had begun, they had gotten into an argument. David, who was paranoid and very jealous about Frankie, accused her of having an affair with Eugene Clark. Frankie told him that was ridiculous, and she was tired of his accusations and irrational jealousy. She then told him they were through.
Without any warning, David grabbed Frankie and pulled her out the driver’s-side door of the car. He grabbed her so violently and unexpectedly that her slippers fell off onto the passenger-side floor mat. As soon as she was pulled out the door, Frankie knew he was going to hit her. She struck first. She was holding a
travel mug full of hot coffee, and before David was able to land a punch, she threw the coffee in his face and upper body. Then she stiffened, waiting for the blow to fall.
In total surprise to Frankie, David didn’t swing at her or say anything. Instead, he slowly and methodically walked to a nearby toolshed and reemerged from it, holding a claw hammer. Frankie said later, “He had a wild look in his eyes, like he was demented.”
David held the hammer up over his head and slowly walked toward her. When he was only a few feet from her, Frankie stood her ground and spat out, “Go ahead, if you’re man enough!”
Against all expectations Gerard stopped in his tracks, lowered the hammer to his side and quietly walked back into the toolshed. He put the hammer back on a nail on the wall, walked by Frankie without a word, got into his car and left. Eugene Clark, who had witnessed the whole thing from a distance, called 911 and reported the incident.
Incredibly, David Gerard was by then making a 911 call of his own. He drove to Oakville and phoned the sheriff’s office, reporting that he’d just been assaulted by his girlfriend, Frankie Cochran. A deputy responded to this call and met David Gerard at a convenience store in the area. He showed the deputy the coffee burn marks on his chest and his lip, which was still bleeding. The blood had run down onto his shirt and pants. Lane noted later, “It was obvious to the deputy that Gerard was trying to make himself look more like a victim, since he had made no attempt to wipe blood from his chin. And it appeared that he had chewed on the inside of his lip to make it bleed.” Nonetheless, the deputy took photographs of Gerard’s “injuries.”
Meanwhile, another deputy contacted Frankie Cochran, who was still crying about the incident. The deputy took photographs of the coffee stains on her blouse and where coffee had sloshed when she threw the mug’s contents onto Gerard. Once all the facts were in, it was David Gerard who was arrested in violation of the Washington State domestic violence act, and not Frankie. Gerard was booked into the county jail, and he appeared before a district court judge the next day. After that process was completed, Judge Thomas Copeland issued a No-Contact Order (NOCON) upon Gerard, which meant he could not be in the same vicinity as Frankie Cochran. Then Judge Copeland set a trial date, and Gerard promised to appear.
After David Gerard was released from jail, he was contacted by Eugene Clark and told that he was fired. Seething with resentment for not only losing his girlfriend, but his job as well, Gerard was in an angry and violent mood that next week. Frankie moved out of the apartment, which she had shared with Gerard, to a relative’s residence twenty miles away, in the town of Elma. Even though she was now away from Gerard, she had the uneasy feeling that he was stalking her. Worried and on the alert, she had her uncle drive her to work for her protection.
On the day she was assaulted, Frankie was asked by Eugene Clark if she could work a double shift. His cows needed to be milked twice daily, and the milker who generally worked the evening shift couldn’t make it that day. Frankie normally only worked the morning shift, and she quit the morning milking on March 17 at about 1:00 P.M. Frankie, however, said that she could work that evening as well, and a friend of her uncle’s, named Tom Scott, drove her back to Clark’s Dairy for the evening shift.
On the way there, Scott stopped his vehicle at the Del Cris convenience store in the town of Elma. After purchasing a few items, Scott drove Frankie to Clark’s Dairy and let her off there for the evening milking shift. Then Scott left.
What was interesting to Lane and the other detectives was that a surveillance camera at the Del Cris market showed David Gerard entering the store at approximately 5:45 P.M., right around the same time that Tom Scott and Frankie Cochran were there. Gerard was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of dark sweatpants. The clothes he was wearing then were different from the ones he was wearing when arrested at the 7-Eleven store in Aberdeen a few hours later, after the attack. Gerard purchased a soda at the store and then left. The detectives surmised that he went from there to Clark’s Dairy to try and kill Frankie with the hammer.
One of the interesting sidelights of all of this was that David Gerard phoned Frankie’s uncle at around 7:30 P.M., allegedly looking for Frankie. By that time he had probably already assaulted Frankie with the hammer and was trying to set up an alibi that he didn’t know where she was. Just like his “driving the Loop” alibi, which had been scuttled by the landslide, this alibi was ruined by the fact that Gerard had been caught on videotape at the Del Cris market. He didn’t have to phone Frankie’s uncle to know where she was. He had just seen her at the market.
As Lane went through the collected evidence, he was looking for items of particular interest that he could send on to the state lab. It was already obvious that the clothes that Gerard had worn to the milking parlor, where he assaulted Frankie, had been thrown away, perhaps never to be found. Lane went through a red nylon wallet Gerard had carried in his pants pocket and it was stuffed with paperwork. Amongst all the papers Lane found a small photo of Frankie and her three children. These were children by two previous marriages.
Lane also found a small photo of a woman named Patty Rodriguez and her two sons. Next to it was a small newspaper article, which Lane carefully unfolded and read. It was about Patty Rodriguez’s funeral service in 1995. This set off immediate alarm bells in Lane’s head. He had already seized an enlarged photograph from the trunk of Gerards’ car, and that photo depicted Patty Rodriguez and her two boys. These individuals had all died in a house fire in 1995, and Lane knew all about the case, having been part of an investigation on it at the time. It had been ruled an accidental fire, but even then, he’d had his doubts. The one interesting thing occurring to Lane now was that David Gerard had been Patty’s live-in boyfriend in 1995. In fact, she had just broken up with him before she, her sons and her mother had all died in that fire. And Lane and Detective Parfitt had questioned David Gerard in relation to that 1995 fire. Although Gerard had acted strangely after the fire, Lane and Parfitt had chalked that up to grief on Gerard’s part at the time.
Lane realized that in order to have the blood samples already seized from Gerard’s vehicle analyzed, he had to get blood samples from David Gerard and Frankie as well. Frankie by now had been moved to Providence Centralia Hospital, closer to Grays Harbor County. Lane went to see her there, and the nurse drew a sample of Frankie’s blood and put it into a tube. Once again, Lane spoke with Frankie about the assault. Not only was she still alive, but some of her memory had returned as well. Frankie told Lane about moving fourteen cows into the milking parlor on the day she was assaulted, and she was getting them hooked up to the milking machine. Suddenly the sliding door opened, she turned around and just caught a glimpse of David Gerard standing behind her with a hammer held over his head. Gerard didn’t say a word. He brought the hammer down toward her head with a savage blow, and Frankie managed to raise her arm upward. The hammer blow shattered her forearm. Before she could react again, Gerard swung the hammer and hit her on the right side of the head. Frankie collapsed to the floor, and recalled being struck in the head at least three more times. Then, as if to finish the job, Gerard either pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the neck with it, or used the claws on the hammer to stab her neck. Assuming she was now dead or soon would be, Gerard left the milking parlor without saying a word.
From that point on, Frankie slipped in and out of consciousness. She did so for nearly two hours. One thing she recalled was telling herself she was not going to die on that filthy, bloody milking floor. Her memory was, of course, fragmented, and she was receiving a lot of morphine in the hospital. Frankie needed it. She had excruciating pain from head to foot, and at times it felt as if she were being stretched on the rack. The morphine had its side effects, however. Frankie was haunted by frightening morphine-enhanced dreams—dreams in which she was still in grave danger.
Frankie told Lane of having several nightmares of David Gerard coming through her hospital room window to finish the job. In the dreams he would sneak i
n, unseen by the staff, and once again have a hammer in his hand. This time he was intent on finishing the job he had begun in the milking parlor. Lane reassured her that Gerard was in jail now and he wasn’t getting out. Lane Youmans also said that he would do everything possible to put David Gerard away for a long, long time.
3
A STIFF SENTENCE
Lane Youmans obtained a search warrant to seize a blood sample from David Gerard. This was signed by Judge Stephen Brown, and with the order in hand, Lane had Gerard brought to the nurses’ station at the county jail. Gerard’s attorney had already been notified about this, and Lane assured the attorney that he would not ask Gerard any questions while drawing the blood. Lane phoned the Montesano Fire Department (MFD) and had a medic come to the jail for the blood draw. Lane introduced himself to Gerard and the medic, and had the medic draw two blood tubes of Gerard’s blood. The medic tied a rubber strap around Gerard’s upper arm and stuck him with a needle. Gerard winced, and Lane thought, Now that’s something! He’s afraid of a needle, but he can try and beat his girlfriend to death with a hammer! He’s afraid to look at even a little bit of his own blood. But it didn’t bother him a bit to spatter Frankie’s blood all over the walls and floor of the milking parlor.
After the medic had filled the two tubes with Gerard’s blood, he handed them to Lane, who wrote Gerard’s name on each and the date as well. Then Lane placed each tube into a separate envelope, marking one as 64-A and the other as 64-B. After that, the envelopes were placed into a refrigerator in the evidence room. Gerard was given a copy of the search warrant and was returned to his cell.
