by Robert Scott
Lane Youmans had other ideas in mind, as well, after the sentence was handed down. Now that David Gerard wasn’t going anywhere for a long, long time, Lane began to work on his theory that Gerard was not only responsible for the attempted murder of Frankie Cochran, but the deaths of Patty Rodriguez, her mother and Patty’s two sons in a house fire. And Lane also began to wonder if Gerard was guilty of a brutal murder of a woman named Elaine “Brooke” McCollum on the nearby Weyco Haul Road in 1991, and the murder of Carol Leighton in 1996 on that same logging road.
4
A DARK AND LONELY ROAD
On February 6, 1991, Lane Youmans got up as usual, and as he shaved, he made a mental note of what his plans were for the day. These plans included cases related to burglaries, thefts and bad checks. If those didn’t fill up all his time, he could take another look at an unsolved Jane Doe homicide from 1988. Mushroom pickers out in the woods near the town of Elma had stumbled upon a human skull, and it turned out to be a homicide. And then if those weren’t enough, he was going to have to testify in another murder case at court in the near future. As the various plans became focused in his mind, the telephone suddenly rang, and Lane went to answer it.
It was a phone call from the GHSO, and it blew all of Lane’s plans clear out of the water. The body of a young woman had just been discovered on the Weyco Haul Road, short for the Weyerhauser Lumber/Paper Mill Company haul road that was only a few miles south of Aberdeen. Lane knew that the Weyco Haul Road was a gravel road built by the timber company near the Blue Slough Road, outside of the town of Cosmopolis, so that their logging truck drivers didn’t have to drive their loaded rigs up the steep and winding highway over Cosmopolis Hill.
The first person to spot a body lying off to the side of the Weyco Haul Road was a Hispanic man on his way to a job while he was in his pickup truck. This man drove to Cosmopolis, and in broken English told a Cosmopolis police officer about the body. But the man’s English was so poor, the Cosmopolis officer had a hard time understanding what he was trying to say. To remedy that situation, the officer decided to follow the Hispanic man to try and figure out what he was talking about. It was obvious that he was very excited and upset about something.
When the Cosmopolis officer got to the location of the body, it was quite apparent why the Hispanic man had been so upset and agitated. To help the officer, a GHSO deputy who spoke Spanish was called to the scene to help interpret. This GHSO officer interviewed the Hispanic man and took a statement.
After the phone call from GHSO, Lane began assembling his homicide kit, and added enough food and water to last him three days in case he had to stay there that long. Lane related later, “I have been to crime scenes in remote areas of Grays Harbor County, and I never want to leave a scene until all the processing is done. I try to equip my van with everything I would need, but every scene presents unique problems. One of the main things was to make sure I had enough food and water to last me for a few days.”
Lane looked outside his window to check the weather conditions, and guessed that he was lucky this time. It would be cold, but it didn’t look like rain. There wouldn’t be any need for tarps, shelters or additional equipment. That done, he jumped into his van and drove the eight miles from his home to the crime scene.
Once he arrived and got out of the van, the weather was indeed cold, but there was no snow on the ground. Lane made contact with officers and other detectives at the east end of the Weyco Haul Road and learned that the body of a woman was found lying on the south side of the road, about a mile from State Highway 107. Lane went down toward the body and could tell that she was white and appeared to be in her late twenties. She lay on her back, with her head pointing west toward Cosmopolis and Aberdeen.
It was apparent that the young woman had been run over several times by a pickup truck or large car, and distinctive tire tracks were present in the mud near her body. She had sustained massive injuries, including a broken right leg, and her scalp had been torn loose, or avulsed, by the spinning tires. She was wearing a short black jacket, red shirt, bra, panties, socks and one shoe. Tire tracks and scrapes from the vehicle and road surface were present on every part of her body.
It appeared that she had been struck and dragged a short distance before coming to rest alongside the shoulder of the road. The vehicle then drove over her, backed up over her, and then moved forward once again over her body before proceeding west. In other words, it appeared that by the second time the vehicle moved forward, it had to be an intentional act and not just an accident. In the mud around the body was a lot of blood, clumps of hair, an upper denture, a single tooth and the woman’s wristwatch. On the road to the east of the body was a woman’s hat, one of her shoes, a pair of black sweatpants, which were turned inside out, and a purse. Lane checked the purse and found an identification inside for Elaine M. McCollum, thirty-three years old, of Aberdeen. Lane looked at the woman’s body beside the road and determined that the dead young woman was indeed Elaine McCollum.
Lane checked Elaine’s body for approximate time of death. He knew that temperature and weather were factors in that determination, and could alter stiffening of the body, known as rigor mortis. There was also pooling of blood on the lowest portions of the body, known as livor mortis. Lane checked Elaine’s fingers, wrists, elbows and other joints, and found them to be somewhat flexible. He knew that rigor began about two hours after death, and a body became completely stiff for approximately the next twelve hours. From this knowledge, it appeared to Lane that Elaine McCollum had been dead for about eight hours by the time he examined her. Which would have made her death occur sometime around midnight.
The purse contained $300 in cash, which tended to rule out robbery as a motive for her death. Lane photographed the scene from every angle; then he stood back and just gazed at the scene in its totality. As he recalled later, “I stood there in the cold morning air and took in every detail. The tire tracks in the gravel indicated that the suspect had chased the victim west down the road, knocking her down near the center of the road. But it hadn’t been at a high rate of speed, since her lower legs were not broken by the vehicle bumper. The clothing was spread out on the roadway in almost a straight line. The victim had probably not run off the road because it was dark at that time of night and there was a steep drop-off on one side, and a steep hillside on the other side of the road.”
Lane examined the sweatpants, which had been turned inside out, and noticed that there was no dirt or mud on the outside of them. He doubted very much that the vehicle had struck Elaine with such force that it had knocked her sweatpants off upon first impact. Another thing that Lane saw made him take notice. Elaine’s panties were partially torn and the waistband was rolled inward. Lane noted, “This could have been caused by the spinning tire or by Elaine hurriedly pulling her panties up.” The state of the panties indicated that she’d had sex there in the woods and then had pulled up her panties afterward. Whether it was consensual sex or not, he couldn’t determine at that point.
Lane worked on and around the crime scene as Elaine McCollum’s body lay near the gravel road. He liked working from the outside perimeter inward toward a body as he collected evidence. After several hours Lane had to turn the scene over to another detective, because he was subpoenaed to appear in court that day and testify in a murder trial at superior court. It was the case of a man who had been shot and his body left in an isolated area of the county. And if that wasn’t enough, there was another murder case going forward about a man who had killed his girlfriend and dumped her body into the Pacific Ocean.
While Lane Youmans was in court, Detectives Gary Parfitt and Doug Smythe scoured the Elaine McCollum crime scene for additional evidence. They put together a crime scene sketch and evidence log, documenting the items that had been collected. Sketches were necessary, because unlike photos, they gave a sense of perspective and depth. Photos were often good at depicting very definite items or scenes, but they did not give a sense of the crime s
cene in its totality.
The detectives also made plaster casts of the tire tread marks in the road next to Elaine’s body. These tire tread casts were generally made by spraying the area with a fixative to create a moulage. Then a portable frame was placed around the track. Using a bucket and stirring stick, the officers mixed plaster with water to the necessary consistency. Then the plaster was carefully poured into the frame, making sure to even out the texture. Often the plaster was reinforced with twigs, straw, craft sticks or anything else that was available. And then it was left to dry, anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours, depending upon atmospheric conditions. Casting tire tracks was as much an art as a science.
After he testified in court, Lane returned and reviewed the list that the other detectives had made, which included the clothing, hair samples, teeth and tire tread casts. A unit from the Washington State Patrol (WSP) was also there when Lane returned. They were a squad of accident investigation detectives and they brought along a device called a Total Station. It could electronically mark the location of various points of a scene, which could later be reconstructed as an exact scale map of the crime area. In conjunction with crime photos and physical measurements, the Total Station gave a very accurate reading about vehicles involved in accidents or crime scenes. As the name implied, the Total Station was helpful in gathering all relevant information in one central location.
It was dark by the time all the evidence had been collected, and finally Elaine McCollum’s hands and feet were placed in paper bags so that no trace evidence would fall off them. Then her body was placed into a plastic bag and turned over to Fern Hill Mortuary.
The next morning Lane Youmans attended the autopsy of Elaine McCollum at the Fern Hill Mortuary in Aberdeen. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Sally Fitterer, who worked for the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in Seattle, but she had a contract with the state to do autopsies for Grays Harbor County as well. As Lane noted, “Dr. Fitterer was young and rather petite, not what one would expect a forensic pathologist to look like. But she was very good at what she did. It did look a little odd, since she was performing postmortem exams when she was eight months pregnant, but she didn’t let that slow her down.”
The dimensions of the prep room at the Fern Hill Mortuary was about ten feet by twenty feet, and a quarter of that was taken up by a cooler in which bodies were stored. As in all homicides in Grays Harbor County, there were, besides the medical doctor performing the autopsy, other individuals who crowded into the small space, including detectives and administrators. All of those people jammed together in the tiny room made for a very tight squeeze, and Lane recalled, “It made things interesting for me to take photos, take custody of the clothing and other items of evidence removed from the body. Then I had to make sure everything was bagged and documented and take care of all the other little tasks that needed to be done.”
In this very cramped atmosphere, Dr. Fitterer began the autopsy of Elaine McCollum by first conducting a complete external examination of the deceased’s body. Lane snapped photographs of the body while it was clothed and also as items of clothing were removed. Dr. Fitterer removed each item of clothing and marked them with a unique number on a plastic tag. She then documented in her notes what the item was, and handed the article to Lane. He placed it in a separate paper bag and marked what the item was on the outside of the bag.
When every item of clothing was removed, Dr. Fitterer continued with the external examination, and Lane noted all the damage done to Elaine McCollum. She had large scrape marks running in different directions all over her body. From experience Lane surmised these had been caused when she had been dragged on the road by a vehicle. Dr. Fitterer began her internal examination, removing and documenting each organ. After completing this, Fitterer determined that Elaine McCollum’s cause of death was due to trauma to the liver caused by the weight of the vehicle as it drove over her.
Dr. Fitterer also completed a rape kit, which consisted of fingernail scrapings, oral, anal and vaginal swabs, along with Elaine’s panties. Fitterer took blood and urine samples from the body, and all of this evidence was turned over to Lane, who catalogued them before he submitted them into evidence. Lane put the rape kit into a refrigerator to preserve any biological material. The urine sample was sent to the Washington State Toxicology Laboratory in Seattle, and those results would later show that Elaine had no signs of drugs in her system, but she did have a .12 blood alcohol level, which was higher than the limit on a DUI test in Washington State.
Detective Ed McGowan contacted Elaine McCollum’s parents, who lived in Aberdeen, and he learned that she lived with a heroin addict named David Simmons, of that same city. In fact, Simmons had reported Elaine missing to the Aberdeen Police Department (APD) on the morning after she hadn’t returned home the previous night. It was not like Elaine to be out all night long without telling him where she was. According to Simmons, he had spent the previous night trying to kick his heroin habit, and Elaine had gone to the local taverns in downtown Aberdeen. At those taverns everyone knew her as Brooke, a name she called herself there. Brooke was a character on Elaine’s favorite soap opera, All My Children.
Detective McGowan learned that six years previously, Elaine had moved home into her parents’ house after a bad relationship. At that point she’d had some sort of mental breakdown and had become a virtual recluse in their home. Elaine stayed in her room almost all the time, not even going out to dine anywhere around town. Old friends didn’t come by, no one called her—other than siblings—and she all but withdrew from the world.
Then after time passed, Elaine slowly came out of her shell and started going to the local taverns, not only to drink but to socialize. In fact, the taverns became Elaine’s social meeting place in town. It was at one of the taverns that she met David Simmons, and after a short period of time, they fell in love. The tavern scene may not have been the best in the world for Elaine, and being in love with a drug addict was difficult, but at least they had each other. And after so many years of seclusion, Elaine seemed happy again.
David Simmons wasn’t a bad guy at heart, but his heroin addiction did strain the relationship, as did Elaine’s emotional problems. Despite all that, they decided to move in together at a small residence in Aberdeen. Detective McGowan noted, “Elaine spent most evenings in the downtown taverns of Aberdeen, where she was friends with all the regulars and never caused any problems.” In fact, most of the people around there liked Elaine, and she seemed to always be upbeat and happy in such surroundings. After her years of self-imposed confinement, downtown Aberdeen was her escape from a life behind four walls.
Detective McGowan learned that on the evening of February 5, 1991, Elaine visited several taverns in downtown Aberdeen and was looking for a friend of hers named Todd Bigelow. That made all the GHSO detectives’ “radar” perk up. Bigelow was a well-known character around Aberdeen, known for his alcoholism and combative nature when he was drunk. And detectives at the time knew that Todd was also the son of a man who owned one of Aberdeen’s largest car dealerships. Law enforcement authorities had plenty of run-ins with Todd over the years, but these had generally been of a drunk and disorderly nature and driving-under-the-influence (DUI) incidents, not murder.
Detective McGowan was able to track Todd Bigelow down, and according to Bigelow, he and Elaine had spoken briefly outside a tavern in Aberdeen on the night of the murder. Then Bigelow said he had gone drinking at several taverns around town. Later he had supposedly passed out at a friend’s house. Drinking to excess and passing out somewhere was not new to Bigelow.
Detective McGowan also learned through a woman named Karen Luther that Elaine had been seen that evening at a restaurant called the Smoke Shop (sometimes referred to as the Smoke Shop Restaurant or Smoke Shop Café). Luther also said that Elaine had been wearing a floppy red hat, which she often wore while downtown, and she’d been looking for someone. Elaine apparently didn’t tell Karen Luther who that someone was.
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Luther and Elaine spoke briefly on the sidewalk outside the Smoke Shop and then a pickup truck and white sedan pulled up near them. Elaine told Luther that she was going to a party somewhere, and said, “There’s my ride.” At that point Luther walked into the Smoke Shop and didn’t see which vehicle Elaine got into, but she sensed that it was either the white sedan or pickup truck that were on the street nearby.
The detectives scoured all the taverns of downtown Aberdeen and learned that no one had seen Elaine after 10:00 P.M. on February 5. The detectives also learned that many people at the taverns thought that Todd Bigelow had killed Elaine. Lane Youmans noted later, “They said Bigelow was a drunk and capable of running someone over. He was the son of Jack Bigelow, who owned Bigelow Chevrolet in Aberdeen. The family was influential, living in a big house on Bigelow Drive on the hill above Aberdeen. Todd was one of those kids who didn’t have to work, and when he got into trouble, it seemed like daddy would take care of things for him. I told other detectives, ‘If people were voting, Todd Bigelow would be going to prison for murder.’ But what we needed was evidence, and until we had more, Todd was just a person of interest.”
In fact, what the detectives did next was spend a lot of time trying to prove that Todd Bigelow had not killed Elaine McCollum. They checked out his white Cadillac and all the rumors about him, but no hard facts placed Bigelow at the murder scene on the Weyco Haul Road. And the Cadillac had no front end or undercarriage damage. Many detectives believed a valid theory was that Todd might have run Elaine over in a drunken stupor. However, the lack of damage on the Cadillac tended to rule that out. And Bigelow could never quite be placed at the crime scene at the time in question. One thing that made him more of a suspect, than not, was the fact that the detectives learned through friends of Elaine’s that she had been trying to find Todd Bigelow just before she disappeared from the streets of Aberdeen on February 5, 1991. It had been more than just a request on her part. She had been very insistent about it. Just why she wanted to meet up with him again was not readily apparent.
