by Robert Scott
Lane processed the McDonald’s napkins and Pepsi bottle that were found on the road, as well as the condom wrapper, looking for fingerprints. The wrapper and bottle were subjected to superglue fumes, which would adhere to any moisture contained in fingerprints and to a polymer, which caused fingerprints to become visible. If fingerprints did show up, they could be dusted with fingerprint powder and lifted with print tape. From that point the tape was placed onto fingerprint cards, and the case number, date and location written on the back.
Lane was able to lift ten prints off the Pepsi bottle, but on the Sheik condom wrapper all he could discern were several ridges that appeared to be part of a whorl pattern. The few ridges on those weren’t enough for an AFIS search, let alone a comparison with a suspect’s fingerprint card. The napkins that were found near Carol’s body were processed with ninhydrin, a chemical that reacts with amino acids found in fingerprints, causing the print to turn purple. The napkins were then sprayed with the chemical and allowed to dry. Lane examined the napkins after this process, but he found no latent prints. He decided not to process the napkins found near the condom by chemical processing, because he surmised they probably contained the DNA of the suspected killer, and chemical processing would destroy that DNA. Lane was pretty sure the suspect had used those napkins to wipe himself off after sex, and then tossed the napkins onto the road.
After everything was dried, processed, photographed, repackaged and sealed with evidence tape, Lane returned all the items to the evidence room. The rape kit was put into the refrigerator to preserve any DNA, and Lane sent the prints he’d lifted from the Pepsi bottle, along with Carol Leighton’s print card, to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in Olympia. He also sent the obscure print from the condom wrapper to them, knowing it was a long shot at best. Lane requested that they compare the prints and check any unidentified prints with AFIS.
Later, Lane Youmans received a report from the crime lab that all ten prints on the Pepsi bottle belonged to Carol, and the print from the Sheik condom wrapper was not identifiable. About a month after this happened, Lane received a report about the rape kit. The report stated that semen was present in the condom, on the panties, on the vaginal swab, anal swab and oral swab. By now, Lane knew that Carol had been a prostitute and there could be multiple sperm donors. As he said later, “I knew that the condom belonged to the killer, and the other semen found was probably from Leighton’s other customers. We now had the suspect’s DNA, and all we needed was to find someone to compare it with, because in 1996, the computer system that could compare DNA was still in its early stages. We did have some physical evidence, and [the names of] witnesses that saw Carol Leighton throughout the day before she was murdered. No one saw her after ten P.M., and we had no suspects yet. We had a possible scenario, based upon interviews and examination of evidence. I knew that it was probably not exact—they seldom are—but you continually fine-tune them as information comes in. The evidence is there, it doesn’t lie. You have to be able to interpret the facts, and that comes from experience. The detectives will bounce ideas and theories off each other. We will often act out what we believe took place, and one detective portrays the suspect, while another portrays the victim. I know that someone watching us would think we were crazy.”
Lane realized that the DNA database was still in its infancy, and it was going to be a matter of luck to get a match from the napkins and condom to an actual person. When the DNA computer system database began, it only had blood sample DNA from convicted sex offenders. Later this was expanded to all persons convicted of a felony. This, of course, left out anyone who had only been convicted of misdemeanors or had never been through the judicial system at all. As it turned out, the DNA from the napkins and condom did not come back with a match to anyone in the system.
Yet, as Lane Youmans stated, “There is no statute of limitation on murder. Although the results of the fingerprint and DNA analysis was disappointing, we continued working on the case, following up on leads and processing evidence. I watch a lot of crime shows, like Cold Case Files, on TV, and often I see a new technique or method for processing evidence. Then I start thinking how I can apply that technique to evidence in one of my cases. A mental list of evidence is constantly swirling in my mind, and I constantly pull items out of evidence to try different techniques.
“Every case helps refine what you’ve learned from experience. Although Virginia Barsic’s and Robin Rose’s cases had no apparent connection to Carol Leighton’s case, what I learned on each helped me later on.”
GHSO detective Matt Organ began talking to a lot of the prostitutes in downtown Aberdeen. From Organ’s notes, and by talking with him, Lane was able to put together a report not only on Carol Leighton, but on her mode of prostitution as well. Lane Youmans wrote, Carol was a forty-one-year-old woman who had been addicted to heroin for a number of years. Because of this addiction she turned to prostitution to support a $150 a day habit. She worked as a prostitute in Tacoma and also in Aberdeen. Her circle of friends were either involved in prostitution or the drug trade. Carol started getting a reputation for ripping off johns by stealing their money. Most of her tricks were from $25 to $100. She always demanded that the john wear a condom and preferred to have straight sex with a customer.
The people she knew said that Carol was always careful who she went out with. She would either notify a friend, have that friend come along or at least call a friend and give the license plate number of the person she was going with. (Apparently, Carol had not done this on the evening of August 2.)
She would spend some time with the john, talking to the john before hand, to make sure they were okay. She would never go to a strange location such as out in the woods, but would go with the john to a local motel. She would sometimes break this rule, if she was desperate for money because of her addiction. The toxicology report indicated that Carol had both cocaine and heroin in her bloodstream when she died. There was one witness who said that Carol was able to obtain heroin earlier in the evening on August 2, 1996.
Carol had no close family members in the Grays Harbor area. She and ex-husband Robert Leighton were divorced around 1992, because of her drug usage. However, they were still friends, and she recently moved into a mobile home on his property after returning from a drug treatment center in Arizona. When Carol moved back to Robert Leighton’s place, he was not aware that she was using illegal drugs once again.
When Carol worked as a prostitute, she dressed casually as do all of the prostitutes in the Aberdeen area, so that they blend in. Carol normally wore blue jeans or shorts, and a tee shirt with a long-sleeved shirt to hide the track marks on her arms. The majority of her clothing consisted of those types of items; generally in blues, browns, and whites. She had very few personal possessions in the mobile home. There were no photographs, diaries or personal effects. Carol was an outgoing individual, but she was also street smart. She was not trusting of people. She normally carried a folding pocket knife with her that she would keep up her sleeve or taped to her pant leg when she [was] working, to protect herself. It is believed that this knife was used on her when she was killed.
While Carol was living on Robert Leighton’s property, she would use his bathroom and kitchen, however, a search of her garbage revealed that she mostly existed on fast food. Although they were divorced, Bob Leighton still cared for his ex-wife.
Lane Youmans, once again, wrote of Carol’s last-known movements. While much of this was the same as his previous report, he also added a few new wrinkles that highlighted certain aspects of new facts that had surfaced:
On August 2, 1996, Bob Leighton drove Carol from their home in Wesport, twenty miles into Aberdeen so that Carol could go to the Aberdeen Library and use their computer to construct her resume so that she could apply for a job. A check of the library computers shows that Carol did not use their facilities. Instead, she walked six blocks to a woman named Carol C’s residence, where she made arrangements to purchase some heroin. She met
a female named Teresa at a local 7-11 store, several blocks away where she purchased the heroin.
Carol then walked several blocks to the Asher Apartment Building and shot up the heroin in the laundry room. A short time later she walked three blocks to the downtown area around 4 PM. One subject saw her at Mac’s Tavern at 7 PM. At approximately 7:30 PM, a man named Ted called the tavern looking for an individual, and Carol answered the phone. Ted and Carol had a brief conversation and he was the last person to hear her voice besides the killer.
It is believed she met the suspect in the vicinity of Mac’s shortly after 7:30 PM. At some time after that, Carol obtained a bottle of Pepsi Cola that was found on the Weyco Haul Road near her body. Her fingerprints were found on the bottle and it was approximately two-thirds full.
Lane Youmans began to believe that the Carol Leighton and Elaine McCollum murders had been perpetrated by the same individual. Not because the cases were close in time—they were not. Nor because Carol and Elaine knew each other. They may have met once or twice down at the taverns in Aberdeen, but they weren’t friends. The connection in Lane’s mind was because of the location of the murder sites on the Weyco Haul Road—one murder site within one mile of the other. And the savagery of both attacks. The murder weapons had been very different—one being a knife, and the other a large vehicle—but the frenzy of the scenes are what stayed with Lane. The driver who had killed Elaine had driven over her, backed up over her, and driven over her again, making sure she was dead. And the knife wielder had cut Carol’s throat and then proceeded to stab her in the chest, stomach and vaginal area—many, many more times than it took to kill her. This absolute savagery on the killer’s part made Lane believe the perp was the same man.
As the one-year anniversary of Carol Leighton’s murder approached, Lane Youmans requested that GHSO perform a stakeout of officers on the Weyco Haul Road just in case the killer decided to savor that anniversary by driving down the road once more. Lane knew that some killers liked to remember the day and time they had murdered their victim. Most of the detectives in the Investigation Division at GHSO were behind the plan, and they even agreed not to put in for overtime, since the administration wouldn’t approve the plan if they did.
The plan consisted of two-man teams—one man hidden in the woods near the murder site, and the other man hidden near where the condom had been found. It was decided they would work twelve-hour shifts on this, from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, around the one-year anniversary of the murder. Matt Organ and Lane would work the Saturday-night shift; Lane at the murder scene and Matt at the condom scene.
They arrived at the locations around 8:00 P.M., and Lane parked his Jeep Cherokee at the end of a nearby spur road, well out of sight of the Weyco Haul Road. Both Lane and Matt were dressed in camouflage clothing, with camo makeup on their faces, and each carried a backpack filled with food, water, flashlight, portable radio and cell phone. Matt and Lane split up, and Lane walked down the logging road to the body site just as the sun was beginning to set.
Lane stepped off the road, into the brush, and settled down amongst small alder trees and ferns. Then he got out his bottle of bug repellent, to keep the mosquitos at bay, which were hovering all around. The sun set, and soon he was enveloped by total darkness. Lane took out his small night vision device and placed it on his backpack, along with the cell phone and radio. Then all was complete and utter stillness.
Lane recalled, “The hours slowly ticked by with nothing to see, nothing happening and nothing but quiet. I knew this plan was a gamble, but if we didn’t sit out here, we would never know. Behind my position in the brush, I could see the headlights of vehicles passing by on Blue Slough Road, which was about one hundred fifty feet away, below me.”
It was a very memorable experience for Matt Organ as well. He recalled, “The mosquitos were fierce that night and I wore my head net, but they still bit me through it because it was too close to the skin. It was very warm for nighttime in Grays Harbor and I was glad for that. I used a lot of insect repellent, but it tends to dissolve plastic. So everything I touched—my watch, pens, and canteen—were all smeared with the stuff.
“I made my ‘hide’ very comfortable, thinking about the guys who would follow me for the next few days. I set up a latrine a short distance away over a small ridge. And I tried making the ‘hide position’ not be very visible during daylight hours.
“The mystery of the stolen car that was discovered down the road from where Carol’s body was found was still bothering me. I have never believed in coincidence in police work. I was certain the vehicle was somehow involved, but I just couldn’t figure out why. Then I began to wonder if Elaine McCollum’s murder on this same road had anything to do with Carol’s murder. I believed it had to be.
“I thought about all the time I spent with the prostitutes in Aberdeen and Hoquiam and how the Aberdeen Police Department could not give me the names of any prostitutes in their city because they said, ‘We don’t have prostitution here!’ I found prostitutes there by picking them out in front of bars on the street. It had been pretty much no effort at all.
“I bought them meals or cigarettes to get them to talk to me about Carol and their patrons. It had been absolutely depressing getting to know these women. It had sucked the life out of me, talking to them. The dreams they once had were gone, and the hopelessness was depressing.
“As I sat there, I thought about the investigation I had done and wondered if I’d missed something important. I thought about the hours I had spent talking to others about it, boring them while I tried finding the missing piece. I read and re-read case reports and found nothing. I read the McCollum report and was not impressed by some of the work done on it. I hoped that no one in the future would read my report and think I was a moron. And I feared that there would be a need in the future for someone to review my work, because I did not believe that this killer was done, that sooner or later another body would be found on the Weyco Haul Road.
“I hoped this wasn’t going to be my second unsolved homicide. I had worked on a case in eastern Washington in 1981 that was still unsolved, and very few days went by [that] I did not think about that case. I hoped against hope that the asshole who murdered Carol would show up and we could solve this case. I tried not to eat too much crap, but did, anyway, because I always do when I’m on surveillance.
“I worried that my wife would like me even less than she already did, because I was working all the time and becoming very detached from my family during times like this. She never appreciated that I was picking up hookers. I was thinking about my sergeant and his bullshit theories about this case and never wanting to be creative in police work. So I got comfortable and fought the mosquitos and checked with Lane now and then. And just waited.”
Suddenly, around midnight, a vehicle approached on Blue Slough Road. As the vehicle passed Lane’s position, the murder site, the driver slowed down to around thirty-five miles per hour and then, for no apparent reason, honked his horn twice. There were no other cars on the road, no houses nearby, no pedestrians. The only thing of significance anywhere in the area was the spot up the hill where Carol Leighton had been butchered one year before.
Lane jumped up from his hidden position and ran down the bank as quickly as he could to catch a glimpse of the license plate number. But by that time, the vehicle had moved on, and Lane’s view was obscured by trees and bushes. Lane wanted to call dispatch immediately to send a patrol car out to detain this vehicle, but in his haste down the hill, he’d left his radio and cell phone sitting on his backpack.
Lane raced back uphill and then thought to himself that the dispatcher didn’t even know that there were detectives out on the Weyco Haul Road in a stakeout. By the time he explained everything, it would be too late. His best hope now was that the driver, who had honked, would actually drive up to the Weyco Haul Road and come visit the spot of Carol’s murder. Just to be on the safe side, Lane felt around on the ground and found his Model 87
0 pump shotgun. It had a short barrel and folding stock, because he’d used it on drug raids.
Lane said later, “I’d used that shotgun on raids because more than once, I was the first one through the door. Racking the slide on the shotgun in a dark room was what I called the universal sound of terror. It got people’s attention right away. Luckily, I never had to use it on anyone.
“I remembered thinking up there on the Weyco Haul Road that I had to play it by ear. If that guy did drive up, should I confront him or just sit back and observe what he did and get his license plate number? I knew the smartest thing to do would be to get the guy’s license plate number and call it in. But my inner voice was telling me that I couldn’t let him get away. It was obvious to me, if that person stopped there with that car, then he was the one who had murdered Carol.”
In the end all those thoughts were moot. The vehicle did not drive up onto the Weyco Haul Road, and Lane sat there until morning, observing nothing else of importance.
Matt said later, “In the morning when I was relieved, I decided not to carry all my stuff out and stashed it at the site. When I got back for the next shift, I found that someone had found it, eaten all my food, drank my water and had been through all my stuff. I was pissed!”
Lane and Matt worked their next shift Sunday night into Monday morning, but nothing of interest turned up. And yet something may have come of all this time sitting in the bush. Lane was sure that whoever honked near the murder site had been connected to Carol Leighton’s death. Lane also believed that the person would kill again, or at least try to kill again. The savagery of Carol’s murder pointed at a very angry individual who was not adverse to spilling blood when enraged. And Lane, like most in the sheriff’s office, believed that the person who had butchered Carol Leighton had murdered Elaine McCollum as well.
