by Robert Scott
Lane did one more interesting thing at college, which had nothing to do with police work and took him in quite an opposite direction. Lane and three buddies formed a rock band called Nation. Besides Lane, there was Gary Jarbo, Stan Sliva and Jim Beeman. Lane was on drums, and they started playing at high-school dances, local taverns, weddings and outdoor functions. Since the college didn’t have classes that would prepare Lane for a career in law enforcement, he quit college and devoted most of his time to playing in the band. At high-school dances they would play for three or four hours, often after a football game. Lane recalled, “We played Mount Si High in Snoqualmie, the night they won their big game. You could feel the energy and excitement from the crowd, and they really enjoyed themselves. It was one of our best nights.”
Lane related, “The band members and I moved to Seattle in 1973. We were a hard-rock band performing songs by the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull and Alice Cooper.” Not unlike Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Lane and his band members knew that Seattle had much more to offer, as far as bands went, than provincial Grays Harbor County. Nation played a lot of the local venues around Seattle with the same hard-driving music. But unlike Kurt Cobain and his Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic, Lane said that he and his bandmates realized that playing in a rock band was only going to take them so far. They were good, but they weren’t extraordinary.
Nontheless, Lane recounted, “we all knew we weren’t going to get rich, but it was fun while it lasted. One of our most memorable shows was in Forks, out on the Olympic Peninsula.” (This was the same Forks that David Gerard would later try to claim as an alibi when he attacked Frankie Cochran with a hammer.)
Lane recalled, “The most classic small-town hotel our band ever stayed in and played in was the Antlers Inn in Forks. Forks was a real logging town, with everything that goes with that. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and there was a flashing red sign right outside our window. The beds were tubular metal hospital-type beds. Playing music in the Antler Room was like that scene in the Blues Brothers movie. There were drunken loggers, logging trucks rumbling by at four A.M., constant noise and fights.
“We even did tours all over the Northwest. One tour took us to all the lodges in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding towns. Our last gig was in Cody, Wyoming. I remember sitting on the ground in a parking lot before the show, eating a can of cold Spam and coming to the realization that I needed to leave the music business and pursue my goal of becoming a law enforcement officer.”
In late 1974, Lane quit the band and started looking around for jobs that would help him to become a police officer. By this time his girlfriend, Terri, was going to college in the Seattle area, so Lane started looking for work there. He got a job doing security at the State Liquor Warehouse in Seattle, and he and Terri were married in 1975.
Lane’s next job would bring him into contact with another site that would have its moments of fame. It was the large Weyerhauser mill in Snoqualmie, and this mill eventually would be the setting for David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks. Lane related, “I became a big fan of that show. The Weyerhauser mill was a huge facility. Our main job in security there was fire watch. We carried a watch clock that looked like a round canteen. There was a clock and key hole on the front, and on the inside a paper tape. A number of large keys are located throughout the mill, and when you got to a station, you inserted the key into the watch clock and gave it a quarter turn. The key had a number on it, and that number was pressed onto the tape. At the end of the day, the boss could look at the tape, and know where the security officer had been at any given time. It was pretty primitive by today’s technology, but it worked.
“Being in charge, since I was a lieutenant of security at that point, I had to work all three shifts. So my work week consisted of two swings, two graveyards and one day shift. After a few weeks of that, I lost all track of time. I woke up once, sitting on the edge of my bed, and I couldn’t remember if I was getting up or going to bed.”
Lane knew that this job was only a temporary one, and he started putting in résumés to various police departments around the area. He also taught classes concerning security work, to bolster his résumé. Terri got a job working for the city of Hoquiam, and the Youmans moved back to that city, where Lane worked security at several stores. Lane’s main goal was to be hired as a state police trooper.
Then on January 1, 1977, Lane’s dream of being in law enforcement finally came true. He was hired as a deputy by the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office. In that era new deputies worked at the jail unit until they were ready to go out on patrol. Lane recounted, “One morning in July 1977, the chief criminal deputy issued me a worn-out Colt .357, a ticket book, deputy’s badge, and told me I could go out on patrol. The problem was, I had no police training at all, since I didn’t go to the academy until March 1978. There was no field-training officer or standard operating procedure manual back then. I was literally on my own. Luckily, I was able to BS my way through a lot of situations. It was helpful having watched so many episodes of Dragnet, Adam-12 and similar TV shows. I usually worked on the west end of the county, so I knew the roads, and I knew many of the people, or knew someone who knew them. Every time I got a call on the radio, I felt a tightness in my stomach.
“I’m not a big guy—so, many times I could diffuse a tense situation with some humor and common sense. It was shocking that they basically had a person with no law enforcement experience with a gun, enforcing state laws. I was always eager to go to work, and, at the same time, scared to death. I enjoyed working crime scenes, whereas most deputies didn’t. They were much more aggressive and interested in pursuing bad guys. They liked to be in on the action. I liked the details of a crime scene. I liked the evidence aspect—being able to prove that someone committed a crime.
“Victims also appreciated the extra effort, and many times would invite their neighbors over to watch me work. I dusted many rocks that had been thrown through windows, more for the benefit of the victims, but sometimes I could raise prints off the surfaces that I never thought possible.
“When I went to the academy, it had a course of eight hours of evidence collection. That was it. I gained most of my experience from being on what I called five-dollar burglaries, where a window was broken and some small item stolen. I’d pull out my print kit and spend some time looking for prints and evidence. If I screwed up, I learned from that experience.”
As Lane spent his years with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office, he helped start a Police Explorers post for young people interested in law enforcement, and he joined the dive team. Later he became a member of the SWAT team, Search and Rescue, and eventually a detective in the Investigation Division. As the years progressed, Lane became GHSO’s crime scene specialist and fingerprint expert. He said, “I also became the Cold Case Squad because detectives who had been assigned to [working] homicides would get promoted, while I remained in Investigations. As in a Cold Case Squad of one. I wanted to remain detective, because I was good at it, and I looked forward to going to work. Early in my career I had the same lofty goal most cops have of saving the world. I soon realized that was unrealistic, but I knew I could save small pieces of it.”
And then February 6, 1991, rolled around. Lane didn’t know it yet, but his life and that of David Gerard’s were going to converge. The convergence would have a profound effect on both of their lives, and they were never going to be the same afterward.
12
HUNTING EVIDENCE
After David Gerard pled guilty in the Frankie Cochran case in 1999, Lane Youmans had Jennifer Cowardin, at GHSO, make a working copy of the Carol Leighton murder investigation. The archive box by now held three large three-ring binders full of material about the case. Lane’s first task was to read the other officers’ reports, notes, statements and lab reports to reacquaint himself with the details about the murder. Lane also wanted to see if the name David Gerard was mentioned anywhere in the reports by other officer
s. As Lane read along, he discovered that David Gerard’s name had never been mentioned at all by various people who had been interviewed by detectives concerning Carol Leighton, including numerous interviews of prostitutes in the Aberdeen area. Yet, that seemed to be a pattern with Gerard. He was always in some kind of trouble or predicament, but rarely to the level of it being a felony. Or at least the things that had come to light, by that point, were below the level of felonies. Lots of people knew David Gerard, but only in a cursory manner—they’d seen him sitting at a bar or walking down the street. But Lane couldn’t find anyone who said they were good friends with Gerard. He just seemed to be one of those guys that others knew on sight, and that was about it.
On April 19, 1999, Lane obtained one of the two blood samples of Gerard’s blood and sent it to the WSP Crime Lab in Seattle. He asked them to extract Gerard’s DNA and compare it to the semen found in the condom that Lane had discovered on the Weyco Haul Road, not far from where Carol Leighton had been murdered in 1996. Four months later, Lane received a phone call from Jodie Fass, who worked in the DNA section at the WSP Crime Lab. Fass told Lane that four out of six bands matched Gerard’s sample, but they would have to switch to a different type of testing for a more definitive result. Fass also said that the condom itself might have to be submitted for testing.
Lane immediately contacted evidence custodian Bill Pelesky to make sure the condom was still in evidence. Pelesky called Lane back and told him the condom was still there. Later, Lane recalled, “I didn’t tell anyone about my call to the crime lab at the time. I was afraid I would tell them about a possible match, only to find out later that further testing showed there was no match. While I waited for the results, I asked Jennifer Cowardin to pull the sheriff’s case file on the Elaine McCollum case.”
Even though the FBI profilers didn’t think that Elaine McCollum’s murder and Carol Leighton’s murder were connected, Lane still held a strong belief that they were. He took the evidence box on McCollum and read through all the reports and files, just as he had done with Carol Leighton. Lane once again looked for any report that mentioned David Gerard’s name in connection with all the people the officers had spoken with concerning McCollum’s murder. Way down at the bottom of the box was a list of people who had bought Classic Premium tires from the Les Scwhab store in Aberdeen. There were 213 customers named on the list, and on the last page of the list, Lane found the name at number 207: David Gerard, at a post office box in Aberdeen. Gerard had purchased four Classic Premium tires on September 10, 1990, five months before the murder of Elaine McCollum.
Lane learned that after the murder of McCollum, Detective Stocks had checked the phone book and found a David Gerard who lived in Montesano. Stocks contacted this person, and it was proven he had nothing to do with the murder of Elaine McCollum. What Detective Stocks didn’t know at the time was that David Gerard, of Montesano, was not the same David Gerard who had the POB in Aberdeen, nor was the Montesano David Gerard the same David Gerard who had attacked Frankie Cochran. Incredibly, there were two David Gerards who lived within fifteen miles of each other in Grays Harbor County in 1991. Because of this twist of fate, Detective Stocks never did contact David Gerard, of Aberdeen, nor see his brown Ford Thunderbird, which might still have had damage to the front-end undercarriage after running over Elaine McCollum.
On September 22, 1999, Lane received a phone call from Jodie Fass at the crime lab. Fass told Lane that she had completed a new test on the DNA found in the condom, discovered at the Leighton murder scene, and it matched to David Gerard, the same David Gerard who had pled guilty in Frankie Cochran’s case. Fass told Lane that the official report hadn’t been written yet, but the chances that the DNA from the condom was someone else’s DNA was one in several billion.
Lane recalled, “A rush came over me, but I was in my office alone when I got the call, which was good, because when I hung up the phone, I let out a yell. The other detectives and several administrators were in superior court for the trial of a man that had kidnapped an eight-year-old girl from her bed, carried her to a tent nearby and raped her. I had worked that crime scene and had already testified. I walked over to the courtroom, and several detectives and Undersheriff Rick Scott were standing around the hallway outside the courtroom. Some were waiting to testify, and witnesses had been excluded from the courtroom until they were called. There were several civilians standing around, so I motioned for the officers to come over to me. Undersheriff Scott, Detective Parfitt, Sergeant Pimentel, and Deputy Patrick walked up to me. I told them the crime lab had called and they had a one hundred percent match with David Gerard to Carol Leighton. They all said nothing, just stood and stared.”
No wonder they all stared. It had been three years since the Carol Leighton case, and it had grown ice cold. And suddenly here was Detective Lane Youmans standing in front of them, telling them that the WSP Crime Lab had a 100 percent match to David Gerard and Carol’s murder case. The same David Gerard who had recently tried murdering his girlfriend, Frankie Cochran.
Lane said later, “I needed to know everything I could learn about David Allen Gerard. I already knew that he had tried beating someone he loved to death with a claw hammer. I knew he had a ‘little spat’ with another girlfriend, Patty Rodriguez, and she was dead before dawn the next day, as well as her sons and mother. And now I could put him on the Weyco Haul Road on the same evening, two-tenths of a mile from a woman who had been slaughtered.” The two-tenths of a mile away was, of course, the spot where Gerard had dropped a used condom on the road.
Lane set up a filing system from all the various cases into one handy reference system, where he could pull out information in a regulated and concise manner. There was one file box for all the various police reports and criminal history, another for all the vehicles Gerard had ever owned, a third for all his past girlfriends, another for family members and friends. The criminal history and police report section alone grew to three large binders. This section went clear back to 1984.
From the police reports Lane found the names of six former girlfriends of Gerard’s, the last one being Frankie Cochran. As far as family went, Lane discovered that Gerard’s mother had died in 1986 and his father in 1992. David had a sister, Kathy, and three brothers, Donnie, Dennis and Kevin. Lane also learned that David was the oldest, and his parents had divorced when he was still in his teens. When his father left home, David’s mother was saddled with raising all the children in a low-income housing project in Hoquiam’s west end. His mother went on Social Security, and had to take medication for several medical problems.
What really perked up Lane’s interest was the fact that David Gerard’s mother was a diabetic and was found in bed unconscious one day in 1986. Since it was part of David’s duty to watch over her, and make sure she took her meds, this set off alarm bells in Lane’s head. Mrs. Gerard was rushed to Community Hospital in Aberdeen one day in 1986, but she was dead on arrival (DOA). The cause of death was determined to be acid ketosis, or very high blood sugar, due to lack of insulin.
After Donna Gerard died, coroner John Bebich conducted a death investigation into the circumstances leading up to her death. Bebich learned that a month prior to her death, Donna had been admitted to Community Hospital with numbness in one arm and slurred speech. She was complaining of a severe headache, and claimed that while driving her Volvo, she had been rear-ended by a pickup truck at a stop sign next to Aberdeen’s Honda dealership. The emergency room doctor concluded she had sustained a head injury in the accident, and she was admitted to a nearby nursing home to recover.
Within a short period of time, Donna Gerard was removed from the facility by family members against doctor’s recommendations. Two weeks later her daughter discovered her lying in bed and unresponsive. Kathy Gerard immediately called for an ambulance. After Donna was pronounced dead at the hospital, an autopsy was performed and blood samples were taken. A test of the blood revealed the high glucose level, and it was obvious she hadn’t taken h
er insulin. When asked about this, family members said that she wasn’t good about taking it regularly. David was supposed to help her with that chore.
Coroner Bebich was still suspicious enough about this situation that he looked into the car accident story and inspected Donna Gerard’s Volvo. He found no damage to the Volvo and there was no indication of an accident in front of the Honda dealership in Aberdeen, as she had claimed. Certainly, no accident report had ever been made by the Aberdeen Police Department. Bebich interviewed the staff at the car dealership, and no one there recalled any accident in front of the dealership.
Looking further into the matter, Bebich talked with several friends of Donna Gerard and learned from one that Donna had indicated she was afraid of one of her boys, although which boy’s name didn’t come up. This friend believed that Donna hadn’t been in any car accident, but rather had been assaulted by this particular son. The friend also believed that Donna had concocted the car accident story, either out of love or fear of this son.
When all was said and done, Coroner Bebich took his autopsy report and showed it to another pathologist. After looking it over, the other pathologist agreed that Donna Gerard had died from complications due to diabetes. Whether there were other circumstances involved in her death couldn’t be determined. No more investigation was done about a son who may have assaulted Donna a few weeks before her death—a son she was so afraid of that she concocted a false report about a vehicle accident.
Lane Youmans started gathering more and more files about David Gerard’s criminal history. These reports came in from GHSO, HPD, APD, Montesano Police Department (MPD), Olympia Police Department (OPD), Lewis County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO), Thurston County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO), Pierce County Sheriff’s Department (PCSD), Washington State Game Department and WSP. Despite all these arrests and citations, Gerard had never served any prison time before his conviction of the assault on Frankie Cochran. Nonetheless, Gerard had obviously been in a lot of trouble in numerous counties around Washington State.
