by Robert Scott
David’s control over Frankie’s life was almost complete by that point. He monitored any calls she received and wanted to know who had called her. He became irrationally jealous if she even looked in the direction of another man. And he demanded to know where she was at all times.
Lane asked Frankie if Gerard ever spoke about his childhood. She said that he had, and he’d said that his father left the family when David was young. David also said that his mother was abusive, but this wasn’t something that Lane had picked up from the other siblings. According to David, when he was young, his mother had struck him on the side of the head with a frying pan that left a dent in his skull. He also told Frankie that he left home as a teenager and made a living working on a farm as a handyman. Whether these stories were true or not, Frankie couldn’t say for sure. He also told her that he was served drinks at the Red Barn Restaurant when he was only fourteen years old. Both Lane and Frankie wondered if Gerard had lied about this.
David told her very little about the other women he’d known before her. Lane asked Frankie if Gerard had ever mentioned Patty Rodriguez or some woman he had known who had perished in a fire. Lane was surprised to learn that Gerard had indeed told Frankie about Patty Rodriguez and the house fire. But in Gerard’s version an uncle of Patty’s had set the fire and had gone to prison for it. This, of course, was not true. Patty had no uncle.
Lane asked if David was secretive about his possessions, or if there was anything off-limits to her. Frankie replied that Gerard had told her that she could never look inside his wallet. Lane asked if she ever had, and Frankie replied, “Of course! When he told me I couldn’t, then I made sure that I did.” Frankie went through the wad of papers that Gerard always had stuffed in his wallet and found the names of lots of women and their phone numbers written down on cocktail coasters. These were not women’s names that she knew. Frankie did wonder, however, if these were names of women from David’s past, or names that he was still collecting when he went out, while they were together. Even though they were living together, David was often out on his own. He had a life out there that she knew nothing about.
Lane asked if there was anything else that David had that was supposed to be “secret.” Frankie responded that he had a metal box in a closet that he told her she should never look inside. That was like waving a red flag at Frankie, and she did peek inside the box when he wasn’t home. Frankie indicated to Lane that the box was a little larger than a lunch box. Inside the metal box she discovered more wads of papers, women’s addresses and photographs of various women.
Lane later showed Frankie photos of Carol Leighton, Elaine McCollum, Patty Rodriguez and a woman named Connie Rolls. Connie had disappeared from Aberdeen in 1984. Frankie scanned the photos, but she didn’t recall seeing any of those women’s photographs in the metal box. Lane asked if there had been anything like jewelry in the metal box. Frankie said that she didn’t see any, but she admitted that she hadn’t pulled everything out of the box, which was mainly stuffed with paper. She felt that if she’d moved the paper around too much, David would know she had rifled through its contents and possibly give her a beating for doing so. And Frankie told Lane she hadn’t seen any jewelry in the box at that time. However, she later began to have memories of some jewelry being there. Frankie spoke of it as being cheap costume jewelry. She thought it might be something that a person would pick up at a county fair. Lane wasn’t sure if Frankie had actually seen that jewelry, or if his previous question about jewelry had somehow planted a seed in her mind that she had seen some. Her memory was often a jumbled mishmash of places, times and events.
Lane asked Frankie whether Gerard had committed any crimes while the two were living together. To Lane’s surprise, Frankie told him about a big heist that Gerard had pulled off. Frankie said that in early 1999, they had been living at the Park Motel in Central Park, just east of Aberdeen. One day they drove to Montesano so that Frankie could buy a birthday cake at the Thriftway store. Frankie walked to the bakery of the Thriftway while David strolled to the back of the store. She saw him heading toward an area that contained an office and a restroom. At the time Frankie assumed David was going to use the restroom.
Frankie continued shopping for a cake, and then she noticed David coming toward her at a very fast pace. She described it to Lane as a “kind of skip.” Gerard told her, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” and indicated that she should follow him right away. She did as instructed, perplexed by what was happening. She even abandoned purchasing the cake she had just selected. They got into his car in the parking lot, and Frankie looked over at him, confused about what was taking place. One thing she did notice was that his pants legs had a large bulge in it, underneath the waistband.
David drove for a short distance, then stopped the car behind an apartment complex. He then reached down into his pants and withdrew a bank bag. David cut the bag open with a knife, since it was zipped and locked on top, and pulled out a large wad of cash and checks. David began counting the money, and Frankie could see that it came to over $5,000. After he counted the money, David stuffed the wad of cash into his pocket and then tossed the bank bag, containing the checks, into a Dumpster. He told Frankie never to tell anyone about what had just occurred, or he would hurt her if she did.
After this revelation Lane contacted MPD lieutenant Jeff Myers and provided him with information about what he’d just learned from Frankie. Lieutenant Myers confirmed that a bank bag containing over $12,000 in cash and checks had been stolen from the Thriftway store in Montesano. Police at the time suspected the theft was an inside job, and they had questioned employees and gave the assistant manager a polygraph test. The assistant manager became the primary suspect of the theft and was later fired by the store for a crime he had not committed. Interestingly, this was the same Thriftway store where Kurt Cobain first heard the Melvins and fell in love with punk rock.
Lane recalled, “At my request the Montesano PD held off questioning Gerard until the statute of limitations was almost up on the case. While clearing the assistant manager’s name, and charging Gerard for the theft, was important, my ultimate goal was to have David Gerard answer for the other crimes he committed. Especially if he had murdered Elaine McCollum and Carol Leighton.”
When the statute of limitations on the bank bag theft was almost up, Lieutenant Myers obtained a bank bag similar in appearance to the one that had been stolen. He cut it open in the area of the bag that Frankie had described, placed it into an evidence bag, and sealed it with evidence tape. He also took a blank videotape, put it into an evidence bag and sealed it with evidence tape. Lieutenant Myers attached some official-looking tags on the evidence bag, then drove to the Clallam Bay Corrections Center (CBCC), where David Gerard was housed at the time for his attempted murder of Frankie Cochran. He wanted to give Gerard the impression that the bank bag had been recovered, and the theft had been caught on the store’s surveillance system.
Lane was convinced that the ruse would be futile, since David Gerard never confessed to anything. He would make up a story—no matter how outlandish—and then stick with it. But Lieutenant Myers believed it was worth a shot. All it would require was a drive up to Clallam Bay.
Myers recalled about that trip: “I drove up to Clallam Bay with Detective Bob Wilson. We tried every technique in the book on Gerard, but nothing worked. He just had this thousand-yard stare. It was like talking to a block of ice. I likened him to a Ted Bundy, without the personality.
“Usually, criminals want to know what facts you know. So they start talking to see what they can learn. Not Gerard. After a while he lost interest in the whole thing. All he would say was ‘I didn’t steal the bag.’ He finally said, ‘Can I go back to my cell?’ We let him go. He wouldn’t admit to anything.”
As things turned out, Lane had been absolutely right about David Gerard. Lane recounted, “Lieutenant Myers later told me that despite the ‘evidence,’ Gerard would only say that he didn’t steal the money, and he didn’t know
what Lieutenant Myers was talking about. At least the trip to Clallam Bay was a nice drive.”
Looking into the aspect of Gerard destroying Frankie’s clothing and other items when he became upset at her, Lane requested a copy of that report from Lewis County. Detective Glade Austin, of the LCSO, eventually sent him the report that concerned malicious mischief. Along with the report Lane asked for any photos that Detective Austin had taken at the time. When Lane received the report and photos, he scanned through them and saw from the photos what incredible damage Gerard had done. There were photos of overturned furniture, broken dishes, destroyed photographs and a pile of ruined clothing. He hadn’t just thrown the items on the floor, he had demolished them.
One LCSO photo absolutely jumped out at Lane. It was the photo of a folding pocketknife. The blade was open and appeared to be about three inches in length. The handle was of dark brown wood, and there were some brass pieces on the end of the handle. To Lane, it looked exactly like the one described by a friend of Carol Leighton’s named Nadine J., who had spoken about the knife that Carol had carried for protection. Lane always believed that Carol had pulled that knife on Gerard, and he had wrestled it away from her. Once he had it, he slaughtered her with her own knife. Carol’s knife had not been found at the crime scene, even though Nadine J. said that Carol always carried it with her. Lane surmised that David Gerard had kept Carol’s knife as a souvenier after he had murdered her.
Lane asked Frankie about the knife in the photograph. Frankie said the knife wasn’t hers, and she believed at the time that it had belonged to David, although she didn’t see him purchase it. One thing was for certain—when David Gerard’s car and apartment were searched after his attack on Frankie, no knife of that description was found. He made certain he had gotten rid of that particular knife.
14
INCRIMINATING PATTERNS
Moving in a different direction, Lane Youmans now knew that David Gerard had purchased Les Schwab Classic Premium tires months before Elaine McCollum was murdered. The receipt that Detective Stocks had recovered in 1991 about the transaction listed Gerard’s name, post office box, and many other things, including the odometer reading of his vehicle at the time. There was everything in there except the license plate number and Gerard’s residence address. While there was a space on the work order for the license plate, the person at Les Schwab hadn’t written that down.
Lane contacted Les Kennedy, who was the manager at the Les Schwab store in Aberdeen, and asked if there was any way to get a list of every item that David Gerard had ever purchased from that location. Lane hoped that Gerard was a repeat customer at the Les Schwab store. Kennedy gave Lane a phone number of the Les Schwab headquarters in Prineville, Oregon, and Lane phoned them.
In fact, the headquarters was very helpful and they sent Lane a number of copies of work orders done for David Gerard at the Aberdeen store. Most of those work orders had his license plate numbers on them, and Lane was able to conclude that the vehicle with Classic Premium tires had been Gerard’s 1980 Ford Thunderbird. Lane could see from one receipt that in July 1991, Gerard had the steering on his Thunderbird repaired. Lane said later, “I surmised that repeatedly running over a person would be hard on the steering of a vehicle.” On further examination of the records, Lane noticed that Gerard had sold the Thunderbird to the Aberdeen Auto Wreckers in 1997. Lane made a phone call to the wrecking yard, hoping against hope that the vehicle was still there. He was not surprised when he learned that it had been scrapped years before.
Another vehicle that Gerard had owned was a black 1980 Jeep J10 pickup truck. That vehicle also could have been used to kill Elaine McCollum. Lane checked with the Department of Licensing and found that the vehicle was still around. It was currently owned by a man named Thomas in Auburn, Washington. Lane drove out to Thomas’s residence, but no one was home at the time. But Lane did see a 1980 Jeep J10 pickup parked near the house. The Jeep had been jacked up to accommodate larger tires and it had a brush guard mounted on the front end. Lane didn’t want to examine the Jeep without the owner’s permission, so he left a business card on Thomas’s front door.
Lane received a call from Thomas the next day, and Lane explained to him that he was investigating an old hit-and-run accident that had nothing to do with Thomas. It had occurred before Thomas owned the Jeep. Lane then identified the previous owner as being David Gerard, and asked for permission to come out to Auburn and examine the Jeep. Thomas assented to the request, and Lane drove out to Auburn the next day.
Lane began photographing the Jeep’s exterior from every angle. He then put on a green cotton jumpsuit and crawled beneath the Jeep. He lay on his back, a flashlight in one hand and camera in the other, examining the undercarriage of the Jeep for damage. Amongst all the dirt, grime and grease on the undercarriage, Lane began finding some hairs and fibers stuck in the grease and on the metal framework. He carefully collected each hair and fiber after photographing them.
As he recollected, “I became more and more excited at these discoveries, and upon finding a small swatch of fabric snagged on a piece of metal by the gas tank, I sat up to get a closer look and, wham, I struck the trailer hitch with the top of my head. I had always heard about people seeing stars at times like that, but I never believed it until then. I lay there on the ground beneath the Jeep in a backyard in Auburn, a hundred miles from Montesano, in a state of semiconsciousness when I realized that no one from the sheriff’s office knew I was there. The only person who knew I was there was Thomas, and he was at work somewhere. I lay there for some time, trying to clear out the cobwebs in my head, before I was able to focus once again and get on with my work.”
Once Lane had regained his composure, he spread out a large tarp on the ground beneath the truck and spent the next several hours carefully removing crud and dried mud from the undercarriage, placing it onto the tarp. He collected twenty pounds of mud, dirt and oil and placed it into plastic containers. After he had collected all that he thought was feasible, he transported it back to the GHSO office in Montesano.
Lane spread butcher paper out on a large table in his work area and dumped the collected debris onto it. Then with tweezers and a magnifying glass, he slowly picked through the soil, grease and dried mud, plucking out every hair and fiber that he could find. He put the remainder into the evidence room and later submitted the hairs and fibers to the state crime lab, along with Elaine McCollum’s clothing and hair samples.
Lane waited awhile, as was usual, and finally received a report from the lab saying that there was no match to the hairs and fibers he’d collected from beneath the Jeep in connection to Elaine McCollum, although the hairs were definitely human. This created a new mystery, and Lane checked with the Highway Interdiction Traffic Safety (HITS) Unit in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office for any reports of a homicide where a woman was run over by a vehicle. They came back with no such hits, but Lane still wondered if some woman, such as a prostitute or homeless person, had been hit by the vehicle. She might not have been killed, but rather had decided not to tell the police about it because of the activities she was engaged in. Or had some woman who had gone “missing” been killed by Gerard and then her remains never found? Maybe a woman who didn’t live in Grays Harbor County or even Washington State. This discovery of hairs and fibers on the undercarriage of the Jeep opened up many new possibilities.
Lane knew that the vehicle David Gerard was driving by the time of Carol Leighton’s murder was a red 1990 Geo Metro. By that point Gerard no longer had the Ford Thunderbird that may have been used to kill Elaine. Lane discovered citations issued to Gerard, before and after the murder of Carol, stemming from driving infractions. Lane contacted the licensing bureau and requested the owner history of that Geo Metro. When the report came back, it listed Gerard as selling the Geo to a wrecking yard in December 1996, four months after Carol’s murder. Lane next found an accident report made out by Gerard, which stated that he had wrecked the Geo when he tried to avo
id a deer in the road. The Thunderbird he had owned had supposedly been wrecked after he ran it into a ditch. Lane called the wrecking yard where the Geo Metro had been located, but learned it had been sold for scrap years before, and all evidence it might have contained was long gone. It just seemed suspicious that Gerard’s vehicles did not last long after a murder had been committed in the area.
Looking at a different angle, Lane checked the records from Les Schwab and noticed that Gerard drove his vehicles a lot around the area. In fact, during one month, he had put five thousand miles on his car. This confirmed what Frankie had told Lane about Gerard constantly driving around on back roads, no destination in particular. Along with this driving around a lot, and changing vehicles, Lane discovered that Gerard moved from residence to residence a lot as well. Fourteen places in fifteen years. These were mostly located in Grays Harbor County, but also in neighboring counties as well.
As Lane said later, “I compiled a paper trail of law enforcement contacts about Gerard, but I could find no records of his travels. He always paid in cash—no credit card receipts, no gas cards. He was like a ghost. He left no footprint—just the occasional contact with law enforcement and the occasional body.”
Not only did Gerard’s vehicles and tires interest Lane Youmans, but an angle about shoes did as well. When Elaine McCollum’s body was found, her right shoe was lying a short distance away from her, along with her pants, purse and hat. Lane had originally assumed that her shoe had been knocked off her foot by the impact of the vehicle. Later he began to wonder if Gerard had pulled off her shoes, as well as her pants, when he raped her. Then Elaine had possibly gathered them up as she fled, only managing to get one shoe on, before she was struck and killed. The interesting thing to Lane was that Carol Leighton’s left shoe was off her foot and lying a few feet from her body where she had been murdered as well. The shoe, a flip-flop type, was found sitting upright in the road.
