by Ann Rule
Dana Rose suspected that Jackie knew about the assault, and had even encouraged it. It was a twisted game, and the child’s terror gratified her attacker.
The damage to her body from the sexual abuse was so severe that years later a gynecologist would tell her that she would never be able to carry a child. “But they were wrong,” says Dana Rose. “I had three children. As a mom, I can’t understand how anyone would could hurt their children the way Jackie hurt me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always thought that she isn’t my biological mother.”
Most of the sexual abuse was directed at Dana Rose. “They usually chose me, because I was older,” she says. “Lots of times Deanna would be in the room when it was happening, but nothing would be done to her.”
But Deanna did not escape unscathed, and the sisters would often hold on to each other in the night. Dana Rose recalls, “I did my best to protect her. Deanna and I would sit in the bed and hold each other and rock back forth. I told her we’d be okay, as long as we had each other.”
Dana Rose had been Deanna’s protector as far back as she could remember. Dana Rose was just three when she started fixing her little sister’s bottles and changing her diapers.
Buddy, Dana Rose, and Deanna lived for long periods at the elder Gardenhires’ home, but whenever Jackie applied for welfare, she claimed the kids lived with her.
Dana Rose remembers that she and her siblings had been staying with Gladys and George when Jackie brought her and Deanna and to live with her. Jackie left her son behind, but she needed the girls for the pedophile shows.
Dana Rose craved Jackie’s approval. The little girl wanted Jackie and Lee to care about her. There was a time when Dana Rose wanted so badly to connect with her “parents” that she was glad when Lee allowed her and her siblings to use the Schut name at school. She wanted them to be a normal family, and she thought that having Lee’s name would make her feel as if she belonged.
Abused children typically blame themselves, and Dana Rose was no exception. If something went wrong, then it had to be her fault. And because things always seemed to be going wrong, Dana Rose suffered from guilt.
She was an intelligent girl, so in her logical mind, she knew she did not deserve the way she was treated. But on an emotional level, she felt like a bad person.
Lee punished the children by making them bend over and hold their ankles. “Then he would hit us with a belt,” she remembers.
Lee and Jackie were affectionate with each other, and Dana Rose sometimes saw them kissing. “I thought they loved each other,” she says.
But Jackie had no affection for Dana. If Jackie had simply ignored her, that would have been bad enough, but Dana Rose was frequently the recipient of Jackie’s rage.
The woman was terribly frightening when she got angry—which she often did. “She would roll her eyes back so that only the whites of her eyes showed, and she would look like she was demonically possessed,” Dana Rose confides. After a few minutes of yelling and throwing things, Jackie would suddenly snap out of it. “She’d get up and go to the bathroom or something, and come out and act like nothing had happened.”
When Dana Rose was under the age of eleven, her grandparents, George and Gladys Gardenhire, treated her well. “My grandma and I had a bond, and my grandpa was always nice to me,” she says. But when it comes to her recollection of Jackie, Dana Rose says, “I don’t have one memory of any affection—any kindness shown to me by her. Not one moment.”
Still, Dana Rose continued to seek approval from Jackie. When she was about ten, she won a blue ribbon at school for a sculpture she’d made from pieces of wood. “I was so proud and so excited to show it to her,” Dana Rose remembers. “I got off of the school bus, and she was standing outside smoking. I ran up to her and showed her the ribbon and the sculpture, and she grabbed it out of my hands and threw it down on the asphalt. It broke into pieces.”
“That’s nothing! That’s just garbage!” Jackie screamed, and Dana Rose ran away in tears.
You are ugly. You are fat. You’re nothing and you’re always going to be nothing. You are worthless.
Jackie belittled Dana Rose every chance she got, and the cruel words burned holes into her soul.
* * *
Sarah Moore,* who is now a grandmother and still lives in Yakima, was just thirteen when she met Bernard Oldham.
Though Sarah managed to get away before Bernard could physically harm her, the memories of that time are so dark that just sharing the details with me has given her nightmares. “I’ve been waking up in the morning with anxiety attacks,” she says. “I’m talking about it to you because I think it is healing for me. My sister told me that if I let the dark out, there will be room for the light to come in.”
Sarah recalls that Bernie took her and her friend, Brenda Rowe,* to a sleazy motel—the same motel where Bernard had taken other children.
“I was naïve,” Sarah admits. “I didn’t really understand what was going on.” What Sarah did know was that she did not want Bernie touching her.
“Bernie was short and fat, and he had body odor,” she remembers. He tried to cover up the fact that he’d skipped a shower by dousing himself with cheap cologne, but that just made the smell worse.
His hair was silver, and it not only grew from his head, but sprouted profusely from his ears and nose. “His hands were always dirty,” Sarah adds. “He had grease under his fingernails—probably because he worked with cars at the dealership.”
Brenda was a beautiful fifteen-year-old brunette with bright blue eyes and a voluptuous body. She let Bernie make out with her in the motel while Sarah watched TV.
“She did it because her boyfriend wanted her to,” Sarah explains. “Tom* was nineteen and he worked at the dealership with Bernie. Brenda was madly in love with Tom and she would do anything for him. He encouraged her to do things with Bernie because he wanted the money.”
Though Brenda probably did not look at it that way, Tom was her pimp. He had introduced her to Bernie for the sole purpose of extracting cash from him in exchange for sex with the underage girl.
Sarah was careful to keep her eyes trained on the TV while her friend wrestled on the bed with the old married guy. She was not sure exactly what they were doing, and she did not want to know.
Several times, Sarah went with Brenda to hang out with Bernie. He drove the girls around and told them stories about all the important people he knew. He claimed to be pals with a man known in Yakima for his connections to organized crime, and Sarah got the feeling that he was trying to intimidate her by dropping the name of the dangerous character.
“I found out later that he didn’t even know the guy,” she recalls. Bernie put a lot of energy into trying to impress the young teens by bragging about his friends and entertaining them with dumb jokes. “He goofed around a lot,” says Sarah.
Bernie was annoying, but hanging out with him proved to be profitable. “He stuck twenty-dollar bills down my bra, and I would say, ‘Don’t expect me to do anything.’ ”
And Bernie replied, “I’m just trying to help you out because I know you need the money.”
A twenty-dollar bill was a windfall for a thirteen-year-old in 1984. Sarah refused to let Bernie touch her, but she kept the cash. She didn’t realize that the dirty old man was grooming her and probably expected that he would eventually have his way with her. She was constantly dodging him as he tried to put his arm around her or smacked her on her backside.
Sarah and Brenda were not the only teens that hung out with Bernie. There were about half a dozen other girls from Sarah’s school who dropped in at the car lot.
“We knew that when we needed money, we could go see Bernie,” says Sarah. One of her friends told her that Bernie had a business in Seattle and had promised her that if she went to work for him there, she could make a lot of money.
Many of the girls who spent time with Bernie were from low-income families, and they were dazzled by the pedophile’s promises of riches.
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Sarah does not know if any of the other girls from the group let Bernie touch them, but there was no question about Brenda. Sarah had been there when Brenda and Bernard were intimate.
She could not understand how her friend put up with it. One afternoon after a session with Bernie, Sarah told Brenda in disgust, “You’re a moron!”
But Brenda seemed to think she had hit the big time, and that she was on her way to becoming rich and famous. One day she took Sarah behind the dealership and proudly showed her the trailer.
Sarah cautiously peered into the cavernous metal box at the mattress surrounded by lights and movie cameras.
“This,” said Brenda triumphantly, “is where the magic happens. This is where stars are made.”
Bernie had apparently convinced Brenda that he was as well connected as a Hollywood director and that she was going to be a movie star.
Bernie was making movies, but they wouldn’t be winning any Academy Awards.
While Brenda was enthusiastic about the moviemaking in Bernie’s trailer, Dana Rose and Deanna were terrified of it.
On a summer day when temperatures were creeping into the 90s, the neighbor, Ellen, had legitimate business at the car dealership, and she pulled into a parking space there right next to Jackie, who also happened to be just pulling up.
As Jackie got out of the car, she chatted with Ellen and explained that she was picking something up at the dealership.
Ellen noticed Deanna and Dana Rose in the backseat and asked Jackie’s permission to take the girls next door to a fast-food stand for a soda.
“It was the oddest thing,” Ellen confides. “The girls didn’t want to get out of the car. It was really hot, but the girls looked scared and refused to get out to go with me. I couldn’t understand why they were so afraid, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood why.”
Sarah, too, now understands what Bernie was up to when he asked Brenda to bring her along for visits at the motel all those years ago. “I just recently learned that Bernie was paying Brenda a hundred bucks for every girl she brought to the motel,” says Sarah. “I thought she was my friend, but she betrayed me.”
The proprietors of the Yakima pedophile prostitution ring were trying to build their stable of young females. Prepubescent girls were in high demand, and they were also easy to manipulate.
Sarah was lucky. As Bernard was working to draw her into the fold, news of his degrading activities was beginning to circulate. Bernard’s empire was about to fall.
No one knows how many other children were harmed by Bernard Oldham and the Schuts. The “work” the girls were asked to do damaged body, mind, and soul. They were exposed to ugly, dehumanizing things, and no one ever worried about their emotional or physical health.
There were no nutritious meals at Jackie’s house, and the girls were often sleep deprived, because as “stars” of Bernie’s shows, they were kept up until very late. Dana Rose did her best to take care of her little sister.
Why would a mother allow her children to be subjected to such sleazy and degrading abuse? Jackie Schut not only allowed it, she encouraged it.
This is my thirty-fourth true crime book, featuring the horrific acts of sociopaths. When I first began to write about crime, it was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that some people do not possess consciences. And schooled as I am in the dynamics of evil, I still cannot understand it on an emotional level. But when I boil it down to the hard facts, it’s clear that Jackie Schut has no conscience.
While Jackie appeared to have no moral compass, Dana Rose did. When I asked her about her very earliest childhood memory, she described how Jackie and Lee had shared pornography with her. “I was about three when they called me into a room, and they showed me pictures in dirty magazines. I remember them telling me that this was something fun to do.”
Even as a small child, Dana Rose somehow knew that what the people in the magazines were doing was wrong. She was confused and repulsed.
Jackie was the only mother that Dana Rose ever knew—or at least, the only mother she remembered. The child grew up with abuse, yet she herself was kind. And in all the chaos, she figured out that the world she lived in was not right. She sensed that there could be a better life for her.
Dana Rose remembers a moment when she thought she was going to be rescued. Jackie had taken her to a doctor, and it turned out that the little girl had a sexually transmitted infection. Dana Rose overheard the grown-ups talking about it and hoped that now someone was going to realize what was going on and help her.
But Jackie took her aside and whispered, “Tell them we take baths together.”
Dana Rose did as she was told, and the doctor believed the lie. He bought the story that the child had contracted the infection from the shared baths with her mother.
Sometimes Dana Rose wondered what would happen if she told someone what was happening to her. But she was afraid to defy Jackie. At least ten strange men violated Dana Rose and other children in the metal container behind the dealership or in the sleazy motel rooms Bernard rented.
Dana Rose was exploited by Bernard Oldham for years. She was ten when someone finally came to her rescue.
* * *
Bob Regimbal had never considered a career in law enforcement until he happened to run into an acquaintance who was a Yakima sheriff. It was 1967, and he was twenty-five years old.
Bob was looking for work, and when the sheriff suggested he go down to the station and fill out an application, he figured he had nothing to lose.
Shortly after applying at the police station, he was offered a job delivering magazines in Ellensburg, Washington. It was not particularly exciting work, but it paid the bills.
Bob was surprised when he got a call from the sheriff’s office. There was an opening, and he could have the job if he could start that night at midnight.
Working for the sheriff would be a step up from delivering magazines, but he did not want to leave his boss in a bind. “I was taught that you don’t quit a job without giving notice,” he says.
Luckily, when Bob talked to his boss, he encouraged him to take the new job. “I never shorted a man for trying to get ahead,” Bob’s boss told him. “We’ll find someone to take your route.”
Bob showed up at the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office at midnight, and that was the beginning of a career in law enforcement that would last twenty-nine years.
He began as a deputy sheriff and also served as the jailer. After two years, he was sent out on patrol.
When he was young, Bob also worked in the narcotics division for a while. When he let his hair grow, it was easy for him to blend in and bust drug dealers.
Later, he worked investigating burglaries, and he found that detective work came naturally to him. At one point he was promoted to chief criminal deputy, but he found his five years in that management position unsatisfying. “That was the worst five years of my career,” he says. “I wanted to be outside working.”
Bob, who was “in two shoot-outs and lived to tell you about it,” says he never understood why some of his cop friends quit because they couldn’t take the stress.
He loved his work in law enforcement, though the darkest part of his career was the year he spent working sex crimes, beginning in 1984. “It’s very difficult to work sex crimes. Especially kid related,” he confides. As a father, his protective instinct kicked in whenever he came across a case of an abused child.
The abuse that went on behind the car dealership could not be kept secret forever. Detective Regimbal and Detective Mike Amos were assigned to investigate.
The detectives worked with Children Protection Services and with Robyn Light, senior investigator and victim witness manager for the prosecutor’s office.
They suspected that in addition to being exploited by Bernard Oldham, Dana Rose was also being sexually abused by her mother and stepfather, Harold Lee Schut.
The detectives interviewed countless people and began building a case. Though the ev
idence was stacking up, they did not yet have enough proof to make arrests.
Then Regimbal got a phone call that spurred him into action. Word was that Jackie and Bernie were making plans to check the girls out of their school in Selah, Washington, and whisk them away on a trip.
“Knowing that these kids were possibly being abused by their mother, stepfather, and Bernard Oldham, we couldn’t let them take them,” Regimbal explains. “In order to protect them, we went to the school and said we were taking the girls and putting them into protective custody.”
The detectives were shocked by the abuse of Dana Rose and her little sister. “Dana Rose was older, and she got the brunt of it,” says Regimbal. “She was abused so badly, I don’t know how she survived.”
At the time the children were put into protective custody, Regimbal and Amos believed they were investigating a case of multiple sexual abuse of minors and pornography distribution. That was bad enough. But they had barely penetrated the surface of something even darker that lay beneath.
With Dana Rose and Deanna safe—at least for the moment—Bob Regimbal found Harold Lee Schut, but he couldn’t find Bernard Oldham. “I got Lee in custody, and I interviewed him,” Regimbal remembers. “And it’s a funny thing. Lee seemed to be kind of a nice guy, except for, of course, his participation in the crimes that Jackie and Bernie drew him into. He was willing to talk to me, and he was almost repentant for what he’d been doing.”
Detective Regimbal knew that Bernard was the orchestrator of the pedophile prostitution ring, and he needed to apprehend him as soon as possible.
“I made a deal with Lee, and I regretted it,” Regimbal admits. “I had a warrant for Lee on the statutory rape charges, but I told him I’d let him loose if he located Bernie for me. I had the squeeze on him, so I sat on the warrant.”
Lee Schut agreed to the deal.
“Lee booked on me,” the Yakima detective says ruefully. “He didn’t try to find Bernie for me.”
