Mortal Danger and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  The two deputies decided not disturb the scene. Instead, they would wait for Detective Sergeant Ben Benson, who would be in charge of this criminal investigation, before going further. He was on his way with forensic investigator Adam Anderson. Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp and Detectives Darren Moss and Jason Tate were on the property now. They spoke in hushed tones.

  This was a crime that would shock even longtime law enforcement veterans, with some of the most totally unexpected twists and turns, and it had occurred in such a quiet and bucolic area. It was going to take some intense detective work to discern why it had happened and who had hated the victims enough to kill them.

  During his more than two decades with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, Ben Benson has worked everything from patrol to undercover drug investigation, and now he was a detective sergeant in CID who had seen his share of homicides. But none like this.

  Benson, forty-seven, is tall and laconic, and never seems to get rattled. When he was just a high school student, he managed to get an interview with a local law enforcement chief who had been forced to retire in disgrace, a man who hadn’t agreed to talk to any newspaper or television reporters from Seattle or Tacoma. Seventeen-year-old Benson’s scoop, worthy of any metropolitan newspaper, was published in his high school paper. His interrogation skills had only improved in the three decades since. The average criminal was no match for him.

  When he was just a rookie, Ben Benson was as mature as detectives twenty years older than he was. He owns a small plane, and he and his wife, Grace Kingman, a Pierce County deputy prosecutor, spend much of their time off flying over Puget Sound and the islands that dot it, taking photographs of the natural beauty that abounds in Washington State.

  Benson is also one of the Sheriff’s Department pilots. In July 2008, while he was flying over a suspected illegal narcotics operation with another pilot and two deputies, their Cessna 206’s engine suddenly stopped. They dropped from 2,200 feet to within 500 feet of the ground in forty-five seconds, and they sent out a Mayday! call.

  They looked down and saw they were over a large mall and a freeway, with no safe place to land. More dicey moments passed before Benson switched the fuel tanks back and forth, and the engine came back to life. In the air, in an emergency, he was totally calm—until afterward, when he thought about what might have happened.

  No, nothing seems to alarm him, but even he was appalled by this scene of horror on a quiet country road.

  As Benson arrived at the Maucks’ house with Adam Anderson, Detective Lynelle Anderson drew up an affidavit for a search warrant. Lynelle Anderson had a special talent for organizing scores of details and creating comprehensive affidavits. The investigators had many buildings, trailers, mobile homes, and vehicles to search, and they needed the warrants ASAP.

  At shortly after 2:00 p.m., the sun was already beginning to lower in the western sky, so while they waited for the warrant, Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien, also a forensic investigator, took photographs of the exterior of the house, while Detective Tom Catey made a video recording as he walked around the house and surrounding area, describing what he saw.

  Everyone arriving from the Sheriff’s Department was an expert in his or her particular field. The familiar routines they followed helped a little to defuse their revulsion as they first encountered the crime scene.

  But only a little.

  Ed Troyer, a close friend of Ben Benson’s who once worked with him when they were both road deputies and in the Narcotics Unit, has been the sheriff’s media liaison for several years. Troyer is the first line of media defense, managing to juggle the people’s right to know and the need for secrecy in many investigations. Now, he stationed himself between the investigators and the massive media response as word of a possible multiple murder was picked up from police radio calls.

  Neither he nor the investigators knew just how bad the situation was, but Troyer told reporters as much as he could.

  Jeff Freitas had said the house was completely dark at 5:00 a.m. when he passed it on his way hunting, but now both exterior lights were on. For some reason, Brian Mauck must have turned them on before it got light about eight. As Tom Catey walked around the outside of the house, he noted that all of the windows were securely locked: At the front door, he saw that someone inside could open the door when the push-button lock was set by turning the knob, but it could not be opened from the outside when the lock was set. If the dead bolt was shoved into its slot—as it was when the police arrived—the door could not be opened.

  It would have taken a very, very thin person to enter through the missing panel’s space, which was only twelve inches wide. No, it was more likely that Brian Mauck had heard something on the front porch, flipped on the outside lights, and admitted someone he either believed he could trust or someone pretending to be in distress.

  Whoever had come to the Maucks’ door should never, ever have been let in.

  The bamboo floor of the dining room, just beyond the front door, was stained scarlet in many spots. These areas had been covered with the blue fleece blanket and matching sheets. Now that Benson was inside, he could see that something heavy had been dragged from the bloodied floor in the dining area, across a section of rug there, and then into the great room, where the television still droned on.

  Benson moved into the great room, where he carefully removed the blankets covering the bodies. He found a white male, dressed in a gray T-shirt and jeans, wearing a black belt but no socks or shoes. He was in a prone position; the woman lay on her back, draped crosswise on top of him, over his shoulders. Rigor mortis was apparent; they had been dead for hours.

  There was so much blood spatter—probably medium velocity (cast-off blood)—that it stained the walls red in two distinct patterns eight feet above the floor. The south wall had so much blood on it that it was hard to tell what color it had originally been painted.

  Criminalists would determine that the killer or killers had swept a broom through the pools of blood on the floor, flinging it up on the wall. The broom had been dropped carelessly in the kitchen, as if whoever tried to sweep up the blood had realized it was a hopeless task.

  Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien used standard black fingerprint powder to process the exterior of the sliding glass door that opened off the great room and brought up latent prints from the sliding portion and door frame. They might be matched to the couple who lived here, or they might be the one key the investigators needed.

  The blue blanket covering the female victim had hidden the fact that she was nude. She might have slept that way, or the killer’s motive could have been a sexual attack. One bullet hole was obvious just above her nose near the corner of her right eye, almost certainly a fatal wound. After she was photographed, she was turned over, and a second wound now was visible in the back of her upper right arm. And then a third, in the back of her neck, just to the left of midline. She had probably been shot as she tried to run away from her killer.

  She also had severe injuries to one elbow where she had fought her killer. Chances were that he—or she—would show bruises or cuts.

  The video camera recorded sights and sounds; the photographer’s words were terse and organized. Benson had to maintain a certain emotional distance as he looked down at a very young woman who had perished in an “overkill” by someone she was fleeing from. The only thing he could do for her now was to find her killer and put him (or her) behind bars.

  The dead man was young, too. Freitas had said that Brian was thirty and Beverly was twenty-eight. This victim appeared to have two gunshot wounds in the back of his head and one in the right temple area—all fatal wounds. When the Pierce County medical examiner, Dr. Eric Kiesel, had finished his initial examination, his deputy ME, Bert Osborne, and Adam Anderson lifted the man to a litter. A gray cloth towel was revealed beneath where the victim’s chest had been. It had blood on it—but it also had four bullet holes and gunshot residue on one corner. It might very well have been used as a silencer.


  At this point early in the murder probe, the investigators had to consider the possibility that this could have been a murder-suicide after a quarrel—but then they realized that it was impossible that both victims had been shot in the back. Nobody’s hands could bend and twist into a position that would allow that.

  Almost all homicide detectives begin their investigation without knowing anything about the victims. When a superior detective winds up his case, he will know the dead better, perhaps, than he has known anyone in life. Ben Benson was fairly sure he knew the names of the people who had perished in this cozy home. An official identification lay ahead, but Jeff Freitas said they were Beverly and Brian Mauck, his neighbors and good friends.

  The two vehicles parked outside belonged to them: a white Dodge 2500 Sprinter van that had EMERALD AIRE, INC. painted on both sides, and HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING REFRIGERATION CONTROLS and a phone number beneath that. According to Freitas, Brian Mauck worked for that company as a technician. Beverly worked for Baydo’s Chevrolet, and her vehicle, a gray Chevrolet Suburban, was parked next to Brian’s van. Both vehicles were locked and didn’t appear to have been tampered with.

  Ben Benson knew now that the Maucks were familiar residents of the area, and that they had numerous ties to friends and family. He glanced around the home that they had shared in the first year of their marriage. Their house was neat, if a little cluttered. There were several movies around the television set, a few popular titles, some X-rated and untitled, three stuffed animals, some Seattle Seahawks memorabilia, plants, a cat scratching post—now tipped over—and two cats hiding from all the strangers, and between the brown recliners, a cheese knife and tray, coasters, and three TV remote controls.

  Bev and Brian Mauck weren’t teetotalers. The detectives had found champagne, raspberry coolers, and two six-packs of beer chilling on the rear porch. (They learned later that these were thank-you gifts for work Brian had done free for friends.) On an island in their kitchen, there was a nearly empty half gallon of vodka and a bottle of sour apple schnapps, the ingredients for an appletini. Two empty martini glasses rested on the island. There was a supply of liqueurs in a cabinet. Nevertheless, they didn’t appear to be heavy imbibers.

  They were obviously athletes. In the garage, Benson and his team of investigators found motorcycle helmets and boots, an exercycle, golf clubs, skis, hiking and camping equipment, twin Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a treadmill, two Ski-Doos with a trailer, and all manner of scuba-diving equipment from dive suits and swim fins to air tanks.

  Benson surmised that Brian and Beverly Mauck had been attacked unawares before they had much time to defend themselves, although it looked as though Bev had gotten in some good licks before her killer shot her between the eyes. The couple had to have been in top physical condition. They had also clearly been enjoying their lives to the fullest. Probably they had been intimate the night before; their undergarments were tossed aside in their bedroom. He wondered if someone had been watching them through a window, someone overwhelmed with lust, enough to break in.

  If Beverly Mauck had been sexually attacked by the killer, the postmortem examination and acid phosphotase and DNA tests could determine that.

  As Benson and Tom Catey moved from room to room, they observed hundreds of articles. They would all be listed on the voice recorder of the video camera. All told, the detectives found six weapons: a .22 Beretta handgun (unloaded but with a fully loaded magazine next to it), a Buck knife, an aluminum baseball bat next to the bed in the master bedroom, a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and two rifles. Why hadn’t Brian Mauck reached for one of them—even the baseball bat—as he went to the door?

  There were drops, smears, one fingerprint in blood, and small pools of blood all over the house. Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien took samples of all of it. They could see that someone had wiped down the light-switch plates with a bloody cloth, making an effort to erase any fingerprints left there.

  There promised to be a lot of physical evidence; the challenge was to connect the most telling evidence to a suspect. In the end, the Pierce County investigators would have 190 separate items of physical evidence, from bedding and blood samples to .22-caliber spent rounds (slugs) and towels with gunshot residue burns to hairs and fibers and DVDs and underwear and apparently untouched ammunition.

  Better to preserve too much than not enough.

  When the forensic investigators lifted the bloodstained blankets and sheets from the entry hall so they could be dried and then tested in the police lab, Ben Benson saw more broom or drag marks beneath them. He caught his breath as he saw tread patterns from shoes in the midst of the streaks. They had come from both a large shoe—surely belonging to a male—and a much smaller shoe. The large print was well defined, with a sharp zigzag pattern; even the worn marks on the sole left a distinct imprint.

  Who had left them there? The best physical evidence is a fingerprint left in blood; the bottom of a shoe in blood is almost as good. Beyond the pattern itself, there are signs of wear, cuts, and damage done by rocks and pebbles.

  Any halfway intelligent killer would know that and throw away the shoes he’d worn as he committed his crime(s).

  Ben Benson was hoping for a dumb murderer, or at least an overconfident one. But he knew that Brian Mauck himself could have left those marks if he’d been wearing shoes when he opened his front door to murder. And if he had lived long enough to walk a few feet through his own life’s fluid.

  But Brian was barefoot. It had to be his killer who left the prints.

  It was close to two in the morning when Benson, the CID investigators, and the forensic criminalists cleared the murder scene. They carried with them innumerable containers and plastic baggies filled with what might be vital evidence, all sealed, dated, and initialed. They’d spent almost twelve hours processing it, and they had learned a great deal—but not enough.

  The death house was locked and CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER tape was posted.

  Deputies would stand by to watch it overnight.

  Chapter Two

  Ben Benson and the criminalists were back the next morning—Sunday. This time, in the daylight, they could see vomit in the gravel portion of the driveway.

  That, too, would be tested for DNA.

  Twenty-four hours after Jeff Freitas’s desperate call to 911, they had so far: photos of two shoe prints in blood and what appeared to be a fingerprint on a doorjamb, a fingerprint on the outside of a sliding glass door, some prints Hanson-O’Brien had lifted from a faucet in a bathroom sink, a broken front door, a mound of vomit, a towel that had been used as a silencer, and an initial sense of the makeup of the neighborhood where the Maucks had lived.

  There would be all manner of forensic science tests ahead, autopsies, a canvass of the area for possible witnesses, and a search to determine if anyone had a grudge against the young couple.

  The neighborhood along 70th Avenue East was home to all kinds of people, some well-to-do, some enjoying a comfortable living, and some barely making it. Beverly and Brian Mauck had had two salaries and no children yet; they had intended to take just one more scuba-diving trip to Turks and Caicos before they concentrated on becoming parents. They weren’t rich, but they had enough disposable income to buy all the “toys” that detectives had noted as they walked around their home. Anyone could have seen that this had been a happy couple who shared almost everything. There were two of all their sports equipment. Two cozy brown chairs in the great room. Benson and his crew would have to talk to many more people to verify their impression of this marriage, but it seemed to have been a good one, over far too soon.

  On the day after the double murder, Mary Lou Hanson-O’Brien took digital images of more possible evidence: hairs and fibers, and other items that hadn’t been visible in the darkness of the night before. She covered the door frame that had a bloody print on it with plastic while Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp sawed away that portion of the jamb. It might be an extremely valuable exhibit in a trial.

  Sh
e collected the Buck knife, a digital camera that held photographs of Brian Mauck in the process of being tattooed, a bloodied paper towel, and a roll of paper towels.

  Beverly had been very popular in high school at Mt. Rainier High in Des Moines, Washington. Some of her adventures were legendary among her peers. Bev was most memorable for falling out of the back of a truck in full clown makeup and costume. She loved to laugh and her sense of humor was infectious. She and Brian enjoyed popular comedians’ CDs and Bev insisted that her friends and siblings listen to them when they were riding in her car. “Listen, listen!” she’d command her friend Jenny—who was as close as a sister—hitting her on the arm.

  “I knew she’d heard it so many times before,” Jenny recalled, “and she was funnier than any of the comedians she made us listen to.”

  Brian was mischievous and his voice could drown out anyone else in the room. His friends called him a “wild stallion,” and he would try just about anything. He’d been fearless almost since he was born. When he was three, he slipped out of his house and headed for the 7-Eleven to buy candy. He got there, but it was almost a miracle because he had to cross two four-lane highways to reach the convenience store. Beverly was just as fearless, a tomboy who refused to wear dresses when she was a child and played on the boys’ teams in high school. She’d grown up with two brothers, and she’d learned how to keep up with them.

  If they had to die young, those who knew them would have expected it to be in a diving accident or a motorcycle crash.

  Beverly Slater and Brian Mauck had known each other for years, and had dated steadily for four years before their wedding on May 5, 2006. And what a wedding it was. Held on Cinco de Mayo—the riotous Mexican holiday—it was fitting that they had chosen an island off Mexico for the ceremony. Their guests flew down to join them as they were married on a white sand beach. One of their neighbors said they had honeymooned on Turks and Caicos, their favorite spot for scuba diving.