Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers

by Ann Rule

  To her great relief, Al had agreed. Maeve couldn’t eat much, but Al stopped trying to operate on her. She tossed and fretted, but occasionally she was able to take a few sips of soup. Kari said she felt a little more confident that Maeve would survive, because she could see very little blood from the wound, except for the irritation Al had caused by probing for the bullet.

  “Still,” she told Englelbretson, “I was afraid that Maeve might be bleeding internally. I thought about walking down to town by myself to get help, but I couldn’t leave Maeve alone in the cabin with Al, and I didn’t know if I could find the road in the dark. Besides, if Al really had shot Maeve, what was to stop him from discovering Kari was gone, shooting Maeve again—and then tracking Kari down in the night?”

  It was full dark by then, and Kari knew that none of them would be able to get out of the woods until morning. She was frightened that Maeve wouldn’t live that long, but she didn’t know what she could do to save her.

  “I sat up all night, watching over Maeve,” Kari said. “I watched Al, too, and it looked as though he was sleeping. His gun was on the other side of the cabin. I wondered if I could reach it before he did if I went for it.”

  At 7:30 A.M., it began to get light outside. Maeve was still alive, and Al didn’t seem to suspect that Kari no longer trusted him. From time to time he said he probably should go for help. When she heard that, hope rose in Kari, but two hours passed and Al made no move to leave.

  Finally, at nine-thirty, Al did put on his coat. Kari waited for him to pick up his rifle, but he left it leaning against the wall. He promised to come back with help as soon as he could. Hours passed, with no sound but the crackling of the fire and the wind whistling around the cabins. It was bitter cold, and Kari expected that it would start to snow again at any time.

  “Finally I said, ‘Maeve, we’ve got to try to walk out, or we might be here all winter.’ And I got her on her feet and dressed, but the minute I got her out the door, she fell down and couldn’t move. She said one of her arms didn’t have any feeling.”

  Kari would not leave her friend alone. So the two girls went back into the cabin, which had become their prison. They waited. And waited. And waited.

  Kari said she realized that she had been a fool to believe that Al would send help. If he had shot at them—and she believed now that he had—why would he send someone to rescue them?

  Kari admitted to Engelbretson that she finally began to panic. Maeve would die up there, and then she might, too. She didn’t know where Al was—maybe hiding outside, waiting to play some more of his sick games. Still, she felt she had to do something. Another night was coming on, and the icy cold had already begun to creep into every corner of the cabin. No longer thinking clearly herself, Kari said she tried once more to get Maeve on her feet and moving toward Index.

  “And then,” the pretty girl said, smiling faintly, “we went outside, and the snowmobiles found us.”

  While Engelbretson awaited word from the hospital, he talked to a young boy who lived near Handy and Digger. The youngster said his mother had loaned Al the .22 rifle. “I got that gun in a trade,” the boy said. “It was an Ithaca Model M49 that fired .22s short and longs.”

  In Providence Hospital, doctors worked desperately over Maeve Flaherty. She needed surgery, but they had to get her strong enough to withstand it. When she was stabilized, they rushed her into the operating room.

  Maeve was in surgery for hours. As the surgeon probed, he was astounded to find that only a miracle had kept her alive so far. A .22 caliber bullet had entered her back. If it had traveled in a straight line, it would have pierced her heart. But .22 bullets travel at high speed, and if they hit a bone, they are deflected and their paths altered. This bullet had hit one of Maeve’s ribs and changed course. The impact had caused the bullet to “mushroom” before it entered one of her carotid arteries—arteries present on either side of the neck that provide oxygenated blood to the brain. By a freak of fate, the mushroomed bullet had formed a crudely effective plug to prevent hemorrhaging. Had the bullet bisected the carotid artery instead of becoming stuck in it, Maeve Flaherty would have bled to death within three to five minutes.

  As it was, the stoppage of blood to the brain on the affected side had acted like a small stroke. This explained why Maeve had complained of a lack of feeling in one arm and hand. Whether it would be permanent could only be determined by time.

  Maeve’s doctors cautiously predicted she would live—if infection or complications didn’t develop.

  Surgeons wondered why that tiny mushroomed bullet had not been jarred loose during Kari’s attempts to walk her friend out of the woods or during the rough snowmobile ride down through the drifts. And they thanked God that Al had not been able to reach it as he tried to remove it. The bullet that almost killed Maeve had also saved her life.

  Detective Doug Engelbretson issued a wanted order on a young white male, five feet eleven to six feet tall, twenty-three to twenty-six years of age, with medium blond hair two or three inches long, brown eyes, a three-week growth of beard, and a heavy mustache. The man might be called Al. Kari Ivarsen remembered that he had a scar on his right thumb.

  Early Monday morning the investigative team from the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office went back into the wilderness where they had rescued Maeve Flaherty. They found tracks in the snow, all leading toward Index. They found the ridge with the platform where Al had said he’d seen men shooting, but there were no footprints indicating that anyone had been there recently. There had been no snowfall since Maeve was shot, so the unbroken snow on the ridge pretty well wiped out Al’s story about snipers.

  They did, however, find other tracks—tracks indicating that a lone stalker had trailed the two teenage girls as they headed for town and safety. Someone had moved stealthily along a creek bed just below the road the girls walked on. From time to time the tracks went up the banks of the creek bed, suggesting that the stalker had climbed to a spot where he could take a bead on the road.

  Just as a hunter stalks an animal, a man alone had obviously stalked the helpless girls. Evidently he had waited until the opportunity for a perfect shot presented itself. Then he had fired.

  Back at the cabin, the sheriff’s men found several knives sharp enough to probe for a bullet. Why, then, had Al used a dull bread knife, a piece of glass, and a pool cue?

  “This man is a sadist,” one investigator said. “He wanted to hurt her as much as possible. If we don’t find him, I have a terrible feeling he’ll do it again.”

  Deputy Frank Young, who was fairly new in the department, offered his time—on-duty and off—to Doug Engelbretson. Engelbretson, a former assistant police chief of Snohomish, Washington, and a seventeen-year veteran in law enforcement, was glad to have the help; they had at least twenty-five cabins to check.

  It was almost March, and down in Everett, where their offices were, crocuses, daffodils, and pussy willows were budding out, but it was bitter winter in the mountains. Their breath froze and hung in the air as the investigators tromped through the drifts. They questioned every resident they could locate. Some locals had seen the elusive Al, but he had been very careful not to reveal anything at all about his plans or his background.

  Doug Engelbretson talked again with Handy and Digger. They, of course, had every reason not to want to talk in any depth with a lawman. But Engelbretson knew they were opposed to violence of any kind.

  “This man we’re looking for,” he began, “isn’t the non-violent type he told you he was. He shot that little girl, and then he operated on her just to hurt her more. I don’t think he’s the sort of person you want to protect. You think about it. If you can help me, call me at home any time. Leave your first name or don’t leave any name at all. I’ll know.”

  Handy and Digger nodded. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  A day later an anonymous informant called Engelbretson. “The man you’re looking for is named Daniel Albert Prentice.* He’s AWOL from Fort Lewi
s, and he came from Salem, Oregon, to begin with.”

  Before Engelbretson could ask more, the phone went dead.

  Armed with this information, however, the Snohomish County detective was able to locate Oregon records on Prentice. The suspect was on probation out of Reedsport, Oregon, charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He had apparently managed to hide that fact from army recruiters, but Daniel Albert “Al” Prentice had shown a predilection for violence in the past. Oregon authorities promised to cooperate completely in locating the missing man.

  Doug Engelbretson had assured Handy and Digger that they could trust him, and his word was good. It paid off several days later. He received a phone call at home that spurred him into action.

  “Listen,” the voice began. “The man you want is being shuttled up to Canada after midnight tonight. He’s going out of Redmond on 405 to Bothell and then north to the border at Sumas. We know now that he’s not one of us—he wanted to kill that girl—and we won’t cover for him. He’s yours if you want to stop us along the road.”

  “What will you be driving?” Engelbretson asked.

  “A dark blue Chevy van—license number J78862. There’ll be three of us. He’ll be the short-haired man in the middle. Me and Digger will be the long-haired hippies.”

  “Okay,” Engelbretson said. “We’ll intercept between Everett and Arlington. I won’t tell you where—you’ll act too nervous if you know. But we’ll be all around you.”

  Engelbretson contacted Detective Sergeant Tom Hart at home in Arlington, and Hart said he would approach Highway 9 from the north. Detective Jerry Cook would come in from the east. A patrol car would approach from the west, and Doug Engelbretson and Frank Young would head toward Arlington from the south.

  Sometime before dawn, Hart radioed that he had the van in sight.

  “We’re moving in,” Engelbretson responded. “We should intercept at Frontier Village.”

  It happened fast. One minute Prentice was relaxed and confident that he was almost free and clear in Canada. The next moment the van was surrounded by Snohomish County sheriff’s vehicles, marked and unmarked. Digger and Handy bailed out of either side of their van and out of the line of fire. But the officers didn’t have to shoot. Prentice was ordered out and told to lean against the van while he was frisked. He obeyed meekly.

  “You’re under arrest for first-degree assault with intent to commit murder. I must advise you of your rights,” Engelbretson said, and he read Prentice his Miranda rights.

  “What’s it all about?” Prentice asked casually.

  “A sixteen-year-old girl,” Engelbretson answered tersely.

  Prentice gave his name as Frank Fink.

  One of the deputies, a man who had not been briefed on all the facts, moved in to arrest the long-haired duo who accompanied the suspect. Digger and Handy looked at Doug Engelbretson, a question unspoken in their eyes.

  “They’re with us,” Engelbretson said. “Just let them move on.”

  The deputy did as he was told, but he stood shaking his head as Digger and Handy drove off.

  At sheriff’s headquarters, Engelbretson again informed “Frank Fink” of his rights. The suspect gave a statement, repeating his story of the unknown snipers who had shot at Kari and Maeve.

  Engelbretson held up his hand and said quietly, “Dan, you’re not telling me the truth. You stalked those girls as if they were deer, didn’t you?…And then you shot Maeve.”

  Suddenly Prentice shuddered, drew a deep breath, and blurted, “Yes!”

  Although he claimed to have no explanation for why he had attacked the girls who thought he was their friend, he admitted that he had hunted them, stopping from time to time to draw a bead, and then dropping back until he got a better shot. He said that he had shot Maeve through the back because he’d figured the bullet would go right through her heart. If she had died, he planned to shoot Kari dead too.

  After the first shot, he said, he came to his senses. He fell to the snow and asked himself why he had done it. Finally he made himself get up and go to them.

  Master criminalist George Ishii, who headed the Washington State Police Crime Lab, did ballistics tests on the bullet taken from Maeve Flaherty’s neck and the .22 rifle Prentice had abandoned in the cabin. Under a scanning electron microscope, all the lands and grooves matched perfectly.

  Daniel Prentice went on trial in Snohomish County Superior Court on August 5, 1971. Deputy Prosecutor David Metcalf presented the almost unbelievable case to a jury of Prentice’s peers. Maeve Flaherty and Kari Ivarsen took the stand to recall the frigid night when their trust in Prentice turned to terror.

  The jury quickly returned a verdict of guilty, and on September 17, Prentice was sentenced to twenty-five years in a Washington prison.

  Doug Engelbretson had found his man, beginning with only a description and a false name: Al. Amid those endless acres of snowdrifts he had found one of the most dangerous criminals he had ever hunted. Handy and Digger had held the key, and while they had no reason to trust cops, they had trusted Doug Engelbretson and he had kept his word to them. They would return to what they did, and the quiet-spoken detective would go back to his work.

  Handy and Digger, the conscientious objectors who knew they were placing themselves in jeopardy but felt Prentice was so dangerous they had to take the chance, have long since moved on from Index to an unknown destination. The war in Vietnam that they deplored is over. For a short time, they fought a different kind of violence.

  Maeve Flaherty recovered from the bullet wound that almost killed her, but she was left with semiparalysis in one hand and memories of terror that never quite went away. She and Kari had believed in a kind of love that was idyllic but dangerous—a love that included a trusting acceptance of everyone they met. They were ultimately disillusioned by Al. And yet they found the purest, most selfless kind of love in Handy and Digger.

  And, I might suggest, in Doug Engelbretson who would not rest until their attacker was safely behind bars.

  One question has always puzzled me. On the first night that Maeve and Kari heard an animal thrashing and scratching against their cabin, Al was inside with them. He could not have made the initial noises they heard, although it was certainly Al who made noise later that night when he said he was hunting rabbits. Who—or what—was outside their cabin? Could it have been the dread Sasquatch who scrabbled at the walls of the girls’ cabin that wintry night in February? No one will never know.

  In retrospect, Maeve Flaherty and Kari Ivarsen came to realize that the monster they tried to escape from was not nearly as dangerous as the one they ran to for protection.

  Today Kari and Maeve are women nearly fifty. Maeve suffered permanent physical damage from her bullet wound; both of them still carry a heavier emotional burden.

  The Killer Who Never

  Forgot…or Forgave

  (from In the Name of Love)

  Of all the emotions humans feel, love may be the most confusing—and the easiest to misidentify. Infatuation, possessiveness, sexual attraction, jealousy, and passion have often been mistaken for true love. One of the strangest, saddest, and longest cases I ever covered dealt with a married couple who had separated, reunited, and separated again. Their final “separation” brought one of them into court in a series of trials that seemed endless. I spent two Christmas seasons on the hard benches of a King County Superior Courtroom, taking copious notes.

  And so did the defendant in a double murder trial.

  And so did the deputy prosecuting attorney.

  Every morning we passed a huge Christmas tree in the lobby of the courthouse, but inside the courtroom, there was no holiday season.

  The defendant was attractive, charming, and so at ease it seemed impossible that he was on trial for the premeditated murder of two members of his own family.

  And yet he was on trial—not just once but twice. If what the deputy prosecutor said about him was true, love had disintegrated into blind jealousy and then murderou
s hatred until finally the most innocent victim of all was killed because of an erroneous assumption.

  The trials culminated at Christmas, but the case had begun close to another holiday weekend. The tragic story of Jody* and Arne Kaarsten* first made headlines on July 6, 1966, the Wednesday after a long Fourth of July weekend. It was only a little over two weeks past the summer solstice, and the sun rose early in the Northwest that morning. Although dew still clung to the grass, it had been daylight for more than three hours when twenty-three-year-old Arne Kaarsten appeared at his next-door neighbor’s house in the suburb of Kent, where the one-story homes were built close together. It was typical sixties mass-produced construction where the same three or four floor plans were repeated in every third or fourth house; only different colored paint and varied landscaping made the homes individual. For the most part, this was a neighborhood of young married couples.

  It was a little before 8:00 A.M. when Arne Kaarsten pounded frantically on the kitchen window of Ted Pearce’s home. Pearce looked up, startled, to see Kaarsten, dressed in a bathrobe, carrying his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Terry.*

  “There’s something the matter with Jody,” Kaarsten gasped.

  Pearce took the little girl and handed her to his wife. Then he followed Kaarsten, who was already running back toward his own home. Arne entered his house through the sliding glass doors at the back, which Pearce knew opened into the dinette.

  Pearce stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. “There,” Arne said, pointing to what looked like a mound of blankets in the living room. “There she is.”

  Pearce moved closer until he could make out tufts of blond hair protruding above the blankets. He shoved away an overturned coffee table and snatched the covers back.

  Twenty-two-year-old Jody Kaarsten lay absolutely still beneath them. She was face down and wore only a pair of bikini panties and a short quilted robe that was bunched up around her shoulders. Her panties had been pulled down just below her buttocks.