A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

kind.”
    As they had in the Perkins case, the Seattle police investigators began a canvass of neighbors. A man in the apartment directly above Jeanie’s quarters told Sanford that something roused him from his sleep very early in the morning of June 22. Between 1:20 to 1:30 A.M. , two short screams for help had burst through his dreams. “I thought they’d come from the street, but when I looked out my window, I didn’t see anyone out there. I listened, but everything was quiet, and I finally went back to bed.”
    The couple who shared an adjoining wall with Jeanie’s apartment had heard nothing at all during the night of June 21–22.
    Two young men came forward and told the police that they had spent several hours visiting with Jeanie on Monday night, June 21. It was the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year and, in Seattle, that meant it was light until well past ten. Lots of people in the Broadway and University districts were out that Monday night, visiting.
    Detective Dick Reed interviewed the men who volunteered the information about being with Jeanie on Monday night. They told Reed that they had dropped in around 7:30 and had stayed until 10:30 or 11. Jeanie was busy around her apartment, talking to them while she cleaned. She told them she planned to leave on her vacation in a few days, and wanted to leave her place clean so it would be nice to come back to. She had also confided in them about a man she was “afraid” of. He wasn’t a complete stranger, she said, but she didn’t know his name.
    “She said, ‘I told him not to come back again,’ ” the men told Reed, but she hadn’t gone into any more detail than that. No one had knocked on her door while they were there and Jeanie had no phone, so there were no calls.
    A coworker at the Indian Center came up with a suspect’s name and a possible motive. He said that Jeanie had been instrumental in catching and convicting an obscene phone caller who had plagued the Center in January and February of 1976. He explained, “Jeanie kept the guy on the line for half an hour and he was trapped. She testified in court against him.”
    The investigators checked and found that the man had been convicted of making obscene calls on the basis of Jeanie’s testimony, but he was reported to have left the Seattle area.
    All of the detectives involved in the two murder investigations met to discuss the many commonalities in the two cases,
and
the fact that Melvin Jones’s name kept surfacing in each. Both Jeanie and Marcia had had very full social lives and many admirers, but at length, the investigators had eliminated every possible suspect
except
the husky ex-convict.
    Jeanie Easley’s friend, the man who had brought Melvin along to the dorm party on May 28, was interviewed again. Although he worked with Melvin at an upholstery company, he said they had met originally at the Monroe Reformatory. They asked him about Melvin’s mood during the first part of June, and the man recalled that Melvin had been at work regularly the week after Marcia Perkins died. “He mentioned once that he had to take a polygraph because he had some friend who died,” the man said. “But it didn’t seem like he was upset about it or anything.”
    “Melvin ever talk about wanting to date Jeanie, or about going to see her after you all went to the party together?” Sanford asked.
    “No, not that I can remember. He never said anything about her after that night.”
    While the circumstantial evidence was pointing more and more at Melvin Jones, technicians and criminalists at the Washington State Crime Lab were evaluating evidence. There was nothing from Marcia Perkins’s apartment. The scene had just been too clean. But the investigators were excited when Tim Taylor called with the news that he had “made” Melvin Jones’s palm prints.
    “Those are his prints on the wall of Jeanie Easley’s apartment.”
    It was enough probable cause for an arrest.
    Ten minutes later, Duane Homan and Benny DePalmo pulled up in front of the home where Melvin Jones lived with relatives. He was outside working on his car, and he squinted at them as he wiped grease from his hands. He agreed to accompany the detectives to headquarters, but he did not seem unduly alarmed. When informed of his rights and told they wanted to discuss the case with him, Jones asked,
“Which
case?”
    “Marcia Perkins. What about that party you went to on the 28th?” De Palmo asked.
    Jones