Ann Rule

The most basic bit of advice given to women who have to walk alone at night is, __ook alert. Be aware of your surroundings and walk briskly. You will be safer if you know where you are going, and if anyone who observes you senses that._ The stalking, predatory animal cuts the weakest from the pack, and then kills at his leisure.

Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same: stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust.

In all human endeavors that deal with what is unthinkable, too terrible to be dealt with squarely, we turn to what is familiar and regimented: funerals, wakes, and even wars. Now, in this trial, we had gone beyond our empathy with the pain of the victims and our niggling realization that the defendant was a fragmented personality. He knew the rules, he even knew a great deal about the law, but he did not seem to be cognizant of what was about to happen to him. He seemed to consider himself irrefragable. And what was about to happen to him was vital for the good of society. I could not refute that. It had to be, but it seemed hollow that none of us understood that his ego, our egos and the rituals of the courtroom itself, the jokes and the nervous laughter were veiling the gut reactions that we should all be facing. We were all on __his railroad train running _

And, like all the others, I have been manipulated to suit Ted__ needs. I don__ feel particularly embarrassed or resentful about that. I was one of many, all of us intelligent, compassionate people who had no real comprehension of what possessed him, what drove him obsessively.

I had long since managed a degree of detachment when dealing with photographs from homicide cases. They no longer upset me as they once did, although I make it a point not to dwell on them. By the time I stood in Shirley Lewis__ office, I had seen thousands of body pictures. I had seen pictures of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker in Thurston County, but that was months before it was known there was a __ed._ Of course, there were no bodies to photograph in the other Washington cases, and I had had no access to Colorado or Utah pictures. Now, I was staring down at huge color photographs of the damage done to girls young enough to be my daughters__t pictures of damage alleged to be the handiwork of a man I thought I knew. That man who only minutes before had smiled the same old grin at me, and shrugged as if to say, __ have no part of this._ It hit me with a terrible sickening wave. I ran to the ladies_ room and threw up.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all,_ but conscience is what gives us our humanity, the factor that separates us from animals. It allows us to love, to feel another__ pain, and to grow. Whatever the drawbacks are to being blessed with a conscience, the rewards are essential to living in a world with other human beings.