Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers (16 page)

Campbell’s alleged close personal relationship with the woman was borne out by a notation in the Monroe House files on January 28, 1982. Campbell had returned from a furlough and said he was in a car that had hit a pole northwest of Monroe. The car, a 1974 Volkswagen, was found, abandoned, by a Washington State trooper. It was totaled, and the pole was heavily damaged. The trooper checked with the Department of Motor Vehicles for the car’s registration and found that it belonged to the woman who had been a counselor at the prison. She later told her insurance agency that it had been wrecked, but no charges were ever brought because troopers could not determine who had been driving the Volkswagen.

Campbell may have had charm for one woman, but another, his ex-wife, seemed unimpressed by his charisma. She reported to a detective in the town where she lived that Campbell—whom she, too, believed was still in prison at the time—had come to her home on Christmas Day 1981 and raped her. She said he had returned twice to rape her again. She had finally gone to the police on March 16 and attempted to make a formal complaint of rape against Campbell but the police had advised her the case seemed too weak to bring to court.

This was the man who Renae Wicklund believed was safely behind prison walls. He had only been 12 miles away, working days in a landscaping firm, apparently maintaining some kind of romantic relationship with his former drug counselor and allegedly assaulting his ex-wife. There was another factor. He had come to the attention of work-release authorities on March 18 for “having possession of or consuming beer at Everett Work Release.” A female officer found a partially filled can of beer on his bed and noted that the room smelled of alcohol.

This report enraged Campbell. He hated having the female officers at the facility write him up, and he showed his resentment openly. He argued with them about even the slightest order they gave him. He said he had much more freedom in his social outings when he had furloughs from the reformatory. He felt he should have complete freedom to do what he wanted while he was in work release.

A hearing had been held about his “poor attitude and behavior” toward two women officers, but he was allowed to remain in work release. He was given a second chance primarily because of his good record while in prison.

But
was
his record that good in prison?

A look at Charles Rodman Campbell’s “good behavior” was startling. For some reason, when Campbell came up before the parole board seeking work release, the paperwork that came with him cited only three minor infractions during his first year at Monroe and referred to him as a “model prisoner” thereafter. The infractions mentioned were not that bad: mutilating a curtain; possessing “pruno” (an alcoholic beverage that cons distill from yeast and any fruit or vegetable matter they can get their hands on: potatoes, apples, oranges); and refusing to allow a guard to search him for a club he had hidden under his jacket. He said he carried the club to ward off attacks by bullies in the yard.

After these minor incidents—more indicative of the behavior of a bad boy than a dangerous con—the superintendent of the state reformatory indicated to the parole board that Campbell’s record was spotless.

Not quite.

After
Campbell had won his furloughs and his work-release assignment,
after
Renae and Shannah Wicklund and Barbara Hendrickson had their throats slit, and
after
Campbell was charged with those crimes, the head of the guards’ union at the reformatory said that Campbell had used drugs as recently as the year prior to his work release.

It was obvious that someone had been covering up for Charles Campbell. Shortly after Campbell was transferred to the work-release program, the Washington State parole board discovered that the Monroe Reformatory had failed to forward copies of prison infractions to them. Hundreds of prisoners had been released without having their behavior in prison evaluated. And Charles Campbell was one of those prisoners who had slipped through the fissures in the justice system.

KIRO-TV in Seattle managed to obtain additional infraction reports on Campbell, incidents that occurred between December 31, 1977, and June 13, 1978; these infractions were never revealed to the parole board beyond a cursory notation in a counselor’s report, which mentioned that Campbell had threatened a nurse and gotten into a beef with another inmate. According to the records, the huge bushy-haired con had lunged at the nurse on New Year’s Eve 1977, when she refused to give him his medication because he was an hour late reporting to the hospital. “When I refused to give him the medication late,” the nurse had said, “he jumped to his feet with his fists clenched and moved toward me in a threatening manner, as though he intended to hit me.”

A staff member had stepped between Campbell and the female nurse, and a guard had dragged Campbell away while he shouted obscenities at her. On May 8, 1978, Campbell had kicked another inmate in the groin and ignored a guard’s order to move on in a standoff that lasted until additional guards arrived. Later that month, Campbell had cut into the chow line and angered other prisoners. He refused to move on and broke a tray in half in his hands. The situation was fraught with tension in the mess hall full of convicts. On May 24, Campbell was discovered high on drugs. He fought guards like a tiger until they got his jacket off and found an envelope in it containing three empty yellow capsules.

A month later Campbell again balked at a body search and tossed an envelope to another con. Guards recovered it and found a syringe and needle inside. He was punished with the removal of privileges for these infractions, but even his guards were afraid of him. They asked administrators to transfer Campbell from Monroe to the state penitentiary at Walla Walla. Nothing came of this request.

None of this information was available to the parole board when it came time for Campbell’s parole hearing.

When the news of Charles Campbell’s actual prison behavior reached the media, Washington State legislators immediately scheduled an investigation. One state senator put it bluntly: “Somebody obviously held back information that caused the death of three people.” Prison administrators argued that the parole board had asked
not
to see all the minor infractions, and that they had held back the reports for that reason.

Charles Campbell apparently scared the hell out of a lot of people, guards and fellow prisoners alike. He was so big, so muscular, and so quick to erupt into rage. Guards who had reservations about Campbell’s suitability for parole didn’t want their names published, but said off the record that they thought he should have been sent back to prison.

Even more frightened of seeing his name in print was an ex-convict who had served time with Campbell; the label “snitch” is a sure way to commit suicide in or out of prison for an ex-con. But the anonymous man recalled that Charles Campbell had ruled his fellow inmates with terror, forcing the weaker cons to obtain drugs for him and to submit to sodomy. Prison “prestige” belonged to the physically strong.

It is quite likely that no one will ever know what really happened on April 14, 1982. The victims are dead, and the murderer chose not to speak of his crimes.

Charles Campbell went on trial in November 1982. If he was convicted of aggravated murder in the first degree, he could be sentenced to death. To accomplish that, the state had to prove that Campbell’s crimes fit within the parameters of the statute as follows:

• He was serving a prison term in a state facility or program at the time of the murders.
  
• The victims had previously testified against him in a court of law.
  
• Campbell allegedly committed the murders to conceal his identity.
  
• There was more than one victim and the murders were part of a common scheme or plan.
  
• The murders were committed along with other crimes, including first-degree rape, first-degree robbery, and first-degree burglary.
  

They were all true. Renae Wicklund had been raped as her stalker wreaked his revenge. Her jewelry was stolen. Allegedly Charles Campbell attempted to sell the missing jewelry hours after the slayings. The burglary charges would indicate that the defendant made illegal entry into the home—by force or subterfuge.

Charles Campbell asked for a change of venue to another state, claiming that he could not receive a fair trial in the state of Washington because of the media coverage. His request was denied.

On November 26, 1982, the day after Thanksgiving, the jury retired to debate the question of Campbell’s guilt or innocence. They returned after only four hours. They had found the defendant guilty. Guilty on three counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

In the penalty phase of his trial, Charles Campbell was sentenced to death. At first he refused to cooperate with his attorneys’ efforts to have his life spared. They appealed, but he said it was against his wishes.

He would spend years on death row in the Washington State penitentiary in Walla Walla, a fearsome figure who spat at Governor Booth Gardner when he had the temerity to peer through the bulletproof-glass window in Campbell’s cell. For a man who one day soon might beg Gardner to stay his execution at the last minute, it was an incredibly stupid show of temper.

Campbell was visited regularly by his mistress, the ex-alcohol counselor and her child—Charles Campbell’s son. They seemed a strangely mismated couple.

As the years passed and his attorneys continued to appeal his death sentence, Campbell was disdainful of their efforts on his behalf. All the while, he was drawing nearer and nearer to the hangman’s noose. In March of 1989 he came within two days of being executed when his attorneys won a stay from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel agreed to listen to Campbell’s attorneys’ appeal, which contended he had been denied his right to a fair trial because he was not present when his jury was selected.
(He
had refused to come to court.)

The second issue was that having to choose the means of one’s death was cruel and unusual punishment. (When Washington State added death by lethal injection to its roster of execution methods, Charles Campbell had balked. He would not choose, he insisted. In essence, the state was forcing him to commit suicide by saying which method of execution he preferred.) “That’s against my religion,” he said smugly.

The Ninth Circuit Court panel heard arguments in Campbell’s case in June 1989, but the judges did not hand down their decision for two and a half years. In April 1992 they rejected Campbell’s arguments—but later granted his request to have the same issues reheard by an eleven-judge panel. In addition, Charles Campbell and his team of attorneys filed another federal petition, his third. He lost the latter, but the second is still pending.

In the decade since his conviction, Charles Campbell has apparently come to believe that he too is mortal and that there is a fairly good possibility that the state of Washington
is
going to kill him. By the time Charles Campbell began to cooperate in the endless series of appeals, it may have been too late.

When Westly Allan Dodd, a murderous pedophile, was executed on Washington State’s gallows on January 5, 1993, the state broke its thirty-five-year pattern of not carrying out the death penalty. Charles Campbell is expected to be executed before 1993 is over. Whether the execution will be by hanging or lethal injection is the only question left.

Few tears will be shed.

Renae and Shannah Wicklund are buried side by side in Jamestown, North Dakota, far from Clearview, Washington. Hilda Ahlers came to Clearview to settle their affairs, and grocer Rick Arriza drove her to the Clearview Elementary School to pick up Shannah’s belongings. There wasn’t much, because nine years is not enough time to gather much—beyond love. “I took her up to the school,” Arizza recalled. “We picked up Shannah’s things—glue, storybooks, an umbrella, notebooks. She just started crying.”

Hilda Ahlers rarely sleepwalks anymore, but she did for years, reliving the moment she first learned of Renae’s and Shannah’s deaths.

“There was a light tap on my door at three
A.M.
,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘Who is it?’ and this small voice said, ‘It’s me,’ and I knew it was Lorene. I was so frightened when I opened the door, wondering which one of my grandchildren I’d lost. But Lorene was standing there holding her littlest one, and her husband, Jerry, was standing beside her with their other two children.

“I remember saying to myself, Thank God, they’re all there, and then I looked behind them and I saw our pastor, and I knew it had to be Renae.

“‘Airplane accident?’ I asked.

“‘No.’

“‘Car accident?’

“‘No…murdered.’

“My mind flew to Shannah. Who was looking after Shannah? And then I heard Lorene say, ‘Shannah too.’”

After twelve years of appeals, Charles Campbell finally came to the end of the road. His last chance to have his death sentence commuted was to obtain a reprieve from the governor of Washington State. In 1994, Mike Lowry was one of the most liberal governors in the state in recent years, and, ironically, he did not believe in capital punishment. Lowry did, however, meet with Campbell face-to-face, aware that Campbell had spit in the face of his predecessor.