August 13, 2023 • 68 mins
The Cascades provide the endless backdrop for this Oregon serial killer. Back and forth on US Highway 20, the Watcher spends decades looking for trouble. He finds it over and over again until the search for a young girl brings it to a halt.
Sources:
https://projects.oregonlive.com/ghostsofhighway20/melissasheila/
https://projects.oregonlive.com/ghostsofhighway20/ackroyd/
https://www.smith.edu/news/noelle-crombie-92-highway-20
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark (00:00):
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the
(00:02):
second time.
That day he was getting dark andhe was about to give up.
He smiled to himself such apretty little girl, what was you
thinking coming out here allalone?
Marcy (00:14):
Welcome to Crime Raven; true crimes, real life stories
from law enforcement and issuescrime fighters face.
This podcast highlights crimesresearched by retired Detective
Sergeant Mark Rein, usingpublicly available information,
court records and personalrecollections.
Content may be graphic,disturbing, or violent.
Listener discretion is advised.
(00:36):
Suspects are considered innocentuntil found guilty in a court of
law.
One of the places that you canlisten to Crime Raven is on
Audible.
With an Audible membership, youcan access podcasts, audiobooks,
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To support Crime Raven, Audibleis allowing our listeners to try
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(00:57):
audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
That's free access for 30 daysat audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
We'll also put the link in theshow notes.
Mark (01:25):
watcher was a guy who liked his job.
He worked the highway for theOregon Department of
Transportation.
The road was like life itself.
You never knew what was aroundthe next bend.
And when the unexpected arose,you had to be decisive to rely
on yourself.
In that respect, watcher felt akinship to those he imagined who
were his pioneering ancestors.
(01:47):
They were the people who hadtraversed these same mountains
survived raging river crossings,desert, dry summers, snowstorms,
and apocalyptic wildfires.
Things hadn't changed much.
The stretch of Mountain Roadthat watcher worked was the wild
west lawless empty.
Sure, the occasional car passedswiftly through, but his road
(02:10):
was never The journey's end.
Desolation bounded on eitherside, mostly steep slopes, a few
flat turnouts winding throughRiver Valley and pass.
It was a rugged wildernesssandwiched between the green,
wet central valley to the west,and the arid high desert to the
east In his saga, watcher wasthe hero.
(02:32):
He spent his time, day and nightlooking for trouble.
Sometimes he found people, theirpilgrimage interrupted.
They were in distress on theroadside.
Sometimes he came acrosscollisions or travelers who
missed the curve.
Rescuing, stranded travelers,helping them get their cars
towed to get gas, whatever theyneeded.
(02:53):
Watcher was there to helpeverybody and doing so, he was
helping himself.
Marcy (02:58):
The girl is blonde pretty and just out of high school, so
she's at a crossroads.
It's really the first crossroadsthat everybody recognizes.
What would her path in life be?
She couldn't bear the thought ofstaying in the tiny, dusty town,
living with her boring assparents until she could squeeze
her way into some boring assjob, maybe in some office
(03:23):
somewhere, answering phones,maybe at the school.
She imagined herself as one ofthose lunch ladies and shook her
head.
Etch a sketch style to erase theimage.
No, she had to get the fuck outof there at least for a while.
Do something, see somethingbefore the rest of her life
Solidified slowly around her,like wet concrete on a cold day.
(03:48):
So one day the girl kissed andhugged her mom and dad lied
about staying over at afriend's, picked up the pack
that she dropped out of herbedroom window and walked away.
Eventually, her parents wouldfind the note explaining what
she planned to do.
She loved them.
She didn't want to argue, didn'twanna see the fear and
(04:10):
uncertainty in their eyes.
In a few days, she would call.
Maybe by then she would be ather friend's place in Eugene,
safe and Sound.
She shed guilt with every step,and by the time she hit the
highway and was lifting herthumb to passing cars headed
west, she was beaming withexcitement again.
(04:31):
The girl was lucky.
A family headed south to Nevadawas the first car that stopped
for her.
The dad smiled and nodded frombehind the wheel when he pulled
up.
While the mother pretty maybemid thirties questioned her out
of the window in an almostscolding tone, asking why was
she out here all alone?
(04:51):
Telling her to get in whilelooking into the brush on the
roadside, as if someone wasgonna jump out of one of those
scrubby bushes at any minute.
They made her feel at home piledin the back of a station wagon.
Kids bounced around herwrestling with each other,
shooting her nonsensicalquestions.
The mother turned sideways andfrom the front seat, asked the
(05:12):
girl questions.
In between refereeing the kidmayhem swirling across both back
seats.
As the girl replied, the motherparroted the answers to the side
of her husband's head.
It soon became clear that themother thought the girl's plans
were crazy.
The girl is headed to Eugene.
Could they maybe drop her off inEugene?
(05:32):
The husband chuckled to himselfand said, hun, there is no way
we can go all the way to Eugeneand make it in time.
They were going south to Nevada.
Family thing.
Husband said, I can take you asfar as bend, and then you gotta
catch a ride west.
The girl smiled great, thanks.
The mother,faced troubled, spentthe next two hours alternately
(05:52):
trying to manage the kidcraziness while counseling the
girl.
The girl was not as fortunate inher next couple of rides.
First, a man who mainly wantedto know if the girl had accepted
Jesus Christ as her savior.
She told him yes, but apparentlynot to his satisfaction.
Then a lady was nice enough.
(06:12):
The problem with those rides wasthat they were locals and not
going far.
The girl stayed overnight at athankfully cheap roadside motel.
The fatigue overcame theexcitement of the journey that
first night, and she was asleepwithin a minute of her head
hitting the musty pillow.
Mid-morning found the girlwalking on the shoulder of us 20
(06:34):
in Oregon.
The first ride had beenfortunate.
A man headed west on 20 took herout of the high desert, across
the mountain passes and into thedense forest that blankets the
west side of the cascades.
The driver, a man who remindedthe girl of her dad one day was
too soon to be homesick, right?
(06:54):
Turned out to be a collegeteacher.
So when the girl didn't knowmuch about the scenery, he
filled what might have been anawkward silence with an hour's
worth of geology facts.
The professor dropped the girloff at a gas station at the turn
where he went south and shecontinued west.
There wasn't much traffic andthe few cars that passed were
(07:15):
headed east.
It was a sunny day, a pleasantbreeze on her face.
So the girl counted herblessings and enjoyed the new
scenery.
First, she was thankful that somuch of her walk was downhill.
She could see a river runningparallel to the road in the
valley below.
In the distance farmland lookedlike a patchwork quilt visible
(07:36):
through the gaps in the densesurrounding forest.
In the early afternoon, a truckdriving east with an insignia on
the door that read OregonDepartment of Transportation
pulled across the lanes oftraffic and onto the shoulder
behind the girl.
The driver, a big bearded,bearish man leaned out.
He wanted to know if she was allright.
She told him she was trying tocatch a ride.
(07:57):
The man said that he had to gofurther up, but if he saw her
when he came back, she couldride with him.
He pointed in the direction shewas walking.
There's a gas station a fewmiles on down.
Then she was walking again.
The girl caught a ride from thegas station, a local lady who
could only take her a couple ofmiles before she had to turn
off, but she figured every milewas progress.
(08:21):
As the afternoon turned toevening, the girl continued to
hike West.
She knew there was a reservoirup ahead and beyond that, a town
where she planned to stay thenight if she couldn't catch a
ride.
In the late afternoon, cloudshad rolled in, casting
everything in a gray pall.
The girl was worried that itwould soon be very dark and
worse might rain.
(08:43):
Just then a truck pulled paststopping on the shoulder in
front of the girl.
She ran up to the passengerdoor.
The driver looked familiar, butit took her a second to realize
it was the Oregon d o t guy thatshe talked to earlier.
Only the truck was different.
No insignia.
The guy was the same.
Bearish with a dark bushy beard.
(09:04):
Looking through the open sidewindow she could see it was his
personal truck.
He smiled at her.
"I told you I'd give you a rideon my way back.
You made it farther than Ithought you would." The girl
opened the door just as a lightrain began to mist the
windshield"and just in time" hejoked.
The pickup's rear wheelsslipping on gravel as it
accelerated back into thewestbound lane
Mark (09:27):
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the
second time.
That day he was getting dark andhe was about to give up.
He smiled to himself such apretty little girl, what was you
thinking coming out here allalone?
His life on the road was likethat.
He was often in the right placeat the right time.
There were lists of people whowould swear that he had saved
them in their time of need.
(09:47):
And for all those people thatwatcher had helped the road had
repaid him.
He could legitimately callhimself the guardian Angel
Highway 20.
No one could blame him for theoccasional indulgence.
He only took a little off thetop.
Sometimes he drove his owntruck, which made him anonymous.
But the state rig that putpeople at ease.
(10:08):
They suspected nothing with thestate rig.
After all, he could be anywhereand still be just doing his job
What he loved was, it was justlike hunting.
Call it poaching of the verybest kind.
He knew his stretch of road,like the back of his hand, all
the stopping spots, all thestalking spots.
He knew where he could get awayfrom the road and not be
interrupted.
And the times he had beeninterrupted, he was just out
(10:31):
hunting.
He had even admitted to poachingoutta season once.
Gotten a ticket.
Yeah, that wasn't dear blood.
Stupid assholes.
Watcher was always careful.
He had passed on girls that wereripe for the taking.
After a little conversation, hecould tell who would be missed,
the ones who would bring theheat.
(10:51):
He wanted the unaccountablegirls, the ones who gave off
that aroma of being strays, likethat drunk Indian bitch.
Nothing says stray like a youngdrunk Indian bitch.
After he fucked her, he wantedmore.
He decided to let her live so hecould have more, but she had
betrayed his trust.
No matter.
The cops hadn't bought herbullshit anyway.
(11:13):
This one, she felt like a stray.
Marcy (11:18):
The girl relaxed into the old truck seat.
After walking as long as she hadtoday, it felt great.
The guy asked her a couple ofthe common questions, where she
from?
Where she going?
She's honest with him becausewhy not?
The guy was quiet for a fewminutes.
They passed the reservoir as thedarkness outside enveloped.
(11:39):
For a few minutes, there waslight again as they went through
the small town.
Then they were back in the dark.
The only illumination was twoyellow headlight beams cutting
through the misting rain and aweak green glow from the
dashboard.
The girl was almost asleep whenshe felt the truck slow, then
turned left.
She raised her head, but couldonly see a dirt road and an
(12:01):
opening in the trees.
The sound of the tires changedas the truck left the pavement
and rocked slowly as it movedthrough Uneven wet dirt.
The girl asked where they weregoing.
The guy said something abouttaking a leak, but there was
something new in his voice.
Fully awake now the girl sat upand turned toward the driver.
(12:22):
The guy stared back at her.
His eyes were wide.
She could see his teeth.
He was breathing heavily.
He was excited.
He stopped the truck and reacheddown between his legs.
It took the girl a second torealize that the guy had a
hunting knife in his hand.
He's holding it up.
It had a green hue likeeverything else, but the blade
(12:45):
flashed, metallic.
The girl reached down desperateto escape.
She realized there's no handle,no release.
She screamed.
Loud.
Mark (12:58):
He held the blade up and threw gritted teeth hissed,"do
that again and I'll gut youbitch." The knife moved down.
He pulled up her shirt andpressed the sharp cold metal
against the skin of her softbelly.
She submitted.
He began cutting and ripping ather clothes.
It's his ritual.
Suddenly he opened the door andbacked out, dragging the girl
(13:18):
with him onto the damp ground.
He cut and ripped at fabric, ashow of strength of domination.
He stripped off all of herclothes and groped her with
rough hands.
He's fat.
Breath wreaking of food andcoffee and beer.
His beard rubs against her bodyas he violates her.
Marcy (13:49):
In December, 1978, investigators from the Oregon
State Police responded to areport of a woman who'd gone
missing at Camp Sherman, aremote recreational site in
central Oregon on the easternslopes of the cascade range.
The area boasts scenic, ruggedgeography in an alpine setting
and is popular for hunting,fishing, boating, photography,
(14:13):
and trail hiking.
35 year old Kay, Jean Turner andher husband had been spending
the holidays at the camp with agroup of friends.
All had driven up from Eugene.
Just after 8:00 AM on ChristmasEve morning.
Kay, who was an avid jogger setoff on an eight mile run that
should have taken less than anhour.
(14:36):
Her preferred running circuitfollowed Camp Roads that led out
near us Route 20.
Despite it being the end ofDecember, the air temperatures
were unseasonably warm, midfifties, and made for
comfortable running.
Kay was wearing a bluesweatshirt, yellow shorts, and
Adidas shoes.
Kay's husband Noel becameincreasingly concerned when his
(14:58):
wife had not returned by 10:00AM.
He drove all the camp roads andfinding no trace, called the
police around 2:00 PM.
The first agency to respond wasthe Jefferson County Sheriff's
Office.
After a brief consultation, theycalled out search and rescue
personnel.
(15:18):
Those teams brought in assetsincluding volunteers, dog teams,
and aircraft.
The only thing they found by thetime the sun that day were
suspicious tracks in the snow onthe side of the road.
The prints were a tangle of twodistinct sets of shoe
impressions.
One was large, probably a man'sboot.
(15:40):
The other was a small Adidasrunning shoe.
The ground search continued inday two.
As detectives from Oregon StatePolice join the effort.
As a matter of routine, theybegan victimology, examining
Kay's life for risk factors andscrutinizing the people around
her.
(16:01):
They discovered that Kay washaving affairs with two men back
home in Eugene.
This led to obvious questions.
Were they involved in herdisappearance?
Could this be a motive for herhusband?
Investigators quickly discountedthe boyfriends, and
significantly they did not castsuspicion back on Kay's husband.
(16:23):
Although Noel Turner could neverbe completely ruled out, the
police found no evidence that hewas involved in his wife's
disappearance.
With the ground search andinitial investigation underway,
the community gave police theirsecond suspect.
Several locals pushed policetowards a guy named John
Aykroyd, a man who lived in thearea.
(16:46):
He wasn't well liked and rumorsswirled around him.
Many people characterized him asweird, creepy, and often
hostile.
He worked for the state d o t asa mechanic and road safety
monitor, which meant Aykroydspent long hours driving up and
down a stretch of remote Oregonhighway looking for trouble.
(17:09):
As police officers combed thesmall community, an informant
tipped them off.
Aykroyd was talking about seeingKay Turner while she was jogging
on Christmas Eve.
It didn't take the police longto find Aykroyd who was fairly
unremarkable.
six Feet tall, medium, builddark hair and glasses.
(17:29):
When questioned Aykroyd told thepolice that he worked as usual
overnight shift that ChristmasEve morning while driving
towards one of his favoritehunting areas.
He saw Kay Turner jogging.
Aykroyd pulled over and spokewith her briefly explaining that
he thought he'd hit a dog in thearea and asked Kay if she'd seen
anything.
(17:50):
Aykroyd denied that there wasany more to the contact, but his
admission made him the lastknown person to see the missing
woman.
This placed him firmly on thetop of the suspect list until
his friend and coworker RogerBeck gave Aykroyd an alibi.
Beck said that he and his friendhad been together in the area
(18:12):
illegally hunting deer.
This assertion was corroboratedby Beck's wife.
The admission againstself-interest.
In mentioning the poaching andthe alibi, witness deflected the
investigation away from Aykroydas fast as it had focused.
The ground search rambled on forfive days without success before
(18:33):
they canceled it.
Seven months after Kay Turner'sdisappearance On August 12th,
Aykroyd walked into a localstore.
He told people he had found KayTurner's remains in the woods
while walking his dog.
When police arrived, Aykroyd ledthem to his find, and they
(18:53):
confirmed that the remains,although in an advanced state of
decomposition, appeared to behuman.
Investigators found the factthat the last person to see Kay
Turner was the same person whohappened to find her remains
months later, highly suspicious.
In the interview, they askedAykroyd to describe how he knew
(19:15):
the remains were those of KayTurner.
Aykroyd's description of thebody site confused the
investigators.
The area they were looking atwas fairly nondescript.
In the time Kay's body lay inthe densely wooded hillside.
It had been completely reduced.
The bones were weathered.
There was no flesh.
(19:37):
Debris, partially buried whatwas left of her clothing on the
forest floor.
Yet Aykroyd described K Turner'syellow shorts and the wreak of
decomposing flesh as if the bodywere still fresh.
Police and volunteers conducteda series of increasingly
detailed area searches,ultimately recovering major
(19:58):
bones, a shoe, clothing items,and a wristwatch.
In the days following therecovery, the medical examiner
confirmed that the bones wereKay Turner.
He could compare her dentalrecords to a lower jawbone found
at the scene.
Kay Turner's skull would befound a year later by another
hunter.
(20:19):
It had been carried almost amile away from the other
remains.
Aykroyd's submitted to follow-upinterviews and polygraph
examination.
Under pressure, he changed hisstory saying that he'd actually
found Kay's body in the snow inFebruary.
He gave details about herdecomposing body that her throat
(20:40):
had been cut.
She had a bullet wound to thechest and animals had consumed
part of her, including her eyes.
Aroy told investigators he wasnervous after the February
discovery, that they wouldsuspect him in her death.
So he didn't say anything.
He could not explain why hechose August 12th to change his
(21:01):
mind.
Perhaps Aykroyd came forward sothat he could claim the find K
Turner reward fund.
The administrator of the fundrefused to pay him because they
had not ruled him out as asuspect.
The K Turner missing personturned murder case spent a
decade like this brief flurriesof activity and long periods of
(21:22):
dormancy as interest waxed andwaned, and investigators came
and went.
July 10th, 1990 was the day thata 13 year old girl named
Rashonda Pickle disappeared.
Rashonda lived with her mother,Linda, her brother Byron, and a
(21:43):
stepfather in Sanam Junction,barely a wide spot in the road
where US Route 20 and Oregon.
Route 22 meet.
On the day her mother reportedRashonda missing.
She was described as a four footseven 90 pounds with brown hair
wearing black pants, a whiteT-shirt, sneakers, and silver
(22:05):
stud earrings.
When police began interviewingabout the girl, they discovered
that there were problems insidethe family.
While the stepfather outwardlypresented a calm, competent
demeanor, those closest to himsaw beyond the facade.
Inside the home he was a brutaldictator, severely beating Linda
and her children regularly.
(22:27):
Rash ANDA's brother Byron,described the man's rages as
sudden, unexpected, andvolcanic.
Friends said that they regularlysaw bruises on both kids.
Some of rash ANDA's closestconfidants went further.
They said the girl never wantedto go home.
She would often bring a changeof clothes to school and beg
friends to let her stay withthem.
(22:49):
The reason was simple.
Rashanda was trying to stay awayfrom a stepfather who was
sexually abusing her.
That same stepfather was thelast person to see Roshonda.
His name was Ackroyd.
Investigators interviewedAykroyd several times at Key
points in the search andinvestigation.
(23:09):
He didn't have much to say anddenied knowledge of what
happened to Rashonda.
He told them that on the day shedisappeared, he spent the entire
day driving around, takingpictures and scouting hunting
locations.
The only alibi he could offer isthat several of his highway
department coworkers saw himwhile he was out.
(23:29):
The coworkers later confirmedseeing Aroy driving around with
a camera that day.
But Aykroyd's appearance wasweird.
They said it felt like he wasgoing out of his way to be seen
and waving the camera aroundlike a prop.
When the police talked toRhonda's biological father who
lived in a nearby city, he toldthem that he had recently talked
(23:49):
to Linda, his ex-wife, aboutakroyd abusing his children.
Byron had filled him in on somethings happening at the home in
Sanam Junction.
Although Linda denied any abusewas happening, the ex threatened
the report aykroyd to the cops.
Rashonda disappeared the nextday.
(24:11):
The investigators confrontedAykroyd with this new
information.
He denied everything but madesome unusual comments as the
interrogation progressed.
When asked Aykroyd speculatedthat someone passing on Highway
20 took her against her will.
At this time, Aykroyd was sixfoot tall, heavyset, almost
(24:31):
bearlike in stature with a densescraggy beard that complimented
that overall impression.
He said 87 pounds is nothing fora guy like my size to carry.
He also theorized that thekidnapper had a knife and that
rashanda was the kind of girlwho could be intimidated.
(24:51):
The Sheriff's Office started alabor intensive search as the
facts became widely known andRoy's linked to Kay Turner's
murder hit the local media.
The district attorney set up atask force.
Their mission justice forRashonda Pickle and Kay Turner.
To this end, detective spentalmost two years working
(25:13):
Rashonda Pickle's disappearance,while reviving the Kay Turner
case.
Progress was slow, butpersistence was rewarded with
breakthroughs.
Aykroyd's alibi, witness andfriend from Beck in 1978, Beck
was no longer married.
When the detectivesre-interviewed his ex-wife, she
(25:34):
told them that she lied.
When she supported Beck's Alibi.
At the time, she was afraid themen would hurt her.
The woman told police that notonly were the two men
unaccounted for after Turner'sdisappearance, she had heard the
men talking about shooting her.
The results of forensicreexamination of Kay Turner
evidence allowed the prosecutionto confidently assert that Kay
(25:58):
Turner had been kidnapped,raped, beaten, stabbed, and
shot.
Oregon media outlets took noticeof the task force activities as
they churn through old policereports on crimes that had
occurred over the last twodecades along the Highway 20
corridor.
There were numerous unsolvedmissing person reports over the
(26:19):
years, along with severalbodies, mostly young women
discovered in dump sitesadjacent to the roadway.
The problem was that most of theremains by the time of discovery
were almost impossible toidentify, with cause of death,
difficult to pinpoint beyondsimply likely homicide.
(26:40):
While canvassing old crimereports from towns in the
Highway 20 corridor, a sexualassault caught the
investigator's attention.
Aykroyd was the named suspect.
Although the rape was nevercharged, it gave the
investigators a template, a kindof Rosetta Stone of Aykroyd's MO
linking cases, and answeringsome questions about what he had
(27:03):
been up to.
One evening in 1977, MarleneGabrielsson left the sister's
rodeo and began hitchhikinghome.
The route was isolated, leadingup into heavily forested
mountainsides.
A man she later identified asRoyd, pulled over his truck and
(27:25):
offered her a ride.
At some point during the drive,Aykroyd turned off onto a
logging road and pulled out aknife.
Marlene tried to flee, but therewas no handle on the passenger
side door..
Arod used the blade menacingly.
He would wave the blade in frontof Marlene's face and then slice
away parts of her clothing.
(27:46):
Suddenly he dragged her out ofthe truck and pinned her to the
ground as he raped her.
Marlene tried to look away,tried to imagine being somewhere
else but the assailant demandedshe looked directly at him while
he assaulted her body.
When Aykroyd finished, Marlenewas afraid for her life.
She pled with him to take herhome, promising not to tell.
(28:10):
She told him that her mother wasbabysitting her child and that
she was expected to be backsoon.
Finally, in response, Aykroyddrove Marlene the rest of the
way.
Dropping her off near hermother's house.
Marlene told investigators in1990 that she never washed
herself after the rape.
She made her mom drive herstraight to the hospital
(28:31):
bringing the slashed clothingwith her.
The 1990 investigators examinedthe 1978 ER doctor notes.
The cuts to the clothing,corresponded with lacerations on
Marlene's body.
They also noted that the cutsseemed almost ritualistic.
The jeans were cut straight fromthe crotch to the hemline.
(28:54):
The 1990 detectives.
After reviewing the old reportsand talking to Marlene, believed
she was lucky to have livedthrough the incident.
The problem was the originalinvestigator in 1977 clearly
believed that Marlene was lying.
The initial interview withMarlene had devolved into an
(29:14):
accusatory interrogation whereminute details were scrutinized
and her answers discounted.
Conversely, when Aykroyd wasinterviewed, he admitted to
giving Marlene a ride, butinsisted that she came onto him.
He denied having sex and claimedto have no idea how her clothes
got slashed.
(29:34):
His account went largelyunchallenged.
Task Force Detectives saw manysimilarities between the cases
they examined and what Marlenehad experienced.
Clothing found in one of theJane Doe found body scenes were
slashed in a fashion similar toMarlene's.
As the task force was finalizingits first case, tragedy struck
(29:57):
again.
In May, 19 92, 2 girls from thetown of Sweet Home, Sheila
Swanson, 19 years old, andMelissa Sanders, 17 years old,
disappeared while hitchhiking onHighway 20.
Both girls skeletal remains werefound together at a remote dump
(30:17):
site near the town of Chitwood.
In October, 1992.
Between the time Sheila Swansonand Melissa Sanders went
missing, and when their bodieswere recovered, the task force
had charged and arrested Aykroydfor Kay Turner's murder.
There were many compellingaspects of the Sheila Swanson
(30:38):
and Melissa Sanders case thatled the investigators to believe
that Aykroyd was responsible.
Timing.
The girls were hitchhiking alongHighway 20 at the same time,
Aykroyd was driving in the area,a witness.
A woman in a passing vehicleclaimed to have seen an Oregon d
o t marked pickup truck, pickingup two girls in the area,
(31:01):
coworker suspicion around thetime the girls disappeared two o
d t shop workers on overtimeunexpectedly encountered Akroyd,
who came in late one night,probably expecting no one would
be there.
The coworkers said his hands andarms were covered in blood.
He claimed to have hit a deer,but neither man believed him and
(31:26):
Aykroyd knew the girls, althoughhe denied it.
Aykroyd was living in the townof Sweet Home at the time the
two girls disappeared.
He frequented a popular localteen hangout.
Because of his age.
The kids there called him theperv.
Some kids said that Swanson andSanders both had spoken to the
perv.
(31:47):
Aykroyd and Beck, both 42 werearrested on June 12th, 1992 for
the rape and murder of KateTurner.
The following year, they triedboth men in front of separate
juries.
In the trials, Beck's ex-wifetestified about covering their
alibi and helping with cleanup,which included burning their
(32:10):
clothing.
The forensic work on Kay'sclothes and Bones revealed the
truth about her death.
Her clothing had been cut off,not torn.
Her bones bore marks where shehad been stabbed.
Metal fragments were embedded inthe bones showing that they'd
also shot her.
This evidence corresponded withguesses Aykroyd had made at the
(32:32):
time that he claimed to havediscovered the body.
It turned out that MarleneGabrielsson was not the only
woman to have survived a brushwith Aykroyd.
Investigators found anotherwoman who worked as a waitress
at Black Butte Lodge.
She testified one day as she wasriding her bicycle home from
work, Aykroyd stopped on theroadside in front of her
(32:53):
pointing a gun.
He tried to make her stop, butshe was able to elude him.
At the conclusion of the murdertrials, both men were found
guilty on all charges and givenlife sentences.
Several years later, Aykroydpled no contest to a charge of
murder for his stepdaughterRashonda pickle.
(33:13):
This plea eliminated anypossibility that he could ever
be granted parole.
In spite of the plea, he refusedto disclose the location of
Shonda's body.
Akroyd died of natural causes onDecember 30th, 2016, while
incarcerated at Oregon StatePenitentiary in Salem.
(33:34):
He was 67 at the time of hisdeath.
Investigators from the LincolnCounty District Attorney's
Office were preparing to chargehim for the murders of Sheila
Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
(34:03):
Transitioning to the discussion,this is really a set of cases
over a very long timeline.
Let's start by talking about KayTurner.
They were in a pretty remotearea when this happened.
What does the response look like
Mark (34:16):
As a responding officer, you're sent to a missing person,
and this is a pretty commoncall.
Wherever you are.
I think you go and you starttalking to the complainants and
ask the initial questions.
Who's missing?
How long have they been missing?
What's the situation?
What's already been done?
Where have you looked?
And try to basically get ageneral feel of that situation.
(34:38):
A search for a person,especially one that's urgent is
a considerable deployment ofresources.
Basically to have a majorsituation like this where
everybody's gonna be called out,you have to The original
responding officer has hadpretty high confidence that the
situation's real, the personthat's missing is in danger and
that that kind of deploymentwill likely find this person.
(35:01):
And the whole time you're reallyhoping that the person's going
to, and honestly you're hopingthe person shows up the first
thing that's gonna be done is,who is the person likely to be
with their friends?
And we contact all those perpeople and run through that list
of where is the person likely tobe, let's check all those places
first.
like if you go for to a housewhere there's a kid missing, the
first thing you're going towanna check is the officers are
(35:24):
gonna ask to thoroughly checkthe home.
Now, if you have people that arelike you're not checking our
home.
Wait a minute, your kid'smissing, we need to check your
home, we wanna check that offbecause if we begin a huge
overland search here or a everwidening search for a truly
missing kid, we need to say wechecked off A to B first place,
always the house.
(35:44):
And likewise here, we're gonnamake sure that.
All the likely places arechecked.
Where Kay Turner was likely tobe where she could have stopped
off, does she have any friendsin the area?
Where does she like to go in thearea?
Is there a place she might gofind a, a park bench and look at
her favorite mountain?
And obviously here the Sheriff'sDepartment assess that Yes.
(36:04):
Is a situation that needs tohave resources brought out on.
And they called out, theirsearch team volunteers.
They had some Boy scout groupsin the area and those search
teams brought out otherresources like aviation and
tracking dogs.
Any major missing person, isgonna follow two tracks.
You're gonna have the groundtrack which is searching the
(36:25):
areas I just described.
And then you're also gonna havethe the investigative portion.
You're gonna take all the peopleaside and you're gonna interview
them and see what they reallythink separately from one
another.
Because these friends that wentup with Kay Turner into the
mountains, some of them knewsome things about her that maybe
the husband didn't know.
The other thing you would wannaknow is what do the friends
(36:47):
there have to say about therelationship between Noel, the
husband and Kay Turner, leadingup to the event?
Did it seem like they werehappy?
Was there any fights?
Did they hear any arguments?
This kind of thing.
And those interviews will informwhere you're gonna search,
Marcy (37:02):
This morning you were talking about a recent Anchorage
case.
How does that relate here?
Mark (37:07):
Yeah I keep track of what's going on in, back in my
old city and about, at the timeof this recording, almost a week
prior, there's a 21 year oldfemale that was missing.
And what I noticed about themissing personal report was that
the report was coming fromfamily that was, I think they
might have been visiting SouthAfrica or some, she had some
(37:28):
family in South Africa.
And my, the first thing Ithought was, Why was there not a
local appeal?
Does she have no family inAnchorage?
Now some people are military,they may not have any family in
Anchorage, but why wasn't theresomebody local announcing this
calling for her search?
My first question there when Ithought, when I saw that, I was
like, does she not have aboyfriend or a husband here in
(37:49):
town?
What's up with that?
The reason I thought that is ifyou listen to our episode on
Susan Bailey, a DV situation thesame thing.
The husband who lived in townwas not eager to report this
thing.
It turned out he had killed hiswife.
And even though he should be thefirst reporter to the police,
(38:09):
the people I went to, to talk toabout her being missing were her
coworkers.
Likewise, I didn't know anythingabout the missing lady in
Anchorage.
But my first thought was Iwonder if she's got a husband or
her boyfriend at town?
There was a lot of media on thismissing person and searching for
her And it turned out five dayslater, her body was found near
(38:30):
to where her and her husbandsignificantly lived.
It turned out on the weekendprior, the husband had shot her
in the middle of the night andhid the body in the woods
nearby.
Here's a situation whereoverland search, if you don't
have the specific location,would be difficult to search.
Although eventually theyprobably would've found her
because she wasn't far from herhouse.
(38:50):
But here the investigatorsdirected the search that
ultimately turned up her body.
Marcy (38:56):
You've been involved in searches where the family was
not immediately excluded, butthen it turned out the family
wasn't involved.
How does that sort of thing getsorted out?
Mark (39:06):
Yeah.
Especially with kids, it's hardto know.
I helped in the ground searchfor a couple missing kids a long
time ago.
It wasn't clear that the parentwasn't a suspect.
Some of those situations are,ambiguous.
There's some suspiciousbackground issues here.
So one of the detectives had theunenviable task of pressing the
(39:28):
parent, and they pressed theparent hard.
And it later turned out the kidswere deceased.
And the parent wasn't directlyinvolved.
This missing kids thing lastedfor a few weeks.
And, I talked to one of thedetectives that was, An
interviewer there.
And I can tell you that findingout that the parent that he had
(39:49):
interrogated confronted actuallydidn't have anything to do with
it.
He felt like shit, but it had tobe done.
We had to find those kids, wehad to figure out if they knew
anything.
In this case with the K turner,you'd locked the husband down to
a timeline going in and, you'dsee if they had any arguments.
What did the husband say aboutthe stability?
(40:11):
Did he know about theboyfriends.
And in those interviews you'dsee what reaction you got.
A lot of times they're not gonnabe honest and there's gonna be
clues to that.
And like I said, you'd talk tothe friends and see if they, did
they see Kay leave?
Did they know she went running?
Or is that just what the husbandsaid?
And in general, what was thewhole situation in the days
prior?
Marcy (40:32):
Do you think that the husband knew about the
boyfriends?
Do you think one of the friendsknew and told investigators?
How did that come up?
Mark (40:41):
I actually don't know who spilled the beans on that, or if
he knew, or who knows.
But it was something theyinvestigated.
In that case, say this came upin a case I was working at,
track down the boyfriend, see ifthey knew anything, and
significantly what did thoseguys say about the husband?
Did the husband say that she's,seeing them because he's a
tyrant and beats her, what's hesaying?
Or does he not know?
Is he clueless?
(41:02):
I imagine that based on thecases I'm involved in, the
detectives pretty early had atheory about how that was gonna
go.
Just like on the case I talkedabout in Anchorage last week, I
would bet those detectives hadsome idea pretty quick after
touching base with that husband.
Maybe the neighbors, because shewas shot in an apartment, they
had a pretty good idea thatthings weren't right inside the
(41:24):
house.
What was their relationshiplike?
And I think in this case withKay Turner, they would've had a
pretty good idea that thisdoesn't smell like something
that went bad suddenly, and shejust disappeared.
And as far as K Turner goes youmight say is it the kind of
thing where she would just upand leave her husband?
It probably didn't feel likethat either.
Because why would she go away ona trip, Christmas trip with her
(41:46):
friends and her husband, and,just step out on them.
It just, it doesn't seem right.
Versus so the middle of nowhere,right in the middle of nowhere.
And versus, the week prior sheleaves him or something.
And like I said, in other casesI've seen and are familiar with
husbands that just did in theirwives or did something, their
wives often aren't in a hurry tomake that report.
(42:07):
They want to delay it.
They want to delay thatconfrontation with the cops.
It's inevitably coming.
Marcy (42:12):
This certainly served as a red herring for a while with
the investigators.
Mark (42:15):
Yeah, the boyfriends.
Yeah.
The good thing is, like I said,with the two tracks, they were
able to area search, whichunfortunately the area search
wasn't successful.
And then they were also wereable, they had the manpower to
actually work the investigationtoo.
So I think they pretty muchdiscounted the boyfriends that
red herring.
And were able to move towards areal suspect
Marcy (42:39):
setting plays a really huge role in this whole story.
Mark (42:44):
Oh yeah.
And I'm familiar with searchesin very large areas, densely
wooded, rugged relativelysparsely populated.
It's funny when I think of thatit's like that movie alien where
no in place areas where no onecan hear you scream.
anywhere where these placeswhere any help is gonna be a
long time incoming, ironicallyAykroyd's job was that guy to
(43:07):
come and help.
The thing about the setting inthis situation is Ayd was a
predator in his own territory.
He's been traveling it foryears.
He's familiar with the wholearea and, he legitimately had a
reason to be where he wascommitting crimes.
So his presence is neversuspicious.
Marcy (43:28):
And when they really scrutinized him, he had this
believable fallback excuse of,I'm just hunting, or I'm
poaching, or I'm running overwild animals.
Mark (43:38):
Yeah.
And he wasn't a dumb guy.
He told investigators who'spoaching and that's what's known
as a, an admission againstself-interest.
And it one of the indicatorsthat he might be telling the
truth.
It's an effort to appear thathe's just an honest guy, caught
making a small mistake when hedoesn't really wanna admit to
the big thing.
So it's the perfect environmentand it's coupled with poor
(44:00):
oversight and supervision onthat highway job.
It's perfect for him to do whathe wants to do live out his
fantasies.
As far as his preferred victimswent, he obviously, he wasn't
picking up every woman he saw,he put, he was selecting those
that were vulnerable.
And he had control enough tobite his time and wait for
somebody.
That's right.
(44:21):
And as far as the body dumpscience, he could, he picked
places where he knew only a fewpeople frequented, not on
popular hiking areas.
it makes me think of if youwatch the show Yellowstone.
They have a thing calledMoonlight Train, where the
people on the ranch that aresupposedly good guys, although
this is a bad thing.
When they want to bump offsomebody, when they wanna kill
(44:43):
somebody and eliminate them theycall it, they were taking'em on
the Moonlight train and theydrive'em out to a Clifftop and
they shoot'em and toss'em offthe cliff, and they can do this
time after time because theyknow nobody's gonna go in the
rugged cliff side area thatthey're doing that on.
And that's what makes me thinkhere is this guy knew all those
places.
And the other thing that, theother thought that brought to me
(45:05):
was he pled to Rashonda.
And it made me wonder, why hedidn't just give up where her
body was located.
It made me wonder if he had hisown Moonlight train location
where if he gave up Rashonda,there'd be other people there.
Marcy (45:24):
Presumably he'd been killing for years by then.
Do you think he would'vedeveloped a special spot to dump
bodies rather than spreadingthem around that region?
Mark (45:32):
I know investigators are fairly certain that some of
those women that were found atdump sites are his.
I don't know, but I think it'spossible, and I think that may
be a reason why he wouldn't wantto give up Rhonda's location is
because there were other onesthat he liked that spot.
That's what I think.
Marcy (45:50):
There were several initial searches for K.
What were the problems withthose overland searches?
Mark (45:56):
Yeah.
When the investigators in lateryears looked at the original
search what they saw was the,some of the areas where they
searched were too broad, toobig.
And I think the investigator isright.
A victim is unlikely to turn upmiles off a roadway or path
without any kind of means ofgetting there easily.
(46:18):
And most dump bodies are foundnear the road, not five miles
back.
And same with correspondingarticles of evidence.
If you listen to our episode onthe Bethany Carrera case, that's
a good example.
The suspects there drove herbody away from the urban area of
Anchorage out into thewilderness.
And then when they got to wherethey thought they were safe,
(46:39):
they drove basically across agravel parking lot.
And they couldn't dig a gravedue to the ground conditions.
So they threw her body down inembankment, but she still turned
out to be very close to theroad.
Marcy (46:52):
Yeah, but the drive between Anchorage and Fairbanks
is seven hours of wilderness.
She could have been on the edgeof the road and you still
would've had trouble finding
Mark (47:01):
her.
Yeah.
That was the problem that theyhad to have some somebody point.
And that's the problem they hadwith all the murders that we
profiled here.
Lots of densely wooded area,lots of roadside turnouts to
scour.
And, it's much too big an area.
Just to randomly search
Marcy (47:20):
while we're on the subject of Bethany Carrera, the
investigation at the dump sitehad some commonalities with Kay
Turner because her skull wasfound a year after the rest of
her body, about three quartersof a mile away.
Very similarly.
Mark (47:35):
I thought of that when I heard, when I looked at this
case, both sets of remains werescattered by animals as they
decomposed in the Bethany careercase.
Her remains were spread byanimals, downhill across a
meadow in case's case.
And this may in the place thatshe was found, it wasn't super
rugged in case.
And in her intax skull wasfound.
(47:55):
It's a pretty large item to becarried almost a mile.
But it was probably decomposedenough to easily separate and it
did separate from the jawbecause they found that at the
original site, and it separatefrom spine and any tissues left,
which meant it'd be lighterthan, an intact head.
So what you'd expect is remainswould travel more easily
downhill.
This a rugged area.
(48:16):
But you're still probablytalking about a d a dog or
coyote versus an a small rodent.
Marcy (48:23):
Back to the huge search area.
What do you do with that kind ofan area?
Mark (48:28):
Yeah.
You take a look at whatresources you have.
You try and figure out thehighest areas of probability of
discovery.
Maybe you look at places wherethe victim or suspect like to
spend time.
If you have that information youtry to think like the victim or
like the suspect, and you searchplaces that seem right for the
situation.
You use resources like Aircraftcanine to augment your effort.
(48:51):
Basically you do the best youcan with what you have and you
have to accept it even after asearch is complete.
It doesn't mean that the targetwasn't right there and that you
just missed it.
Marcy (49:04):
You did say you were surprised that they used Boy
Scouts in the search for Kay'sbody.
Mark (49:10):
Yeah.
My immediate reaction was, I wassurprised that you're gonna
bring, basically what are youngsome, sometimes young kids.
But I guess I was spoiled livingin the city.
There were some fairly strictrequirements on who could be a
part of the civilian team.
They need background checks, butI guess in a very rural
environment, you can't beselective.
(49:32):
I feel very fortunate that Inever had to be part of a search
that was so large that we werecalling for, just any volunteer.
Marcy (49:39):
You did coordinate overland searches that were
strictly police?
Mark (49:43):
Yeah.
The Kincaid Park searches thatwe're looking for, the episode
we had with Mindy Schloss.
She was killed by serial killerJoshua Wade.
That was just Anchorage Police,F b i and other, any other
federal agents who they couldscrape up.
I ran the line searches for that
Marcy (50:00):
why would you keep it Just police versus adding
civilians or boy scouts?
Mark (50:05):
Even some investigations are sensitive with Mindy Schloss
case.
The homicide team wanted to keepthe, that information tight and
have the fewer leaks, thebetter.
So they saw to keep it as swornpersonnel or only, I'm not
trying to say by any means thatcivilian team members are
unreliable.
They're great and they'reessential.
(50:27):
But that case, particularlysensitive, we're trying to keep
the identity of the, by thattime the name Josh Wade.
What it was explosive.
He had gotten away with it,pretty much everybody knew he
got away with it before, and forhim to turn up in this high
profile missing nurse casewould've been explosive.
We're trying to keep that noisedown as long as we could.
(50:49):
Now my concern with Boy Scoutssearching is the effect that, if
you find things that could haveon a child, some of my adult
searchers they talked about someof the, depression and being
upset by finding some of thesethings.
So I'd be worried about kids,especially with fresh body
parts.
Like I said, even adults canhave trouble at experience.
But again, if your choice issearching with kids or not
(51:12):
searching at all, I'll take thekids.
Marcy (51:16):
You mentioned that cases sometime need shepherding or
they risk being forgotten.
Mark (51:23):
Yeah.
If you listen to Susan Bailey,that murder is a good example.
And there's some other ones thatI can think of where they're not
easy to solve.
In Susan Bailey, we, everybodyknew what happened and who did
it.
The case needed somebody to, tobe an advocate to, to shepherd
it, to push it through the endzone.
And it gets stale.
These cases get get cold, growcold, and get stale on that.
(51:46):
I was the initial respondingofficer.
But I cared about it enough.
I knew she was dead right away.
I cared about the case.
I checked back in homicide withit regularly, and it got passed
between detectives becausepeople are coming in and out.
But I was thrilled when thedetective who eventually ran
with it cared about it as muchas I did.
On the other hand, some caseshave to ripen.
(52:08):
Witnesses can come forward afteryears of living with guilt or
the horrible knowledge of whathappened.
Or, kids grow up and they cansay, okay, now I'm gonna talk
about it.
For but for most cases, timedoes not make'em better.
They don't get better with agelike wine.
One of the problems with thedetectives is sometimes not
taking action is easier thangrinding out a tough case both
(52:32):
for the investigator and aprosecutor.
Now that
Marcy (52:36):
sounds a little bit like you're trying to say
investigators might be lazy.
Mark (52:39):
No, I'm not.
I absolutely don't wanna givethat impression.
Quite the contrary.
But keep in mind thatinvestigator units are never
overstaffed and over budgeted.
There's always a new case comingin to distract you from that
pile of shit you already have.
Marcy (52:53):
It seems like the Marlene Gabrielsson case, that initial
rape was forgotten until much,much later, maybe even till
after Rashonda Pickle'sdisappearance.
Mark (53:06):
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think that the reason thatpeople, that investigators and
later the press started lookingback was that, you had this K
turner, he's the main suspect.
Like I said, on the, on someother things, you just know
that's the people involved inthat just know he's the guy.
We just can't prove it.
And here you have.
A young girl, she's missing.
(53:27):
He's the guy we pretty muchknow.
He is the guy after looking intoit a little while.
Now we're gonna pull out all thestops'cause this guy, we're not,
we gotta stop this guy.
And the thing about the MarlonGabrielson case is that it was a
historical case.
It's thought of to be as he,it's his first it's Aykroyd's
first known rape case.
(53:48):
And back then there wasn't adatabase.
Case relations were not easilysearched.
And that's changed quite a bit.
Now I could go to the computerand find cases, all the
contacts, all the associatesthat dating back decades.
And the ability to do that isonly getting better.
Despite people's fear of bigbrothers watching.
I think that's a great thing.
And I know I've benefitedgreatly from my career from that
(54:11):
particular technologicalprocess.
Marcy (54:15):
Okay.
But the police were downrightunresponsive to Marlene Gabriels
son's initial report of beingraped.
Mark (54:22):
Yes, they were.
And it was significant in thelater case, only as historical
case because it pretty muchshowed what he what he liked to
do, what he did and from, andthey had the ability to talk to
her first person and get thestory.
So we want, we wanna talk aboutwhy it wasn't worked.
So first of all, I think itshould have been worked.
(54:45):
I think it, I think looking atthe, at that specific case, I
think there was plenty to go on.
And let me explain that when thedecision process for charging a
complaint of sexual assault,what the investigator has to
prove or has to secure evidencefor is consent, right?
So we have to prove thatnon-consensual sex happened and
(55:10):
that there was no consent.
That's the investigative burden.
I'm trying to look at that caseand figure out what would make
the investigator skeptical,right?
You have so much evidence there.
The suspect talked to them andthe victim talked to them and
the victim told the story thathe did this.
And he cut her clothes up andyou have he picks her up.
(55:33):
He drives her to the place, hethreatens her, holds a knife up,
he cuts her clothes off and sheconvinced him to take her home.
And she gets out of the car andshe goes right to her mother and
says, this guy raped me.
Take me to the hospital.
I've got all this cut clothesevidence, and we drive over the
(55:54):
hospital and the ER doc takes alook at her body and says, yes,
those cuts that are consistentwith where he cuts your clothing
and also cut your body while heis doing that.
You'd have questions like of themother, Hey, Did you hear that
truck drop her off?
What was her, because you caninterview the mother on hearsay
things because she's the firstreporter or the first person
(56:17):
that was reported to.
She would get to tell herobservations, but she also to
say what was said to her.
And then you put all thattogether and it makes sense.
And now you talk to this otherguy who picked her up and drove
her somewhere and she came ontohim.
And then, at what point thereshe, he didn't see her cut, her
clothing cut up.
So what a point did her cut, herclothing become cut up, like
(56:39):
between the time she jumpedoutta the car and what would the
motive be there?
And so there's so much here inthis case that's provable.
I do not know why they did nottake it seriously and go with it
other than.
There's a couple of reasons whyI can, there's conjecture, but I
can say these cases, consent inthis case based on my
(57:01):
experience, would not be reallya problem unless you had
something else, right?
Like you found out that thecomplainant had made all kinds
of crazy things happen in thepast that would cloud that at
the same time you couldn'tdiscount her statement.
So you're looking for thingsthat would add credibility to
his defense or, that,'causethat's what you do is you sort
(57:22):
through this what you have asmuch as you can get and you
weigh it and you weigh it withthe prosecutor.
And can we overcome thatconsent?
And in this case, it's prettyserious.
She's got cut up clothing andstuff.
And having just met this guy,it's unlikely they were into
some weird.
Weird game with a knife thingthat where she was, it was a
consensual situation.
So these are the things you'dlook for.
(57:43):
And I would say, based on what Iknow about this case there's no
reason to not move forward withYeah.
He lacked consent when he didwhat he did to her.
Marcy (57:55):
And there's no evidence that they knew each other before
this interaction.
There was no prior association.
Mark (58:00):
In a case like this, that's, that is a very big piece
of evidence.
What's the likelihood that thatall of these things are gonna
happen like that?
Like he's saying nothing,there's nothing wrong here.
She came onto me and all I didwas take her home and look at
what ha what she's got evidencewise, and you talk to those two
people and you.
Okay.
And a lot of it has to do withwho's we have to, everything is
(58:22):
overcoming consent, but some ofthat is whose story.
It makes sense and whose storyis off now that may not overcome
that burden because sometimescontent is very difficult to
prove when you lack evidencelike they have in this case.
But in this case, I can tell youif it came into my office and
somebody worked it it would verylikely be an immediate arrest.
Marcy (58:48):
So Marlene Gabrielsson Inupiat Alaska native, and she
believes the reason that theycompletely discounted her
complaint is because theythought of her as just a drunk
Indian.
And I actually think she'sright.
And that the initialinvestigation was a completely
racist response.
Mark (59:07):
I can't say that you're wrong.
And I can say that I thinkthere's a that they should have
arrested him for rape on thisfirst case.
Maybe not even his first case,but the one they got him on the
first one they know about.
But I can't say.
In my mind, I can't say whetherit's because she's a Alaska
native.
They would've thought of as heras Indian.
But being from Alaska and tellyou that she's thinking of
herself as Alaska native what,the reason I say that is because
(59:31):
if you look at the cases we havecovered that are historical
cases, and from my experienceyou look back at some of the
cases we've covered, where whitewomen were the victims and so
forth, and they've receivedresponses that were consistent
like this, like a complete lackof appropriate response from all
races of female victims ofsexual assault.
(59:52):
So part of that could have beenjust been, she was a woman in
1978.
And not, I'm not to say that'snot, these things don't ha don't
still happen, and they do.
Marcy (01:00:02):
And both can be true, but do you think that the situation
has improved much?
We still have a problem withmissing and murdered indigenous
women across the United Statesand Canada.
Mark (01:00:12):
As far as that goes the situation may not have improved
much, but as far as theinvestigation, I think that in a
lot of places, a lot of areas,I'm not saying across the board,
there have been a lot ofimprovement.
I think training, awareness,victim services have greatly
improved in a lot of places.
And there's a huge effort to dothat nationwide.
(01:00:33):
But there's still a long way togo.
Just a few days before this,we're making this recording, the
US coast Guard Academy has ascandal where the top commander
of that institution was caughtcovering up decades of sexual
assault complaints that happenedat the military academy.
Have we improved?
I think we have.
Are we where we need to be?
Absolutely not.
Marcy (01:00:55):
In the end, Marlene and Gabrielsson talked about going
back to Alaska after she wasraped so that she could feel
safe.
Mark (01:01:02):
Yeah.
That that part I, when she saidthat I, it's so ironic.
Alaska, where I worked in thelargest city in Alaska has, and
this is true of the whole state,has some of the highest per
capita levels of sexual assaultin the country.
And Alaska native females aredisproportionately represented
in that statistic.
Marcy (01:01:23):
So a lot of work still to be done to make sure that
indigenous women are protectedappropriately.
Mark (01:01:30):
Yes.
And all women.
Marcy (01:01:32):
Yes, and all women.
Rand's mother does not believethat Aykroyd killed her
daughter.
In fact, she was entirely superdefensive about the idea that
there was any sort of abuse ofher daughter or anybody in the
family, or any problems at allwith Aykroyd.
And it so pisses me off whenmothers fail to protect their
children from shit like this.
(01:01:52):
Is she being selfish inpretending that everything was
perfectly fine?
Or what the hell is going onwith
Mark (01:01:57):
that woman?
I think it's selfish in aself-defense kind of way, in a
denial kind of way.
It's the same reason that thewoman who alibied her husband in
Aykroyd knowing that they justkilled a woman that the fact
that she would blockinvestigation like that for
years is pretty amazing.
(01:02:18):
And why, rhonda's mother'sprotecting herself.
She doesn't want to admit thatshe basically brought the guy in
who murdered her daughter andallowed the abuse to happen.
She's not gonna admit that toherself or anybody else.
The alibi witness there, she'sliving in a rural place.
She's maybe dependent financialsupport.
I think they had kids what,where's she gonna go?
(01:02:40):
What are they gonna do?
How's she gonna get away fromthat guy that just helped
murdered her murder, rape awoman?
Obviously she knew what wasgoing on, because it was big
news in that area, right?
This woman is missing.
And then later she's raped andmurdered and, her husband and
her husband's friend show upwith blood and talk about
shooting her.
So she knew what was going on.
(01:03:01):
That aspect, people covering forother people it's heartbreaking,
but I think it's human natureand it's not surprising in a DV
relationship that happens.
So he
Marcy (01:03:11):
moved on to killing two people at once with Sheila
Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
That seems super risky to tryand control two people at the
same time.
Do you think his buddy wasinvolved in that one also?
Mark (01:03:24):
I don't think so.
I don't think there's evidenceof that.
I think the buddy had moved toCalifornia by that time.
These are two girls young andhe's a big guy and he's got a
weapon and he's got, He's gotthe element of surprise he may
be the perv, they may joke he'sthe per'cause.
He is the old guy at the teenagehangout.
But they're gonna take a ridefrom him so they can get back
home.
And who knows how that wentdown?
(01:03:44):
Maybe he's threatening one andkept the other one under control
by threatening the other one.
One of the other murders theysuspect him of was actually a
young woman and a young man.
That's another issue of control.
I don't know how he would'vedone that, but they're pretty
sure he did that one too.
We didn't profile that one'causethere isn't a lot known.
They just know that the youngwoman, young man turned up at a
Highway 20 pullout.
(01:04:05):
Pretty same situation.
I think that was maybe one ofthe ones where the clothing was
cut.
So I don't know.
But it's not impossible, and Iknow that, a lot of those depend
on securing one, one,threatening one.
Marcy (01:04:20):
It doesn't seem like we know a whole lot about aykroyd
beyond what's directly relatedto all these crimes.
Mark (01:04:28):
We know he grew up in the area he worked, which is very
rural.
There was a story from between10 and 12 when he was a boy.
His father was going to sell alitter of puppies that he had
and Aykroyd took a machete andkilled, cut up all the puppies
so that the father couldn't sellthem.
That's an indication he wassadistic back then.
(01:04:50):
We know he's as an adult, he'sfairly antisocial.
He had a couple of friends, andhe had a friend who would be
willing to kill with him.
But his coworkers mainly thoughthe was a weirdo and most of them
didn't like to be around him.
We know that when he did have aliving girlfriend with kids, he
terrorized them.
Which probably sadly also givesus insight into what his home
(01:05:10):
life was like when he wasgrowing up and
Marcy (01:05:14):
we know he was actively raping and killing along that
stretch of 20, between 1977 and1992, is there any kind of
estimation of how many moremissing and murdered women he
could be responsible for?
Mark (01:05:30):
I've seen guesses of 10.
They're fairly certain four, but10.
When you look at the number offound bodies they had and the,
they never found RashondaPickle.
If you look at the 10, theythink that's a possibility.
And maybe there's some thatweren't found like Rashonda.
I don't know that there's a firmnumber there but a long time and
(01:05:52):
with a lack of oversight and allthe conditions that made him a
perfect predator in the area.
That was his hunting ground.
Marcy (01:06:00):
I'm really interested in the fact that Rashanda Hass
never been found and how thatwas probably his closest
relationship of all of thosevictims.
That was the person that heactually knew.
I wonder if that's related tothe fact that they've never
found her.
I think that the reason thatwe've never found her is because
he knew her, that she wasspecial to him or that
(01:06:23):
relationship was different thanjust a random stranger off the
street.
Mark (01:06:27):
Or like I, my theory is he found a place he liked to put
her.
Marcy (01:06:34):
And with K Turner, there was a little bit of indication
that he might have gone andvisit her body over time before
he finally called the police andsaid that he found her
officially, that he, that maybehe was revisiting the site,
which I guess is a fairly normalserial killer kind of thing to
do.
Mark (01:06:48):
Yeah.
Lots of information about that.
my theory about why he wouldn'tgive up rash, ANDA's resting
places because it's a place heliked and there might've been
others, o others there.
That's just my personal theory.
Marcy (01:07:01):
I hope that Marlene Gabrielsson feels safe now.
Mark (01:07:08):
I hope so too.
She certainly feels vindicatedalthough, sadly I know that she
feels if they had listened toher way back in 77 that a lot of
this could have been avoided,
Marcy (01:07:17):
just an unspeakable tragedy.
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(01:07:41):
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a 3 Little Birds, LLCproduction.
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the
(00:02):
second time.
That day he was getting dark andhe was about to give up.
He smiled to himself such apretty little girl, what was you
thinking coming out here allalone?
Marcy (00:14):
Welcome to Crime Raven; true crimes, real life stories
from law enforcement and issuescrime fighters face.
This podcast highlights crimesresearched by retired Detective
Sergeant Mark Rein, usingpublicly available information,
court records and personalrecollections.
Content may be graphic,disturbing, or violent.
Listener discretion is advised.
(00:36):
Suspects are considered innocentuntil found guilty in a court of
law.
One of the places that you canlisten to Crime Raven is on
Audible.
With an Audible membership, youcan access podcasts, audiobooks,
and original content.
To support Crime Raven, Audibleis allowing our listeners to try
it for free for 30 days if youvisit
(00:57):
audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
That's free access for 30 daysat audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
We'll also put the link in theshow notes.
Mark (01:25):
watcher was a guy who liked his job.
He worked the highway for theOregon Department of
Transportation.
The road was like life itself.
You never knew what was aroundthe next bend.
And when the unexpected arose,you had to be decisive to rely
on yourself.
In that respect, watcher felt akinship to those he imagined who
were his pioneering ancestors.
(01:47):
They were the people who hadtraversed these same mountains
survived raging river crossings,desert, dry summers, snowstorms,
and apocalyptic wildfires.
Things hadn't changed much.
The stretch of Mountain Roadthat watcher worked was the wild
west lawless empty.
Sure, the occasional car passedswiftly through, but his road
(02:10):
was never The journey's end.
Desolation bounded on eitherside, mostly steep slopes, a few
flat turnouts winding throughRiver Valley and pass.
It was a rugged wildernesssandwiched between the green,
wet central valley to the west,and the arid high desert to the
east In his saga, watcher wasthe hero.
(02:32):
He spent his time, day and nightlooking for trouble.
Sometimes he found people, theirpilgrimage interrupted.
They were in distress on theroadside.
Sometimes he came acrosscollisions or travelers who
missed the curve.
Rescuing, stranded travelers,helping them get their cars
towed to get gas, whatever theyneeded.
(02:53):
Watcher was there to helpeverybody and doing so, he was
helping himself.
Marcy (02:58):
The girl is blonde pretty and just out of high school, so
she's at a crossroads.
It's really the first crossroadsthat everybody recognizes.
What would her path in life be?
She couldn't bear the thought ofstaying in the tiny, dusty town,
living with her boring assparents until she could squeeze
her way into some boring assjob, maybe in some office
(03:23):
somewhere, answering phones,maybe at the school.
She imagined herself as one ofthose lunch ladies and shook her
head.
Etch a sketch style to erase theimage.
No, she had to get the fuck outof there at least for a while.
Do something, see somethingbefore the rest of her life
Solidified slowly around her,like wet concrete on a cold day.
(03:48):
So one day the girl kissed andhugged her mom and dad lied
about staying over at afriend's, picked up the pack
that she dropped out of herbedroom window and walked away.
Eventually, her parents wouldfind the note explaining what
she planned to do.
She loved them.
She didn't want to argue, didn'twanna see the fear and
(04:10):
uncertainty in their eyes.
In a few days, she would call.
Maybe by then she would be ather friend's place in Eugene,
safe and Sound.
She shed guilt with every step,and by the time she hit the
highway and was lifting herthumb to passing cars headed
west, she was beaming withexcitement again.
(04:31):
The girl was lucky.
A family headed south to Nevadawas the first car that stopped
for her.
The dad smiled and nodded frombehind the wheel when he pulled
up.
While the mother pretty maybemid thirties questioned her out
of the window in an almostscolding tone, asking why was
she out here all alone?
(04:51):
Telling her to get in whilelooking into the brush on the
roadside, as if someone wasgonna jump out of one of those
scrubby bushes at any minute.
They made her feel at home piledin the back of a station wagon.
Kids bounced around herwrestling with each other,
shooting her nonsensicalquestions.
The mother turned sideways andfrom the front seat, asked the
(05:12):
girl questions.
In between refereeing the kidmayhem swirling across both back
seats.
As the girl replied, the motherparroted the answers to the side
of her husband's head.
It soon became clear that themother thought the girl's plans
were crazy.
The girl is headed to Eugene.
Could they maybe drop her off inEugene?
(05:32):
The husband chuckled to himselfand said, hun, there is no way
we can go all the way to Eugeneand make it in time.
They were going south to Nevada.
Family thing.
Husband said, I can take you asfar as bend, and then you gotta
catch a ride west.
The girl smiled great, thanks.
The mother,faced troubled, spentthe next two hours alternately
(05:52):
trying to manage the kidcraziness while counseling the
girl.
The girl was not as fortunate inher next couple of rides.
First, a man who mainly wantedto know if the girl had accepted
Jesus Christ as her savior.
She told him yes, but apparentlynot to his satisfaction.
Then a lady was nice enough.
(06:12):
The problem with those rides wasthat they were locals and not
going far.
The girl stayed overnight at athankfully cheap roadside motel.
The fatigue overcame theexcitement of the journey that
first night, and she was asleepwithin a minute of her head
hitting the musty pillow.
Mid-morning found the girlwalking on the shoulder of us 20
(06:34):
in Oregon.
The first ride had beenfortunate.
A man headed west on 20 took herout of the high desert, across
the mountain passes and into thedense forest that blankets the
west side of the cascades.
The driver, a man who remindedthe girl of her dad one day was
too soon to be homesick, right?
(06:54):
Turned out to be a collegeteacher.
So when the girl didn't knowmuch about the scenery, he
filled what might have been anawkward silence with an hour's
worth of geology facts.
The professor dropped the girloff at a gas station at the turn
where he went south and shecontinued west.
There wasn't much traffic andthe few cars that passed were
(07:15):
headed east.
It was a sunny day, a pleasantbreeze on her face.
So the girl counted herblessings and enjoyed the new
scenery.
First, she was thankful that somuch of her walk was downhill.
She could see a river runningparallel to the road in the
valley below.
In the distance farmland lookedlike a patchwork quilt visible
(07:36):
through the gaps in the densesurrounding forest.
In the early afternoon, a truckdriving east with an insignia on
the door that read OregonDepartment of Transportation
pulled across the lanes oftraffic and onto the shoulder
behind the girl.
The driver, a big bearded,bearish man leaned out.
He wanted to know if she was allright.
She told him she was trying tocatch a ride.
(07:57):
The man said that he had to gofurther up, but if he saw her
when he came back, she couldride with him.
He pointed in the direction shewas walking.
There's a gas station a fewmiles on down.
Then she was walking again.
The girl caught a ride from thegas station, a local lady who
could only take her a couple ofmiles before she had to turn
off, but she figured every milewas progress.
(08:21):
As the afternoon turned toevening, the girl continued to
hike West.
She knew there was a reservoirup ahead and beyond that, a town
where she planned to stay thenight if she couldn't catch a
ride.
In the late afternoon, cloudshad rolled in, casting
everything in a gray pall.
The girl was worried that itwould soon be very dark and
worse might rain.
(08:43):
Just then a truck pulled paststopping on the shoulder in
front of the girl.
She ran up to the passengerdoor.
The driver looked familiar, butit took her a second to realize
it was the Oregon d o t guy thatshe talked to earlier.
Only the truck was different.
No insignia.
The guy was the same.
Bearish with a dark bushy beard.
(09:04):
Looking through the open sidewindow she could see it was his
personal truck.
He smiled at her.
"I told you I'd give you a rideon my way back.
You made it farther than Ithought you would." The girl
opened the door just as a lightrain began to mist the
windshield"and just in time" hejoked.
The pickup's rear wheelsslipping on gravel as it
accelerated back into thewestbound lane
Mark (09:27):
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the
second time.
That day he was getting dark andhe was about to give up.
He smiled to himself such apretty little girl, what was you
thinking coming out here allalone?
His life on the road was likethat.
He was often in the right placeat the right time.
There were lists of people whowould swear that he had saved
them in their time of need.
(09:47):
And for all those people thatwatcher had helped the road had
repaid him.
He could legitimately callhimself the guardian Angel
Highway 20.
No one could blame him for theoccasional indulgence.
He only took a little off thetop.
Sometimes he drove his owntruck, which made him anonymous.
But the state rig that putpeople at ease.
(10:08):
They suspected nothing with thestate rig.
After all, he could be anywhereand still be just doing his job
What he loved was, it was justlike hunting.
Call it poaching of the verybest kind.
He knew his stretch of road,like the back of his hand, all
the stopping spots, all thestalking spots.
He knew where he could get awayfrom the road and not be
interrupted.
And the times he had beeninterrupted, he was just out
(10:31):
hunting.
He had even admitted to poachingoutta season once.
Gotten a ticket.
Yeah, that wasn't dear blood.
Stupid assholes.
Watcher was always careful.
He had passed on girls that wereripe for the taking.
After a little conversation, hecould tell who would be missed,
the ones who would bring theheat.
(10:51):
He wanted the unaccountablegirls, the ones who gave off
that aroma of being strays, likethat drunk Indian bitch.
Nothing says stray like a youngdrunk Indian bitch.
After he fucked her, he wantedmore.
He decided to let her live so hecould have more, but she had
betrayed his trust.
No matter.
The cops hadn't bought herbullshit anyway.
(11:13):
This one, she felt like a stray.
Marcy (11:18):
The girl relaxed into the old truck seat.
After walking as long as she hadtoday, it felt great.
The guy asked her a couple ofthe common questions, where she
from?
Where she going?
She's honest with him becausewhy not?
The guy was quiet for a fewminutes.
They passed the reservoir as thedarkness outside enveloped.
(11:39):
For a few minutes, there waslight again as they went through
the small town.
Then they were back in the dark.
The only illumination was twoyellow headlight beams cutting
through the misting rain and aweak green glow from the
dashboard.
The girl was almost asleep whenshe felt the truck slow, then
turned left.
She raised her head, but couldonly see a dirt road and an
(12:01):
opening in the trees.
The sound of the tires changedas the truck left the pavement
and rocked slowly as it movedthrough Uneven wet dirt.
The girl asked where they weregoing.
The guy said something abouttaking a leak, but there was
something new in his voice.
Fully awake now the girl sat upand turned toward the driver.
(12:22):
The guy stared back at her.
His eyes were wide.
She could see his teeth.
He was breathing heavily.
He was excited.
He stopped the truck and reacheddown between his legs.
It took the girl a second torealize that the guy had a
hunting knife in his hand.
He's holding it up.
It had a green hue likeeverything else, but the blade
(12:45):
flashed, metallic.
The girl reached down desperateto escape.
She realized there's no handle,no release.
She screamed.
Loud.
Mark (12:58):
He held the blade up and threw gritted teeth hissed,"do
that again and I'll gut youbitch." The knife moved down.
He pulled up her shirt andpressed the sharp cold metal
against the skin of her softbelly.
She submitted.
He began cutting and ripping ather clothes.
It's his ritual.
Suddenly he opened the door andbacked out, dragging the girl
(13:18):
with him onto the damp ground.
He cut and ripped at fabric, ashow of strength of domination.
He stripped off all of herclothes and groped her with
rough hands.
He's fat.
Breath wreaking of food andcoffee and beer.
His beard rubs against her bodyas he violates her.
Marcy (13:49):
In December, 1978, investigators from the Oregon
State Police responded to areport of a woman who'd gone
missing at Camp Sherman, aremote recreational site in
central Oregon on the easternslopes of the cascade range.
The area boasts scenic, ruggedgeography in an alpine setting
and is popular for hunting,fishing, boating, photography,
(14:13):
and trail hiking.
35 year old Kay, Jean Turner andher husband had been spending
the holidays at the camp with agroup of friends.
All had driven up from Eugene.
Just after 8:00 AM on ChristmasEve morning.
Kay, who was an avid jogger setoff on an eight mile run that
should have taken less than anhour.
(14:36):
Her preferred running circuitfollowed Camp Roads that led out
near us Route 20.
Despite it being the end ofDecember, the air temperatures
were unseasonably warm, midfifties, and made for
comfortable running.
Kay was wearing a bluesweatshirt, yellow shorts, and
Adidas shoes.
Kay's husband Noel becameincreasingly concerned when his
(14:58):
wife had not returned by 10:00AM.
He drove all the camp roads andfinding no trace, called the
police around 2:00 PM.
The first agency to respond wasthe Jefferson County Sheriff's
Office.
After a brief consultation, theycalled out search and rescue
personnel.
(15:18):
Those teams brought in assetsincluding volunteers, dog teams,
and aircraft.
The only thing they found by thetime the sun that day were
suspicious tracks in the snow onthe side of the road.
The prints were a tangle of twodistinct sets of shoe
impressions.
One was large, probably a man'sboot.
(15:40):
The other was a small Adidasrunning shoe.
The ground search continued inday two.
As detectives from Oregon StatePolice join the effort.
As a matter of routine, theybegan victimology, examining
Kay's life for risk factors andscrutinizing the people around
her.
(16:01):
They discovered that Kay washaving affairs with two men back
home in Eugene.
This led to obvious questions.
Were they involved in herdisappearance?
Could this be a motive for herhusband?
Investigators quickly discountedthe boyfriends, and
significantly they did not castsuspicion back on Kay's husband.
(16:23):
Although Noel Turner could neverbe completely ruled out, the
police found no evidence that hewas involved in his wife's
disappearance.
With the ground search andinitial investigation underway,
the community gave police theirsecond suspect.
Several locals pushed policetowards a guy named John
Aykroyd, a man who lived in thearea.
(16:46):
He wasn't well liked and rumorsswirled around him.
Many people characterized him asweird, creepy, and often
hostile.
He worked for the state d o t asa mechanic and road safety
monitor, which meant Aykroydspent long hours driving up and
down a stretch of remote Oregonhighway looking for trouble.
(17:09):
As police officers combed thesmall community, an informant
tipped them off.
Aykroyd was talking about seeingKay Turner while she was jogging
on Christmas Eve.
It didn't take the police longto find Aykroyd who was fairly
unremarkable.
six Feet tall, medium, builddark hair and glasses.
(17:29):
When questioned Aykroyd told thepolice that he worked as usual
overnight shift that ChristmasEve morning while driving
towards one of his favoritehunting areas.
He saw Kay Turner jogging.
Aykroyd pulled over and spokewith her briefly explaining that
he thought he'd hit a dog in thearea and asked Kay if she'd seen
anything.
(17:50):
Aykroyd denied that there wasany more to the contact, but his
admission made him the lastknown person to see the missing
woman.
This placed him firmly on thetop of the suspect list until
his friend and coworker RogerBeck gave Aykroyd an alibi.
Beck said that he and his friendhad been together in the area
(18:12):
illegally hunting deer.
This assertion was corroboratedby Beck's wife.
The admission againstself-interest.
In mentioning the poaching andthe alibi, witness deflected the
investigation away from Aykroydas fast as it had focused.
The ground search rambled on forfive days without success before
(18:33):
they canceled it.
Seven months after Kay Turner'sdisappearance On August 12th,
Aykroyd walked into a localstore.
He told people he had found KayTurner's remains in the woods
while walking his dog.
When police arrived, Aykroyd ledthem to his find, and they
(18:53):
confirmed that the remains,although in an advanced state of
decomposition, appeared to behuman.
Investigators found the factthat the last person to see Kay
Turner was the same person whohappened to find her remains
months later, highly suspicious.
In the interview, they askedAykroyd to describe how he knew
(19:15):
the remains were those of KayTurner.
Aykroyd's description of thebody site confused the
investigators.
The area they were looking atwas fairly nondescript.
In the time Kay's body lay inthe densely wooded hillside.
It had been completely reduced.
The bones were weathered.
There was no flesh.
(19:37):
Debris, partially buried whatwas left of her clothing on the
forest floor.
Yet Aykroyd described K Turner'syellow shorts and the wreak of
decomposing flesh as if the bodywere still fresh.
Police and volunteers conducteda series of increasingly
detailed area searches,ultimately recovering major
(19:58):
bones, a shoe, clothing items,and a wristwatch.
In the days following therecovery, the medical examiner
confirmed that the bones wereKay Turner.
He could compare her dentalrecords to a lower jawbone found
at the scene.
Kay Turner's skull would befound a year later by another
hunter.
(20:19):
It had been carried almost amile away from the other
remains.
Aykroyd's submitted to follow-upinterviews and polygraph
examination.
Under pressure, he changed hisstory saying that he'd actually
found Kay's body in the snow inFebruary.
He gave details about herdecomposing body that her throat
(20:40):
had been cut.
She had a bullet wound to thechest and animals had consumed
part of her, including her eyes.
Aroy told investigators he wasnervous after the February
discovery, that they wouldsuspect him in her death.
So he didn't say anything.
He could not explain why hechose August 12th to change his
(21:01):
mind.
Perhaps Aykroyd came forward sothat he could claim the find K
Turner reward fund.
The administrator of the fundrefused to pay him because they
had not ruled him out as asuspect.
The K Turner missing personturned murder case spent a
decade like this brief flurriesof activity and long periods of
(21:22):
dormancy as interest waxed andwaned, and investigators came
and went.
July 10th, 1990 was the day thata 13 year old girl named
Rashonda Pickle disappeared.
Rashonda lived with her mother,Linda, her brother Byron, and a
(21:43):
stepfather in Sanam Junction,barely a wide spot in the road
where US Route 20 and Oregon.
Route 22 meet.
On the day her mother reportedRashonda missing.
She was described as a four footseven 90 pounds with brown hair
wearing black pants, a whiteT-shirt, sneakers, and silver
(22:05):
stud earrings.
When police began interviewingabout the girl, they discovered
that there were problems insidethe family.
While the stepfather outwardlypresented a calm, competent
demeanor, those closest to himsaw beyond the facade.
Inside the home he was a brutaldictator, severely beating Linda
and her children regularly.
(22:27):
Rash ANDA's brother Byron,described the man's rages as
sudden, unexpected, andvolcanic.
Friends said that they regularlysaw bruises on both kids.
Some of rash ANDA's closestconfidants went further.
They said the girl never wantedto go home.
She would often bring a changeof clothes to school and beg
friends to let her stay withthem.
(22:49):
The reason was simple.
Rashanda was trying to stay awayfrom a stepfather who was
sexually abusing her.
That same stepfather was thelast person to see Roshonda.
His name was Ackroyd.
Investigators interviewedAykroyd several times at Key
points in the search andinvestigation.
(23:09):
He didn't have much to say anddenied knowledge of what
happened to Rashonda.
He told them that on the day shedisappeared, he spent the entire
day driving around, takingpictures and scouting hunting
locations.
The only alibi he could offer isthat several of his highway
department coworkers saw himwhile he was out.
(23:29):
The coworkers later confirmedseeing Aroy driving around with
a camera that day.
But Aykroyd's appearance wasweird.
They said it felt like he wasgoing out of his way to be seen
and waving the camera aroundlike a prop.
When the police talked toRhonda's biological father who
lived in a nearby city, he toldthem that he had recently talked
(23:49):
to Linda, his ex-wife, aboutakroyd abusing his children.
Byron had filled him in on somethings happening at the home in
Sanam Junction.
Although Linda denied any abusewas happening, the ex threatened
the report aykroyd to the cops.
Rashonda disappeared the nextday.
(24:11):
The investigators confrontedAykroyd with this new
information.
He denied everything but madesome unusual comments as the
interrogation progressed.
When asked Aykroyd speculatedthat someone passing on Highway
20 took her against her will.
At this time, Aykroyd was sixfoot tall, heavyset, almost
(24:31):
bearlike in stature with a densescraggy beard that complimented
that overall impression.
He said 87 pounds is nothing fora guy like my size to carry.
He also theorized that thekidnapper had a knife and that
rashanda was the kind of girlwho could be intimidated.
(24:51):
The Sheriff's Office started alabor intensive search as the
facts became widely known andRoy's linked to Kay Turner's
murder hit the local media.
The district attorney set up atask force.
Their mission justice forRashonda Pickle and Kay Turner.
To this end, detective spentalmost two years working
(25:13):
Rashonda Pickle's disappearance,while reviving the Kay Turner
case.
Progress was slow, butpersistence was rewarded with
breakthroughs.
Aykroyd's alibi, witness andfriend from Beck in 1978, Beck
was no longer married.
When the detectivesre-interviewed his ex-wife, she
(25:34):
told them that she lied.
When she supported Beck's Alibi.
At the time, she was afraid themen would hurt her.
The woman told police that notonly were the two men
unaccounted for after Turner'sdisappearance, she had heard the
men talking about shooting her.
The results of forensicreexamination of Kay Turner
evidence allowed the prosecutionto confidently assert that Kay
(25:58):
Turner had been kidnapped,raped, beaten, stabbed, and
shot.
Oregon media outlets took noticeof the task force activities as
they churn through old policereports on crimes that had
occurred over the last twodecades along the Highway 20
corridor.
There were numerous unsolvedmissing person reports over the
(26:19):
years, along with severalbodies, mostly young women
discovered in dump sitesadjacent to the roadway.
The problem was that most of theremains by the time of discovery
were almost impossible toidentify, with cause of death,
difficult to pinpoint beyondsimply likely homicide.
(26:40):
While canvassing old crimereports from towns in the
Highway 20 corridor, a sexualassault caught the
investigator's attention.
Aykroyd was the named suspect.
Although the rape was nevercharged, it gave the
investigators a template, a kindof Rosetta Stone of Aykroyd's MO
linking cases, and answeringsome questions about what he had
(27:03):
been up to.
One evening in 1977, MarleneGabrielsson left the sister's
rodeo and began hitchhikinghome.
The route was isolated, leadingup into heavily forested
mountainsides.
A man she later identified asRoyd, pulled over his truck and
(27:25):
offered her a ride.
At some point during the drive,Aykroyd turned off onto a
logging road and pulled out aknife.
Marlene tried to flee, but therewas no handle on the passenger
side door..
Arod used the blade menacingly.
He would wave the blade in frontof Marlene's face and then slice
away parts of her clothing.
(27:46):
Suddenly he dragged her out ofthe truck and pinned her to the
ground as he raped her.
Marlene tried to look away,tried to imagine being somewhere
else but the assailant demandedshe looked directly at him while
he assaulted her body.
When Aykroyd finished, Marlenewas afraid for her life.
She pled with him to take herhome, promising not to tell.
(28:10):
She told him that her mother wasbabysitting her child and that
she was expected to be backsoon.
Finally, in response, Aykroyddrove Marlene the rest of the
way.
Dropping her off near hermother's house.
Marlene told investigators in1990 that she never washed
herself after the rape.
She made her mom drive herstraight to the hospital
(28:31):
bringing the slashed clothingwith her.
The 1990 investigators examinedthe 1978 ER doctor notes.
The cuts to the clothing,corresponded with lacerations on
Marlene's body.
They also noted that the cutsseemed almost ritualistic.
The jeans were cut straight fromthe crotch to the hemline.
(28:54):
The 1990 detectives.
After reviewing the old reportsand talking to Marlene, believed
she was lucky to have livedthrough the incident.
The problem was the originalinvestigator in 1977 clearly
believed that Marlene was lying.
The initial interview withMarlene had devolved into an
(29:14):
accusatory interrogation whereminute details were scrutinized
and her answers discounted.
Conversely, when Aykroyd wasinterviewed, he admitted to
giving Marlene a ride, butinsisted that she came onto him.
He denied having sex and claimedto have no idea how her clothes
got slashed.
(29:34):
His account went largelyunchallenged.
Task Force Detectives saw manysimilarities between the cases
they examined and what Marlenehad experienced.
Clothing found in one of theJane Doe found body scenes were
slashed in a fashion similar toMarlene's.
As the task force was finalizingits first case, tragedy struck
(29:57):
again.
In May, 19 92, 2 girls from thetown of Sweet Home, Sheila
Swanson, 19 years old, andMelissa Sanders, 17 years old,
disappeared while hitchhiking onHighway 20.
Both girls skeletal remains werefound together at a remote dump
(30:17):
site near the town of Chitwood.
In October, 1992.
Between the time Sheila Swansonand Melissa Sanders went
missing, and when their bodieswere recovered, the task force
had charged and arrested Aykroydfor Kay Turner's murder.
There were many compellingaspects of the Sheila Swanson
(30:38):
and Melissa Sanders case thatled the investigators to believe
that Aykroyd was responsible.
Timing.
The girls were hitchhiking alongHighway 20 at the same time,
Aykroyd was driving in the area,a witness.
A woman in a passing vehicleclaimed to have seen an Oregon d
o t marked pickup truck, pickingup two girls in the area,
(31:01):
coworker suspicion around thetime the girls disappeared two o
d t shop workers on overtimeunexpectedly encountered Akroyd,
who came in late one night,probably expecting no one would
be there.
The coworkers said his hands andarms were covered in blood.
He claimed to have hit a deer,but neither man believed him and
(31:26):
Aykroyd knew the girls, althoughhe denied it.
Aykroyd was living in the townof Sweet Home at the time the
two girls disappeared.
He frequented a popular localteen hangout.
Because of his age.
The kids there called him theperv.
Some kids said that Swanson andSanders both had spoken to the
perv.
(31:47):
Aykroyd and Beck, both 42 werearrested on June 12th, 1992 for
the rape and murder of KateTurner.
The following year, they triedboth men in front of separate
juries.
In the trials, Beck's ex-wifetestified about covering their
alibi and helping with cleanup,which included burning their
(32:10):
clothing.
The forensic work on Kay'sclothes and Bones revealed the
truth about her death.
Her clothing had been cut off,not torn.
Her bones bore marks where shehad been stabbed.
Metal fragments were embedded inthe bones showing that they'd
also shot her.
This evidence corresponded withguesses Aykroyd had made at the
(32:32):
time that he claimed to havediscovered the body.
It turned out that MarleneGabrielsson was not the only
woman to have survived a brushwith Aykroyd.
Investigators found anotherwoman who worked as a waitress
at Black Butte Lodge.
She testified one day as she wasriding her bicycle home from
work, Aykroyd stopped on theroadside in front of her
(32:53):
pointing a gun.
He tried to make her stop, butshe was able to elude him.
At the conclusion of the murdertrials, both men were found
guilty on all charges and givenlife sentences.
Several years later, Aykroydpled no contest to a charge of
murder for his stepdaughterRashonda pickle.
(33:13):
This plea eliminated anypossibility that he could ever
be granted parole.
In spite of the plea, he refusedto disclose the location of
Shonda's body.
Akroyd died of natural causes onDecember 30th, 2016, while
incarcerated at Oregon StatePenitentiary in Salem.
(33:34):
He was 67 at the time of hisdeath.
Investigators from the LincolnCounty District Attorney's
Office were preparing to chargehim for the murders of Sheila
Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
(34:03):
Transitioning to the discussion,this is really a set of cases
over a very long timeline.
Let's start by talking about KayTurner.
They were in a pretty remotearea when this happened.
What does the response look like
Mark (34:16):
As a responding officer, you're sent to a missing person,
and this is a pretty commoncall.
Wherever you are.
I think you go and you starttalking to the complainants and
ask the initial questions.
Who's missing?
How long have they been missing?
What's the situation?
What's already been done?
Where have you looked?
And try to basically get ageneral feel of that situation.
(34:38):
A search for a person,especially one that's urgent is
a considerable deployment ofresources.
Basically to have a majorsituation like this where
everybody's gonna be called out,you have to The original
responding officer has hadpretty high confidence that the
situation's real, the personthat's missing is in danger and
that that kind of deploymentwill likely find this person.
(35:01):
And the whole time you're reallyhoping that the person's going
to, and honestly you're hopingthe person shows up the first
thing that's gonna be done is,who is the person likely to be
with their friends?
And we contact all those perpeople and run through that list
of where is the person likely tobe, let's check all those places
first.
like if you go for to a housewhere there's a kid missing, the
first thing you're going towanna check is the officers are
(35:24):
gonna ask to thoroughly checkthe home.
Now, if you have people that arelike you're not checking our
home.
Wait a minute, your kid'smissing, we need to check your
home, we wanna check that offbecause if we begin a huge
overland search here or a everwidening search for a truly
missing kid, we need to say wechecked off A to B first place,
always the house.
(35:44):
And likewise here, we're gonnamake sure that.
All the likely places arechecked.
Where Kay Turner was likely tobe where she could have stopped
off, does she have any friendsin the area?
Where does she like to go in thearea?
Is there a place she might gofind a, a park bench and look at
her favorite mountain?
And obviously here the Sheriff'sDepartment assess that Yes.
(36:04):
Is a situation that needs tohave resources brought out on.
And they called out, theirsearch team volunteers.
They had some Boy scout groupsin the area and those search
teams brought out otherresources like aviation and
tracking dogs.
Any major missing person, isgonna follow two tracks.
You're gonna have the groundtrack which is searching the
(36:25):
areas I just described.
And then you're also gonna havethe the investigative portion.
You're gonna take all the peopleaside and you're gonna interview
them and see what they reallythink separately from one
another.
Because these friends that wentup with Kay Turner into the
mountains, some of them knewsome things about her that maybe
the husband didn't know.
The other thing you would wannaknow is what do the friends
(36:47):
there have to say about therelationship between Noel, the
husband and Kay Turner, leadingup to the event?
Did it seem like they werehappy?
Was there any fights?
Did they hear any arguments?
This kind of thing.
And those interviews will informwhere you're gonna search,
Marcy (37:02):
This morning you were talking about a recent Anchorage
case.
How does that relate here?
Mark (37:07):
Yeah I keep track of what's going on in, back in my
old city and about, at the timeof this recording, almost a week
prior, there's a 21 year oldfemale that was missing.
And what I noticed about themissing personal report was that
the report was coming fromfamily that was, I think they
might have been visiting SouthAfrica or some, she had some
(37:28):
family in South Africa.
And my, the first thing Ithought was, Why was there not a
local appeal?
Does she have no family inAnchorage?
Now some people are military,they may not have any family in
Anchorage, but why wasn't theresomebody local announcing this
calling for her search?
My first question there when Ithought, when I saw that, I was
like, does she not have aboyfriend or a husband here in
(37:49):
town?
What's up with that?
The reason I thought that is ifyou listen to our episode on
Susan Bailey, a DV situation thesame thing.
The husband who lived in townwas not eager to report this
thing.
It turned out he had killed hiswife.
And even though he should be thefirst reporter to the police,
(38:09):
the people I went to, to talk toabout her being missing were her
coworkers.
Likewise, I didn't know anythingabout the missing lady in
Anchorage.
But my first thought was Iwonder if she's got a husband or
her boyfriend at town?
There was a lot of media on thismissing person and searching for
her And it turned out five dayslater, her body was found near
(38:30):
to where her and her husbandsignificantly lived.
It turned out on the weekendprior, the husband had shot her
in the middle of the night andhid the body in the woods
nearby.
Here's a situation whereoverland search, if you don't
have the specific location,would be difficult to search.
Although eventually theyprobably would've found her
because she wasn't far from herhouse.
(38:50):
But here the investigatorsdirected the search that
ultimately turned up her body.
Marcy (38:56):
You've been involved in searches where the family was
not immediately excluded, butthen it turned out the family
wasn't involved.
How does that sort of thing getsorted out?
Mark (39:06):
Yeah.
Especially with kids, it's hardto know.
I helped in the ground searchfor a couple missing kids a long
time ago.
It wasn't clear that the parentwasn't a suspect.
Some of those situations are,ambiguous.
There's some suspiciousbackground issues here.
So one of the detectives had theunenviable task of pressing the
(39:28):
parent, and they pressed theparent hard.
And it later turned out the kidswere deceased.
And the parent wasn't directlyinvolved.
This missing kids thing lastedfor a few weeks.
And, I talked to one of thedetectives that was, An
interviewer there.
And I can tell you that findingout that the parent that he had
(39:49):
interrogated confronted actuallydidn't have anything to do with
it.
He felt like shit, but it had tobe done.
We had to find those kids, wehad to figure out if they knew
anything.
In this case with the K turner,you'd locked the husband down to
a timeline going in and, you'dsee if they had any arguments.
What did the husband say aboutthe stability?
(40:11):
Did he know about theboyfriends.
And in those interviews you'dsee what reaction you got.
A lot of times they're not gonnabe honest and there's gonna be
clues to that.
And like I said, you'd talk tothe friends and see if they, did
they see Kay leave?
Did they know she went running?
Or is that just what the husbandsaid?
And in general, what was thewhole situation in the days
prior?
Marcy (40:32):
Do you think that the husband knew about the
boyfriends?
Do you think one of the friendsknew and told investigators?
How did that come up?
Mark (40:41):
I actually don't know who spilled the beans on that, or if
he knew, or who knows.
But it was something theyinvestigated.
In that case, say this came upin a case I was working at,
track down the boyfriend, see ifthey knew anything, and
significantly what did thoseguys say about the husband?
Did the husband say that she's,seeing them because he's a
tyrant and beats her, what's hesaying?
Or does he not know?
Is he clueless?
(41:02):
I imagine that based on thecases I'm involved in, the
detectives pretty early had atheory about how that was gonna
go.
Just like on the case I talkedabout in Anchorage last week, I
would bet those detectives hadsome idea pretty quick after
touching base with that husband.
Maybe the neighbors, because shewas shot in an apartment, they
had a pretty good idea thatthings weren't right inside the
(41:24):
house.
What was their relationshiplike?
And I think in this case withKay Turner, they would've had a
pretty good idea that thisdoesn't smell like something
that went bad suddenly, and shejust disappeared.
And as far as K Turner goes youmight say is it the kind of
thing where she would just upand leave her husband?
It probably didn't feel likethat either.
Because why would she go away ona trip, Christmas trip with her
(41:46):
friends and her husband, and,just step out on them.
It just, it doesn't seem right.
Versus so the middle of nowhere,right in the middle of nowhere.
And versus, the week prior sheleaves him or something.
And like I said, in other casesI've seen and are familiar with
husbands that just did in theirwives or did something, their
wives often aren't in a hurry tomake that report.
(42:07):
They want to delay it.
They want to delay thatconfrontation with the cops.
It's inevitably coming.
Marcy (42:12):
This certainly served as a red herring for a while with
the investigators.
Mark (42:15):
Yeah, the boyfriends.
Yeah.
The good thing is, like I said,with the two tracks, they were
able to area search, whichunfortunately the area search
wasn't successful.
And then they were also wereable, they had the manpower to
actually work the investigationtoo.
So I think they pretty muchdiscounted the boyfriends that
red herring.
And were able to move towards areal suspect
Marcy (42:39):
setting plays a really huge role in this whole story.
Mark (42:44):
Oh yeah.
And I'm familiar with searchesin very large areas, densely
wooded, rugged relativelysparsely populated.
It's funny when I think of thatit's like that movie alien where
no in place areas where no onecan hear you scream.
anywhere where these placeswhere any help is gonna be a
long time incoming, ironicallyAykroyd's job was that guy to
(43:07):
come and help.
The thing about the setting inthis situation is Ayd was a
predator in his own territory.
He's been traveling it foryears.
He's familiar with the wholearea and, he legitimately had a
reason to be where he wascommitting crimes.
So his presence is neversuspicious.
Marcy (43:28):
And when they really scrutinized him, he had this
believable fallback excuse of,I'm just hunting, or I'm
poaching, or I'm running overwild animals.
Mark (43:38):
Yeah.
And he wasn't a dumb guy.
He told investigators who'spoaching and that's what's known
as a, an admission againstself-interest.
And it one of the indicatorsthat he might be telling the
truth.
It's an effort to appear thathe's just an honest guy, caught
making a small mistake when hedoesn't really wanna admit to
the big thing.
So it's the perfect environmentand it's coupled with poor
(44:00):
oversight and supervision onthat highway job.
It's perfect for him to do whathe wants to do live out his
fantasies.
As far as his preferred victimswent, he obviously, he wasn't
picking up every woman he saw,he put, he was selecting those
that were vulnerable.
And he had control enough tobite his time and wait for
somebody.
That's right.
(44:21):
And as far as the body dumpscience, he could, he picked
places where he knew only a fewpeople frequented, not on
popular hiking areas.
it makes me think of if youwatch the show Yellowstone.
They have a thing calledMoonlight Train, where the
people on the ranch that aresupposedly good guys, although
this is a bad thing.
When they want to bump offsomebody, when they wanna kill
(44:43):
somebody and eliminate them theycall it, they were taking'em on
the Moonlight train and theydrive'em out to a Clifftop and
they shoot'em and toss'em offthe cliff, and they can do this
time after time because theyknow nobody's gonna go in the
rugged cliff side area thatthey're doing that on.
And that's what makes me thinkhere is this guy knew all those
places.
And the other thing that, theother thought that brought to me
(45:05):
was he pled to Rashonda.
And it made me wonder, why hedidn't just give up where her
body was located.
It made me wonder if he had hisown Moonlight train location
where if he gave up Rashonda,there'd be other people there.
Marcy (45:24):
Presumably he'd been killing for years by then.
Do you think he would'vedeveloped a special spot to dump
bodies rather than spreadingthem around that region?
Mark (45:32):
I know investigators are fairly certain that some of
those women that were found atdump sites are his.
I don't know, but I think it'spossible, and I think that may
be a reason why he wouldn't wantto give up Rhonda's location is
because there were other onesthat he liked that spot.
That's what I think.
Marcy (45:50):
There were several initial searches for K.
What were the problems withthose overland searches?
Mark (45:56):
Yeah.
When the investigators in lateryears looked at the original
search what they saw was the,some of the areas where they
searched were too broad, toobig.
And I think the investigator isright.
A victim is unlikely to turn upmiles off a roadway or path
without any kind of means ofgetting there easily.
(46:18):
And most dump bodies are foundnear the road, not five miles
back.
And same with correspondingarticles of evidence.
If you listen to our episode onthe Bethany Carrera case, that's
a good example.
The suspects there drove herbody away from the urban area of
Anchorage out into thewilderness.
And then when they got to wherethey thought they were safe,
(46:39):
they drove basically across agravel parking lot.
And they couldn't dig a gravedue to the ground conditions.
So they threw her body down inembankment, but she still turned
out to be very close to theroad.
Marcy (46:52):
Yeah, but the drive between Anchorage and Fairbanks
is seven hours of wilderness.
She could have been on the edgeof the road and you still
would've had trouble finding
Mark (47:01):
her.
Yeah.
That was the problem that theyhad to have some somebody point.
And that's the problem they hadwith all the murders that we
profiled here.
Lots of densely wooded area,lots of roadside turnouts to
scour.
And, it's much too big an area.
Just to randomly search
Marcy (47:20):
while we're on the subject of Bethany Carrera, the
investigation at the dump sitehad some commonalities with Kay
Turner because her skull wasfound a year after the rest of
her body, about three quartersof a mile away.
Very similarly.
Mark (47:35):
I thought of that when I heard, when I looked at this
case, both sets of remains werescattered by animals as they
decomposed in the Bethany careercase.
Her remains were spread byanimals, downhill across a
meadow in case's case.
And this may in the place thatshe was found, it wasn't super
rugged in case.
And in her intax skull wasfound.
(47:55):
It's a pretty large item to becarried almost a mile.
But it was probably decomposedenough to easily separate and it
did separate from the jawbecause they found that at the
original site, and it separatefrom spine and any tissues left,
which meant it'd be lighterthan, an intact head.
So what you'd expect is remainswould travel more easily
downhill.
This a rugged area.
(48:16):
But you're still probablytalking about a d a dog or
coyote versus an a small rodent.
Marcy (48:23):
Back to the huge search area.
What do you do with that kind ofan area?
Mark (48:28):
Yeah.
You take a look at whatresources you have.
You try and figure out thehighest areas of probability of
discovery.
Maybe you look at places wherethe victim or suspect like to
spend time.
If you have that information youtry to think like the victim or
like the suspect, and you searchplaces that seem right for the
situation.
You use resources like Aircraftcanine to augment your effort.
(48:51):
Basically you do the best youcan with what you have and you
have to accept it even after asearch is complete.
It doesn't mean that the targetwasn't right there and that you
just missed it.
Marcy (49:04):
You did say you were surprised that they used Boy
Scouts in the search for Kay'sbody.
Mark (49:10):
Yeah.
My immediate reaction was, I wassurprised that you're gonna
bring, basically what are youngsome, sometimes young kids.
But I guess I was spoiled livingin the city.
There were some fairly strictrequirements on who could be a
part of the civilian team.
They need background checks, butI guess in a very rural
environment, you can't beselective.
(49:32):
I feel very fortunate that Inever had to be part of a search
that was so large that we werecalling for, just any volunteer.
Marcy (49:39):
You did coordinate overland searches that were
strictly police?
Mark (49:43):
Yeah.
The Kincaid Park searches thatwe're looking for, the episode
we had with Mindy Schloss.
She was killed by serial killerJoshua Wade.
That was just Anchorage Police,F b i and other, any other
federal agents who they couldscrape up.
I ran the line searches for that
Marcy (50:00):
why would you keep it Just police versus adding
civilians or boy scouts?
Mark (50:05):
Even some investigations are sensitive with Mindy Schloss
case.
The homicide team wanted to keepthe, that information tight and
have the fewer leaks, thebetter.
So they saw to keep it as swornpersonnel or only, I'm not
trying to say by any means thatcivilian team members are
unreliable.
They're great and they'reessential.
(50:27):
But that case, particularlysensitive, we're trying to keep
the identity of the, by thattime the name Josh Wade.
What it was explosive.
He had gotten away with it,pretty much everybody knew he
got away with it before, and forhim to turn up in this high
profile missing nurse casewould've been explosive.
We're trying to keep that noisedown as long as we could.
(50:49):
Now my concern with Boy Scoutssearching is the effect that, if
you find things that could haveon a child, some of my adult
searchers they talked about someof the, depression and being
upset by finding some of thesethings.
So I'd be worried about kids,especially with fresh body
parts.
Like I said, even adults canhave trouble at experience.
But again, if your choice issearching with kids or not
(51:12):
searching at all, I'll take thekids.
Marcy (51:16):
You mentioned that cases sometime need shepherding or
they risk being forgotten.
Mark (51:23):
Yeah.
If you listen to Susan Bailey,that murder is a good example.
And there's some other ones thatI can think of where they're not
easy to solve.
In Susan Bailey, we, everybodyknew what happened and who did
it.
The case needed somebody to, tobe an advocate to, to shepherd
it, to push it through the endzone.
And it gets stale.
These cases get get cold, growcold, and get stale on that.
(51:46):
I was the initial respondingofficer.
But I cared about it enough.
I knew she was dead right away.
I cared about the case.
I checked back in homicide withit regularly, and it got passed
between detectives becausepeople are coming in and out.
But I was thrilled when thedetective who eventually ran
with it cared about it as muchas I did.
On the other hand, some caseshave to ripen.
(52:08):
Witnesses can come forward afteryears of living with guilt or
the horrible knowledge of whathappened.
Or, kids grow up and they cansay, okay, now I'm gonna talk
about it.
For but for most cases, timedoes not make'em better.
They don't get better with agelike wine.
One of the problems with thedetectives is sometimes not
taking action is easier thangrinding out a tough case both
(52:32):
for the investigator and aprosecutor.
Now that
Marcy (52:36):
sounds a little bit like you're trying to say
investigators might be lazy.
Mark (52:39):
No, I'm not.
I absolutely don't wanna givethat impression.
Quite the contrary.
But keep in mind thatinvestigator units are never
overstaffed and over budgeted.
There's always a new case comingin to distract you from that
pile of shit you already have.
Marcy (52:53):
It seems like the Marlene Gabrielsson case, that initial
rape was forgotten until much,much later, maybe even till
after Rashonda Pickle'sdisappearance.
Mark (53:06):
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think that the reason thatpeople, that investigators and
later the press started lookingback was that, you had this K
turner, he's the main suspect.
Like I said, on the, on someother things, you just know
that's the people involved inthat just know he's the guy.
We just can't prove it.
And here you have.
A young girl, she's missing.
(53:27):
He's the guy we pretty muchknow.
He is the guy after looking intoit a little while.
Now we're gonna pull out all thestops'cause this guy, we're not,
we gotta stop this guy.
And the thing about the MarlonGabrielson case is that it was a
historical case.
It's thought of to be as he,it's his first it's Aykroyd's
first known rape case.
(53:48):
And back then there wasn't adatabase.
Case relations were not easilysearched.
And that's changed quite a bit.
Now I could go to the computerand find cases, all the
contacts, all the associatesthat dating back decades.
And the ability to do that isonly getting better.
Despite people's fear of bigbrothers watching.
I think that's a great thing.
And I know I've benefitedgreatly from my career from that
(54:11):
particular technologicalprocess.
Marcy (54:15):
Okay.
But the police were downrightunresponsive to Marlene Gabriels
son's initial report of beingraped.
Mark (54:22):
Yes, they were.
And it was significant in thelater case, only as historical
case because it pretty muchshowed what he what he liked to
do, what he did and from, andthey had the ability to talk to
her first person and get thestory.
So we want, we wanna talk aboutwhy it wasn't worked.
So first of all, I think itshould have been worked.
(54:45):
I think it, I think looking atthe, at that specific case, I
think there was plenty to go on.
And let me explain that when thedecision process for charging a
complaint of sexual assault,what the investigator has to
prove or has to secure evidencefor is consent, right?
So we have to prove thatnon-consensual sex happened and
(55:10):
that there was no consent.
That's the investigative burden.
I'm trying to look at that caseand figure out what would make
the investigator skeptical,right?
You have so much evidence there.
The suspect talked to them andthe victim talked to them and
the victim told the story thathe did this.
And he cut her clothes up andyou have he picks her up.
(55:33):
He drives her to the place, hethreatens her, holds a knife up,
he cuts her clothes off and sheconvinced him to take her home.
And she gets out of the car andshe goes right to her mother and
says, this guy raped me.
Take me to the hospital.
I've got all this cut clothesevidence, and we drive over the
(55:54):
hospital and the ER doc takes alook at her body and says, yes,
those cuts that are consistentwith where he cuts your clothing
and also cut your body while heis doing that.
You'd have questions like of themother, Hey, Did you hear that
truck drop her off?
What was her, because you caninterview the mother on hearsay
things because she's the firstreporter or the first person
(56:17):
that was reported to.
She would get to tell herobservations, but she also to
say what was said to her.
And then you put all thattogether and it makes sense.
And now you talk to this otherguy who picked her up and drove
her somewhere and she came ontohim.
And then, at what point thereshe, he didn't see her cut, her
clothing cut up.
So what a point did her cut, herclothing become cut up, like
(56:39):
between the time she jumpedoutta the car and what would the
motive be there?
And so there's so much here inthis case that's provable.
I do not know why they did nottake it seriously and go with it
other than.
There's a couple of reasons whyI can, there's conjecture, but I
can say these cases, consent inthis case based on my
(57:01):
experience, would not be reallya problem unless you had
something else, right?
Like you found out that thecomplainant had made all kinds
of crazy things happen in thepast that would cloud that at
the same time you couldn'tdiscount her statement.
So you're looking for thingsthat would add credibility to
his defense or, that,'causethat's what you do is you sort
(57:22):
through this what you have asmuch as you can get and you
weigh it and you weigh it withthe prosecutor.
And can we overcome thatconsent?
And in this case, it's prettyserious.
She's got cut up clothing andstuff.
And having just met this guy,it's unlikely they were into
some weird.
Weird game with a knife thingthat where she was, it was a
consensual situation.
So these are the things you'dlook for.
(57:43):
And I would say, based on what Iknow about this case there's no
reason to not move forward withYeah.
He lacked consent when he didwhat he did to her.
Marcy (57:55):
And there's no evidence that they knew each other before
this interaction.
There was no prior association.
Mark (58:00):
In a case like this, that's, that is a very big piece
of evidence.
What's the likelihood that thatall of these things are gonna
happen like that?
Like he's saying nothing,there's nothing wrong here.
She came onto me and all I didwas take her home and look at
what ha what she's got evidencewise, and you talk to those two
people and you.
Okay.
And a lot of it has to do withwho's we have to, everything is
(58:22):
overcoming consent, but some ofthat is whose story.
It makes sense and whose storyis off now that may not overcome
that burden because sometimescontent is very difficult to
prove when you lack evidencelike they have in this case.
But in this case, I can tell youif it came into my office and
somebody worked it it would verylikely be an immediate arrest.
Marcy (58:48):
So Marlene Gabrielsson Inupiat Alaska native, and she
believes the reason that theycompletely discounted her
complaint is because theythought of her as just a drunk
Indian.
And I actually think she'sright.
And that the initialinvestigation was a completely
racist response.
Mark (59:07):
I can't say that you're wrong.
And I can say that I thinkthere's a that they should have
arrested him for rape on thisfirst case.
Maybe not even his first case,but the one they got him on the
first one they know about.
But I can't say.
In my mind, I can't say whetherit's because she's a Alaska
native.
They would've thought of as heras Indian.
But being from Alaska and tellyou that she's thinking of
herself as Alaska native what,the reason I say that is because
(59:31):
if you look at the cases we havecovered that are historical
cases, and from my experienceyou look back at some of the
cases we've covered, where whitewomen were the victims and so
forth, and they've receivedresponses that were consistent
like this, like a complete lackof appropriate response from all
races of female victims ofsexual assault.
(59:52):
So part of that could have beenjust been, she was a woman in
1978.
And not, I'm not to say that'snot, these things don't ha don't
still happen, and they do.
Marcy (01:00:02):
And both can be true, but do you think that the situation
has improved much?
We still have a problem withmissing and murdered indigenous
women across the United Statesand Canada.
Mark (01:00:12):
As far as that goes the situation may not have improved
much, but as far as theinvestigation, I think that in a
lot of places, a lot of areas,I'm not saying across the board,
there have been a lot ofimprovement.
I think training, awareness,victim services have greatly
improved in a lot of places.
And there's a huge effort to dothat nationwide.
(01:00:33):
But there's still a long way togo.
Just a few days before this,we're making this recording, the
US coast Guard Academy has ascandal where the top commander
of that institution was caughtcovering up decades of sexual
assault complaints that happenedat the military academy.
Have we improved?
I think we have.
Are we where we need to be?
Absolutely not.
Marcy (01:00:55):
In the end, Marlene and Gabrielsson talked about going
back to Alaska after she wasraped so that she could feel
safe.
Mark (01:01:02):
Yeah.
That that part I, when she saidthat I, it's so ironic.
Alaska, where I worked in thelargest city in Alaska has, and
this is true of the whole state,has some of the highest per
capita levels of sexual assaultin the country.
And Alaska native females aredisproportionately represented
in that statistic.
Marcy (01:01:23):
So a lot of work still to be done to make sure that
indigenous women are protectedappropriately.
Mark (01:01:30):
Yes.
And all women.
Marcy (01:01:32):
Yes, and all women.
Rand's mother does not believethat Aykroyd killed her
daughter.
In fact, she was entirely superdefensive about the idea that
there was any sort of abuse ofher daughter or anybody in the
family, or any problems at allwith Aykroyd.
And it so pisses me off whenmothers fail to protect their
children from shit like this.
(01:01:52):
Is she being selfish inpretending that everything was
perfectly fine?
Or what the hell is going onwith
Mark (01:01:57):
that woman?
I think it's selfish in aself-defense kind of way, in a
denial kind of way.
It's the same reason that thewoman who alibied her husband in
Aykroyd knowing that they justkilled a woman that the fact
that she would blockinvestigation like that for
years is pretty amazing.
(01:02:18):
And why, rhonda's mother'sprotecting herself.
She doesn't want to admit thatshe basically brought the guy in
who murdered her daughter andallowed the abuse to happen.
She's not gonna admit that toherself or anybody else.
The alibi witness there, she'sliving in a rural place.
She's maybe dependent financialsupport.
I think they had kids what,where's she gonna go?
(01:02:40):
What are they gonna do?
How's she gonna get away fromthat guy that just helped
murdered her murder, rape awoman?
Obviously she knew what wasgoing on, because it was big
news in that area, right?
This woman is missing.
And then later she's raped andmurdered and, her husband and
her husband's friend show upwith blood and talk about
shooting her.
So she knew what was going on.
(01:03:01):
That aspect, people covering forother people it's heartbreaking,
but I think it's human natureand it's not surprising in a DV
relationship that happens.
So he
Marcy (01:03:11):
moved on to killing two people at once with Sheila
Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
That seems super risky to tryand control two people at the
same time.
Do you think his buddy wasinvolved in that one also?
Mark (01:03:24):
I don't think so.
I don't think there's evidenceof that.
I think the buddy had moved toCalifornia by that time.
These are two girls young andhe's a big guy and he's got a
weapon and he's got, He's gotthe element of surprise he may
be the perv, they may joke he'sthe per'cause.
He is the old guy at the teenagehangout.
But they're gonna take a ridefrom him so they can get back
home.
And who knows how that wentdown?
(01:03:44):
Maybe he's threatening one andkept the other one under control
by threatening the other one.
One of the other murders theysuspect him of was actually a
young woman and a young man.
That's another issue of control.
I don't know how he would'vedone that, but they're pretty
sure he did that one too.
We didn't profile that one'causethere isn't a lot known.
They just know that the youngwoman, young man turned up at a
Highway 20 pullout.
(01:04:05):
Pretty same situation.
I think that was maybe one ofthe ones where the clothing was
cut.
So I don't know.
But it's not impossible, and Iknow that, a lot of those depend
on securing one, one,threatening one.
Marcy (01:04:20):
It doesn't seem like we know a whole lot about aykroyd
beyond what's directly relatedto all these crimes.
Mark (01:04:28):
We know he grew up in the area he worked, which is very
rural.
There was a story from between10 and 12 when he was a boy.
His father was going to sell alitter of puppies that he had
and Aykroyd took a machete andkilled, cut up all the puppies
so that the father couldn't sellthem.
That's an indication he wassadistic back then.
(01:04:50):
We know he's as an adult, he'sfairly antisocial.
He had a couple of friends, andhe had a friend who would be
willing to kill with him.
But his coworkers mainly thoughthe was a weirdo and most of them
didn't like to be around him.
We know that when he did have aliving girlfriend with kids, he
terrorized them.
Which probably sadly also givesus insight into what his home
(01:05:10):
life was like when he wasgrowing up and
Marcy (01:05:14):
we know he was actively raping and killing along that
stretch of 20, between 1977 and1992, is there any kind of
estimation of how many moremissing and murdered women he
could be responsible for?
Mark (01:05:30):
I've seen guesses of 10.
They're fairly certain four, but10.
When you look at the number offound bodies they had and the,
they never found RashondaPickle.
If you look at the 10, theythink that's a possibility.
And maybe there's some thatweren't found like Rashonda.
I don't know that there's a firmnumber there but a long time and
(01:05:52):
with a lack of oversight and allthe conditions that made him a
perfect predator in the area.
That was his hunting ground.
Marcy (01:06:00):
I'm really interested in the fact that Rashanda Hass
never been found and how thatwas probably his closest
relationship of all of thosevictims.
That was the person that heactually knew.
I wonder if that's related tothe fact that they've never
found her.
I think that the reason thatwe've never found her is because
he knew her, that she wasspecial to him or that
(01:06:23):
relationship was different thanjust a random stranger off the
street.
Mark (01:06:27):
Or like I, my theory is he found a place he liked to put
her.
Marcy (01:06:34):
And with K Turner, there was a little bit of indication
that he might have gone andvisit her body over time before
he finally called the police andsaid that he found her
officially, that he, that maybehe was revisiting the site,
which I guess is a fairly normalserial killer kind of thing to
do.
Mark (01:06:48):
Yeah.
Lots of information about that.
my theory about why he wouldn'tgive up rash, ANDA's resting
places because it's a place heliked and there might've been
others, o others there.
That's just my personal theory.
Marcy (01:07:01):
I hope that Marlene Gabrielsson feels safe now.
Mark (01:07:08):
I hope so too.
She certainly feels vindicatedalthough, sadly I know that she
feels if they had listened toher way back in 77 that a lot of
this could have been avoided,
Marcy (01:07:17):
just an unspeakable tragedy.
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