Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers (14 page)

All in all, Charles Campbell was not someone any woman would want to see running up her driveway.

Renae Wicklund was vastly relieved when Campbell was arrested after she identified him in March 1976. He was charged with one count of first-degree assault with intent to kill and one count of sodomy. By reporting what had happened to her, she had become one of the small percentage of women who have the courage to turn a sex criminal in to the police. Law enforcement authorities agree that statistics on sex crimes are almost impossible to chart accurately, that perhaps only one out of ten victims makes a police report. Women who have been raped and sexually molested are afraid and embarrassed. They are naturally hesitant to get on the witness stand and tell strangers in a courtroom the intimate details of an aberrant sexual attack.

But Renae Wicklund reported Campbell, and she got up in court and told it all. Her neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, went on the stand, too. There was no way they could refuse to testify and face their consciences knowing that a monstrous criminal might go free to harm other women. Still, the ordeal was agonizing.

Under our justice system, the suspect has the right to face his accusers, and Renae had to testify about the sexual appetites of her attacker as Charles Campbell stared at her, this huge man with the piercing dark eyes.

Renae Wicklund’s testimony was bolstered by testimony from a young woman who had once lived with Campbell. The woman said she lived near the Wicklunds’ home and that Campbell had visited her often—including the week of the rape. Campbell’s former lover said that he carried a knife and that he had told her, “You never know when you’re going to need it.”

The seven-woman, five-man jury found Charles Campbell guilty of both the assault and the sodomy. They also found that he had committed those crimes while in possession of a deadly weapon. At his sentencing, his prior record was introduced, and the consensus was that he was not fit to be on the streets for a very long time. Campbell had already pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary in the Okanogan County cases and had received up to fifteen years in prison with a five-year minimum. In Snohomish County, Judge Phillip Sheridan sentenced Campbell to another thirty years in prison with a seven-and-a-half-year minimum for the attack on the Wicklunds.

Charles Campbell’s trial in the attack on Renae and Shannah lasted only three days. It didn’t even rate a headline in the Everett papers.

The headlines would come later.

Renae Wicklund went home to pick up the pieces of her life, scarred as all sexual attack victims are by a pervasive fear that never quite goes away. Her marriage to Jack Wicklund broke up, partially from the lingering emotional trauma of the sex attack and partially for personal reasons. She and Shannah remained in the modest little white house in the woods, and Renae worked hard to support them. She worked as a beautician and also as an accountant for beauty parlors. She was a very intelligent woman and a single mother who wanted to be sure Shannah had everything she needed. Her own mother, Hilda, had always worked, and Renae’s life was solidly grounded in the work ethic.

Renae remained on friendly terms with Jack after he moved out. She also stayed close to her in-laws, who lived in a little town in Kitsap County across Puget Sound. Jack’s parents had always liked Renae. She joined their family get-togethers happily; her own mother and her sister Lorene were more than a thousand miles away in North Dakota. Renae was a great cook and brought food to every Wicklund holiday gathering, and she was a wonderful mother to Shannah, their granddaughter. Even though Renae was divorced from their son, she made sure that Jack’s parents saw Shannah often.

Once they got used to Jack’s being gone, Renae Wicklund and Shannah seemed to do all right. Don and Barbara helped out with chores Renae couldn’t manage, and both the Hendricksons adored Shannah.

Jack Wicklund was the one who now became a target for violence. In December 1977 he was almost killed in a bizarre attack. Wicklund was found in his West Seattle home, tied to a chair and severely burned over most of his body. He was rushed to a hospital, but it was a long time before doctors would cautiously say he might live and even longer before Wicklund could give a statement. All he remembered was that a stranger had walked into his home carrying a package and wished him Merry Christmas. He insisted he had never seen the man before. The stranger then tied Jack to a chair, poured gasoline over him, and struck a match.

Miraculously, Jack Wicklund didn’t die, but he was horribly scarred and lived with constant, unyielding pain. He was forced to wear a kind of rubber suit to minimize the formation of scar tissue.

In April 1978 Jack Wicklund left his parents’ home in Hansville, Washington, after a visit. They were worried about his burns, and it had been awful for them to see their son in his strange rubber suit, but he was alive. A few hours after Jack left to go home, a Kitsap County coroner’s deputy came to his parents’ home and broke the news that Jack had been killed in a one-car accident on the Hansville Road. His car had left the road and crashed into a tree, killing him instantly. There were no witnesses. The ensuing investigation into Jack Wicklund’s death never produced any definite answers as to why the crash had occurred. After surviving what should have been a fatal torching, Wicklund had met his fate on a lonely road. The curve where the car had left the road was known to be dangerous, but Wicklund had traversed the county road countless times before, and he knew the curve was there; he should have been prepared for it. Perhaps he had been temporarily blinded by oncoming headlights. If so, the other car hadn’t stopped. Perhaps he had been run off the road.

Seattle police have never solved the murder attempt on Wicklund. Perhaps he was suicidal and it took him two tries to succeed in destroying himself. Perhaps he was involved in something unsavory or dangerous—or both. Or perhaps Jack Wicklund was only a very unlucky man.

The shock of the deliberate torching of her ex-husband and then his accidental death coming so hard on the heels of the murder attempt only served to heighten Renae Wicklund’s constant anxiety. The attack by Charles Campbell had made her think that the world was a terribly dangerous place where tragedy waited just ahead. She could not help but wonder if the incidents were somehow connected, if they were more than just random misfortunes. She told friends and coworkers that she lived and walked in terror that something awful was going to happen again. And who could blame her?

Still, Renae Wicklund put on the facade of a cheerful, outgoing woman who was confident that she could take care of fatherless Shannah. Maybe trouble came in threes; people always said that. If that was true, then her three were all used up: the sexual attack, the burning, Jack’s fatal car crash.

Renae Wicklund didn’t know much about the workings of the justice system. She knew that Charles Campbell had been sent to the Monroe Reformatory—Washington’s mid-level penal institution. Security was not as tight there as it was in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, but it was much stronger than at Green Hill Academy, the boys’ training school in Chehalis. Renae didn’t care where Campbell was as long as he was locked up. All together, he had forty-five years hanging over him. That seemed like a safety net. Renae assumed that Campbell would be over sixty-five when he finally got out. By then Shannah would be middle-aged and Renae would be an old woman. They would probably have moved far away, too, maybe even back to North Dakota.

To a layman, forty-five years does sound like a long, long time. However, Charles Campbell’s two sentences would run concurrently, not consecutively. Although it wasn’t likely, it was within the realm of possibility that he could serve only the seven-and-a-half-year minimum and be released in 1983 or 1984. He would, of course, have to have some time off for good behavior to do that.

Renae had no idea that forty-five years didn’t really
mean
forty-five years.

She and Shannah stayed in their old neighborhood, and Renae worked to keep the house and yard up. Shannah grew through the toddler stage and became a pretty little girl with straight shiny brown bangs, a pageboy haircut, and big brown eyes. Tall for her age, she was quiet and a little shy. She went to the Shepherd of the Hill Lutheran Church Sunday school and they teased her fondly about being their “little missionary” because she was always bringing a new friend along with her.

Renae had played the flute as a girl, and Shannah had ambitions to master it, too. She invited Don and Barb over for “a recital,” and they clapped as if she were a child prodigy. She took dancing lessons, and Don Hendrickson took pictures of her in her costumes. Her grandpa Wicklund helped her learn how to ride a two-wheel bike.

The neighborhood in Clearview was a good place for a little girl to grow up, even though it might have been easier for Renae to live in a city apartment where she didn’t have to cope with leaking roofs and broken plumbing and keeping a yard clear of weeds. She really counted on her neighbors. She and Shannah shopped at the Clearview market, and everybody knew both of them. Barbara Hendrickson’s grandchildren grew up along with Shannah, and they often played together.

Renae proved to be a really clever businesswoman. She operated her accounting business for beauty parlors out of her own home, and her clients were pleased with her know-how and efficiency. She was expert in helping students get grants and loans to help them through beauty school. In early 1982 Renae was only thirty-one, but she was shouldering her responsibilities with great maturity.

If she thought about the man who had broken into her home eight years earlier—and those close to her say she did—the scary memories crept up full-blown only when the moon was hidden behind scudding clouds and the wind sighed in the tall trees around her little house. He was part of a nightmare she couldn’t quite forget, but his image was gone when the sun rose again.

Renae bought a large dog, an Afghan hound, more to keep her company than for protection. Afghans are not particularly territorial or effective as watchdogs. But it would bark if anyone came around her property.

Less than 25 miles away, Charles Campbell was locked up in the Monroe Reformatory. He had earned the nickname “One Punch” because his fist was so powerful. He was a bully, and weaker inmates toadied to him, fearful of that fist. Guards were aware of Campbell’s drug trafficking—
inside
prison—and his infraction record grew thicker and thicker.

Renae was serene in her belief that her attacker was locked up in prison and still had years and years to go on his sentence. Nevertheless, she was super-cautious, because she knew what could happen. Charles Campbell wasn’t the only man who attacked women. Renae had strong locks on the doors and windows, and she warned Shannah never, never to go with strangers.

It snowed in early January 1982, and Don Hendrickson noticed footprints one morning outside the side windows of his home. Later that day, Renae told Barbara that she too had found footprints beneath her windows. Since her house stood so far back from the road, the large prints in the snow upset her.

Hilda Ahlers had been visiting Renae over Christmas, as she almost always did. Renae had never told her mother about the man who had attacked her seven years earlier.

“Renae was so strong,” her mother said. “I never knew. She didn’t want me to worry.” But with the clarity of hindsight, Hilda would come to see that something was wrong that winter. “I remember one night when Renae’s dog—who normally never barked at all—went wild and began barking fiercely. I thought there was something horrid outside, but I was afraid to look.”

Not long after that, the Afghan nipped a neighbor’s child, and Renae decided to give it away.

Looking back, Hilda Ahlers remembered more. “Another time, I saw Renae looking out the window at the road with the strangest look on her face. I said, ‘What do you see out there?’ and Renae just answered, ‘Oh, nothing.’ She didn’t seem frightened; she was just watching so quietly.”

Renae didn’t know that Charles Campbell had been out of prison that weekend in January. Incredibly, and despite a stack of infractions, he had somehow earned time off for good behavior. He had served less than six years in prison, and he was already going out on furloughs.

Neither Renae nor the Hendricksons were aware of that. No one had bothered to tell them. Nor did anyone tell them when Campbell was transferred a month later to a work-release facility located less than ten miles from Clearview.