In 1981, a company called Western Hill began construction on what was originally to be called The Bluffs at 348th Street and First Avenue South in Federal Way. The land for the complex was literally cut out of a dense fir forest. Work began in 1981 but stopped in early 1982 when the company was forced into bankruptcy.
For Bruce McCrory, a landscape architect, the Western Hill project was memorable in many ways. It was the first time he had ever designed an entire project from site to buildings to landscaping. He called it “my baby,” and in an architectural sense, at least, it was.
McCrory was on the site of the apartment complex construction almost every day for over a year. More than two decades later, it would be hard for him to pinpoint the exact year that he came across a stranger in the southeast portion of the site. Panther Lake Elementary School was only fifty feet away at that point, and its playground and ball field abutted the landscaped grounds, making it highly desirable for families with young children. The area had been designated as a “tot lot,” where teeter-totters, monkey bars, and swing sets would one day be built.
It may have been a weekend when McCrory encountered the man he didn’t remember seeing on the site before. “He was wandering around the recently cleared portions of the southeast quarter, near the school property.”
Before the stranger noticed him, McCrory paused, just out of his sight. “I remember him poking at the ground with something,” he recalled. “Why was he poking at the ground? That question kept bothering me as I tried to remember. As I annotated brief descriptions on the only four remaining [shots] out of hundreds of photos I took, I remembered. He was in a rage, flailing his arms, beating the ground, kicking dirt. Then he noticed me, and shifted into the poking mode. I guess social norms prescribe that we respect embarrassing, private displays of emotions.”
And McCrory did that. “I thought he was the soils engineer, and since his vehicle was near where I stood, he had to pass me. I asked him if he was the soils engineer, and he said, ‘You might say that.’ ”
The man brushed by him, obviously not wanting to talk further, walked to his vehicle, which may have been a pickup, although McCrory isn’t sure, threw the stick and a backpack into the rear, and drove away.
McCrory would probably have forgotten this strange incident, one that was over in a few minutes, if not for a second memory that came later. His company softball team was practicing on the ball field at the Panther Lake School in either 1981 or 1982. “We were nearly overcome with the stench of a dead animal. At one point,” McCrory said, “I wandered around trying to identify the source. The area I thought was the location was the present tot-lot curb on the apartment site. The memory is tied to a reference about Ted Bundy by one of my teammates.”
The memory went into Bruce McCrory’s subconscious mind, leaving him with a creepy sense of fear about the smell of decaying flesh. He was aware of the Green River murders that allegedly began in 1982 and the investigation that continued over the next twenty years, but he hadn’t followed the cases closely.
It would be 1987 before construction at the site began again, and, in the meantime, the cleared land would stay as it was except for some low-growing native plants that dotted the bare dirt. When the complex was completed, it was renamed Fox Run, and the apartment buildings were painted a sunny yellow against the dark green of the fir forests that surrounded them. On May 30, 1988, workmen were using a posthole digger in the corner where a six-foot fence would keep children from wandering into the parking lot. There, a huge boulder sat between two tall fir trees. It seemed the perfect spot for a swing set, if a little shady.
They found something in the small hole meant for the swing set’s end posts. It wasn’t a rock the posthole digger had struck; it was bones. From the small circumference exposed, it wasn’t possible for the workers to tell if they were human or animal bones. All work stopped and the King County police were contacted.
Carefully, tediously, Bill Haglund from the Medical Examiner’s Office repeated what he had done so many times before, working slowly to prevent any more damage to the skeleton that had clearly been here just eighteen inches below the surface for many years. He found a left hip, knees, ankles, a scapula, some cervical bones from the upper spine, and a skull. The teeth were intact. If this was one of the long-missing girls, Haglund would soon know it. He had studied the dental X-rays of the still-missing girls so many times and thought he recognized a familiar crown. But he said nothing as he gathered up all that was left of this victim—the bones, faded clothing, fingernails, some hairs and fibers. Indeed, some physical evidence was found with the body: a rotting black V-necked sweater with glittery metallic threads and a dark-colored bra. And on those items, there were paint chips. White paint chips.
Comparison of dental X-rays on file identified the remains. Haglund had been right. It was Debra Lorraine Estes, missing for six years. Had the construction workers dug even a few feet away, the chances of her ever being found would have been slight.
The investigators wondered if there was any way to tell if her killer had just left her body on the grounds of the apartment site where work had been stopped by September of 1982, or if he had actually buried her. The former was more likely; trucks full of dirt and bulldozers had dumped landfill there in 1987 and workmen had probably never noticed the bones, which were probably covered with brush and weeds.
Around seven thirty the next morning, before anyone else could get to Tom and Carol Estes, Fae Brooks and Dave Reichert left their offices for a task they dreaded. At eight ten, they stood at the Esteses’ door. Carol Estes smiled, initially glad to see them, and then her face paled. She knew what it must be that had brought them there so early. They had found Debra.
It doesn’t matter how long a loved one has been gone. The final shutting of a door on hope is agonizing. Carol Estes talked by phone to Bill Haglund and then asked to be taken to the site where Debra’s body had been found. They discouraged her from going, but she was adamant.
Linda Barker, now working in Texas with a foundation set up to aid crime victims, called to be sure a victim’s advocate was on the way to help Debra’s parents. The family asked Dave Reichert to be a pall bearer at Debra’s funeral and he immediately said he would. They also agreed to let the Green River Task Force film the funeral in case the killer showed up.
The scope of the investigation into Debra’s murder would have to be wide-ranging. How many hundreds of workers, truck drivers, electricians, plumbers, and carpenters had been on the Fox Run site in the last six years? The detectives obtained master lists from contractors and subcontractors, and then did computer runs to see if they showed up in police files as any of the Green River victims’ acquaintances, or the johns questioned on the street.
The paint chips—which were scarcely more than flecks—found on Debra Estes’s clothing would be studied by Skip Palenik at his Microtrace laboratories in Elgin, Illinois. Palenik’s ability to find vital evidence verged on genius. Other than paint, some of the materials the renowned microscopist worked with were paper fibers, hair, crystals, and minute amounts of industrial dust, combustibles, pollen, soil, cement, drugs, and wood and vegetable matter. With his powerful array of microscopes, knowledge, and experience, Palenik was the definitive expert the task force investigators needed. After being buried for years, could the almost invisible paint spheres on Debra’s blouse be identified and compared to a known source? They could. Palenik found matches to an expensive paint—Imron, manufactured by DuPont—that was used mostly on commercial vehicles. He set about winnowing down the companies whose standards of excellence would demand paint of this caliber. One strong possibility was the Kenworth Truck Company.