“Ernie called in sick this morning,” his boss said.
The suspect’s employer told the detectives that “Tom” was actually Ernest Leroy Donatelli Jr.,* twenty-four. The investigators obtained his address from the station manager, drove there immediately, and located Ernest Donatelli Jr. He matched the descriptions given by the three victims they knew about. Advised of his rights under the Miranda rule, he agreed to be transported to precinct headquarters for questioning.
Donatelli seemed completely baffled that Sonia Lindell had reported him. “I followed her home early this morning, and I asked her out for coffee,” he said easily. “I can’t understand why she would say I raped her or anything like that. I wasn’t rough with her at all.”
Bob Walliker arrived to continue the interview and Donatelli agreed to have it taped. Walliker began by questioning the suspect about the most recent complaint, the one filed by Sonia Lindell.
Donatelli continued to appear shocked that Sonia had reported him.
“I just saw her driving and she waved and smiled at me. She seemed so friendly that I followed her all the way home. I wasn’t looking for sex, and all we did was have a conversation. When I went to her front door, I asked her if she was hungry and invited her out for a bite to eat.”
As Walliker’s questions grew more intense, however, Donatelli grudgingly admitted that perhaps the woman had been frightened, and that the thought of sex with her might have crossed his mind.
“But I didn’t want to force her, you know,” the suspect said. “I do kind of recall her saying, ‘If you’re going to rape me, go ahead. I’m not going to resist you.’
“But I wasn’t going to rape her. I don’t even know why she said that.”
Again, he disclaimed any use of force.
“I don’t know why she just happened to take her clothes off.”
He finally admitted that he had intended to rape Sonia and said he felt “sorry” about that.
When Bob Walliker asked about the incident following an evening at the Candy Store Tavern, Ernie Donatelli admitted that the attack on Marci Brunswick had taken place the way she’d described it. However, his phraseology on all of the sexual attacks was decidedly euphemistic: he had not “raped” his victims; he only “had sex” with them.
He said he had watched Nadine Jenner walk in and out of her apartment house and found her very attractive.
“I thought she was much older,” Donatelli said. “I didn’t know she was only thirteen.”
The tall, good-looking suspect said he had separated recently from his wife of five years and had suffered from sexual deprivation since. His method for relieving this had obviously not proved either socially or legally acceptable.
Donatelli’s clothing at the time of his arrest showed mud on the knees of his blue work pants and on the lower right leg. Lab tests on his clothing showed a positive reaction for semen on the shirt and underwear along with blood smears of type A blood. That was Nadine Jenner’s type, although it is a very common classification.
Walliker and Oregon State crime lab criminalist Bonnie Garthus processed the red El Camino. It proved to be a virtual treasure trove of physical evidence. Although Marci Brunswick’s shoe had disappeared completely, her square hammered brass earring still lay, apparently undetected by Donatelli, just behind the seat. Acid phosphotase tests on the car’s seat turned the characteristic bright reddish-purple that indicates a positive reaction for semen. The investigators found head and pubic hairs. The tape deck still had the tape engaged that Nadine had described. There was a tire in the truck bed.
And the vehicle’s overhead light had been deliberately removed so that it would have been difficult for an unwilling passenger to observe the suspect’s face.
Donatelli’s three fair-haired victims picked his mug shot from a lay-down of photos that Bob Walliker showed to them. Walliker had built a tight case against the sexual predator and there was no way he could deny the attacks. Instead, Donatelli chose to go the “insanity” route in his defense. He was examined by psychiatrists who said he did indeed regret the attacks but that his regret seemed to be normal. “It’s the regret that any man would feel at getting caught for his crimes,” one psychiatrist said succinctly.
Perhaps to beef up his insanity claims, Donatelli attempted suicide in the Rocky Butte Jail. He succeeded only in breaking his leg and was forced to appear in court in a cast and on crutches.
The man who had demonstrated his anger and hostility toward his estranged wife by terrorizing three female strangers pleaded no contest to two counts of first-degree rape (in the cases of Marci Brunswick and Nadine Jenner) before Circuit Judge Roth on February 6, 1976. On March 16, Judge Roth sentenced Ernie Donatelli Jr. to twenty years in prison, to run concurrently with another twenty-year sentence.
He also had to pay reparations to his victims. In more cases than not, Oregon courts awarded rape victims restitution in amounts ranging from five hundred to three thousand dollars, one more deterrent, hopefully, for the men who considered any attractive woman alone and vulnerable as fair game.
Ernie Donatelli Jr. served his sentence and was released decades ago. As I attempted to find his whereabouts today, the Internet did not list his address or even the state where he lives. I am troubled, however, to discover in a national gun control register that Donatelli recently applied for a gun permit. And it was granted.
Somewhere in America, Ernie Donatelli Jr., who would be in his sixties now, is carrying a deadly weapon. One would hope that he no longer feels a sense of entitlement that spurs him to fixate on helpless women and act on his obsession.
* * *
AN OBSESSION WITH BLONDES
* * *
Retired Multnomah County, Oregon, sheriff’s detective Bob Walliker and his dog Cody. Walliker headed the sex crimes unit for many years and tracked and arrested the suspect who stalked pretty blond victims. (Bob Walliker)
THE LAST VALENTINE’S DAY
It was Valentine’s Day 1975 when an inexplicable homicide occurred in one of Seattle’s northern suburbs. The vast majority of murders have some kind of motive—even though it may not be obvious in the beginning—but there seemed to be a total lack of rhyme, reason, or motivation in the brutal death of sixteen-year-old Diana “Dina” Peterson. Stymied, King County sheriff’s detectives worried that Dina’s death might well end up in the “Losers File”—an outcome they all detested. Their efforts to solve one of the decade’s most baffling murders kept circling in frustrating spirals, and they seemed to be no closer to solving it than they were in the beginning.
This homicide did land in the sheriff’s cold-case file. I originally wrote the story for a magazine way back in 1975, even though it had no ending, hoping that maybe someone would read about what happened and come forward with information that could help.
But no one did. Not then.
* * *
George and Leanne Peterson had a large and happy brood. They had nine children, including a foster daughter, ranging in age from eight and a half to twenty. They had lived in the yellow split-level house on NW 192nd Street in Richmond Beach for almost two years. Their home was welcoming and friendly, and their kids and their friends came and went constantly.
George Peterson worked hard at the service station he owned, and he spent a good part of his “free” time transporting one child or another to basketball practice, school functions, or on errands. He was a strict father, and Leanne backed him up. They knew where each of their youngsters was most of the time—but it was complicated and difficult keeping tabs on nine children who were all involved in their own activities. Their older offspring had more freedom as they matured.
On the morning of February 15, 1975, George Peterson arose at six. It was a Saturday, but he wanted to get to the station early and work on his books before the rush for gas began. He’d had a restless night, waking each time one of the older girls returned. Now, he peered into sixteen-year-old Dina’s room, and saw her bed was undisturbed;
perhaps she’d slept with one of her sisters, or had decided to spend the night with a girlfriend.
No. That couldn’t be. Dina was grounded and wasn’t supposed to go anywhere except to school and her own yard. Her mother had given her some leeway the night before, allowing her to walk to a nearby pizza parlor with a girlfriend. But when George fell asleep, she wasn’t home yet—and Leanne Peterson was half-angry, half-concerned.
As Peterson walked toward his car in the carport, he heard Dina’s little black dog, Oscar, barking frantically. The dog wasn’t known for his silence, but there was something in the frenzied yapping that disturbed Peterson. He moved into the backyard and saw Oscar running along the top of the rockery there. Oscar shivered in the cold; he had been outside all night.
As he approached, Oscar suddenly growled at him, something he never did, and then leapt off the rockery and ran out of sight. Curious and somewhat alarmed, Peterson peered over the stone barrier.
And he drew in a deep gulp of frigid air, so shocked that it seemed his heart had stopped beating. His daughter Dina lay on the cold ground on her back, her eyes slightly open.
Her father scrambled down to where she lay, and knelt beside her. He touched her face gently. Her skin was as cold as ice and he knew that she was dead—improbably, uncomprehendingly, lying dead in her own backyard.
Peterson stumbled back to the house and called their family’s priest first, and then dialed the King County police. Knowing in his heart it would do no good, he grabbed two blankets and covered Dina.
Then he woke his wife and told her that Dina was dead. There was no easy way to say it. They waited hopelessly for the deputies. Their other eight children slept on; they would have to know the truth soon enough.
King County police patrolman Eric W. Anderson was dispatched at 6:22 on that freezing morning. George Peterson’s disjointed call had resulted in the dispatch of a fire department aid car, with the indication that a “possible assault” had taken place.
Anderson pulled up behind a King County Fire Department District #4 emergency vehicle that had reached the scene only a moment before. Anderson followed George Peterson’s directions to the backyard and caught the “thumbs down” signal of EMT Lieutenant Leroy McVay, who had just checked Dina Peterson.
It might have been an assault call to begin with, but the girl on the ground was dead.
Patrol sergeants Larry Danielson and Harold Hansen arrived to supervise patrol units racing to the scene. Lieutenant Richard Kraske of the Major Crimes Unit was notified that an apparent murder victim had just been found. Kraske called homicide detectives Roger Dunn and Rolf Grunden at home and directed them to the scene. They were joined by their sergeant, Len Randall.
Officer Steven Brown secured the crime scene from neighbors who were sure to come out of their homes when they saw the lights and heard sirens. He cordoned off the house and yard with yellow crime scene tape. The homicide men would be the only personnel allowed beyond that barrier. They didn’t want possible evidence touched or trampled.
Initially, it looked as if Dina Peterson had been beaten to death. There was blood on her face. But the investigators wondered how a healthy teenager could be attacked and beaten in her own backyard without someone hearing her cry out.
The houses along 192nd were barely fifteen feet apart, and Dina’s body was only sixteen feet from the patio of her own house. Surely there would have been some unusual noise or sounds of struggle—something that would have been heard by neighbors or her own family.
Investigators planned to canvass the neighborhood for any possible witnesses, but first they had to work the crime scene and preserve as much physical evidence as possible.
The pretty brown-haired teenager was fully clothed in jeans, sweater, and a long coat—all buttoned tightly. Her shoes were still on her feet. If a sexual motivation had been present in the mind of her killer, an overt attack had not been carried out. Maybe she had fought hard enough to scare him—or her—away. But it didn’t look as if she had fought; it was more likely that someone had crept up out of the dark before she had time to respond.
It was still half daylight, with some ground fog not yet dispersed. The detectives held their flashlights at an oblique angle, hoping it would enable them to see any blood in the area near Dina’s body.
They could see dark splashes on some wooden slats near the younger children’s sandbox, and several loose boards nearby also bore bloodstains, as if they had been used to strike her. There was more blood on the stones in the rockery.
Detectives found footprints leading away from the girl’s body—deep, widely spaced prints, which indicated the person who made them was running. Unfortunately, the frozen ground wasn’t conducive to showing deep prints, and they stopped only a few houses away. Rolf Grunden cast these footprints with a plaster-of-paris moulage. The moulage showed only a partial design pattern of the sole of the wearer’s shoes.
The sandbox above the body contained sand that was disturbed, as if the initial struggle had taken place there, but criminalist Kay Sweeney was unable to find any usable footprints or physical evidence there.
Dina Peterson had been dead for hours. Rigor mortis was already well developed in her jaw, where it usually begins as muscles grow taut after death. This eliminated the possibility that she had risen very early to walk her dog. She had probably been lying dead in her backyard for the entire night.
The sheriff’s investigators were still able to open one of her tightly clenched hands, and they found dirt and grass inside. Dina might have tried to hold on to the rockery or the weeds as her assailant dragged her.
Dunn, Grunden, and Sweeney took photographs of the teenager’s body and the surroundings, and measurements for triangulating the area. King County detectives made it a point of triangulating all homicide scenes so they would be able to know exactly where the victims were originally found.
The detectives finished their measurements and pictures in the backyard of the Petersons’ home and were finally ready to turn Dina’s body over. But as they did so, they received a startling surprise.
Dina Peterson hadn’t been beaten to death. A bone-handled hunting knife had been plunged into the center of her back! There were no other possibly fatal wounds at all—just the single deadly knife thrust from behind.
Media reporters had already been told that the girl had apparently died of a beating, and their early morning newscasts used that. The sheriff’s detectives agreed they would keep this new information secret. It was quite possible that only Dina’s killer knew how she died. Quickly, the investigators moved in close and surrounded her body so no onlooker would be able to see the knife as Dina’s body was lifted from the ground and placed in a body bag before the King County medical examiner’s deputies loaded it into their van.
An autopsy would, hopefully, give them more information.
* * *
In deep shock, George and Leanne Peterson nonetheless tried to reconstruct for detectives what had happened the night before.
George Peterson told Roger Dunn that he had not seen Dina since the family had dinner together from about 6 to 6:30 the night before. He explained to Dunn that he had left the house after that to take some of his younger sons to basketball practice and do some other errands.
“I got home around 8:30 and went to watch TV about 8:45—but I was reading the paper, too, and I fell asleep. I woke up at 11:30 because the TV was blaring and I turned it off,” he recalled. “Then I woke up at 1:30 in the morning when one of our girls came home from a date. She knocked on the front door to get in. I checked the patio door leading off the recreation room and found it was locked. I looked in Dina’s room, and she wasn’t there. I was worried and a little angry that she was still out.”
George Peterson explained that if Dina had any faults, it was her tendency to stay out longer than she was supposed to. In fact, that was why she was grounded on Valentine’s Day. She’d stayed out too late the previous night, visiting her boyfriend, Tim Diener,
who lived next door. It was too easy for Dina to sneak over to Tim’s house; all she had to do was open the Petersons’ sliding glass door in the basement and skip over to the sliding door that went into Tim’s room.
Her dad had caught her on February 13 and grabbed her by the arm. “I was angry,” he said. “I told Dina, ‘You don’t go there anymore!’ ”
When Peterson glanced into Dina’s bedroom at 1:30 A.M. on February 15, her bed was neatly made, the bolster pillows in place. But she wasn’t there. He thought she was deliberately defying him.
Her room had looked the same way in the morning just before he found her body.
In any household with teenagers, parents never really sleep well when one of them is out, and Peterson couldn’t get back to sleep by 2:15. He said he’d taken three aspirin and went back to bed, and finally to sleep. At 3:30, Leanne Peterson had gotten up to let their oldest daughter in. Finally, all had been quiet until George got up at 6.
Peterson said he had heard nothing unusual during the night, certainly no cries for help or screams.
Dina’s mother tried to recall for the detectives what had happened the night before. Dina had been grounded for Valentine’s night because she’d stayed out past curfew. She hadn’t done anything shocking; Tim’s parents were home and Dina just forgot about the time.
But her parents wanted to make a point so she wouldn’t do it again.
On Valentine’s night, Dina tried to get her mother to change her mind about the grounding. First, she asked to go to a friend’s birthday party, and Leanne refused—but Dina didn’t seem very disappointed.
Dina tried again. She pleaded to be allowed to go to a basketball game at school and the Valentine’s Day dance that was to follow. Her foster sister was going, she argued, but her mother explained that Dina was the one who was grounded.
She pouted a bit but eventually settled down in the Petersons’ recreation room to watch TV with a girlfriend, and a neighbor boy, Jim Groth, also sixteen, whom she considered a platonic friend. Her sister Marilyn said later that Jim was kind of an old shoe.