Lying in Wait and Other True Cases
Uhrich flicked on the radio, and Holly immediately began to sing along with Zac Brown’s country-western tune, “Not a Worry in the World,” a song about sitting on the beach, carefree and drinking beer. It was a tragic irony, considering that the place where Holly was headed was nothing like the beach.
Holly Grigsby was later videotaped as she gave a shocking five-hour interview. The investigators in three states had always considered Holly as a ride-along, not a partner in crime.
Though rare, females participating in bloody crime sprees are not unheard of. Bonnie Parker—of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde—certainly was an active participant in the pair’s bloody wanderings across America. In more recent times, there have been cases where the female half of a couple joined in the actual violence.
Holly Grigsby spoke in a flat voice as she explained, “We came up from Oregon to kill Joey’s father and to steal from him.”
Joey had told her that his father was wealthy and stressed that there was no reason they had to be poor and go without. They needed to fund their “project.” They didn’t even have a car, when his father had everything.
Once they arrived in Everett, Joey had modified his plans. He had to pick the right time and place to kill his father and, of course, his stepmother, DeeDee, too. They couldn’t leave a witness behind.
Joey decided to strike when Red drove them to the bus station in Everett for their trip back to Oregon.
“The old man will be in the driver’s seat,” Joey told Holly. “And you will be beside him in the front passenger seat. I’ll be behind him, and I will shoot him in the back of the head, see? Once he’s dead, you will take control of the car.”
Holly began to ask how she could manage to get over Red’s body, seize the steering wheel, and straighten out the car. “What if we have an accident?”
“You will figure it out. Just do it.”
The Oregon detectives listened as Holly calmly told them that she and Joey had stolen numerous items from the mobile home, everything of possible value, including Red’s 2010 black Jeep Patriot.
She didn’t say whether the thefts occurred before Red’s murder or afterward, when they had returned to their victims’ mobile home.
The detectives felt sure that Joey had murdered DeeDee, but when they brought this up, Holly interrupted them.
“No,” she said. “I’m the one who duct-taped her—around her mouth, wrists, and ankles.”
That seemed almost impossible, but her next revelation was even more startling: “I killed her—with two different knives.”
Holly confessed to the detectives that she and Joey were also responsible for a murder in Oregon. They had killed the “kid,” she told them.
“Why?” they asked her.
“Because Myers sounded like a Jewish name,” she replied matter-of-factly. “When we were arrested, we were on our way to Sacramento to kill more Jews.”
The killers were like a pair of mad dogs on the loose, frothing with hatred for anyone they perceived as different, their rage exacerbated with each kill.
Holly told the Oregon State Police where they could find Red Pedersen’s body. The victim and his vehicle had been dumped in a wooded area about sixteen miles east of Sweet Home, Oregon. The investigators followed Holly’s directions and found the Jeep near a logging road in the Yellowbottom Campground area north of Green Peter Lake.
The Jeep had been pushed off a gravel road and down a precipitous embankment. Once they managed to climb down the steep incline and look inside, the mystery of Red Pedersen’s whereabouts was solved. His body was inside, with a single bullet wound in the back of his head just behind his right ear. A sign pinned to Red’s shirt read, “Child Molester.”
Red’s remains had been found about a hundred miles away from the Newport jazz festival. Early news reports had indicated that Cody Myers had met his killers in the coastal town. Investigators made a public request, asking to see any photos or videos taken at the jazz festival during the weekend of October 1, in hopes that images of the victim or his killers might have been recorded.
But from a geographical standpoint, it made more sense that the young man had met the dangerous couple in Corvallis. When Cody left his home in Lafayette on Saturday morning, he probably traveled south on Highway 99W. It was the logical route for his journey. Halfway there, he would have arrived in Corvallis and then taken U.S. Route 20 to Newport. As the midway point, Corvallis was the most likely spot to stop for gas or a snack.
It was also the same city where the backpack with the bloody clothing, knife, and stolen credit cards had been found in the park trash on September 29.
It was easy to see how Pedersen and Grigsby could have ended up in Corvallis. If they’d hitched a ride headed out of the Green Peter Lake area after dumping Red, it was a straightforward fifty-mile trip to Corvallis.
Corvallis is a college town, home to Oregon State University. The killers may have hung out in the city for a couple of days, and if Joey wore the turtleneck shirt that covered his tattoos, they could have easily blended in with the hundreds of students who roamed the streets there. A couple of bedraggled young people with backpacks would not have stood out.
* * *
On October 8, Joey Pedersen initiated contact with the police in Yuba City, California. Three days in a jail cell had evidently made him much more eager to talk about what had transpired in the twelve days since September 26.
Maybe he was jealous that Holly was getting all the publicity when he was the one who had planned all the crimes. Perhaps he regretted what he had done—which seemed hardly likely, particularly when he wanted to tell Yuba City detectives about a fourth murder victim.
Joey said it had occurred in Humboldt County in Eureka, California. This victim hadn’t had anything that Joey wanted. Joey killed him because he hated him—though he did not even know him. The victim was African-American. That, of course, made him a prime target for violent racists Holly and Joey.
The Yuba City police called detectives in Humboldt County and asked if they had any recent murders with an MO similar to Joey’s crimes.
They did. Reginald Alan Clark had been recently discovered, shot to death beneath a pile of clothes inside his blue 1989 Ford F-150 pickup.
On October 9, Joey Pedersen summoned a reporter from a local paper and held an abbreviated press conference.
He wanted to be sure that everyone knew that Holly Grigsby had nothing to do with his crimes and that he was solely responsible.
It was not the first time he had shown concern about Holly’s predicament. At the time of Joey’s arrest, authorities had found a note he’d written to Holly, promising her that he would make sure that she was eliminated from suspicion.
It was yet another of his grand plans that would not pan out as he hoped. His goal of vindicating Holly would be difficult to achieve, now that she had confessed to killing DeeDee Pedersen and participating in other murders.
Joey was showing an odd kind of gallantry, or so it seemed. He had murdered his own father and two strangers, and yet he was trying to save Holly, who had admitted to the vicious stabbing of an elderly and vulnerable woman who had shown her nothing but kindness and hospitality.
Perhaps Holly possessed all the traits a man like Joey was looking for.
Joey’s white-supremacy “enterprise” called for enriching its members and associates through murder, robbery, and the use of unauthorized devices and promoting and advancing a white-supremacy movement to “purify” and “preserve” the white race and “reclaim our country and culture” through acts of murder on the basis of race, color, and perceived “degenerate” acts, including sexual abuse, vagrancy, drug abuse, and other “riffraff.”
Members were also instructed to target Jewish leaders and others of the Jewish faith. All through their “by-laws,” the word murder was the first suggestion. It was an ugly, hate-filled document but one that people like Joey and Holly adhered to.
Given Joey’s preferences, who knew how m
any bodies were yet to be discovered out there in the forest that was now ablaze with orange vine maples, red sumac, red kinnikinnick, and yellow poplars? The weather would soon grow cold, there would be snow in the higher elevations, and finding hidden bodies would be next to impossible.
The investigators felt a sense of urgency.
Back in Everett, a “celebration of life” was held for DeeDee. Many mourners attended, although few of her friends had known her as the Leslie named in the obituaries. Most people knew her as DeeDee.
“I don’t think she fought Holly very hard,” her daughter Susan says sadly. “Once she realized that Red wasn’t coming home—ever—she didn’t want to be alone again. She grieved for my dad—Leroy Danner—for a long time, and she really loved Red. She wouldn’t have wanted to go on alone.”
Lori Jane nods in agreement. The sisters believe it would have been very difficult for their mother to carry on with life after Red was murdered. She had lost one husband to divorce, the second to cancer, and the third to murder by his only son. If she hadn’t been home that morning when Red drove Joey and Holly to the bus station, DeeDee would have survived but suffered the horror of waiting for days to learn what had happened to him, only to find out the worst of her imagining was true. The rest of her life would have been full of nightmares.
* * *
If they hadn’t been stopped by Officer Terry Uhrich, at the rate Joey and Holly were cutting killing swaths through the three western states, they might have taken their places in infamy alongside Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, plus numerous other cross-country murderers.
The 2011 holidays approached, and the killing couple remained locked up. They had both been charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder. The Snohomish County prosecutor, Mark Roe, and his deputy, Craig Matheson—who would handle the prosecution in the murders of DeeDee and Red Pedersen—requested that Joey Pedersen be evaluated by a panel of forensic psychiatrists. Was he fit to stand trial? The question “Is the subject a danger to himself or others?” was deliberately excluded from this evaluation. He had already demonstrated that he was.
On January 25, 2012, three psychiatrists met David Joseph “Joey” Pedersen in a secure ward (F2) at Washington’s Western State Hospital. His social worker and one of his attorneys warned him that the fruits of this intense interview would be nonconfidential, and he accepted that easily.
An attorney was at Joey’s side in the room, and Joey seemed pleased when he was told that he could refuse to answer any question and also consult privately with the lawyer when he wished.
He was pleasant and agreeable—not what one might expect from a “mad-dog killer.” When he gave his version of his life, the three psychiatrists noted that this was only Joey’s perspective. They knew better than to take his word as gospel.
Asked about his childhood, Joey said he had spent half of his life in prison, beginning with his first arrest when he was sixteen. “I was kept inside the joint, more or less, for the next fourteen and a half years.”
He told them about his sister, Gloria, who was fifteen months older than he was. He felt he had a reasonably “intact” family when he was growing up. His father was in the Marines, and his mother did not work. “That was before women felt the need to work outside the home,” Joey explained.
Asked if he or his sister was ever abused by their father, Joey said that Red had acted “in a less than ideal manner.” And then he softened the vague comment even more by adding that everyone had his or her definition of abuse. Later in the interview, Joey referred to his father as a “child molester” but then refused to give any details about that.
He said that his parents were at “opposite ends of the spectrum,” with his father being extremely strict and his mother very permissive.
“My parents separated when I was nine, and my sister and I went to live with my aunt, who had lots of foster children, too,” Joey said. “Those were the best four years of my life.”
When describing his move to his mother’s home at age thirteen, Joey explained, “My mother suffered from depression all her life and also multiple personality disorder.” Joey said that she had been hospitalized for inpatient psychiatric care numerous times in both Oregon and California.
“I believe she did make suicide attempts,” he commented. Remembering his time with his mom in his mid-teens, he said, “She let me play hooky because she didn’t want me to leave her.”
Joey said the schools he went to were always too easy for him (a fact supported by his court-ordered IQ tests). He was bored in class, but he had never had the opportunity to participate in any gifted-student programs because his family was always moving to different school districts.
It was clear that Joey Pedersen considered himself superior to most other students. “In the classroom, they teach to the lowest common denominator,” he said. “So I’m waiting for them to get it through some idiot’s thick skull. I finally dropped out of school.”
With school behind him, he worked at fast-food joints and also was employed laying carpet and doing other manual labor, all the while seething over the unfairness of it. He was superior, but no one seemed to understand that.
The attitude of superiority would escalate. (This may well have been the root cause that led him to join a white supremacists group.)
Asked about the specifics of his robbery crimes, Joey was careful about how he answered: “I pled guilty to robbing a few espresso stands, a Circle K, and a McDonald’s . . . I was treated as an adult—even though it was my first arrest.” His original sentence was for six years, but his prison infractions kept adding time to his sentence.
In 2012, Joey was in danger of facing “The Big Bitch.” In convicts’ jargon, three felonies meant life in prison. Three strikes and you’re out.
It seemed a moot point; he was already facing four first-degree aggravated-murder charges. He was sentenced to six years in an adult prison when he was sixteen, but he actually more than doubled that, serving fourteen and a half years for infractions inside, including those for the assaults and his threatening letter to an Idaho judge.
For a man who bragged about how smart he was, Joey Pedersen had done some really dumb things. And paid for them. His parole in May 2011 was the first time he’d seen the world on the other side of prison bars since he was sixteen. Now he was thirty-one. He’d met Holly Grigsby soon after he was a free man. And he still pled her cause. “She shouldn’t be sitting under two counts of aggravated murder,” he said. “She should be at home with her kid.”
Joey had never married, never had children, never served in the military; he had been incarcerated during the years when most young men laid down the foundation of their lives. Asked about any use of drugs or alcohol, he said that he’d seen his father’s alcoholism, and he had vowed that he would never use drugs or alcohol.
“I tried beer once and marijuana once, but I’ve never used meth, cocaine, heroin, or any of that stuff.”
Joey explained his multiple tattoos, including the SWP (Supreme White Power) across the front of his neck, a swastika on his chest, and the image of Adolf Hitler on his belly. The psychiatric team was looking for any indication that he might have mental-health issues and if there were more members of his family—other than his mother—who might be psychotic.
He denied a widespread family propensity for mental problems. Indeed, he seemed calm and cooperative in this interview, entirely appropriate in his responses, even making jokes that suited the situation. His worldview had begun to form when he was seventeen to eighteen. Joey was eager to deny that his philosophy was a concept formed because he’d joined white supremacists in prison as a means of survival. He refused to be seen as a “simplistic stereotype.”
If he had to label what his beliefs were, Pedersen said that the right answer would be “white racialism.”
“I see everything as a battle—and race is paramount. I see our culture as
Europeans being threatened.”
Joey Pedersen’s philosophies were disturbing, but his intelligence was apparent to the staff in Ward F2 and also to the forensic psychiatric panel. His overall IQ was 107, in the high normal range. His vocabulary was impressive for a man who had been in prison since he was a teenager. He spoke with a fluidity and grasp of the English language that many college graduates don’t have.
He obviously enjoyed being at center stage and fencing with his audience.
One of the psychiatrists felt that while Joey was not insane—medically or legally—he was suffering from at least two personality disorders: anxiety disorder and antisocial disorder. Joey denied any major psychiatric symptoms. He was, according to the panel, “well organized and reality based.”
Joey Pedersen attended every ward group offered, and he was popular with the staff, flirting with female guards as he sought more food or treats. He was polite and could be wickedly humorous; it became difficult to picture Joey as a roving killer when he presented as such an affable, bright, cooperative prisoner.
But he was the epitome of a sociopath. Like a chameleon, he could assimilate the personality that would do him the greatest good at any particular time. And this would allow him to maintain his need to appear perfectly sane and in control.
Joey requested a visit from his mother, who still lived in Oregon. “I’m going to death row,” he said calmly. “I’m indifferent to being executed. Seeing Mom is for her to have a last hug. I saw her and hugged her in August 2011 after I got out of prison.”
His request was denied.
Joey Pedersen’s racism was twisted. He said he had no regrets whatsoever about the people he had killed. He was disappointed only that he hadn’t made it to Sacramento, where he’d intended to kill more Jews.
“I have no intention of using an excuse that I was an abused child to beg for leniency,” Joey said firmly. “I know what I did, and I have no regrets. I did what had to be done, and there’s no changing the facts. I killed those people, and they needed to be killed.”