Blood Secrets: Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstructionist by Ann Rule Page A

door and slipped out the back. He started smashing windows to draw their attention and give Trish a chance to escape, but one of them followed him and opened fire to stop the racket. He shot Doug eight times with a rifle.
    I broke the news to his estranged wife and daughters, drove theeldest child to the funeral home, and gave Doug’s eulogy, sharing memories of my old friend from earlier, happier times.
    Though it’s no excuse for what happened to Phil or to Doug, juggling police work with family life can admittedly be tough. Nearly everyone I knew on the force went through his or her share of personal struggles. Carolyn and I separated in 1980 and divorced five years later.
    Not long after Doug Vanderson’s death, I was fortunate enough to give a lecture on blood patterns at a forensics conference. After I had finished speaking, I was putting my notes away when a beautiful woman named Penny approached me and said she had a few questions about my lecture. Penny and I married in 1986, and she has been a great support in both my life and my career. She does plenty of her own fascinating work as well. As a dental hygienist with an interest in forensic odontology, she was part of a National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) that assisted local medical examiners’ offices in identifying bodies through their dental records after the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina disasters. She also spent several years designing and perfecting every aspect of my lab, which took me from the drafty, cavernous barn and makeshift garage space of my early consulting days to a state-of-the-art facility where everything is user-friendly and at my fingertips, whether it’s case files, slides, high-intensity lighting equipment, or bottles of the luminescent chemicals I use to reveal hidden traces of blood spatter.
Murder Mysteries
    By the time I met Penny, I had been investigating murders for a number of years—since 1975, when I became a homicide detective for theMultnomah County Sheriff’s Office. I still remember my first case vividly.
    Successful forty-nine-year-old businessman James Turel, a polio survivor, was found strangled and beaten to death with his own crutches in the offices of his company, the Columbia Bookkeeping Service, on August 29, 1974. My partner, Joe Woods, and I inherited his murder investigation from renowned detective Blackie Yazzolino when he retired, and our first step was to review the crime scene photos and the original detectives’ notes. Though money was missing from the victim’s wallet and the vault was open, the scene looked too neat for a robbery. There was no sign of forced entry, and none of the desks or file cabinets had been disturbed. In fact, all signs suggested Turel had been murdered by someone he knew.
    Rod Addicks, a tax accountant and partial owner of Turel’s company, drew our attention right away. First, Addicks had refused to take a polygraph test when questioned along with other firm employees after Turel’s death. Second, shortly before his death, Turel had confided in his son Stan that he had grown uneasy about Addicks because a house belonging to Addicks had burned down just sixty days after it was purchased. Addicks, he said, seemed downright glib about the fire. Turel suspected arson and told Stan he was checking into the man’s background.
    Months of investigation proved that James Turel’s instincts were on the mark. We dug up a load of dirt on the seemingly clean-cut and mild-mannered Addicks, including allegations of securities fraud and arson in several states. When incriminating evidence surfaced linking Turel’s former seasonal tax preparer, Si Cross, to the arson ring, Cross offered to help with the homicide investigation in exchange for immunity. He told us that Addicks had tried on multiple occasions to hire him and several other men he knew, including his cousin, to kill Turel. Cross agreed initially—for a fee of