Darren Dee O'Neall

O'Neall reconnected with a former high school classmate who moved to the state of Washington when O'Neall made his own arrival there. O'Neall was encouraged to stay and found an old duplex in Puyallup, before acquiring a job in truck driving in Tacoma. When heading into Portland, Oregon on his route, during the evening of January 17, 1987, O'Neall spotted a fourteen-year-old teenage girl, whose identity has never been released to protect her, walking on a freeway to a convenience store, past her curfew without her parents' knowledge. O'Neall drove past her a second time, then parked his truck and watched for her to leave. When she left with soda and candy, O'Neall grabbed her and threw her into his truck to kidnap her, threatening with a knife and an unseen Ruger to kill her if she screamed or tried to fight or run. Driving her to a secluded unpaved location while she was tied and gagged in the sleeping compartment, O'Neall stripped, raped, and sodomized the girl, once with her own empty soda bottle, for several hours. After O'Neall threatened the girl several ways, such as possibly murdering her or selling her to pimps, the girl pleaded to be released and that she wouldn't tell. O'Neall was somehow successfully convinced, driving the girl to a spot where she could reach home easily and left her on the side of the road. She went straight to a truck stop, where an employee graciously drove her back home, and when told her parents, they called the police. A rape exam was conducted to collect evidence, and the girl was questioned for a description, but O'Neall was long gone. He changed his appearance and fled to Edgewood, Washington, where O'Neall found work as a laminator under the alias of Herb Johnson. The girl would grapple with continuous fears of the dark and an aversion towards men from the trauma.[1][2][3][4]

O'Neall met Mary Barnes in town in March, eventually beginning a relationship with her. O'Neall would eventually want to targeted another woman, heading to Baldy's Tavern in Puyallup with Mary on the 27th. When it was past midnight, he saw 22-year-old Robin Smith, who was with her fiancé Larron Crowston and worked as a waitress for funds for their wedding. Robin was still recovering from post-traumatic stress after her dear friend Trish was raped, stabbed, and thrown off a balcony from her apartment after she died, regarded as someone who would fight out of refusal to be a victim. Wanting to get Robin alone, O'Neall made Mary declare an "after hours party" at their apartment to the patrons present. Larron left the apartment before Robin did to go fishing, and after Mary left the apartment for a few hours, she returned to see O'Neall and Robin weren't there any longer. O'Neall stopped by an employer's place in a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker to leave his dog with them and buy a truck, and the employer heard a thumping noise in his trunk, as if someone was kicking. O'Neall alleged he locked another dog of his in there to punish them before driving away, despite the employer's protests. The employer recalled no barking was coming from that space in the car. Robin's family friend Jim Chaney later questioned him, and someone there at the time with a drug addiction had stated he saw a leg in the trunk with a purple and white sock, despite the employer trying to shut him up.[2][3][4][5][6]

Larron returned from his trip and slept, waking up to realize Robin still hadn't returned. After calling her mother Edna, who replied she wasn't at her home either, they reported to the Pierce County Sheriff's Office. After Robin's loved ones gave a description of her to Detectives Walt Stout and Terry Wilson, they searched Mary's apartment, where O'Neall had taken supplies, including food, clothes, camping equipment, and even cords pulled from the television and some lamps. Robin's family scoured the apartment themselves and found lots of drug paraphernalia. The police learned from Mary and other witnesses O'Neall would dress in cowboy attire, lied about being in Army Rangers and Green Berets, also worked as a bartender and in woodwork, and made small changes to his head and facial hair, weight, and even when he wore wide glasses. An arrest warrant was issued on O'Neall for evading justice, and his description was disseminated across the country and to nearby departments.[1][5]

Two days later, a hospital took in a patient matching O'Neall's description, covered in cuts and other injuries from his face downward. They remembered he had a teardrop tattoo next to his eye and "JUNE" across his knuckles, as well as frightening to the point male staff were present due to their lack of security. O'Neall was fidgety and left without treatment. A flagman later saw O'Neall try to get past roadwork near Mount Rainier, stop his car on the side of the road for a half hour, then turn around; investigators believe he was finding a place to dispose of Robin after she was already dead. The day after, on March 30, the Chrysler was found abandoned at a rest stop north of Everett, Washington by a state trooper, covered in blood and the trunk being littered with pieces of bone, some knocked out teeth, and Robin's bloodstained jacket, breaking hopes from the police that Robin would be found alive. Its discovery was briefly delayed by a typo in which state the license plate was from, but a seller at the impound lot it was taken to soon called the police when reading a news report on O'Neall and the car. The Chrysler was revealed to have been stolen from a truck driver in Nampa, Idaho, who met O'Neall when he was hitchhiking under the alias of Jerry Zebulun Macranahan in 1986. O'Neall stayed in his home for almost a month, before making off with his car, Ruger sidearm, and $200 cash.[1][5][7]

Edna led months of searches through Greenwater, Washington, where Robin was coincidentally buried, as a psychic she consulted for free led her to running or dripping water in the area. Dozens of volunteers, including Jim and Robin's siblings, Robert and Brenda, combed through the wilderness in the area, Brenda still weeks pregnant during that time. On Memorial Day, May 25, hikers eventually found bones in the woods across an area near a stream. As police were understaffed and low-funded at the time and needed Robin's full skeleton to identify her, Edna herself contributed efforts and found and collected the rest of the skeleton she could find that would later be confirmed to be her daughter's remains. Robin couldn't be identified easily through forensics, as her blood type wasn't registered, and dental records were difficult since she hadn't seen a dentist in years; but her clothes she was wearing when she disappeared were found folded at the scene, and her wallet and ID were found inside a nearby tree. Forensic anthropology analyses revealed Robin was killed by blunt-force trauma, and a rusty hammer was found in a nearby stream, confirmed as the weapon O'Neall bludgeoned Robin to death with, a hammer that was snatched from yet another employer around the time of Robin's disappearance. An arrest warrant was issued on O'Neall for Robin's murder in the first degree. Lorran needed professional help and psychiatric prescriptions to cope with his traumatic regret over not stopping Robin's kidnapping and murder.[1]

Around the same time, the teenage girl O'Neall kidnapped and repeatedly raped was tracked when police were scouring additional offenses across Washington and nearby states in hopes of following O'Neall's movements, having already heard of his record and open arrest warrant in Colorado Springs. The girl positively picked O'Neall out of a photo lineup without hesitation, and O'Neall was named in the warrant for the arrest for that crime, the girl ready to testify after the charges having been open all those months.[3][2]

On April 24, O'Neall turned up in Bellingham, Washington under the alias of Mike James Johnson, finding work as a bartender at the La Paloma restaurant. He went on a date with 29-year-old Wendy Aughe, a single mother of two children working her way through night classes at McDonald's Beauty School. After she and O'Neall left the restaurant the next early morning, and they gave a friend of Wendy's a ride to their apartment, she wasn't heard from again. Wendy's mother went to her home soon after her daughter's babysitter said she never arrives, and she found an undisturbed scene of blood all over Wendy's bedroom, prompting a police report. Wendy's wallet, keys, and red Ford Torino were gone, and her bedroom was splashed with her blood that soaked into her mattress. There were also traces of blond hair that wasn't Wendy's, an acrylic nail from when she went to a salon before the date, and dried semen, which implied a rape happened at the scene. Spatters of her blood with growing velocity heavily conveyed she was attacked and presumably killed from repeated strikes. Her clothes she wore that day were folded and wedged between her bed and an adjacent wall.

The restaurant owner revealed O'Neall just wrote information down for his application on a placemat, which was taken as evidence along with Wendy's bed. He worked at the restaurant for two days, ending his time with clearing the cash register and making off with the money and a swiped bottle of Jack Daniel's liquor. The listed address on the placemat was the city Lighthouse Mission homeless shelter, where the desk clerk conveyed to Detective C. Jarrett O'Neall alleged to be moving in with a woman he met. O'Neall drove off in Wendy's car despite not having a car beforehand. After releasing an all-points bulletin of O'Neall, a United States Customs showed O'Neall crossing back into America from Canada at Oroville, Washington, alone in Wendy's car. The Ford Torino was found ditched in a tavern parking lot in Eugene, Oregon on May 2, where O'Neall was also spotted trying to sell a gold necklace when local Detective J.T. Parr asked around. Prints on a Burger King hamburger box found in the car and on the placemat were confirmed as O'Neall's, and clothing in the car were confirmed to have been loaned to him from Lighthouse Mission. FBI Agent Dell Orris was assigned to the investigation when the Pierce County police placed a call to the bureau.[1][5][8][9][10]