And Marlene was the victim of police malpractice, which had lethal consequences. The details throughout are extraordinarily vivid. Melissas parents awoke to find the young women gone, their tent empty. Shed need evidence so police could find him later. How were you able to describe his breathing? The reports dont shed light on why they doubted her. She fought back in every scene, but they all ended the same. My editors, Therese Bottomly and Margaret Haberman, told me over and over to think about scenes and to identify cliffhangers. Her description provided a distinct sense of place. Ackroyd was raised in the small logging town of Sweet Home, Oregon. I moved my desk next to Daves. I asked my colleagues if they thought readers would know about Fireballs and the consensus was yes. Pronunciation of John Arthur Ackroyd with 1 audio pronunciation and more for John Arthur Ackroyd. My footnotes for this passage: Oregonian interview with Byron Pickle: They had paddles. On Christmas Eve morning in 1978, she went out for a run in Camp Sherman, where she, her husband and friends planned to spend the holiday. We talked to grieving loved ones. The investigators glanced at each other, stunned by the damning account all these years later. Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. Their clothes were spattered with so much blood that she got rid of Becks jeans and shirt. The Highway 20 Serial Killer Unexplained Oregon. Please take me home.. It meant losing me in the rotation. Its also a newspaper story, not a book. I never got a clear answer about why it was sealed or who made that request. We chose to go with the legacy of the investigation. Her hair was matted with sticks and dirt. Covering thought leadership in journalism, 2023 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, It was pure serendipity. There was Ackroyd, standing at the back of his Ford pickup. Why was it important to do so? Again, the investigator playing Ackroyd tried to grab the woman, only this time she wrestled the gun from his grip and pretended to fire a single fatal shot to his heart. I remember him spanking her over one of those old school windup alarm clocks and it got broke and he was trying to fix it in and stuff and him and mom were talking about it and they were both getting heatedmom said to line them up and spank them until (one confesses) They were getting ready to line us up. Accused of felony theft as a teen, he opted to enlist in the Army and was stationed in Korea, Thailand and Germany, where he worked as a mechanic. Word that Ackroyds stepdaughter had vanished spread quickly to neighboring Jefferson County, where Kaye Turner had been killed more than a decade earlier. To some, she seemed lost, almost invisible. He claimed he invited her to join him on a drive to photograph deer on back roads near the junction. I wanted to absorb all of the material I had collected and then tell the story with authority. When parent conferences rolled around, no one showed up. Unsatisfying because he pleaded no contest but his sentence was suspended as part of the plea so he was never formally convicted and his plea deal didnt require him to reveal what hed done with Rachanda. This is a dramatic scene Ackroyd walks into the Sweet Home shop spattered with blood and offers a strange explanation. What was your source and why did you use it when so many other times you chose to paraphrase speech? The general store in Camp Sherman, Oregon, where John Ackroyd showed up to report he had discovered some clothing in the woods that might've belonged to Kaye Turner, whose disappearance in 1978 caused a stir that lingered for years in this small vacation community just off Highway 20. The annotated version that ran online was a much shorter version of my own footnoted drafts of this story. You shift now to the killer. The story reaches its powerful chronological conclusion. I can hear her bafflement on the 911 audio, which Ive listened to over and over. Over two decades, four women disappeared and one was raped along the same stretch of road in rural Oregon. June 12, 2022 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 0 Sheila often slept away from home but stayed in touch with her mother. A few months later, in 2013, the Linn County district attorney took Rachandas case to grand jurors. It seemed like decent shorthand for conveying the remoteness of this area. You end this section by withholding what happened with the grand jury. Ackroyd was one of many leads they pursued. Over time, Ackroyd added incriminating details to his account. Here is the . They began walking along U.S. 101, covering more than six miles to the turnoff to Highway 20, then headed east. Her husband was abusive and she drifted from Ackroyd. Polygraph "test" of Marlene K. Gabrielsen conducted by Sergeant Phil R. Ensminger of the Lane County Sheriff's Office . The DA knew Ackroyd had changed his story and admitted he had talked to Kaye the morning he encountered her on a run. Again, he didnt respond. Pretty bleak. She thought of how Kaye must have felt, the air so cold she could see her breath. You handle time very effectively, jumping from minute to minute, day to day, month to month and year to year, eliding what came between without the reader feeling a sense of having missed something. Then Rachanda Pickle went missing from the desolate highway compound where she lived, never to be seen again. Ackroyds grim speculation about the harm that had likely come to Rachanda echoed gory stories like the ones hed replay over and over in Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.. Anyone who is reporter, you said, knows that a good editor is hard to come by. This is what we heard at the Youth Club in the early 1970's through to the late 1980's, when most nights were party nights, men were men and girls were girls and you met on the dance floor. A spare style is my natural tendency. Yes and it was something I struggled with. Beck left Oregon. She saw it as a way of letting readers know how much work went into this series. It moved around a bit until it landed here. A couple of weeks later, Marlene sat in the back of an unmarked police car as two officers drove her to the lie detector test. Ackroyd had indeed come across Kaye but didnt go to police, even though he saw posters with her picture at the nearby Santiam Junction highway compound, where he lived. Some of these details were included in police reports. Then Rachanda Pickle, Ackroyds 13-year-old stepdaughter, disappeared. Harmon was more direct when he returned to the prison a second time. You aim to anticipate the next question theyll have. If police had believed her, she might have been his last. Ackroyd earned low grades in school; his high school diploma was marked special education. He was a loner, bullied and beaten by classmates. Mike Harmon, a longtime investigator with the Linn County Sheriffs Office, worried Ackroyd had a shot at parole. I wanted to pick up the watch detail again because we first saw Kaye wearing the watch as she heads on a run and now the watch is a detail in her killing. He seemed almost relieved to be able to talk about what hed seen. Interviews with Rachanda Pickles brother, Byron, and one of her childhood friends. Why? He rolled up the window and slammed the door. Crombie was just wrapping up a four-year stint on the cannabis beat she had created when Bottomly called her into her office and told her about the case. Its definitely hard to read but written, I hope its seen, with deliberation and circumspection. Something, likely a struggle, had knocked out the stem, stopping the watch. The story, photos and documentary took home five Northwest Regional Emmys, the Bruce Baer Award for Oregons best investigative reporting, and was a finalist for the Scripps Howard multimedia journalism award. The editing and revisions were often focused on fleshing out an idea and switching up styles so it wasnt all spare and lean if that makes sense. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William Blake , Charles Dickens , T. S. Eliot , Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More , he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards . She returned to the campground, where a stranger said his buddy, John Ackroyd, could give her a lift. Secondary trauma from reporting stories like this is real. It felt clunky to me to stop and quote a source. They wrote down his habit of taking time off around the disappearances, as hed done with Kaye and Rachanda. The language of the story is spare and lean. Ackroyd was later charged with Kaye's murder -- the only killing he was ever prosecuted for. Theyd noticed that Ackroyds truck was still parked outside and his work rig wasnt there. Ackroyd knew, too, the dirt spurs that led off the highway and into the forest. At the same time, a dozen investigators working the Turner case seized on Ackroyds shifting accounts. It was the first time shed seen him since that summer morning. Laront remembered the night when a bloodied Ackroyd came into the shop. This time you use a direct quote? Sandy Turner, Noels wife, answered and greeted us warmly. I t was the last time any cop talked to Ackroyd. How did you reconstruct the details included in this long section about Marlenes rape and the aftermath? You felt a tremendous obligation to the victims and their loved ones in telling this story. Eventually, the investigation stalled. She talked about how she thought he was a logger or someone who made a living in the woods. Marlene slowly stood, wearing only her T-shirt and jacket. Yes! He was convicted of a sex crime in Minnesota, served seven months in prison, and moved to California. It was a great detail that I needed to work into the story. A father himself now, Byron gets a catch in his voice when he talks about it. How can you say with certainty that he would have heard the river? Later, they mentioned the bizarre encounter to a foreman, but the anecdote never made it past shop gossip. Dried blood covered his arms and hands. We needed to say that. She handed police a brown paper bag with clothes Marlene wore on the night of the attack. Tagged: The Oregonian. By then, The Oregonian/OregonLive also was investigating Ackroyd. Rachanda disappeared on July 10, 1990. Did you assume readers would know what a Fireball is? The men were told to drop it. Marlene glimpsed a .22-caliber rifle on a rack in the cab and a hunting knife stuck in the lid of an old coffee can near the drivers seat. Ackroyd had offered his hunting buddy, Roger Dale Beck, as his alibi, but another jury found Beck guilty of murder in the Turner case, too. There were days when we were depleted after doing interviews or looking at these files and crime scene photos. Its a combination of rhythm the variety is more interesting and simply finding ways to weave in the necessary details of who, what, when, where and why without overwhelming readers. Prosecutors didn't have a body. In it, he thanked me for telling the stories of Ackroyds other victims. They found the other sneaker, mostly intact. What sources did you rely on to reconstruct the events of your trial? . We gobbled up newsroom resources and space online and in the paper, but theres a limit and thats the reality of the job and format. Gary had a troubled childhood. Why? Her case remained unsolved. Biography Current Affairs & Politics General Nonfiction History Music, Film & Performing Arts Religion Social Sciences. Did she feel shed been raped? Investigators believe he killed an unknown number of other victims whose remains are scattered off Highway 20, a two-lane road that crosses central Oregon west-to-east, often disappearing into the shadowy maw of dense evergreen forests.