Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers Read Online Free PDF Page B

Patterson checked the Hood River orchard, he learned that Stolle and Snell had been hired as temporary pickers, and that they’d worked on September 26 and 27. They had, however, failed to show up on Sunday the 28th.
    “They came in on the 29th,” the orchard foreman said, “but they only picked up their checks and left. We haven’t seen them since.”
    Rudy Snell told the orchard foreman that he lived in Albany, Oregon, and that his wife was sick, so he’d had to go home. Oregon State Police verified that Snell did live in Albany. Armed with a search warrant, they brought in criminalists from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab to process his vehicle. Snell didn’t protest. Actually, he couldn’t; he was in jail in Albany on drug charges.
    While Jack Stolle was short and slight, Rudy Snell was a huge man who weighed more than 250 pounds.
    Detective Don Danner flew to Oregon to interview Snell, who was very cooperative. He said he’d met Jack Stolle for the first time in early September, and they’d picked fruit together in Hood River off and on during the month. They had picked on the 26th and 27th, getting off about 3 P.M. on that Saturday.
    “We never left the Hood River area Saturday or Sunday,” he said.
    That seemed to shoot down the Chelan County investigators’ firm belief that they had found the killer or killers of Beverly Johnson and Patty Weidner. But they weren’t ready to give up.
    They weren’t sure Rudy Snell was telling the truth, or even if he had his mental timetable right. He did remember that he and Jack Stolle had met two girls, but his description of them didn’t sound at all like the two murder victims. “We drove over to Biggs Junction and spent the night, but we were back in Hood River before noon on Sunday. I worked on my car on Sunday afternoon, and we started picking again on Monday morning.”
    The orchard foreman, however, had said the men had come in on Monday only to get their paychecks. And he wasn’t sure of the time.
    Rudy Snell hadn’t actually seen Jack Stolle, according to his story, at least, from before noon on Sunday, September 28 until sometime Monday. “Jack quit the orchard on Monday—he said his stomach hurt. He told me he might go to California or Wenatchee. I left him at the bus stop about eight Monday night, and I went home to Albany.”
    The results of the processing of Snell’s car were startling. The state police criminalists found many dog hairs as they examined the contents of their vacuum cleaner bags. The hairs were gray or white. Snell explained that away easily enough; he owned a Samoyed, and the hairs were from his own dog. Hair comparisons rarely yield absolute results, even under a scanning electron microscope. They can only be deemed microscopically alike in class and characteristics.
    Rudy Snell acknowledged that he had once picked apples in the Wenatchee area. “But that was seven years ago,” he said, “and I haven’t been back there since.”
    He willingly took a polygraph test and Oregon State Police experts said the results indicated he was telling the truth about not being in Washington State for years. Nor did his blood pressure, breathing rate, pulse, or galvanic skin response suggest that he had killed Beverly Johnson or Patty Weidner, and he clearly didn’t know who had. He showed no deception at all during any questioning about the Chelan County murders.
    That left Jack Stolle as the lone suspect. Even so, Stolle would have to have adhered to a very tight schedule if he had killed the young women. It was about 170 miles from Hood River to the murder site. If Snell was remembering accurately, Stolle had been out of his sight from sometime Sunday morning until sometime Monday. Sunday was the 28th of September, the date Dr. Bonafaci believed the women had died. Stolle would have had to have caught a good hitch that took him all the way to Chelan. It was possible that he knew about the shack and had gone there to sleep Sunday night,