Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 8

Austin American-Statesman Sunday, December 11, 1983 AS "Vis i mrii: darcl I en Hay, A trail of death Counting the deaths Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole left behind on their Interstate meanderings Is a task that police may not finish for years. The two claim as many as 350 murders but less than 100 have been confirmed. This map, compiled through police lists and interviews with investigators across the country, shows where 61 victims were abducted. Individually or together, Lucas and Toole are suspects in each case. Several have resulted in: one knows what to say and it's been three IN years.

Maybe it will get better some Mother of victim Regina Campbell Fatal encounter of victims tied to interstates I iff Lucas and Toole charged Lucas convicted Lucas charged Toole charged Rulan McGill i By PETE SZILAGYI and JERRY WHITE American-Statesman Staff Jl' A fP Nv lr California ft) California XN x' B'" myi r- Texas Rashell Lee Ward, 14 I San Diego if March3'1983 ZZJ Happy Howry Sacramento I. 1 1 4 Loreano Cuevat, 20s April 5, 1982 Davis Elizabeth Wolf, 27 September 4, 1977 Riverside Unidentified woman December 18, 1981 San Diego Barbara Nantais, 16 August 12, 1978 rSS. Texas 1 nmwi)iinaMK I Midland MHaM NEI Paso OdessaT A V. March 2, 1979 fl tJT I Elizabeth Ann Allen -r4 1 Odessa Qp hh k. Beverly Joyce Luttrull, 46 ftjfl Xy March 13, 1981 ff- Happy Howry, 66 Tyler rJ i Midland August 6, 1982 Kate Rich Knaty Booth, 19 Georgetown February 2,1980 Frank Kevin Key, 19 and I Don Allen, 57 0 nit.

18' i deputies were still trying to identify the young girl found west of town. In deference to community sensibilities, the police will not say for the record if Rashell was molested, but local gossip has it that her slaying was sexually motivated. The killing "was quite a shock" to the city of Red Bluff, Mrs. Turner said. "It had quite a sobering effect.

Rashell was very well liked. For a few days we could hardly have school. The police went around to all the schools and told students how to protect themselves, not to have any fears but to be cautious." FOR WEEKS afterward, Becky could not sleep alone or walk along Jackson Street. "There are several schools on the street, and you'd never see a girl walking alone. If they were walking, it would be with several fellows," her mother said.

In April, Rashell's parents, the Turners and the 1 1 students at the school gathered on the lawn to plant a tulip tree in Rashell's memory. At its base a plaque reads: "Rashell Ward. She was loved by all." After months of following cold leads and bad tips in Rashell's slaying, the Tehama County sheriff's office and residents of Red Bluff think the mystery is solved. The answer came from a town even smaller than Red Bluff, from Montague in North Texas. Puffing on a Pall Mall in the interview room of the Montague County Jail, Henry Lee Lucas dispassionately reported that he killed Rashell Ward.

She was one of hundreds of young women he said he had slain while cruising on and off the nation's interstate highways over an eight-year span. There are still enough unanswered questions to prevent an indictment of Lucas. Yet Sgt. Allen Grobes of the Tehama County sheriff's office said "we are very optimistic" that the case is solved. Grobes and one of his superiors interviewed Lucas for three hours in Montague last summer.

In confessing the slaying, Lucas could not remember the name of the town where the crime took place, but he described its location, 143 miles north of Sacramento, as well as the Interstate 5 rest stops north of town. Sandy Howes is not sure if Henry Lucas killed her daughter. She just wants to forget about it, but she has found that forgetting doesn't come easy to her, nor to the other citizens of Red Bluff who thought it couldn't happen in their valley. December 3. 1982 November 6, 1978 Big Spring Unidentified woman, I MIJ Carolyn Cervenka Round Rock Conroe Nevada Sparks Rulan McGill 32 July 10, 1979 Reno Jeannie Smith, 17 October 1978 Carson City Mike Whitten, 26 December 1, 1979 Colorado Denver Sylvia Quayle, 31 August, 1981 Kansas Topeka Tirell Ocobock, 18 April 26, 1976 Shirley R.

Steiner, 23 July 22, 1978 Oklahoma Oklahoma City Arley Bell Killian, 22 April 19, 1979 Mustang Carl Garrison, 38 December 7, 1980 Rashell Lee Ward Red Bluff, Calif. March 3, 1983 When the sun rises over the Sierra Neva-das and warms the Sacramento Valley, folks in Red Bluff, will tell you it's just the beginning of another day in paradise. Most of the 10,000 residents are high on this community, with its nearby ranches and orchards, and a quality of life worth boasting about. They've got famous appaloosas, a famous bull auction, famous boat races and a famous rodeo, or so they say. But last March 3, there was no sun spilling into the valley.

A light rain was falling, and there was a stranger in paradise. Rashell Ward usually walked to school with her friend and classmate Becky Turner, whose mother, Marjorie, is the principal and teacher at the tiny Seventh Day Advent-ist School on Jackson Street. RASHELL SNAPPED OPEN her new umbrella and began the walk of six blocks from her modest neighborhood, down to Jackson Street, busy with students from the several other schools near the Seventh Day Advent-ist School. She walked past Becky's apartment and noticed that the family's car was gone. She didn't bother stopping, thinking that Mrs.

Turner had driven Becky because of the rain. About 150 yards farther down Jackson Street, as Rashell neared the bluff with the public elementary school on it, a brown car pulled to the curb. A man with a beard and long hair got out, and walked over to her. He showed her a gun. She walked to the car and got in.

About an hour later, a rancher west of Red Bluff on Pine Creek Road was in his home, about seven miles from town, when he heard a sound that means trouble in the rural areas of Tehama County. A gunshot. Wary after months of senseless cattle shootings, the rancher went to dial the county sheriff. As he held the phone preparing to dial, he saw through a window a brown car moving down the road. He later told a reporter from the Red Bluff newspaper that he "thought someone might have shot a yearling calf.

Because the car just drove calmly off, I stood there with the phone in my hand and didn't do anything about it." SOON AFTER 11 A.M., as he was walking his fence line, the rancher found Rashell lying along a dirt road, still wearing the jeans and blouse she chose that morning for school. Her hands were taped in front of her. She had been shot in the head. He called the sheriff. Rashell's mother, Sandy Howes, returned from work that afternoon at the local California Highway Patrol substation, but Rashell was not home.

She was very late. At work, Mrs. Howes had heard that the body of a teen-age girl had been found that day. Alarmed, she drove in her van to the Turners' apartment, where Becky met her at the door and told her Rashell had not been to school. Mrs.

Howes turned pale. She returned home and called the sheriff's office, where Kathy Whorton Monroe, La. April 4, 1981 In small Southern towns, Baptist churches are social and spiritual centers. In Bastrop, about the largest is Green Acres Baptist Church, a big white brick building with a huge parking lot. Green Acres was Kathy Whorton's spiritual home.

The 20-year-old Northeast Louisiana State University student was a Sunday school teacher and a choir member. Her mother, Betty, is the church pianist. Her father, Lee Roy, is a deacon, and her grandmother is nursery director. Whorton was a busy woman, with her studies at the university, the church work and her part-time job as office assistant for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission. Nightclubs and dancing are not considered fit activities for a young Baptist woman, but Whorton nevertheless sought diversions enjoyed by some of her friends at the university.

FOR SOME TIME, she attempted to persuade her parents to allow her to visit a disco in Monroe, about 23 miles away. Monroe is split by Interstate 20, which runs between South Carolina and West Texas. They finally softened, giving their permission. Kathy was to stay at the apartment of two friends in Monroe that night Her friends had dates thatlight at the dis- William Boyd Hite June 1, 1982 Abilene Lynn Gray, 42 March 18, 1980 Unidentified woman June 1981 Elizabeth Teresa Bishop October 2, 1981 Unidentified woman December, 1981 Ringgold Kate Rich, 80 September 16, 1982 Carolyn Cervenka, 19 June 2, 1982 Austin Sandra Dubbs, 34 October 3, 1979 Molly Schlesinger, 52 and Harry Schlesinger, 53 October 23, 1979 San Marcos Sharon Schilling, 19 September 6, 1979 Unidentified woman March 7, 1983 Laura Jean Donez, 16 April 17, 1983 Houston Susan Minnick May 7, 1978 Unidentified woman September 16, 1980 Gloria Stepan, 28 October 2, 1982 'y ft "TOP I Hi Adam Walsh Hollywood, Fla. July 27, 1981 Ottis Toole wanted a son, so he drove to a mall in Hollywood, to get himself one.

Reve Walsh was shopping that day in the Sears store at the Hollywood Mall. Her son, 6-year-old Adam, was with her, but he wanted to play video games with other children, so she left him and went about her shopping. The kids were being noisy too noisy, a security guard thought so he shooed them out of the store. Toole pulled in front of the store and saw his son. He offered Adam toys, and Adam accepted, sliding into the front seat They drove on Interstate 95, toward Toole's home in Jacksonville 300 miles north.

They talked a lot about baseball, Adam's favorite subject ADAM SAID he wanted to go back to his mother, but Toole ignored him and tried to ignore Adam's yelling and crying when it was clear to the child that he wasn't going to be returned. "I wanted to keep him for myself," Toole said. "But the kid started yelling and messing my mind up. I figured out the kid was too brilliant He could figure things out too quick and I couldn't let him go." As Adam cried, Toole repeatedly slammed his right hand against the boy's face. Near Vero Beach, Toole found a quiet pond to dispose of Adam.

He pulled a machete out from under the car seat and cut off his head. He carried the head and body to a wooden dock and threw them into the water. Fifteen days later, a fisherman found the head in a creek that runs from the pond, but Adam's body never has been found. The boy's murder was well publicized in Florida, and his parents lobbied for a ctntral Regina Campbell Neptune Beach, Fla. July 12, 1980 A marriage gone bad sent Regina Campbell from Cairo, to the Northeast Florida beaches where she grew up.

She wanted to be with friends and think her life over, back in Neptune Beach where she liked to knit, draw and walk along the Atlantic Ocean. Campbell, 24, stayed there with grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Basil. He was chief of the Neptune Beach Police Department.

ON THE EVENING of July 12, a Friday four days after she had come from Georgia, Campbell selected a print dress for a night on the town with a friend. They visited two lounges in Neptune Beach and stayed late, until 2:30 a.m. Her companion departed, and Campbell got a bartender at the lounge to walk her most of the way back to her grandparents' house. Two blocks away, the bartender caught a city bus home, and Campbell continued on. Two men in a car watched her walking alone.

The next morning, Rena Hegenbarth, Campbell's mother, received a phone call from the Basils, telling her to come quickly to their house. When she arrived, Basil met her in the yard, put his arm around her and walked her into the house. "Well, I guess we'll have to tell her straight out," Mrs. Basil said. "Re-gina's dead." Hegenbarth stared for a moment, shocked, and asked where her daughter was.

They motioned outside. Just 40 feet from his police cruiser, which had been parked in the Basils' driveway, Regina Campbell's body Ante was found stuffed under a station wagon. She had been raped and strangled. There were numerous bites and scratches on her face, neck and back. A CHILD PLAYING in a nearby creek found Campbell's purse about a week later.

But the Neptune Beach police, with Basil calling the shots, were unable to come up with a killer until three years later when Ottis Toole related the case to a detective in nearby Jacksonville, where he and Henry Lucas had lived. The case will go to the grand jury later this month. "None of the holidays are the same," Campbell's mother said. "I usually take flowers to her grave. Her birthday was in December, real close to Christmas.

We have no enthusiasm. We have nothing to look forward to. We get together but everyone just sits here. No one knows what to say and it's been three years. Maybe it will get better some day." co, but Whorton was alone.

The group stayed until early in the morning, then went to the apartment But when they arrived, Whorton felt uncomfortable because she had no date. She decided to leave for a while to eat an early breakfast. Whorton ate breakfast, then disappeared. Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole had wandered off the interstate that night in Monroe. Both are charged with capital murder.

HER BODY was found the next morning; she had been shot to death. Kathy Whorton's funeral was an event that Bastrop still remembers. The large church was packed to overflowing, with some mourners standing outside in the rain. The 17,000 people of Bastrop are still angry and a little frightened. Why Kathy, they still ask..