Acknowledgments
This book is an account of events adapted from trial transcripts, police records, and interviews. Conversations, statements, legal arguments, testimonies, and all other remarks quoted herein are adaptations of such as recalled from memory. For purposes of clarity, concision, and continuity, statements and conversations often necessitated condensation and emendation. All efforts have been made to retain the original intent, and any errors are unintentional.
This book would not have been possible without the exemplary cooperation of the Everett Washington Police Department, and the Snohomish County Prosecutors Office.
Heartfelt appreciation is expressed to the dedicated health-care professional, Donna McCooke, RGN, of Great Britain, whose views of the issue at hand were of significant value in helping the author retain a sense of perspective.
My editor, the patient and unflappable Michaela Hamilton, deserves credit for the books readability. Heartfelt gratitude to Charlotte Dial Breeze, my literary agent for a decade, my dear friend for life.
Epilogue
May 2003
Gail Doll and Tim Iffrig, although divorced, remained close. Tim worked for the same employer, now located in Mukilteo, Washington. Both he and his mother have stopped drinking.
Gail Doll continued to live in the same little house in Everett from which Roxanne was kidnapped. Carol Clark remained on Lombard Street in the same house where she washed Richard Clarks bloodstained shirt.
Lloyd Herndon was no longer senior detective for the Everett Police Department. For reasons both personal and professional, he returned to patrol duty in Everetts South Precinct.
Feather Rahier, violated at age two by her father, groped in the garage at age four, and vanished from the Gelo residence at age thirteen, returned home alive and well following Clarks conviction and imprisonment. She will not be called to testify, nor will her name be mentioned, at the 2004 penalty phase of Richard Mathew Clark.
Authors Note
In this authors analysis, Richard Clark ineffectually attempted to prevent himself from committing the initial kidnapping of Roxanne Doll. Even though Neila Dalexander made it perfectly clear that she intended to spend the night in town, Richard Clark asked her to return with him to the Doll-Iffrig residence. He also urged Vicki Smith to accompany him after returning Jimmy Miller to the reservation. Had either accepted his invitation, the kidnapping, rape, and murder would have been at least forestalled, if not prevented.
It is also highly probable that the coffee-drinking, glasses-wearing Richard Clark, who reappeared at the Dog House Tavern between 10:00 and 10:30 P.M. , and asked about selling his vana van he had only recently acquiredwas a Richard Clark who was already past the act of rape, and into the mental act of undoing.
This scenario, if valid, puts Jimmy Miller, unconscious in an alcoholic blackout, in the front passenger seat of Clarks van when Richard Clark kidnapped Roxanne Doll between 9:15 and 10:00 P.M. It also means Roxanne Doll was alive in the back of the van until just prior to midnight. Jimmy Miller was asked point-blank if this was possible, and he acknowledged that in his condition that night he would have never known.
None of these various interpretations of time lines and behavioral indicators alters the fact that Richard Clark kidnapped, restrained, raped, and murdered an innocent seven-year-old child named Roxanne Doll.
Each childRoxanne Doll and Richard Clark includedis potentially the light of the world. Had Richard Clarks life been different, his basic at-birth biology balanced, his upbringing healthy, his emotions matured, the odds of him ever committing such a heinous act rapidly diminish.
If there is nothing learned from this nightmare beyond the unquestioned guilt of Richard Clark in the death of Roxanne Doll, her death does not rise to the level of sacrifice. If, however, her death compels a closer examination of the facts and factors that contributed to the creation of the mind-set and motivations of Richard Clarkan examination that saves future livesthen her death is not in vain.
Richard Clark appears to fit the profile of a situational child molester. This type of individual doesnt really have a sexual preference for children, explains Dr. Stephen Rubin, and the motivation is really more one of power or control over someone more weak than they are.
Quite often, abuse in the offenders own life sets the stage for his or her sexual abuse of young people. These individuals usually have low self-esteem, lax standards of morality, and even though this type of offender doesnt have a primary sexual desire for children, they may react to a built-up sexual impulse or anger that, to them, is irresistible.
Childhood beatings, for example, interfere with the proper development of the hypothalamus, which regulates the bodys emotional and hormonal systems. An excess of the hormone noradrenaline, or low levels of the brain chemical serotonin, may cause violent responses to various stimuli.
The main criterion for the victims is availability. Unlike the pedophile who has a compulsive sexual desire for children, and thus pursues them fairly constantly, the situational molester may have many years between episodes, or only one sexually inappropriate act in his entire life.
Incarceration, devoid of comprehensive treatment, has no effect on altering their postrelease behavior. Comprehensive treatment, however, is of significant value. Sex offenders are not as hopelessly fated to a life of deviant behavior as is widely believed, says Dr. Rubin.
Canadian psychologists R. Karl Hanson, Ph.D., and Monique T. Bussiere, Ph.D., recently reviewed 61 studies covering more than 23,300 cases of sex offenses and found that only 13 percent of the individuals identified in the studies went on to commit another sex crime. According to their study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (Vol. 66, No. 2, pp. 348362), those who did re-offend had committed more diverse sexual offenses and more deviant sexual interests, and did not complete their rehabilitative treatment programs.
The findings contradict the wide-held notion that most sex offenders inevitably repeat their deviant behavior, noted the researchers, who are corrections researchers at the Department of the Solicitor General of Canada.
Treatment programs can contribute to community safety, they write. We now have reliable evidence that those who attend and cooperate with treatment programs are less likely to re-offend than those who reject intervention.
Child molestation, because of its large numbers of victims and because of the extent of its damage to the health of its victims, is a national public health problem, state Gene G. Abel, M.D., and Nora Harlow, authors of The Stop Child Molestation Book (Xlibris 2001). To combat this public health problem we must focus on the cause. People with pedophilia molest 88 percent of child sexual abuse victims. Early diagnosis of this disorder, followed by effective medicines and therapies, has the potential to save children from being molested.
The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) is a nonprofit, interdisciplinary organization founded in 1984 to foster research, facilitate information exchange, further professional education, and provide for the advancement of professional standards and practices in the field of sex offender evaluation and treatment. ATSA is specifically focused on the prevention of sexual abuse through effective management of sex offenders, and the protection of our communities through responsible and ethical treatment of sex offenders.
