Gelo repeatedly assured Feather that everyone was doing everything in his or her power to keep everything as easy, nontraumatic, and safe for her as possible. These assurances failed to calm Feather's fears.
“I would go in to check on her at night, and sometimes she would be thrashing around in her sleep. If I went to lay my hand on her shoulder, and went to talk with her and say, âFeather, it's okay,' she would kind of thrash at me with her hands and say, âDon't touch me, don't touch me, leave me alone.'”
Feather's behavior became more troublesome as the date of Clark's trial grew closer. “She was attempting to draw attention to herself or cry out for help in some ways,” said Gelo. “She would come and tell me what she was doing and they were behaviors that she knew would get consequences, or knew would get attention, you know, from me and from the other people in her life. And it was things like accepting a bottle of cider from a winery down the hill from us that had alcohol in it and drinking part of that bottle, but bringing the rest of it home and giving it to me.”
Feather also wore very provocative clothing to schoolâoutfits that were not provocative when first purchased. “She was taking all of the new clothing that we had bought her and cutting it up and making it very sexualizedâcutting, you know, the pants to be very short, or the T-shirt, so that they would expose her midriff,” Gelo said. “That isn't what she would leave the house in the morning with, but she would carry these clothes in her backpack and change. And I would get calls from the school asking that I bring her more appropriate clothing.”
One day, Feather vanished from school after first period. Students and teachers overheard her say that she was leaving with two boys. “The story was that they were going to a boy's house,” Gelo recalled, “because the boys wanted to do drugs. Feather wanted to go along to do her âwild thing' that day. She was back in school by the beginning of fourth hour, and didn't appear intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Feather knew that when she got home, she would be getting consequences at home, and yet she came home straight off the bus.”
Advised by Gelo that skipping class was not a prudent decision, and one that entailed consequences, Feather had no objections. “She was not the least defiant,” said Gelo. “She was pleasant and cooperative.”
Spring break started that day, and Feather was put on restriction. “Again, there was no arguing, not even the sullen look that I would have seen from any of my other teenagers. Saturday morning, she got up very compliant, asked me, âWhat can I do to help you today?'”
Feather helped with the children while Gelo went grocery shopping. “She asked if she could go outside and rollerblade, and my husband said it was okay as long as she was on the corner of our house, and not across the street. That was fine with Feather, it seemed. She soon returned, and my husband suggested that they go downstairs and watch a movie together. He went on down and waited for her, but she didn't come down.”
He looked upstairs, and out on the deck, but Feather wasn't there. “He looked out the living-room window just in time to see her rollerblading by our house with a backpack on her back and a little bag in her hand. And a few minutes later,” said Gelo, “my nineteen-year-old daughter, Faith, came to our house and she had seen Feather down at the 7-Eleven with what looked like a cigarette in her hand. By that time, I had come home, and we went down looking for her and she was gone; we couldn't find her. And,” said Julie Gelo, in 1997, “that's the last time anyone has seen or heard from her.”
Rather than again relive her childhood trauma, Feather packed basic belongings into a backpack, then rollerbladed down the block, around the corner, and out of sight.
She would never be a witness for the prosecution against the man charged in the brutal, sexually motivated slaying of seven-year-old Roxanne Dollâthe big man from the dark garage whose fractured family, abusive upbringing, and interpersonal malaise were tragically similar to her ownâa young man who manifested each stereotypical trait of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: Richard Mathew Clark.
Chapter 2
Richard Mathew Clark entered the world as the fruit of an adulterous womb, on August 18, 1968, and was the youngest of three children. His mother, Kathleen Ann-Marie Feller, had married George Walter-Burton Clark Jr. when she was fifteen years old and already pregnant. The age at which Kathleen began drinking is unknown, but her adult years were spent ceaselessly under the influence.
“When my mom got pregnant with me,” said George Clark II, “her folks didn't approve of my father or my mother's actions, getting pregnant out of wedlock and such. I believe they held it against us, maybe me, but they didn't have much to do with us.”
There was an inarguable difference between Richard, his sister, Leslie, and four year older George Clark II. Richard Clark's father was Gordon Nickel-son. This parental faux pas contributed to the Clarks' separation when Richard was sixteen months old, and their subsequent divorce. Carol Clark, the children's aunt, good-hearted and protective, often looked after the youngsters.
“She came and stayed with us when Richard was first born,” recalled George Clark II. “She was a good cook, and I always had lunch for school.”
The home was not long without a father figure or Kathleen without a man. Neither did her reproductive system remain idle. Commuting to the eastern Washington town of Moses Lake to drive a potato truck, Kathleen met Norman Hastings.
“When she came back from Moses Lake, he would come over and visit, stay the weekend,” recalled George Clark II, “and that's how my younger sister Jennet Hastings came about.”
After the relationship with Hastings petered out, another man entered her life. “He had three kids of his own, so we were kinda like the Brady Bunch,” said George. “After him came Bob Smith, and they had kids together too.”
Bob Smith was known for continuous consumption of strong drink with his wife, his strong opinions on child training, and his even stronger methods of behavior modification. “He beat us,” said George flatly. “He beat us with a belt, a fireplace poker, electrical cords, and his fists. He took a liking to Jennet, and she was spared. His own daughter, Crystal, could do no wrong. But he beat the rest of usâRichard and me more than he beat Leslie. Maybe because we were boys, or maybe because he didn't hate her as much as he hated us.”
According to George Clark II, the three kidsâLeslie, he, and Richardâwould wait in line for their beatings. “We had to watch each other get beat,” he recalled. “What made me scream the most was the fireplace poker that he used on us.”
Unlike his older brother, Richard Clark didn't scream. “Richard would grit his teeth,” said George, “he wouldn't cry until after Bob was gone. Me and Leslie would scream like crazy, but Richard very rarely cried until after it was over.”
According to Aunt Carol, shortly after Kathleen married Bob Smith, she picked up Richard Clark for a visit. “I took him home with me for the weekend,” said Carol. “He had bruises up and down his back and his legs from being beat with a belt. He cried and couldn't sleep for two days. I wrote his mother a letter. I told Kathleen that if I ever [saw] anything like that again, I would report Bob to the authorities.”
Because of that admonition, Carol Clark was not permitted to visit again for three years. “I next saw Richard when he was eight years old,” recalled Carol Clark. “My mom and I had gone to the doctor's office for her appointment, and I saw Richard come out of the doctor's room with his mother. And I didn't know if it was Richard or not because he had lost so much weight and his teeth were protruding out of his mouth. Well, at that time I asked Kathleen if I could bring Richard home with me and keep him because he looked so bad. And she thought it over and she did let me bring him home eventually and keep him because of what was going on. He must have been about eight years old at the time,” said Carol Clark. “Richard lived with me for two years straight.”
Times were always tough in the Bob Smith household. Kathleen broke her neck when Richard was very young and never worked again. Smith did seasonal berry picking, sold marijuana, and poached deer to obtain meat.
“The Clark side of the family was always good to us,” recalled George. His aunt Carol verified the accuracy of his assessment. “Members of our family bought food and clothing for the children,” she said, “and one time I even went to Richard's school and gave him some money.”
Carol desired neither recognition nor praise for this surreptitious expression of honest, loving concern. Sadly, Bob Smith got wind of his stepson's financial windfall. “When Bob found out,” recalled George Clark, “Richard was beaten as punishment.”
Frequent school absences characterized the Clark brothers' school records. “We were kept home from school,” explained George, “because the beating left us so bruised and swollen. Smith didn't want some teacher seeing the signs of severe abuse.”
According to George Clark, Smith was continually under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, and he seemed to concentrate his meager mental efforts on making George, Richard, and Leslie's lives miserable.
“When the family lived in Arlington, Washington,” explained George, “we were forced to sleep in a woodshed. When we moved to Darrington, Smith bought a two-bedroom double-wide trailer. Then he built what he called a bunkhouse fifty yards away from the main mobile home. It had electricity, but no heat. That's where Richard and I lived. We were only allowed in the house for meals.
“To keep us kids out of the house,” he explained, “Bob would make us go out into the yard and pick up rocks and stack them up into piles. Once we finished that, he had us move the piles around the yard.”
According to George Clark II, Bob Smith's treatment of Richard was not only physically painful, but also emotionally humiliating. “There was one event that I'll never forget as long as I live.”
Richard and Jennet, young and mischievous, got up in the middle of the night and ate up all of sister Leslie's Camp Fire Girls cookies. “There were dozens of them,” said George, “and they ate them all. My mom and Bob were responsible for the money. Bob went down to some store and bought this big cigar, very big around. That night we had roast beef, mashed potatoes, a great big dinner. And Richard had to stand next to the kitchen table with a glass of water, had to eat that cigar while we ate our dinner.”
The sight of his younger brother gagging on the cigar diminished George's appetite. “I couldn't eat my dinner, and I don't think any of us kids could. Richard was shaking like a leaf, and Bob was telling him that if he didn't eat it, he was going to get the hell beat out of him.”
When asked why Kathleen allowed Bob to beat her children, George gave the question serious consideration. “I figure Mom must have really loved Bob Smith a lot to let him do that to us. That's all I can figure. Mom must have really loved him.”
Richard Clark was fourteen years old when his loving yet terminally inebriated mother died in an auto accident on September 19, 1982. “She was full of drugs and alcohol when she died,” said Carol. “She hit a bridge on Highway 9.”
“The next morning,” recalled George, “Leslie took the girls, Jennet and Crystal, out in one corner of the yard, and I took Richard out to the other corner of the yard and told him of our mom's death. I don't know how he was affected by itâI was in shock; Bob was in Alaska. He and our mother were not on good terms at that time.”
George Clark telephoned Bob Smith, the man who beat him with a fireplace poker, and told him of Kathleen's death. “When Bob got home, all the kids scatteredâleft, kind of went our own ways.”
After the funeral, Richard Clark went to live with his aunt Carol. “When he came to live with me, he was very upset over his mother's death, but refused to openly grieve,” said Carol. “He wouldn't talk about her death. He kept everything inside. I couldn't even get him to cry. Then, one night, he was at the home, and he was outside and he was all upset and he was crying. He said, âI just want to die.' And that was the time when I told him that I couldn't be his mother. I had to be my son's mother, and that upset him.”
Desperate, disoriented, and self-destructive, Richard Mathew Clark attempted suicide three times within twelve months. “He slit his wrists,” noted Carol sadly. “He still has the scars.”
Richard Clark, still seeking a surrogate mother, moved in with his mother's ex-husband and his new wife, Toni. “I married George Clark, Richard's father, on November 2, 1974,” said Toni Clark. “After Kathleen died, Richard came to live with us for a couple weeks, but it didn't work out because we lived in a two-bedroom house, and we crammed all the kids into one bedroom. It was just so crowded,” she said, “that they didn't have sneezing room. Richard had to walk to school, and he didn't like that school too much anyway. So he went to live with his grandma Feller, Kathleen's mom, for a while after that. After that, he moved into the house of his mother's best friend.”
Although there was always an open door for him with Aunt Carol, Richard Clark remained disconnected and disenchanted. His teenage years were dissipated, bouncing back and forth between a hodgepodge of particularly unimpressive associates who shared his fascination with intoxication. Moments of semiclarity only accompanied the occasional respite with compassionate relatives, none of whom could replace his tragically taken mother. He simply could not bond with any of them.
From that point on, Richard Clark's primary passion was conspicuous consumption of alcohol; his highest educational attainment was seventh or eighth grade. His sadly predictable life-trajectory of emotional distancing and personal boundary violation via burglaries and car thefts escalated in 1988.
At the age of twenty, his inappropriate behavior reached an apparent peak when he locked four-year-old Feather Rahier in Aunt Carol's garage, tied her with socks, and touched her in ways that made her perpetually uncomfortable. He was still under thirty in 1995 when released from the Snohomish County Jail for unpaid traffic tickets. Clark devoted his postincarceration lifestyle to drinking, drugging, and other self-destructive activities classified as “partying.”
“I met Richard Clark at a party,” recalled Roxanne's father, Tim Iffrig. “It was just a casual acquaintance. Two years before he murdered my daughter, I attended a party hosted by Clark's aunt, Vicki Smith.”
Anyone who met Tim Iffrig came away with the same impressionâimmediately likable. Good-natured, outgoing, and adept at overlooking the faults of others, Tim Iffrig was the guy you can't help but like because, as one person said, “he is so darn affable.”
Gail Doll, with her cherubic face that manifested good upbringing and essential innocence, was never a “party person.” Unlike many of her generation, she never crossed the line of light social drinking, nor did she trespass beyond typical teenage experimentation with pot. “In fact, when they took me out for my twenty-first birthday, I didn't order a drink because I was still nursing Roxanne,” she said.
“People thought Tim and I were a real mismatch,” said Gail. “When I told my best friend, Kim Hammond, that I was getting married, she asked me who in the world I was marrying. She just couldn't picture Tim and I together.”
“I was so upset at first about Tim and she getting married,” confessed Hammond. “I actually called
Ricki Lake
and tried to get on TV. They were having a show, âDo you have a friend who you want to keep from making the biggest mistake of his or her life?' Well, I called
Ricki Lake
three times trying to get on that show to keep Tim and Gail from getting married. But as I told Gail, if she does marry Tim, I'll be supportive of her decision, and supportive of their marriage.”
“I had a problem with Tim's drinking,” said Gail, “but he was never abusive nor mean. In fact, quite the opposite. He's one of those guys who starts out in a good mood and just gets in a better mood. Drinking and such were just something he grew up with, whereas I didn't. He has always been the most wonderful and attentive of fathers.”
“As for Richard Clark,” said Gail Doll, “the man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered our daughter, I never liked him from the minute we met. I told Tim that Richard made me uncomfortable. There was something icky about him, and I would never, ever leave him alone with my kids. Maybe it was mother's intuition or something, but Tim couldn't see it. To him, I guess, Richard was just a sometime drinking buddy. And because the house is just as much Tim's as it is mine, I felt Tim was entitled to have his friends over.”
Richard Clark visited Tim and Gail on Friday night, March 31, 1995. The next morning, eight-year-old Nicholas Doll walked into his parents' bedroom and spoke four words that precipitated an avalanche of terror, trauma, and sorrow. “I can't find Roxanne,” he said, and the nightmare began.