Another Democrat criminal makes his mark.
With the 428th pick in the 1974 NFL draft, the Green Bay Packers selected.
. . one of the most violent killers in U.S. history. No one is saying
football led Randall Woodfield down his dark pathbut did it perhaps deter
him from it, at least for a while?
BY L. JON WERTHEIM
EVEN AS CRIME SCENES GO, this one was sensationally gruesome. Shari Hull,
age 20, lay splayed naked on the floor, blood pooling near her matted
hair, brain matter seeping from her skull and spackling the carpet. She
was surrounded by her discarded clothes. Gradually her moans and her deep,
labored breathing diminished until her body was drained of life.
Some time around nine oclock on the evening of Jan. 18, 1981, Hull had
been nearing the end of her Sunday-night shift, cleaning the TransAmerica
office building in the central Oregon town of Keizer. She was preparing to
leave when she was grabbed by a man whod somehow managed to enter the
building. He was strikingly handsome, maybe six feet tall, blessed with a
torrent of thick, curly brown hair and eyes to match. He was wearing jeans
and a leather jacket. Corralling Hull with one hand and holding a gun in
the other, he walked her down a hall. Soon he saw another cleaner, 20-
year-old Lisa Garcia.
The assailant took both women into a back room and ordered them to the
floor. After sexually assaulting them, he shot them each in the back of
the head. This, it would later be revealed, was generally in keeping with
his M.O.: some sexual act followed by a .32 bullet to the rear of the
skull. But while Hull died of her gunshot wounds, Garcia survived by
feigning her death, lying motionless on the floor with slugs lodged in the
back of her skull. As soon as her attacker left, she called the police. En
route, one officer noticed a thickly built man fitting the assailants
description standing at an intersectionbut this was more than a mile from
the attack; it would have taken a hell of an athlete to make it that far
so quickly on foot. So the policeman drove on.
For weeks afterward Garcia worked with detectives to crack the case.
Little did she know, this attack was one of many allegedly carried out by
the same man; she was helping track one of the most notorious serial
murderers in U.S. history. Nicknamed the I-5 Killer, he had threaded a
trail of almost unspeakable brutality up and down the upper left corner of
America, killing in California, Oregon and possibly Washington. His orgy
of violence started in the mid-1970s; by the time hed gotten to Hull and
Garcia, hed already amassed a sizable necrology. Many more murders would
follow.
Based on DNA evidence and advancing crime lab techniques, the I-5 Killers
body count has climbed through the years. Cold case detectives have
conservatively put that number at a dozen, though a few journalists and
armchair detectives believe hes responsible for as many as 44 deaths. And
that doesnt include a string of more than 100 other crimes, mostly
robberies and rapes, that bear his hallmarks.
The I-5 Killers victims were mostly from the same subset: petite,
Caucasian women in their teens or 20s. Sometimes they had declined his
sexual advances and the killings seemed to be acts of retribution. Other
times he didnt know his victims at all. But he had his way with them and
then snuffed out their lives because he could.
And then theres this small detail, which Garcia shared with detectives
and which surfaced again and again across the I-5 Killers crimes: He wore
what appeared to be a strip of athletic tape over the bridge of his nose,
in the manner of a football player at the time. Which stood to reason.
Because not long before turning into one of Americas most depraved and
remorseless serial killers, Randall Woodfield had been drafted by the
Green Bay Packers.
THE NEW COACH had to have been torn. He wanted to pump up the Portland
State program he had just taken over, and placing a guy in the NFL would
go a long way toward that. But he also knew that if he oversold a player,
hed lose credibility. So on that fall day in 1973, as Ron Stratten sat in
the bleachers of Multnomah Stadiumnow Providence Park, home to MLSs
Timbershe chose his words carefully.
An NFL scout had come to see Randall Woodfield, the Vikings leading
receiver. He had been impressed with Woodfields hands and athleticism.
But when he asked Stratten for further assessment, the coach wavered.
Randy runs decent routes, Stratten said with enthusiasm, and hes good
to the outside. He spoke positively about the speed that enabled
Woodfield to run high hurdles for the schools track team. But he also
mentioned Woodfields glaring deficiency: He didnt like getting hit. Not
by the safety. Not by the linebacker. Not by anyone.
THE I-5 KILLER, RECALLED BY HIS FORMER TEAMMATES AND COACHES
HE WAS THE NICEST, MOST GENTLEMANLY KID I EVER KNEW. YEARS LATER, A
REPORTER FROM A SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPER CALLED ME AND ASKED, DO YOU KNOW
A RANDALL WOODFIELD? DID YOU KNOW HES THE I-5 KILLER? I SAID, THAT
CANT BE. PROBABLY THE WRONG RANDALL WOODFIELD.'
Gary Hamblet
PSU receivers coach from 1972 to 73
When Stratten was named Portland States head coach, a year earlier, it
had marked a rarity. Though scarcely acknowledged at the time, he was just
the second African-American in the modern era to hold that position at a
predominantly white school. Stratten was only 29, less than a decade
removed from playing at Oregon. And as a former linebacker, he was quick
to notice receivers who resisted cutting across the middle of the field.
Its a point of character, Stratten told the scout. Woodfield doesnt
have that.
To Stratten, this softness, this dislike of confrontation, was in keeping
with Woodfields genial personality. It wasnt just that Woodfield was, in
the cliché, coachable. Maybe more than any other player on the team, he
seemed to seek out the staff for companionship and counsel. He was always
bopping by our offices before heading to class, recalls Stratten. It was
like he just wanted to hang out with us.
Teammates and coaches memories of Woodfield vary wildly. Some remember
him as unassuming and quiet, if a bit odd. He really didnt fit in, says
Anthony Stoudamire, who was a freshman quarterback at PSU in 1973. Hed
make out-of-the-blue, off-the-wall statements. Stoudamires brother,
Charles (both are uncles of 199596 NBA Rookie of the Year Damon
Stoudamire), was a halfback on that team; he recalls Woodfield for his
vanity. [Randall] was always grooming himself. That even carried over to
the way he played. He seemed like he was more interested in looking cute
out there than getting the job done. True as that may have been, the
pride Woodfield took in his appearance was justified. He was six feet,
with negligible body fat, well-defined muscles and a sly smile framed by
what today might be called a pornstache. To trade in understatement, he
did not struggle to find female companionship. He was a suave,
sophisticated fella, says Jon Carey, a PSU quarterback in 72. Confident
in himself, but not to the point of being cocky.
Woodfield may have been best known at PSU, though, for his devotion to the
Campus Crusade for Christ and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. A
former teammate who spoke on the condition of anonymity recalls, It
seemed real important to him that he come across as someone who would do
the right thingalmost like it was keeping him together.
Armed with the resourcesand facing the public relations pressuresof a
modern-day NFL team, the Packers would have conducted a detailed
background check on Woodfield. And the proverbial red flags would have
flapped wildly. Raised mostly in the picturesque Oregon mid-coast town of
Otter Rock, Woodfield grew up in a fiercely middle-class home. His father
had a steady managerial job at the phone company Pacific Northwest Bell;
his mother was a homemaker. Woodfield had two older sisters, who would
babysit him. The family was well-known and well-regarded in the community.
Outwardly, Woodfield appeared to be the portrait of normal. But in high
school he was caught standing on a bridge and exposing himself to females.
His parents sent him to a therapist, who, by all accounts, was not overly
concerned by a teenagers exploring his sexuality. According to law
officials, Newport Highs coaches knew about the situation but, wanting to
protect their star, chalked it up to an adolescents lapse in impulse
control. Police say that when Woodfield turned 18, his juvenile record was
expunged.)
HE WAS A LITTLE STRANGEMAYBE STRANGER THAN WE THOUGHT. YOU JUST HAD A
BAD FEELING ABOUT THE GUY, LIKE THERE WAS SOMETHING UNDERNEATH HIS MASK.
PSU teammate who asked not to be named
Later, at Treasure Valley (Ore.) Community College, where Woodfield played
football for one season before transferring, he was arrested for allegedly
ransacking an ex-girlfriends home. (With little evidence, he was found
not guilty in a jury trial.) At PSU, Woodfield was arrested multiple times
for indecent exposure. (He was convicted twice.) Stratten, who didnt
recruit Woodfield, says he didnt learn of those arrests until years
later. If I had known, he says, I would have said something [to
interested NFL teams] for sure.
As it was, having done little in the way of intel, Green Bay remained
interested in Woodfield. In the first round of the 1974 NFL draft the
Packers selected Richmond running back Barty Smith, who would go on to
start 42 games in seven seasons. The next day they used their 15th-round
pick on Dave Wannstedt, a natural-born leader who never played a down but
who went on to become an NFL head coach. Two rounds later, with the 428th
pick, Green Bay took Woodfield.
These may not have been the dynastic Packers who won the first two Super
Bowls, in the 1960s, but this was still a celebrated franchise. Woodfield
was offered a one-year contract to serve as a skilled football player
for $16,000. The deal came laden with bonuses: an extra $2,000 if he
caught 25 passes that fall, $3,000 if he caught 30. Heres what you need
to keep in mind about those figures, says Bob Harlan, who as assistant GM
handled the teams contracts that year (and whose son Kevin, now a
prominent broadcaster, was a Packers ball boy back then): When Bart Starr
made $100,000, people thought he was overpaid.
Woodfields contract also stipulated that he keep himself in peak
condition, avoid consorting with gamblers and wear a coat and necktie in
public places. He signed almost immediately. The money enabled him to quit
his job at a Portland-area Burger Chef. But beyond that, this was all
validation. He was on the verge of playing in the NFL. Everyone made such
a big thing when he was drafted, one of Woodfields roommates told The
Oregonian. He put a lot of pressure on himself to make it big.
That April, Woodfield attended a minicamp in Scottsdale, Ariz., an
innovation of Green Bay coach Dan Devine. As special teams coach Hank
Kuhlmann explained beforehand in a letter to players, the minicamp would
be a get-acquainted period so that in July we can all start working
toward our common goal, The Championship. Afterward, Woodfield
returned to Portland galvanized, impressed with the speed of the other
players but confident he would make the team.
Per the Packers request, he spent the next months staying in shape and
working on his pass catching. In June the team sent him a first-class
plane ticket, along with instructions for an airport limo pickup that
would take him to the teams training camp in De Pere, Wis. Woodfield
declined, opting instead to drive out from Oregon. When he arrived, his
bio in the Packers media guide listed him at six feet, 170 pounds and
assessed him as follows:
In July, Woodfield was among the rookies who competed against the Bears in
a scrimmage at Lambeau Field. Writing in the Green Bay Press-Gazette,
Cliff Christl, now the Packers team historian, sought out Woodfield for a
quote. Im pretty excited, the young wideout said. Im just really
thankful for the opportunity. Woodfield survived early cuts and reported
to friends in Portland that he was acquitting himself well, that he felt
as if he belonged.
The Packers thought otherwise. They released Woodfield on Aug. 19, 1974,
before their season began. Woodfield would later contendnot
unreasonablythat his prospects were hindered because Green Bay was
stressing a run game that season. Police would contend that the team had
other reasons. (Packers officials declined to comment for this story.)
Rather than return to Oregon, Woodfield remained in Wisconsin, settling an
hour and a half west in Oshkosh, where he played for the semipro Manitowoc
Chiefs and moonlighted as a press-brake operator. (We pause to point out
the irony: Manitowoc, the 24th-largest city in Wisconsin, would be the
setting for the acclaimed 2015 Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.)
While he would have preferred to spend his Sundays at Lambeau, Woodfield
reckoned that, playing on Saturdays nearby for the Chiefs, maybe Packers
execs would notice him and reconsider their decision.
Teammates from that stop recall Woodfield as a smooth operator, a
ladies man and a bit strange. Fred Auclair, a teammate and roommate,
recalls Woodfield bringing home a trinket he had acquired at a local
Christian bookstore. How much was that? Auclair inquired. Well, said
Woodfield, it wasnt really for sale, so I stole it. Woodfield, adds
Auclair, was on the phone all the time, telling tall tales. He had a
woman in every port, it seemed.
As Woodfield had at Portland State, he ran precise routes and
distinguished himself with speed in Manitowoc. In the 1974 Central States
Football League championship game he caught a pair of passes for 42 yards,
though the Madison Mustangs beat the Chiefs 140. The Packers, meanwhile,
went 68 and, as a team, averaged only 13 completions per game.
IT SHOCKED ME WHEN HE [WENT TO JAIL]. IF THERE WERE 100 GUYS ON THE TEAM,
HED BE THE 99TH GUY ID SUSPECT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
Tim Temple
PSU secondary coach in 1973
After the season, though, Woodfield was dropped by the Chiefs. No reason
was given publicly. There were murmurs, however, that the team had off-
field concerns. (The Chiefs, along with their league, disbanded in 1976.)
While there are no public arrest records for Woodfield in Wisconsin, a
detective would later learn that Woodfield was involved in at least 10
cases of indecent exposure across the state. As one Wisconsin law
enforcement officer recalls, years later, Woodfield couldnt keep the
thing in his pants.
By multiple accounts, Woodfield was devastated by being cut. Deeply
hurt, was the phrase The Oregonian would later use. And, curiously,
Woodfield acted as if he knew there would be no more invitations from
other teams. With his ambitions of being a pro football player killed off,
he drove back to the West Coast. And then the rampage started.
IT TOOK SOME TIME before Randall Woodfield graduated to murder, but the
buildup was steady. Back in Portland, he drifted to the margins. He was
three semesters short of completing his physical education degree at
Portland State, but he rejected suggestions that he return to school;
instead he cycled from job to job, residence to residence, romance to
romance. He was 24 and moving backward in life.
Woodfield would show up at Portland State on occasion to work out with his
old team. By then, Stratten had been replaced by Mouse Davis, who would
later coach as an assistant in the NFL and become known as the godfather
of the run-and-shoot offense. [Woodfield] seemed like a nice kid; he was
a good athlete, Davis recalls today. But one of the other players said,
Coach, dont get too close with that guy. Hes strange. That was the end
of my relationship with him.
In early 1975, Portland police were vexed by a series of attacks on women,
carried out by a maninvariably described as athletically built and
handsomearmed with a knife. After demanding oral sex he would take a
womans purse or wallet and run off. On March 5, detectives set up a sting
operation. An undercover female officer walked leisurely through a park,
and a man wielding a paring knife darted out from behind some bushes
demanding money. Officers converged and arrested the assailant, who
identified himself as one Randall Woodfield.
Charged with robbery, Woodfield gave an extensive interview to police. He
claimed he didnt drink or smoke and that he was committed to the
Christian faith. He admitted to some impulse-control issues and some
sexual problems. And he confessed to one vice: Hed taken steroids to
augment his physique. Maybe, he speculated, that charged his sex drive.
There was a conventional wisdom back in the day that someone who was an
exposer or a Peeping Tom wouldnt elevate to more serious crimes, says
Lieut. Paul Weatheroy, a longtime Portland cold case detective who retired
from that job last year. Weve learned that nothings further from the
truth.
Former PSU teammates threw Woodfield a party to celebrate his release from
prison, but some thought it strange when the guest of honor arrived 21/2
hours late to his own event. Woodfield also got out just in time to attend
his 10-year high school reunion in Newport. There, he wore his muscles
almost as a fashion statement and told stories about his time in the
Packers organization.
I GOT TO KNOW HIM; HE WAS A FRIEND. . . . I WAS SURPRISED WHEN SOME OF
THIS STUFF STARTED COMING DOWN, BUT ON REFLECTION, I THOUGHT: THAT DOES
SORT OF ADD UP."
Jon Carey
PSU quarterback in 1972
Out of prison, he cut a contradictory figure. For all his failureslet go
from bartending gigs, jettisoned by girlfriendsthey hardly seemed to come
at the expense of self-confidence. He cruised around Portland in a gold
1974 Champagne Edition Volkswagen Beetle and took unmistakable pride in
his physique. He was especially fond of sending naked photos of himself to
women. In late 79, Woodfield was photographed in a state of undress, his
abundant muscles abundantly oiled. He mailed the image to Playgirl for
consideration. The following May, he received a letter back:
Congratulations! You have been selected for possible publication in
Playgirls Guy Next Door feature. Woodfield waited for his photo shoot,
and thats when police believe he began to murder.
On Oct. 11, 1980, Cherie Ayers, an attractive 29-year-old, was found
raped, stabbed and bludgeoned to death in her Portland apartment.
According to the coroner, she died from blunt-force trauma and knife
wounds to her neck. Former classmates at Newport High, Ayers and Woodfield
had reconnected at the reunion and had then seen each other socially.
Immediately Woodfield was pegged as a suspect, based mostly on his recent
release from prison. When homicide detectives questioned Woodfield, they
found his answers evasive and deceptive. But he declined to take a
polygraph. A blood test did not link Woodfield to the crime, nor did his
semen match that found in the victims body. In a time predating reliable
DNA testing, there was no other physical evidence.
Apparently emboldened, the one-man crime wave picked up momentum. Seven
weeks later, Darcey Fix, 22, and Doug Altig, 24, were shot to death,
execution-style and with a .32 revolver, in Fixs Portland home. Again
Woodfield had a connection to the murdered woman: One of his closest
friendsa teammate from PSUs track teamhad dated Fix. Again Woodfield
was questioned, but police had nothing concrete linking him to the
murders.
On Dec. 9, 1980, a man wearing a fake beard held up a gas station in
Vancouver, Wash., just across the Columbia River from Portland. Four
nights later, in Eugene, Ore., a man wearing a fake beard and a Band-Aid
(or what looked like athletic tape) on his nose raided an ice cream
parlor. The next night, a drive-in restaurant in nearby Albany, Ore., was
robbed by a bearded man. A week after that, in Seattle, a gunman matching
the same description pinned down a 25-year-old waitress inside a restroom
and forced her to masturbate him. Hull and Garcia were sexually assaulted
and shot in central Oregon four weeks later.
Word began spreading that there was an I-5 Bandit marauding up and down
the northern half of Interstate 5, a ribbon running parallel to the
Pacific for the 1,400 miles between the Mexican and Canadian borders. All
of the crimes occurred within two miles of an interstate exit.
The spree accelerated, each crime more twisted and horrific than the last.
On Feb. 3, 1981, Donna Eckard, 37, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jannell
Jarvis, were found dead in their home in Mountain Gate, Calif., just off
I-5. Each had been shot multiple times in the head. Lab tests would later
reveal that the girl had been sodomized. Earlier that same day, an 18-
year-old waitress was kidnapped and raped after a holdup 15 miles to the
south, in Redding. The next day, a similar crime was reported 100 miles up
I-5 in Yreka, Calif.
By then, word of the I-5 Bandit had amplified to the point that women were
being warned to exercise caution. On Valentines Day 1981, Candee Wilson
implored her 18-year-old daughter, Julie Reitz, to be carefultheres a
dangerous person out there. Later that night, Julie was shot and killed
at their home in Beaverton, Ore., not far from where the Nike campus now
sits. She had known Woodfield previously. In his job as a bouncer he had
overlooked her fake ID and let her into a bar.
From one act to the next, the descriptions were remarkably similar: An
athletic man, armed with a silver .32 revolver and wearing tape or a Band-
Aid over his nose, abducted a woman, committed a sexual act and then shot
her execution-style. Detectives targeted Woodfield as their suspect,
convinced that the receiver who turned squeamish running across the middle
of the field had become an astonishingly brazen murderer.
PICK A COUNTRY and you likely can find a citizen who has killed
ritualistically and repeatedly. Consider the phrase run amok, which
derives from a Malay word translated loosely as to attack with homicidal
mania. Believing that amok was caused by an evil spirit, Indonesian
culture tolerated these violent outbursts and dealt with the aftereffects
with no ill will toward the assailant. The underlying premise: The
capacity to kill indiscriminately dwells in all of us; most people just
suppress the urge or avoid the spirit.
Still, the serial killer occupies a singular role in the cast of
Americana. Here heand the vast majority have been malehas been
hyperbolized and fetishized, even romanticized. Serial killers are
responsible for only a small fraction of the murders committed in the
U.S., but they are some of the most notorious figures in our history and
culture. Says Sarah Weinman, who runs the newsletter The Crime Lady,
[Serial killing] is twisted fantasy that has roots in the wide-open
American landscape, where it is all too easy to hunt and kill without
detection and with impunity.
It was in the 1970s that agents Robert Ressler and John Douglas of the
FBIs behavioral science unit coined and defined the term serial killer,
distinguishing one from a mass murderer (who may kill many at once) or a
spree killer (who lacks a so-called cooling off period between murders).
Indeed, the 70s marked the crimson-stained height of serial killing in
the U.S. In that era there were a number of factors working in the
assailants favor, from lax gun laws to the popularity of psychedelic
drugs to the sprawling interstate highway system to cheap gas. And from
the dearth of surveillance technology to the spotty coordination among
police precincts, it may never have been easier to avoid getting caught.
HE WAS A PRETTY QUIET GUYNOT VERY TALKATIVE; KEPT TO HIMSELF. IVE GOT A
TEAM PHOTO AND HES SITTING RIGHT BEHIND ME. I WOULD HAVE NEVER THOUGHT
HE WAS CAPABLE OF BEING [A KILLER].
Rick Risch
Manitowoc Chiefs defensive back in 1974
Woodfield wasnt the only sociopath terrorizing the West Coast around that
time. Ted Bundys killing orgy in the Northwest is believed to have begun
in 1974, his first eight known victims slain in either Oregon or
Washington. And roughly concurrent with the I-5 Killer, Gary Ridgway had
begun committing ritualized murder in Seattle, mostly targeting young
women. It would take 20 years before he was caught, but immediately he was
known as the Green River Killer, a nod to the waterway where his first
five known victims were found.
What accounts for our captivationwarped as it might bewith serial
killers? Evolutionary biologists have pointed out that as a species, we
are hardwired to run away from predators in a way that we dont
reflexively run away from, say, sunbathing or eating bacon or other
potential causes of death. So the serial killer triggers fear and a
visceral reaction rooted in the most basic human nature.
Others cite the stirring exploration of the darkest corners of humanity.
Serial killers may commit acts of unadulterated evil, but they are also
figures that generate at least a teensy measure of titillation, sometimes
even affection. (See: Lecter, Hannibal.) In a perverse way, you sometimes
end up rooting for these guys, says Skip Hollandsworth, a true crime
writer whose latest book, The Midnight Assassin, focuses on a series of
unsolved murders in 1880s Austin.
Hollandsworth even sees overlapping elements with football. The reason we
love to watch wide receivers is because they are so elusive. They run a
particularly designed route, hoping to wriggle free and catch a pass
despite a defense stacked against them. Its the same reason we are
fascinated with serial killers. They come up with a particularly designed
killing route, carry out the kill and then make their escape, eluding the
cops and crime-scene techniciansonly to do it all again after taking a
breather.
And while we call serial killers monsters, often they are all too human.
Theres something unsettling but also a little tantalizing in the capacity
of everyday peoplesiblings, classmates, coworkers, teammatesto carry out
such chilling acts. He seemed like such a normal guy is the inevitable
refrain from the shocked neighbor. This was a central theme for Ann Rule,
a prominent true crime writer who in her best-selling book The Stranger
Beside Me portrays Ted Bundy as a handsome, well-spoken, good-looking law
student . . . who happened to kill at least 30 women. Rule has conceded,
I can remember thinking that if I were younger and single, or if my
daughters were older, [Bundy] would be almost the perfect man.
From her home base in the serial killer hotbed of Seattle, Rule grew
interested in the I-5 case and published a book in 1984 about Woodfield
titled The I-5 Killer. A meticulously reported accountand an invaluable
resource in this storyRules book relied on public documents as well as
interviews with detectives, family members and the socio-path himself. She
was clearly captivated by Woodfields conventional upbringing, jock
pedigree and good looks. Even the breathless jacket synopsis asks how a
suspect who seemed [so] handsome and appealing [could] have committed such
ugly crimes.
Continued.
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randall-woodfield/index.html