Working for the victims

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, December 29, 2005

There’s a bright line running through Joe Ward’s life.

On one side are the things Snohomish County’s longest-serving homicide detective is willing to talk about. On the other is the ugliness he’s deemed off limits.

Kevin Nortz / The Herald Joe Ward

Ward retires today after nearly three decades investigating murder for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

In keeping with the secrecy that has always been part of his job, there is much the detective won’t discuss.

He offers few thoughts about the scores of killers he helped put behind bars. He avoids talk about the gore and sadness he encountered investigating hundreds of violent deaths.

“I’m not really a person who goes back and rehashes the things that are done,” Ward said. “I don’t forget them, but I try to put them behind me, I guess – but I don’t forget them.”

Ward investigated his first homicide in 1978. He’s since had a hand in nearly every major murder investigation in the county, averaging about 10 cases a year.

Some of his cases have been examined in books by Northwest true-crime writers Ann Rule and Jack Olsen.

That’s something the detective doesn’t talk much about either. It’s not that he’s bashful; he’s just never been comfortable attracting attention linked to the suffering of others, say those who best know his work.

Ward has always been passionate about seeking justice, regardless of the victim’s past, longtime Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Mark Roe said.

“The stuff you see in movies and TV, he does for real,” Roe said. “Those aren’t the things I’ll remember him for. I’ll remember him for the cases nobody wrote about, that nobody was calling about, that nobody is going to make a movie about.”

Prosecutors say Ward was particularly effective in courtrooms. Tall and lean, he looked his questioner square in the eyes, and answered simply and directly – Jimmy Stewart with a handgun in a shoulder holster.

Defense attorneys also respected Ward.

“I think he’s always a gentleman,” said Susan Gaer, one of the county’s most experienced public defenders. “He’s one of those police officers you know will be difficult on the stand because he’s as straightforward as he can be. You’re never going to find him avoiding questions.”

Ward began his police career in 1972 after a stint in the Air Force. He first worked as an emergency dispatcher, but soon applied to become a sheriff’s deputy. As was then the case for all new deputies, his first assignment was supervising a shift in the old county jail, located on the fifth floor of the courthouse.

It was there, in space long since converted into courtrooms and offices, Ward encountered his first murder. Three prisoners killed their cellmate. They tried to make the killing appear a suicide, but were quickly exposed.

Ward spent about five years working patrol before then-homicide detective Bruce Whitman asked him to apply to become his partner. His first murder case was of a woman killed in her home; her fatal injury was undiscovered until the autopsy.

Whitman taught Ward the basics, but in a way that made Ward feel as if he had something to contribute. There was little choice. At the time, the sheriff’s office had only two homicide detectives and “when there are two of you, the dumb end of the tape isn’t that far from the smart end,” Ward said.

By 1982, Ward was working with a new partner, now-Sheriff Rick Bart. One night the partners were paged to a house near Clearview. Inside were the bodies of two women and a girl. They’d been murdered by a convicted rapist who was on work release. The killings were revenge for testimony that had sent the man, Charles Rodman Campbell, to prison.

Bart and Ward put together a case that eventually led to Campbell’s execution. The evidence they gathered also prompted reforms in the state’s parole and prison system.

It was a horrific assignment, and something Ward consistently has declined to discuss. At trial, jurors heard that the crime scene was so disturbing that detectives sat in stunned silence for several minutes before they could begin gathering evidence.

Many detectives learned by watching Ward, especially the importance of approaching a case methodically and with compassion, said Pat Slack, commander of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force. He was Ward’s partner for five years in the early 1990s, a time when the homicide unit grew to multiple, two-detective teams.

Ward made a priority of taking care of the victim’s family and friends, Slack said. He also worked at keeping balance in his life; throwing himself fully into investigating a case while working just as hard to make sure he was there for his own family.

“He helped me with that,” Slack said. It’s tough to go to a bloody crime scene “and the next hour be back with your family. It is a horrible job. It has times when what you see is what you wish you never would have seen.”

Homicide detectives have to look, Slack said, because that is where they often find the clues to resolve a case.

Longtime deputy prosecutor Helene Blume said Ward always was calm and professional. She recalled the methodical way he excavated much of a hillside to recover bullets fired by a man who killed a blind man and a sheriff’s sergeant. Ward helped set the standard that other detectives followed.

“The citizens of this county, if they just knew they would be so proud,” Blume said.

Brad Pince, a sheriff’s homicide detective, said investigators are still talking about the time Ward helped federal prosecutors convict a man who’d built a bomb used in an Alaskan contract killing. Ward had briefly assisted out-of-state detectives in searching the man’s Snohomish County home. The case bounced around the courts for years. The evidence became jumbled. Even so, Ward’s detailed notes were enough to restore order to the case.

“Things like that help the agency’s reputation around the country,” Pince said. “That’s Joe Ward.”

Ward said part of his success came from having enough time to learn from his mistakes, and the good fortune not to repeat them. He credits Marsha, his wife of 26 years, with providing the stability and support he needed to excel. The couple raised three children and recently celebrated the arrival of their first grandchild.

“She’s never made me feel that my family didn’t come first,” Ward said.

In recent years, Ward has split his time between leading detectives at crime scenes and investigating cold cases. He’s also spent substantial time in court, battling convicted killers bent on getting out of prison.

Ward’s final trial pitted him for the third time against Jerry Bartlett Jones Jr., a Bothell man who tried to blame the 1988 murder of his wife on a troubled neighbor boy.

In a spectacle that attracted national attention, Jones this year acted as his own attorney and questioned Ward in court. Jones claimed the detective had jumped to conclusions 17 years ago.

On the witness stand, Ward was firm, but respectful. Jones was found guilty for a third time.

Ward said he was pleased to end his career with the wife killer being held accountable.

“There weren’t any wild goose chases that night,” he said. “There was only one person in the position to have done that to her and he had nothing credible to say.”

Ward’s supervisor, sheriff’s Sgt. Shawn Stich, said he’ll miss his most experienced detective.

“He cares about the people that he is working for and with,” Stich said. “He’s not working for the sheriff. He’s working for the victim and the victims’ families.”

Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.

Here are some of the major cases Joe Ward investigated during his nearly three decades as a homicide detective:

1981 Michael Ray Hightower raped and killed women. He was linked to a Maltby murder after detectives proved he used the same handgun to shoot a nurse six times near Alderwood Manor. The nurse survived. Her testimony helped send Hightower to prison for life.

1982 Charles Rodman Campbell murdered Renae Wicklund, 31, her daughter, Shannah, 8, and their neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, 51, all of Clearview. The two women had testified against Campbell in an earlier sexual assault case. Campbell was hanged in 1994.

1985 Brenda Gere, 12, disappeared from her Clearview-area home. Her fate remained unknown until 1991, when her remains were found scattered across a brushy hillside. Brendas killer was a suspect from the start. Michael Kay Green, a convicted rapist and former University of Washington football player, is now serving a life sentence.

1988 Lee Jones, 41, died at her Mill Creek-area home, the victim of multiple stab wounds. Her husband, Jerry Bartlett Jones Jr., was arrested at the scene, soaked in blood. Jerry Jones went to trial three times. Jurors found him guilty each time.

1991 Kayla Erlandson, the adopted Korean daughter of Noreen Erlandson of Bothell, died from child abuse. Erlandson, then 39, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison. She got out last year after a state Supreme Court ruling tossed out dozens of convictions around the state.

1994 Sheriffs Sgt. Jim Kinard and Ronald Modlin, a blind man, were killed by an angry ex-convict, Charles Ben Finch. The killer was sentenced to die, but won a new trial. A 2000 jury also found Finch guilty but could not agree on his punishment. Deliberations were complicated when the killer attempted suicide with head-first plunge in the county jail. The injuries eventually ended Finchs life on Christmas Eve, 2000.