“When my daughter told me that he had her in there,” Rono said, “I went running over, yelling at him to open up and let her out.”
“I don’t have her,” answered Clark from behind the locked door. “I’m trying to sleep. Go away and quit bothering me.”
“I know she’s in there!” screamed Rono. “I know you have my daughter. Let her out, open the door.”
“I can’t find the light switch,” replied Clark. “I can’t find the key.”
Unconvinced and outraged, the distraught mother battered more violently on Clark’s door, alerting the neighbors. “Let me in!” she screamed. “Let me in right now! I swear to God if you’ve hurt my daughter, you’re going to jail. Open the door right this minute.”
When Clark finally fumbled free the heavy chain and padlock, Rono pushed her way inside. There, in what seemed the most vile of environments, she confronted a bone-chilling scene—her four-year-old daughter stood in front of her, face drenched with tears, green socks tied on her wrists, and the rear of her pants pulled down below her buttocks.
“He was trying to pull up her pants with one hand, and trying to get the sock off her wrist with the other hand, “recalled Rono, who grabbed young Feather and hurried her out of the garage. Clark followed her outside, then turned and ran. Two men from the neighborhood aiding in the search for Feather grabbed him at the end of the alley.
When police arrived, they found Richard Mathew Clark standing stoic and silent as Feather’s mother beat upon his chest with her fists. On either side of Clark were the two neighbor men, who chose not to intervene on Clark’s behalf.
“I was dispatched to the report of a sexual assault,” recalled Officer Dwight Snyder. “When I got back in the area, I heard a lot of people yelling and screaming, separated them, and began to talk to each individual to sort out what had occurred. I knew detectives would want to talk with a child that young—I didn’t want to get too detailed—so I just wanted a general idea of what occurred. I was pretty general on my questions. Feather said she had been outside playing,” explained Snyder, “and that Mr. Clark had come up and talked to her. And then she looked at me and said, ‘He put a sock in my mouth.’ And I asked her if she had talked to Mr. Clark, and she said, ‘Yes, he gives me things.’ She showed me a small, kind-of-statuette, I guess, of a dog that had been given to her. She showed me that, and after she showed me the dog, she looked at me and said, ‘He touched me.’ And I asked her, at that point, well, how did he touch you? And she would just turn away, look at the TV, and not say anything. So I didn’t press the matter. At that point, I decided to arrest Mr. Clark.”
“Richard tied me up with socks and tried to put his hand down my pants,” said Feather. She didn’t simply say it once; she said it repeatedly all the way to the hospital.
Feather’s version of events, detailed five days later to Detective Diane Berglund of the Everett Police Department, related that she was happily playing when Richard Clark picked her up and carried her off.
“It was dark in there,” she said of his garage. “He put a sock in my mouth and a sock around my wrist and tied it in back,” explained Feather, “and a sock over my eyes and another one on my arms—he put the wrist one on first. When Richard put a sock over my mouth, I cried. I was crying and screaming. No one else was in there with me. I knew Misty came over to Richard’s house because I could hear her.”
Although Feather was assuredly mistreated, she was not technically sexually violated. He did not put his hands inside her pants, said the child. “He touched me on the outside,” explained Feather.
Locking a four-year-old girl in a garage, stuffing a sock in her mouth, and tying her up is against the law in Everett, Washington. Richard Mathew Clark was charged with unlawful imprisonment and convicted of the crime.
The entire horrific event in Clark’s dark garage lasted no more than a few minutes, but the effect on Feather was indelible. At the age of four years old, young Feather had now been twice traumatized by inappropriate adult male behavior. Her first sexual molestation was when she was only two years old. The perpetrator didn’t live across the alley or down the road. “It was her own father,” confirmed Angela Rono.
By the time Feather reached adolescence, the troubled teen no longer lived with her mother. From May 20, 1995, until March 29, 1997, Feather lived with a foster family lovingly headed by matriarch Julie Gelo.
The residual trauma of her violated childhood, the predictable pains of puberty, and the instability engendered by frequent placement in foster care raised Feather into a significantly troubled preteen. The aforementioned afflictions resulted in emotional chaos, fragmented relationships, inconsistent school attendance, and precocious sexuality.
Although the stability and structure of the loving Gelo family provided innumerable benefits and blessings, one horrific event immediately preceding her placement in the Gelo household precipitated a maelstrom of devastating emotional impact—the brutal sex slaying of a seven-year-old Everett girl named Roxanne Doll.
Part 1
MISSING
Chapter 1
On the final night of her life, Roxanne Doll spent the hour before bedtime watching a Disney video with her mother, sister, and brother. It was Cinderella, the fairy-tale romance about castles, glass slippers, and an adorable, exploitable young girl rescued by love and magic from a life of mistreatment and toil. Roxanne didn’t live to see sunrise.
Sometime during the night, she was abducted from her bed, raped, and stabbed to death. Her body was found on April 8, 1995, dumped down a brushy north Everett hillside. The blond-haired, blue-eyed second grader lay there for a week, partially buried under a heap of grass clippings and other yard debris.
Roxanne’s disappearance and death struck a nerve in Snohomish County. Hundreds of people beat the brush around south Everett looking for the missing child near her home. When her body was found, hundreds more openly mourned her. Family, friends, and strangers wept at the funeral—a funeral that her parents, on their own, could ill afford.
“If it wasn’t for some very wonderful strangers,” said Roxanne’s mother, Gail Doll, “Roxanne’s funeral would have been nearly impossible to do. So many people gave to us so we could bury her with more dignity and the respect she deserved.” A makeshift roadside shrine was erected where two children picking berries discovered her body.
The man arrested, charged, and convicted of this most heinous crime was no stranger to Roxanne Doll or Feather Rahier. According to the newspaper, the twenty-six-year-old suspect lived in a garage on Lombard Street. His name was Richard M. Clark.
Snohomish County prosecutors, seeing similarities between the 1988 incident involving Feather and the 1995 kidnapping/murder of Roxanne Doll, subpoenaed Feather in February 1997. “When it was opened and she read it, she became very angry,” recalled Gelo.
“I refuse, I’ll not testify. I don’t want to be in the courtroom,” Feather said. “I don’t want to remember what happened to me.”
Clark’s defense attorneys also wanted a deposition, which she reluctantly provided that very month. During the deposition, Feather repeatedly deflected questions by saying, “I don’t remember.” In truth, she remembered.
“I knew Feather had disclosed things to me that would have answered some of those questions,” recalled Gelo. “And so I asked her, I said, you didn’t tell him everything, did you? She hung her head and kind of got tears in her eyes. She said, ‘No, I didn’t. I could have answered just about all of his questions, but I don’t want to remember. I get so scared and I get so sad that I’m afraid of what I might do, and what others