National Park After Dark - 78: Premonition: Olympic National Park

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

This month we take a trip back to Olympic National Park and get to know Jane Constantino – a young woman who lived life to the fullest. Her adventures and subsequent brushes with death led her to Washington state, all in the hopes of checking off an item on her list. Perhaps driven by an ominous premonition, Jane explored the world and experienced life while she still had time. Time, that was cut short – just as she thought it would be. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Reel: Use code NPAD for 30% off your first order plus free shippingBetterHelp: Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our linkApostrophe: Save $15 off your first visit with code NPADAirlyFoods: Use our link and code NPAD to get 25% offFor a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We all know that we are going to die. The one unavoidable, inescapable guarantee that is shared amongst every living thing on earth. Death has paralleled life, acting as its equal and exact counterbalance from the beginning of time itself, and as far as we know, humans are the only species on the planet that live with the knowledge that our time here is limited. Evidence of this awareness can be found throughout the human record in oral histories, concepts, art, various writings, and more. Momento Mori is a perfect example of this.

Translating to, Remember You Must Die, Momento Mori popped up in artistic and symbolic ways in funerary art, architecture, and even jewelry for centuries, and its roots can be traced all the way back to ancient Rome. The figurative hourglass we all carry can be a blessing or a curse, depending on who you ask. Some of us can't stand to think about the passing of time and avert our eyes to the trickling grains of sand, as an hourglass devoid of it can only mean one thing. Time is up. Some do everything their power to delay the inescapable, while others use the thought of impending doom as fuel. Limited time means limited opportunities. Living life as if it's about to end may seem extreme to some,

but to others, there is no other way to look at it, because to some, remember you must die, is a huge incentive to know you must live. Welcome to National Park After Dark. I have a feeling someone's going to die. You think? Everyone's going to die, baby. Yeah, okay. It's a really sad, but it's true. I thought you were going to say something completely different.

I thought you were going to say this sounds familiar because it sounds like the episode you just did in Munchinson Falls National Park. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Your intro does have a similar feeling to it for sure. Mm-hmm. Yep. And I think maybe I found a little bit of inspiration from that story and I wanted to find something

a little similar. And I did. And I am so excited to share it with you. Thank you everybody for joining us. And we are headed to a park that we have already been to. We have been to physically, both of us, and we've been there figuratively in one of our previous episodes. It was a long, long time ago. Okay. If you can think back, like, I think it was like episode, I want to say 10, and it's Olympic National Park. Okay. So we're going to Olympic National Park and based on saying you were a little bit inspired from the episode I did on Hendry Coatesy, I'm assuming that this is going to be like a crazy adventure story. In a way, it is. It's definitely, this person's life was an adventure. And I can't wait to tell you about her because instead of a man, we're talking about a woman

this time, but same frame of thinking as far as taking advantage of life and kind of grabbing it by the balls and just, you know, doing your thing. And I love hearing about people like that. And I love hearing their stories. So I'm very excited that you chose this. Okay. So let's head to Olympic National Park. And just as a little bit of a refresher, because it's been a really long time since we've described this park. And I love it so much. This park was originally established as a national. Monument in 1909, but it was later re-designated as a national park nearly 30 years later in 1938. Over the years, it has been designated also as an international biosphere reserve, which I've never heard of in all of our research. I'm like, what is that? And there are places that are

meant to demonstrate a balanced relationship between people and nature. So it was designated as that, as well as a world heritage site as well. So this place really got it going on. Very cool. The park is located on the Olympic Peninsula, which is an area of western Washington state that juts out into the Pacific Ocean, and it lies directly below Canada's Vancouver Island. Named after the Olympic Mountains that the park encompasses, it was originally established to protect the area's unique wildlife and landscapes and what varied landscapes it has. Within the park, you can experience towering snow-capped mountains, towering trees, lush temperate rainforests, and rocky coastal beaches. And a huge draw to the park is this exact unique variation of terrain. Popular activities include combing the beaches during low tide where starfish, periwinkles,

anemones, hermit crabs, and more color tide pools with splashes of orange, purple, greens, and pink. Others include driving the white knuckle, yet off. inspiring Hurricane Ridge Road, which twists and turns and winds for 17 miles from sea level, all the way up to the visitor center perched atop the mountains, which, and this road also passes through alpine meadows and subalpine lakes. It's absolutely stunning. It seems like when you're at the top, it feels like you're in Switzerland, like a little Switzerland. It's beautiful. And of course, there's the rainforest. The peninsula actually has four, but the whole rainforest within the park remains the most popular hands down. We went there. Yes, we did. And it's a prime example of

a temperate rainforest, and that's because they receive an average of 12 feet or 3.6 meters of rainfall every single year. Wow. That is a lot of rain. The park has a lot to offer, and it draws in millions of people a year who all have hopes of experiencing their own slice of Pacific Northwest paradise. And one of those people was Jane Constantino. Jane was born in 1947 and raised on the east coast of the United States. She grew up in Long Island and went to attend school in nearby New York City when it came time to go to college. She worked for several years after graduation as a social worker, but soon became really restless within city limits. She dreamed of a completely different life, something bigger, broader, and wilder than the Big Apple could offer.

her and she wanted to see the world. So she began her ventures through a Europe trip and along with falling in love with the different sites, she also fell in love with a man. He too was in Europe visiting from the United States and he was actually from Denver, Colorado, where he owned property with a herd of pack horses and Jane's eyes just glittered with visions of the Wild West and she was totally enthralled with him and their budding relationship. Their whirlwind European romance continued back home and they eventually got married. Jane moved to Denver and the couple spent about two years together actually married, but sadly their marriage didn't last and although Jane moved out when their marriage ended, she wanted to stay in Denver. She absolutely loved it there. She had really

become enamored with the area and she worked really hard to make sure that she was able to afford to live there on her own. She rented a small apartment in the city and worked almost every single day, six to seven days a week as a waitress, just to afford the cost of living. She really wanted to be there. She wanted to be there, because if you know anything about living in the city, especially alone, it's really difficult. Crazy expensive, yeah. And I know this was, you know, not current day, so I'm sure it was somewhat more affordable, but it's still not easy. And she was just determined to make it work. And Jane wasn't the typical, like, Colorado gal that you envision, because you wouldn't see her walking down the street in, like, the newest Patagonia vest or

nice new Birkenstocks. She instead lived a very minimalistic lifestyle. She bought only what was necessary, usually as secondhand or used, and drove a beat-up old Volkswagen and saved most of her money throughout the years for things that mattered most to her, which was equipment that she could use on different adventures. She had a glass jar in her apartment that she would fill up every single night with tips from her waitressing job, and for her, that jar was almost always brimming, because Jane was beautiful. Her long, tussled blonde hair draped past her tan shoulders, her slim, athletic build, and beaming smile was a hit with a lot of younger Denver men, but everyone, not just men, were enamored with Jane.

Her personality matched her smile. She was infectious and kind. She was great at her job because people loved her and she loved them right back. One of her previous coworkers even remarked that she was the best waitress that they had ever had. But under her bright personality, she carried a very dark fear. Jane always had a premonition that she was going to die young. And this was something that she wasn't like a. obsessed with. And it wasn't something that, like, ruled her life. But she just had this feeling that

she was never, she couldn't envision herself as an old woman. She just thought that her life was going to end prematurely. And it was perhaps that thought that while she didn't dwell upon it, it drove her to live the life that she wanted. And kind of the way that she ended up living her life maybe was because of this thought. She always had like this inherited fear that she wasn't going to be here that long. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So what she would do was awesome.

So she would work her butt off the majority of the year. Like I'm talking eight to nine months of the year almost every single day working. And she would obviously just to afford rent and cost of living, but she would also stash away a lot of that money. And then she would take months off at a time and travel. And not only did she want to see the world, she wanted to experience it. and experience it she did. By her early 30s, Jane had lived twice the life most of us could only imagine,

and she had just as many brushes with death. In 1974, she was 27 years old, and she ventured to Wyoming to climb the Teton's. At 14,000 feet, she was struck by lightning. What? She was knocked off her feet and clung to the side of the mountain really hard, alive, but seriously burned, she repelled down the mountain and walked. miles to the nearest ranger station for help. And when she arrived, the rangers were stunned at her story and even more shocked at her injury

because the lightning bolt had seared her skin and burned straight down to the bone and it exposed her shoulder. Oh, this is reminding. What is it with the Teton's and getting struck by lightning on there? There's a story that I did. The book that you can check out, a bolt from the blue, but that whole story. And then that story was insane, but that's not even the worst one. And there's an even bigger rescue mission that happened even more recently. And then this girl, she was struck by lightning and then walked into the ranger station,

like half charred. That's badass. And also, wow, that's very scary. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more.

Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So she was admitted to the hospital and she had to stay there almost an entire month recovering. That's how serious this injury was. And she left the hospital with a huge scar. And she nicknamed that scar, her badge of life. She had kind of this renewed sense of vigor for living life after that.

Just as any near-death experience is sure to leave an imprint on anyone's mind, Jane's situation was no different. Living each day like it was her last kind of became her newest outlook. Traveling abroad alone, scaling the Teton solo, and surviving such a dangerous incident combined with her brazen personality may give the impression that Jane was fearless, but she was human and everyone fears something. For her, it was water and a fear of drowning.

I feel that. Yeah. Yeah. I think most of us can kind of sympathize with that fear and relate. But most of us kind of like avoid things that we are afraid of and give like a wide breath to potentially scary things. You know, like if you're afraid of spiders, you're not going to go tromping around like in wood piles or.

You're not going to get a bunch of pet spiders and throw them all over your body. If you're afraid of heights, you're not. going to go skydiving, like things like that. But not Jane. Jane, instead of avoiding the fear of water and drowning, she faced that and set out to conquer it. So she committed time to mastering different water-related activities such as scuba diving. She got certified in scuba diving and kayaking whitewater rivers despite almost drowning while she was crossing a river in Katmai in Alaska. So that's her second thing. She almost died then. So being struck by lightning in the Teton's and almost drowning in Catmai wasn't the last time that Jane would come close to death.

While climbing in Yosemite, she fell. Straight down, she went in plain view of groups of hundreds of onlookers. She was nearly completely covered with rubble and rock when she landed and she survived. And miraculously, she walked away with one broken ankle and a concussion. This girl is just like really playing with death right now. Oh, it gets, she keeps going. Good for her. She took a break from climbing, which is probably a good idea.

She's like, you know, maybe I should try something else right now. Yeah, so you know what she tried? She's like, all right, I'm going to press pause on climbing. I am going to bicycle instead, and I'm going to do it by myself from Nova Scotia to New York. Right, because that's... Right. Just like a casual... You know, I started bicycling, and I go about a mile away from my house, and then I come back.

Yeah, well, she just kept going. She just kept going. And, oh, yeah, she almost died on that trip, too, because when she was running on her bike, she got hit by a truck and had to go to the hospital. Oh, yeah. Of one more thing. She got hit by a truck. Oh, my God. This girl has, like, you know, final destination?

Mm-hmm. It's just, like, all of the things keep going. But, I mean, it's badass. Like, none of this is deterring her from anything. she's just like, yeah, I fell off of where it effort it was in Yosemite. And I have just, I got hit by lightning. I mean, if that's not bad luck, I don't know what it is. And she's still out there just doing whatever she wants. Well, she keeps going because I have more to tell you. So after that incident, she got hit by the truck. She got taken to the hospital. Her first hospital stay when she

got struck by lightning was a month long. This was only just a couple days, less than a week. And she was like, well, I'm well enough to keep going, so she completed her bike ride. Nice. Of course. Of course. And then she decided to go back to climbing. And not only did she decide to go back to climbing. This was the year 1979. And at this point, she was 32 years old. And she decided to just casually climb Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens in nine days. And then after that, directly after that, she got onto her bike from, okay, so just so we know, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker is in Washington State. she got on her bike and peddled to Mexico. Oh my word. And also just like as a side note, if you kind of remember the Mount St. Helens episode that we talked about its eruption.

That was in 1980. And Jane missed the eruption by only a couple months. And she was actually kind of sad at the timing because she wish she could have been there to see it. She's like, oh, I really wanted to survive a volcanic eruption. I wanted to add that to my list of things that I survived. Yeah. So now she's in her early 30s and Jane feared that she was slowing down. Quote unquote.

I feel that my knees are slowing down with every hike. It did say. So I got a lot of this information about her life from actually a book called A Rage to Kill by Anne Rule. And Anne Rule, I know a lot of people may know her previous writing. She's a big true crime author. Her, like, most famous book is The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy that she worked with. But anyway, so there was a chapter in this book about Jane. And in it, she was saying that Jane was fearing slowing down as she was getting into her early 30s.

Not only because as you get older, you tend to slow down just by nature, but also all of these old injuries that she had sustained from other brushes with death, like getting hit by lightning in a truck and falling and stuff. They were kind of starting to, like, ache and just cause some more. more issues. So rather than accepting that, she raised the bar for herself. So in 1980, she began planning what was to be her most difficult adventure to date. She set off from Denver with her brother on bicycle and spent the first portion of the summer riding to New York City. So Denver to New York City. From Denver. Yep. Wow. So she had an amazing time with her brother. She saw half of the country that way and she reflected fondly about it. But her soul was still very restless and she wanted more. So after completing their journey, she flew home to Denver and immediately started planning

the next phase of her journey. She wanted to complete the entire cross-country journey. So she planned another trek this time from Denver to Washington State. So just like the opposite way. And this isn't like a year later for the next summer. This is literally the same. summer. She's like, I'm doing this whole thing. I did a cross-country road trip by car, and it took me a while. Yeah, she did this on a bicycle. That's so, I actually know someone who's doing that right now, so that's funny that you're telling this story. Yeah, it's my cousin, it's her brother, but we have a weird relationship of how we're related, so I don't think that we're like technically related, but he did a trip from New Hampshire down to North Carolina, and he really loved

North Carolina. He hung out there for like two years and now he went from North Carolina to Texas and now all on bicycle and now he's going from Texas to California. That's awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. There's something about, and Andrea Lankford did this. Her and her friend bicycled from. They went from like Arizona to Mexico. Yeah. Yep. So Jane is planning this whole next step, next journey to kind of complete the cross country trek. And this time she was going by herself. She was going with her brother. And she was going to ride solo from Denver all the way to Cape Alvara. This cape is situated on the Olympic Peninsula and it is actually the most westerly point in the lower 48 states. It's located off of the Ozat Reservation within Olympic National Park.

And it was her plan that she wanted, it was on her list, one would say, to dip her bicycle in the Pacific Ocean just as she had done in Mexico and back east into the Atlantic, when she rode to New York. So it was kind of like her bucket list to do all that. She had her route mapped and she made plans with friends because she had friends located in Seattle. So she was going to complete this thing and then she had a date of July 24th to meet up with them in Seattle once she did her thing on the peninsula. So Jane made the journey from Denver to Olympic National Park. And although I'm not sure what exact route she chose, I'm sure.

Sure, it was the trip of a lifetime. Peddling through the west and all it has to offer. The red rock line canyons giving way to wide open spaces until eventually tall grasses and shrubbery would give way to large stands of trees, mountains rising and rolling in the distance until her pedal strokes closed the gap and she was within them. I can imagine her now riding through the gates of Olympic National Park, a smile spread across her face as she rode straight into the ferns and hemlocks. as the great temperate rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, moss dripping from the trees and sunlight peeking through the thick canopy, all in an attempt to reach her and welcome her. And Jane arrived into the park and decided to actually take a little detour

before dipping her bike into the ocean, because just 10 years prior to this, a hiker was walking along the banks of the nearby Ozat Lake when they noticed an indentation in the ground. Upon further investigation, they realized that a storm had recently come through the area and it had led to a big erosion of this particular area on the banks of the river. And the erosion actually exposed hundreds of wooden artifacts. So this area had been tested archaeologically wise by different archaeologists in different test pits.

That didn't really reveal anything, but they knew that there was human activity here. So they were kind of poking around, but nothing had ever really been found until this was found. And archaeologists began working on the site only to uncover six long houses, over 50,000 artifacts spanning over 2,000 years. And all of these things gave an invaluable insight into the life of the Maka people. Items were found that represented activities like fishing, whale and seal hunting, even little toy bow and arrows were all found here. and all of the items were really well preserved because they were entombed after a mudslide engulfed a portion of Amaka village that was near to the coast and what is now Ozette Lake around the year 1560. So the excavation of this area took 11 years to fully excavate and Jane was

visiting at the tail end of this project. So when she arrived on the peninsula that day, she stopped by the dig site because they were giving an archaeological lecture there. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. So she stopped there and learned a little bit about what was going on at that site. So this day is July 23rd, 1979. It was warm and sunny and a very welcome change to the usual moody weather that the peninsula experiences most of the year. It was midweek, a Wednesday. And although it was in the middle of the week, the park was still bustling with other hikers, because when it's sunny in Washington, you take advantage of it. And a group of hikers were enjoying the trails skirting the ocean as Jane had been when they rounded the bend to see that a woman had fainted in the middle of the trail. Calling out to

her and becoming more and more concerned as she didn't move despite their approaching voices, the group hurried to her side. It turned out that this woman was Jane, and, and she had not fainted. Her lifeless body lay soaked in fresh, wet blood in the middle of this trail, just one-fifth of a mile away from the Pacific Ocean. Wait, what? Mm-hmm. How? So, the hikers were frantic. Yeah. And they were searching for a pulse, trying to see what was going, like what happened, and they didn't have any success. They notified law enforcement immediately to park rangers as soon as they could. Kualum County Sheriff's deputies, National Park Service rangers, and tribal police from the OZet Indian Reservation were all on the scene pretty swiftly and

immediately took notice of the violence involved in Jane's death. She had been stabbed brutally six times in the chest. Holy shit. She was still clothed and showed no signs of any sort of sexual assault. Initial thoughts immediately were she must have been stalked or this was a crime of passion. It was so brutal. She must have known her killer. You know, like this is, this is crazy. So law enforcement fanned out and organized a grid search of the entire park. They assumed that right away that the killer was male and not just based on statistics, like not statistically speaking, because they started putting these pieces together and Jane was still young. She was only 32, but she was also an impeccable physical shape.

And they had a really difficult time believing that she could have been easily overtaken in this way by another woman. So they believed that this was a man. It just happened and he was still in the area. The scene along the trail and out onto the beach was searched. Roads to the park were completely closed down and every car leaving was third. searched. Hikers and campers were questioned as words spread like wildfire throughout the park. People started congregating in groups, especially people who were their solo and especially female solo hikers. Everyone was really scared. One solo hiker in particular, who was questioned,

realized immediately that she herself had just escaped death. Breaking down in tears, she told law enforcement a chilling story. Shortly before Jane's body was discovered, she had been hiking the same area on the same trail to the beach when a man approached from behind her. She tried to avoid him, but he quickly caught back up to her. She said he was quote unquote weird and described him as being in his late 30s to early 40s. He was wearing a purple t-shirt that did not match his dark and creepy demeanor. He had curly hair that poked out from underneath a cowboy hat and he was large. He was well over six feet tall and not slim.

He had told her that he was a photographer from Playboy and offered her $50 to pose nude for him. Right there in the middle of the trail. $50? Yeah. As you're hiking in the national park. Yeah. Like what? Yeah.

So freaked out, she told him to go away. And as she was telling him to essentially fuck off, another woman, a young, tanned woman with blonde hair and a bicycle, came along the trail and passed them. the man abruptly dropped the conversation with this other woman, his eyes darted to the new woman, and he began to follow her. So in that moment, the hiker told law enforcement that she was relieved that the man had lost interest in her, and she was happy to get away from the situation and hurry off. But now in hindsight, she was almost certain that she witnessed a murderer and his victim just moments before the crime occurred. Oh, my God. She questioned her decision to leave.

She was beating herself up. And she was just so distraught of like the could of what have should of the situation. Like if she stayed, could she have made a difference? If she didn't leave. Like what would have happened? But like how would she have ever known that that was going to happen? That that was his intention. Exactly.

Like, you know, of course you're going to have thoughts like that. I can only imagine. But you're also in survival mode yourself right then, too. You know, like you just got terrified by this very scary person who's making you uncomfortable and you're thinking the worst in your head. Yeah. Your survival mode is kicked in where you're like, okay, he's not, he's not after me right now. I got to get out. Like, it's not what is he going to do next? What is happening? It's like, okay, I'm surviving right now. So I, that sucks. I mean, that sucks because I would feel the exact same way. I'd be like, could

I have stayed? Could I have done something? But he stabbed her so many times. Like, I can't imagine that if she stayed, that she would have had a different fate, especially with a man who's that large. Mm-hmm. Yep. And I do want to say that the exact trail that they were on was not specified in the sources that I was researching, but just based on Jane's visit to Lake OZette and her destination of the beach, if you look at maps and trail maps of the park, there is one trail that I'm assuming that they were on. And that's called the Cape Alvara Trail. The trail begins at the lake, which she was at during that archaeology. lecture that the park rangers were putting on and she had a destination of the beach. And this trail begins at the lake and ends at the beach. And if you were to hike this trail from the lake to the beach and back, it comes in at around 6.2 miles. The trail itself is beautiful. It crosses the Ozat River on a big arched bridge and it goes onto a cedar boardwalk that goes through dense forests and out into this giant meadow. And at this point in the meadow, Jane would have

been able to hear the crashing of the ocean, which means she wouldn't have been more than a mile away from the ocean. And of course, when they found her, she was so close to the water. As law enforcement continued their searches along the trail, they came upon a man fitting the exact description given by several different hikers. His purple shirt was not stained, but rather soaking wet. Park Rangers Gordon Boyd and Steve Underwood, along with Deputy Michael Lenion, ordered the man to lean against a rock off of the trail while they searched him. He refused to answer any of their questions, namely, you know, what are you doing here? What are you doing in the park today?

And the only information that he would give them was his name. And that was Dale Harrison. But investigators soon found all that they needed in that moment, because as they searched him, his pockets contained several lengths of rope and a large hunting knife. So between the description matching and the rope and the knife... You don't just carry like rope and knife. I mean, actually, maybe I shouldn't say that. Because maybe you do have rope and knives when you're camping and things.

But if you're just walking through the park, rope and knives is not... Mm-hmm. Ugh. So Harrison was immediately arrested on suspicion of murder. And as the crime was committed on federal property, the FBI took over the investigation. So let's learn just a little bit about Dale Harrison. He was visiting the park from Othello, which is a small farming town in eastern Washington, several, several hours away. He had been arrested several times, almost 20 years prior for sex-related crimes, one involving a molestation of two girls, and that particular crime involved a knife.

He was convicted of two separate crimes and served time in prison in both 1962 and 1965, and then he was paroled. Since then, his record was clean. He was living a quote unquote normal life from an outsider's perspective. So she didn't get caught. Exactly. So he was married. He had children. He was a forklift operator.

He was like a great employee. Like, you know, the whole thing. We talked about this with the trailside killer. Just because you have an appearance of having your shit together, it doesn't mean you do. Yeah. So anyway, continued investigations uncovered both circumstantial and physical evidence that tied Harrison to Jane's murder. Testing concluded that all this. though his purple shirt had been recently washed, aka it was dunked in the ocean.

It was full of ocean water. Yeah. The fibers, some of the fibers within it retained blood, which matched James. Also, his hunting knife that he was carrying with him matched the exact wound measurements that were taken during Jane's autopsy. And other hikers picked him out of both a mugshot lay down, like when you put a bunch of pictures in front of somebody and in a physical lineup as well. Okay.

Without hesitation. Like, he was a very, I don't want to say unique, but he just stood out. He was big. He had curly hair. He was just like, yeah. Well, I think that when you're that tall, it's hard to blend in, too. Oh, my God. My stepdad is 6'6.

And he has never blended into anything in his life, I'm sure. My dad's 6'4 and same thing. Mm-hmm. You see him. That's a good way of putting it. He's there. Yeah. Yeah.

So initially, he was very reluctant to give any information. as we said. But when he started talking, he initially played dumb. He had no idea that there was even a murder that took place. He was shocked. Which is hard to believe since everyone knew about it. Yeah, exactly. So then he started changing his tune a little bit saying that, okay, he did know that there was a murder because he actually witnessed it. He wasn't a part of it, but he witnessed it happen. Okay, that's a large leap there, bud. I had no idea there was a murder here. Oh, actually, that you mention it, I did see someone get murdered on the trail today. He said, so his reasoning was he wasn't a part of it. He was just walking on the trail and he saw

a complete stranger to him. He had no idea who this person was. He was a male and he attacked Jane. And he said he quote unquote looked on helplessly as this man, again, who he didn't know, stabbed Jane repeatedly. And he then ran away because he was afraid that he would be pinned with the murder because he had a record. It's like, okay, first of all, looked on helplessly. You're the biggest person here, I'm sure. Yeah, it's not adding up. And also just the fact, you got the knife. Well, you did. Yeah, right. It's just... You did it. You did it. So while he was awaiting trial, investigators continued looking into his past and his current life because the image of a wholesome family man didn't match this brutal crime that took place. Like, yes, he had a record, but it was from

20 years ago. So how does this person who allegedly hasn't done anything in 20 years and this is this wholesome family person all of a sudden commit such a brutal act? There had to have been more to this story and they were right. The puzzle started coming together in the form of an interview with Harrison's closest friend. His name is changed in sources so I'm going to call him Mike. Mike said that Harrison hadn't told him about his previous record, but what he did tell him in extreme, detail was a very troubling fantasy. According to Mike, Harrison explained that this fantasy, which he told Mike, so Harrison told Mike this fantasy in extreme detail at least a dozen times over the last year and a half, like something he would not let go. And it involved finding a woman

alone in the forest, beating her into submission with his belt, tying her up with a rope, and making her his sex life. That was his fantasy. Okay, I get like there's like the Domitrix kind of fetishes out there. But they're consensual, you know, like it's like this is what we're going to do. Yeah, it's like, it's all consensual and you talk about it with someone and then you like role play it or maybe someone does get hurt but it's consent and whatever it is. But this is just disturbing. Like you want to just find a random woman and beat her.

His fantasy had nothing to do with consent. No. And that is the problem. Because whatever you do behind closed doors in your sexual relationship is fine as long as everyone involved is consenting. And of course, that is not what happened here at all. And he, I just, I just don't know. I don't even know what to say about that. So I have to move on.

So Mike said that while Harris, was explaining all of this, that he invited him to become a part of it. He was like, you should come, we should do this together. And Mike always refused, but he also brushed it off, not really expecting him to go through with it. To be serious. It sounds like he's pretty serious. He's inviting him to come and planning it out. Well, again, you don't know how, like, was it in a joking way? Did it come up, like, while they were drinking? Like, you know, I don't know if he actually sat him down and was like, look, this is the plan, this is what I really want to do, I want you to come with me. Like, maybe it was an offhand comment or whatever. Either way. Like, hey, you should join me.

It would be fun, man. Yeah, like, what the fuck. As soon as investigators heard this, they're like, oh my God, everything is coming together here. Yeah. So back to Jane. Jane Constantino was the first person to be murdered in the then 42-year history of Olympic National Park. Harrison went to trial for her murder in November of 1980, where his defense team tried the mentally ill. He was mentally ill during the time of the crime angle. While the prosecution was adamant that the judge should not consider his record-free life from roughly 1965 to 1980, they argued that, yeah, on paper, he may not have committed any crimes, but who the hell knows what he was doing under the radar during that time. Yeah, maybe he didn't do anything. Let's just say best case scenario, he didn't

do anything. But clearly he was capable of turning violent again after a period of time. So who's to say what he would do if he was ever released from prison after this? Yeah. So it wouldn't be a safer, a sound decision. It would endanger the public. So a month later, Harrison was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. And to quote Anne Rule, who like I said, wrote a little bit on her in her book. She ended Jane's section with this quote and I thought it was so beautiful. And she said, quote, speaking about Jane, she took soaring chances and reaped many wonderful rewards before her life ended early just as she had known it would. And that is the story of the wild and wonderful woman Jane Constantino and her unfortunate early death.

in Olympic National Park. God. Why do people like that exist? Not Jane, the other Harrison. Dale Harrison. Dale Harrison. It's just, you know what I think about sometimes, which is kind of off topic, but I think about these people and I think about their families.

I think about his children or his wife who clearly had no idea that their father was capable of something like this. Or I saw this thing going around. I'm sure other people have. too, like on TikTok and Twitter and stuff, like BTK's daughter has an account and she kind of like roast her dad a little bit. But you know, it's coming from a place of like a lot of pain. And I think about their families a lot. Not only are they hurting their victims and their victims families, they're hurting literally everyone who has ever known them. Yeah. It's so true.

And it's hard. I do, I do hear what you're saying about the families because I feel like families are often kind of turned into pariahs after things like that, even if they honestly never had any idea what was going on. It's like, how did you not know? And it's almost like people blame the families and then they have to deal with one, they just lost their husband, their father, their brother, their son, whoever to like this horrific crime that they committed because they're going to jail. They lost their life. They lost this person that they thought they knew and they didn't. But now they have to face the consequences for that person's actions. So I do feel bad for their families. But I also, I just feel so avoidable. Like this man already did time in prison for sexual crimes. I just think

sexual crimes are so different than other crimes because it's so intimate and personal and violating that it's like if a person, if an adult, huge man can commit these crimes, why do you think he's rehabilitated. What makes you think that this person can go back out into the public or deserves to go back out into the public? It's just, it's just wild to me that the laws have decided that they're, I mean, there's people in jail who are serving life in prison for marijuana, but then they get sexual assault and they're in for three years and then they come out and they murder a beautiful person, like, who you're talking about, who had such a lovely life and all these aspirations and goals and just totally cut short because someone decided that this person who has a history of sexually abusing people

deserved a second chance. Yeah, exactly. And I didn't mention it in the episode, but just as a side note, in Anne Rule's book, she kind of talks about maybe what happened because obviously no one knows other than Harrison and his word clearly isn't worth much. But they were, she was kind of speculating on, you know, if he had this fantasy that didn't involve. It never involved killing someone. And he did have a knife, but I think in conversations he had with Mike about this fantasy that was not going to ever happen, but obviously did. The knife was

involved just as a backup for worst case scenario type of thing. He never went out with the intention to kill someone, allegedly. So what Anne Rule was kind of speculating was, you know, Jane probably fought back or attempted to fight back. It wasn't as easily submissive as he originally thought. Like, he thought he was going to stroll up to a woman, beat her down, tie her up, make her a sex slave. And Jane was just not about that. And she stuck up for herself. She was strong.

She was obviously very, very independent. She, I mean, she lived and worked by herself and went on all these adventures by herself for so many years. She's in shape. She's in shape. She's been, I'm sure she's dealt with situations that probably involved having to stick up for herself in the past. Like, she wasn't what he was expecting, I think. She ruined his fantasy. Exactly.

And he probably got mad and decided to lash out. And unfortunately, ended her life in such a brutal way. Oh my God. Actually, hold on a second. Okay, I missed a little section, but it's okay because I'm going to tell you guys now. Okay. I skipped over this tiny paragraph in here, but it's just like so fucking creepy. So when investigators were questioning all the hikers and stuff before they found him,

before they found him in the park, they were talking to more people that had seen him. And not only did they see him, several hikers described encountering the same man on the trail that that original hiker was like, oh my God, I probably just escaped getting killed by him. the same description. They saw him on the trail and he was wearing a purple shirt. It wasn't wet yet, but they described it being like striped. And what they were seeing was actually blood. But one hiker said when they initially saw him, he was like hurrying past everyone. Like, so they remembered him because he was just acting so erratically. Yeah. And the hiker said, quote, it looked as if he had been picking berries and wiped his hands on his shirt. at least at first, I realize now that wasn't what it was.

So he was going around the part in this, like, this is a very heavily used area. Like, there's people everywhere. Sounds like he was just trying to get to the ocean. Yeah. Yeah, he had blood all over his shirt. And it was all everywhere. And people, just imagine seeing that and being like, and it's such like a, it just makes me sad. That comment makes me really sad because you would assume that someone's just picking berries.

It's an innocent thought. In the summer. You're picking berries. Why would your first thought be like, that's blood? He just murdered someone. Yeah. And then now in hindsight, he's like, oh, shit. That is what happened.

Yeah. So anyway. Oh, God. God. All right. Well, I just, I really, you know, you guys know, murder stories aren't always the easiest. And I tried to kind of make that, like, the, not the primary focus of this story.

Because, like we said, in your story, that we just did in Africa, like, you shouldn't be defined about, like, on the way that you died, but rather how you lived. And Jane just lived, like, the most extraordinary life. There's so much more about her. Her life was so much more than her death. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that is the story of Jane Constantino. May she rest in peace. And maybe the next time you're in Olympic National Park, especially out on the coast, you can think of her. dip your toe into the ocean for and yeah look up that trail look up that the ozat lake and that air the cape it's so pretty it's just like it makes me want to just get my car and drive over there right now

which i certainly could um but yeah what a cool park and what a sad story so that's all i have for today well thank you for tuning in as always we really really appreciate you all and all your support and your love we couldn't be here without you so thank you everyone. And you should enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Go bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember,

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