True Crime Campfire - Lost Highway: The Murders at Moclips Beach

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

It’s kind of hard to pin down what the first slasher movie was. Do you start with “Psycho” in 1960? Go even further back? But there’s no real doubt when the genre blossomed—the 1970s. And that makes sense, because the 1970s was also when the shocking crimes of serial killers really permeated the national consciousness. You ask someone to name a serial killer, there’s a good chance they’ll name someone who was mostly or exclusively active in the ‘70s—Bundy, Gacy, BTK, Son of Sam. The slasher movies tapped into a growing awareness that there really were terrifyingly dangerous people out there, killers who didn’t even have to know you to want you dead. This is the story of the horrible murders of two young hitchhikers, at a time when such cases were startlingly common. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code HAPPYCAMPER at  https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpodSources:Ann Rule—Last Dance, Last Chance—"The Beach”Court papers:,https://casetext.com/case/state-v-batten-3https://www.thedailyworld.com/news/gone-girl-the-disappearance-of-laura-flink/ https://charleyproject.org/case/laura-lee-asynithe-flinkFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. It's kind of hard to pin down what the first slasher movie was. Do you start with Psycho in 1960? Go even further back? But there's no real doubt when the genre blossomed, the 1970s. And that makes sense because the 70s was also when the shocking crimes of serial killers really permeated the national consciousness.

You ask someone to name a serial killer, there's a good chance they'll name someone who was mostly or exclusively active in the 70s. Bundy, Gacy, B.T.K. Son of Sam. The slasher movies tapped into a growing awareness that there were really terrifyingly dangerous people out there. killers who didn't even have to know you to want you dead. This is Lost Highway, the murders on Moclips Beach. So, campers, before we get into our main story this week, which is from 1975, we want to kind of set the scene by talking about a couple of things, which to us, say the 70s, just as loudly as lava lamps, shag carpets, or sideburns, hitchhiking, and murder. In the U.S., hitchhiking really exploded in the 60s and 70s, mostly with younger people,

part of the rising counterculture's new spirit of freedom and adventure. And it was most common out on the West Coast, where those counterculture influences were strong, and the roads were long and lonely. On, say, a California highway, it was a common sight to pass young men and women with a thumb sticking out, looking for a ride. If you were going any distance at all, it'd be weird not to see a hitchhiker. And I don't think you have to be a true crime nerd to think, that sounds dangerous as hell. Like, I want it to be a good thing, I really do, and I'm sure for most people it was fine, but yeah, it's dangerous as hell. Even today, with cameras everywhere and cell phones with GPS,

there was none of that stuff in the 70s. If you got into a stranger's car, it was terrifyingly easy for you to just vanish. And while there have certainly been cases of murderous hitchhikers, most of the time the threat goes in the other direction, vulnerable young people being picked up by drivers with real bad intentions. In 1972, Edmund Big Ed Kemper spent a lot of time cruising around the highways of Northern California in his Ford Galaxy. He was 24 years old, and it had been three years since he'd been released from the maximum

security at Tascadero State Hospital. He'd been committed there after murdering both his grandparents at the age of 15. While he drove, he noticed how many hitchhikers were on the road, and in particular, how many of them were young women. He'd later say that the freedom these women had infuriated him, flaunting in my face the fact that they could do any damn thing they wanted. But, of course, he was a highly skilled liar and manipulator, so who knows what was really going through his head. Regardless, he started keeping knives, handcuffs, blankets, and plastic bags in his car, a convenient murder kit close at hand if he needed it. He didn't need it for a while.

Kemper estimated that he gave around 150 rides to young women that were perfectly friendly and peaceful, with him dropping him off safely just where he said he would. But he had his murder kit in the car all the time. And given who he is, I have no doubt at all he was getting a thrill from no. knowing he could hurt those women if he wanted, that even if they didn't know it, their lives were in his hands. Obviously, this wasn't going to last forever. Ed was building up to something. He'd later describe his overpowering violent urges as his little zapples, which often happened after he'd been arguing with his mother. Yeah. Ed Kemper is sort of the quintessential, you know, like mommy issues poster child.

Like, like he, yeah, if there's, if there's a picture near the mommy issues part of the encyclopedia, it is Ed Kemper. Oh, yeah. Or as the fellow fans of last podcast on the left may know him, bumblebutt. Bumblebutt. He was a bumblebutt according to the last podcast on the left. For young women who got in his car during these little Zapples episodes, the consequences were deadly. In May 1972, he picked up Mary Ann Pesci and Anita Luches. two 18-year-olds who were hitching from Fresno State to Stanford.

After an hour on the road, he drove into the woods near Alameda, where he handcuffed Marianne and shoved Anita into the trunk of the galaxy. Kemper was six foot nine and could easily overpower just about anyone. While he was handcuffing Marianne, he accidentally brushed his hand on the side of her breast and got embarrassed, blushing and apologizing. Moments later, he was stabbing and strangling. her to death. Bizarre. Then he got Anita out of the trunk and killed her the same way. As he drove back to his apartment with both bodies in the trunk, a cop pulled him over because he

had a broken tail light. Kemper was as cool as a fridge full of cucumbers and the cop didn't suspect a thing. He took the bodies into his apartment and, well, we're not going to tell you what he did in there. Bad things. Look, Kemper's not a mystery. If you really want to know, it's not hard to find out. Over the next year, he murdered four more young women he picked up as hitchhikers, before killing his mother and her best friend and then turning himself in. A little way north of Ed Kemper's killing ground, in Sonoma County, there was a series of terrifying hitchhiker murders throughout 1972 and 73. Seven young women, between the ages of 12 and 23, were picked up, violently assaulted, often bound, then killed, usually by strangulation, and discarded like trash,

tossed into ravines and ditches by the side of the road. The victims usually had a small piece of jewelry, like one earring missing, possibly taken as a trophy. And there are a bunch more deaths that have been put forward as fitting into the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. They probably weren't committed by the same killer, but it's indicative of just how many people were getting murdered on the highways at the time. The Santa Rosa killings remain unsolved, although lots of suspects of very incredibility have been put forward. Was it the Zodiac killer who claimed a much higher body count than the police connected with him? Like most connections to the Zodiac killer, it's not likely.

The Santa Rosa killings weren't anything like the confirmed Zodiac murders, and they had a sexual element that the Zodiac cases didn't. Was it Ted Bundy? Investigators did take a good look at Bundy after his first arrest, in 1975. He'd spent some time in nearby Marion County, but for the dates of several of the Santa Rosa killings, they were able to pin him down to Washington State. They dismissed him as a suspect, and honestly, they're probably right. Anytime you have an unsolved 70s-era murder on the West Coast, somebody is going to suggest Bundy or Zodiac. They can't have done them all, right?

It's like every two years, like some go-getter investigators, like, I've solved it. It was Bundy. And it was like, no, it wasn't. A somewhat more viable suspect was Frederick Manali, a creative writing instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, who died in a possibly suicidal head-on collision in 1976. After his death, his widow found sketches Frederick had made of himself in various S&M-type situations, some with current or former students of his. Oh, great. That's just what you want to hear about, your former professor, right? Mm-hmm. One of the students in the sketches was Kim Wendy Allen, one of the victims of the Santa Rosa killer. Creepy, but there's no real shortage of creepy teachers having inappropriate thoughts about their students.

And for some reason, it's always an English teacher. Why is that? It is not bite your tongue as a former English teacher. I have to say. You know, in all of the media, it's an English teacher. Because I think, like, you can get them reading, like, romantic poetry and, like, gazing, you know. sultrally over their books at their students. I think that's why I have it in my brain.

Sorry, no offense to English professors out there. I'm sure there's a lot of pervy calculus professors. Anyway, it's a pretty big leap from there to a serial murderer. The Santa Rosa killings are well known because their grouping and similarities suggest a serial killer. And Ed Kemper's crimes are notorious because we know exactly what happened in them because the big guy literally will not shut the fuck up. Yeah, he can't stop telling us. He loves, he loves talking. And so many people are like letting him do it.

I'm like, no, stop talking to him. Enough. Seriously. But there were hundreds of hitchhiking murders in the 70s. Many of them unsolved. Most of them not famous because they're isolated tragedies. For our main story, we're in the tiny coastal town of Moeclips, Washington, Friday, April 18th, 1975. A married couple visiting from Seattle walked along the beach in the early

evening, looking for decorative pieces of driftwood they could take home. This far north, the Pacific Coast is a wild and windy place, and the beach squeezed between the woods and the turbulent sea, was more famous for clam digging than sunbathing. The wife noticed what looked like a shelter made from pieces of driftwood, a simple thing. She thought it looked more like a kid's fort than a serious attempt at protection from the elements. Curious, she came closer and peeked through a gap between the pieces of wood, and then backed away, embarrassed. She'd seen what was unmistakably a naked butt through the gap and thought she'd stumbled on a couple taking advantage of the shelter for a little outdoor nookie.

But by the time she'd walked back to her husband and told him what she'd seen, she was already having doubts. It was a wind-swept 50 degrees on that April evening, not exactly prime conditions for sex o'natural. So the couple approached the shelter, calling out but getting no reply. They looked inside, and a moment later they were running. running across the damp sand back to their truck, desperate to find a phone and call the police. Gray's Harbor County is a big sparsely populated piece of land. The police had to come from Montessano,

40 miles away, and by the time they got there, the sun was setting and a storm had blown in, strong winds lashing the investigators with rain as they trudged along the beach, flashlights struggling to pierce the increasing gloom. In the cold light of the flashlights, wind and rain all around, they pierced. appeared into the shelter and found a scene of horror. Two young women lay on sleeping bags, clearly dead. It looked like they'd been that way for several days. They were both nearly naked and had each been stabbed several times. They'd bled so much that the blood had soaked through the sleeping bags, staining the sand underneath. Both young women were in the same

situation. Their jeans and panties pulled down to their ankles, effectively hobbling them. Their wrists were tightly bound together with twine that was now soaked with blood. They each wore plaid shirts. Those and their bras had been pushed up nearly to their shoulders. It seemed clear that their hands had been tied before the attempt to strip them, and that was the only reason their shirts were still on. They'd both been gagged with fabric cut from their shirts, cleanly cut by an extremely sharp knife.

The taller woman, who had long, light brown hair, had her hands tied in front of her. The other, who was very petite and had straight dark hair in a ponytail, had her hands tied behind her back. There wasn't much sign of a struggle. Their hiking boots and backpacks were neatly lined up, apparently undisturbed. Obviously, the scene suggested a sexual motive for the murders. Robbery wasn't likely.

The investigators found quite a bit of cash in the backpacks, along with driver's licenses. They were Tina Jacobson and Gail. Burton, both 19 years old and both from Vashon, a big mostly rural island in Puget Sound. Sheriff Harold Sumter had an awful sinking feeling. He was pretty sure he and his buddy had passed these women on the road a few days earlier. They hadn't stuck their thumbs out for a cop car, but it was clear they were hitchhiking. Hitchhiking wasn't illegal, and in the mid-70s it wasn't really unusual either, but it was unwise. It would have seemed especially unwise in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-70s, where nearly a dozen young women had recently vanished

or been murdered at the hands of a mysterious and terrifying killer known only as Ted. Ted was, of course, Ted Bundy, who by this time had moved on from Washington to fail miserably at law school in Utah, but no one in the Northwest knew that. Sumter had no reason to stop and speak to the young women walking by the side of the road or to offer them a ride, but he couldn't help but think that if he had, he might not be looking at this awful scene right now. Tina Jacobson and Galisa Burton, who went by Gail, had been friends together at Vichon Island High School, which was the kind of school where everyone knows everyone else because

just a few hundred people went there. As you might imagine, for a rural community with two big cities just a short ferry trip away, a lot of young people moved to Seattle or Tacoma the first chance they got, and Tina and Gail both got jobs out of high school at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. Gail was tiny, just a hair over five feet tall and under 100 pounds, with long dark hair and big round glasses. She was kind of an ethereal soul, and soon discovered that big city life didn't really agree with her. She moved back to Vichon, living alone on 20 acres, working as an apprentice for a small business making moccasins and leather shirts. And honestly, who can blame her? I know small town life isn't necessarily as idyllic as it's painted,

But living in among the orchards and strawberry fields of Bichon Island sounds pretty sweet, especially back then before the commuter boom drove house price is insane. Tina was taller and a little more worldly, enjoying her new life in the city and her job at the hospital, though she liked to visit Gail back on the island. She was good-looking with long, curly, light brown hair. Anne Ruhle, whose article, The Beach, was our main source for this case, described her as having a face as open as a flower. It's such a sweet way to put it.

It's true, too. She and Gail both loved the outdoors, and they'd gone hiking and camping together a lot. It was Tina's idea to take a trip down to Grey's Harbor. She'd been there before, and New Gail would love the wild sea front before tour of season really kicked in. They knew what they were doing. They had good boots and warm clothes and packed their backpacks

with sleeping bags, camping gear, and food, plus some cash for emergencies. They were old hands at this. Their friends and family told them. told them, as they always did, to be careful of strangers, but they weren't too worried. They would have worried if either Tina or Gail were hiking alone, but since they were together, everybody figured they'd be safe. So Tina and Gail took the ferry to Tacoma, entirely confident that their feet and thumbs

would get them to the Pacific coast in no time. They'd told their families and friends that they'd be back by April 17th, but nobody was really upset when they didn't show up on time. They were probably just having a blast and decided to camp for an extra day. Now, sadly, it was clear why they hadn't come home. On the 18th, back on the dark, rain-lashed beach at Moeclips, investigators did the best they could to find any evidence, although without much hope in this exposed, wind-blown environment.

This had the potential to be a difficult investigation, and a complicated one, too. The shelter that Tina and Gail's bodies were found in was situated 200 feet past the border of the Quinault Indian Reservation, so Sheriff Sumter had to call in both the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Having multiple agencies involved in a case can go either way. You can either benefit from wider experience and knowledge, or disagreements over priorities and authority can bog everything down. But before those other agencies arrived,

something about the crime scene was already tickling Sheriff Sumter's memory. Harold Sumter had only just been made sheriff in 1975, but he'd been in law enforcement for 12 years before, before then. A significant part of being a good detective is just noticing things and remembering them. And right now, Sumter was remembering a case from eight years previously, involving an odd 20-year-old called William Batten, who worked at a local shingle mill. A lot of neighborhoods in small towns have a William Baton, a local weirdo. And not weird in a fun, I'm going to wear my elf ears to school kind of way. Weird in a skin crawling, don't be alone with him kind of way.

Yeah, our school had several of each. as I recall. Yeah, less Boo Radley and more Hannibal Lecter, you know? Yeah, exactly. Batten was a big husky, dark-haired dude who'd been caught under the floor of the MoClips Community Club, where he'd drilled holes in the floor so he could watch preteen girls use the bathroom. He'd tied an 11-year-old boy upside down to a pole, then ran away. He'd grabbed and groped a 13-year-old girl.

Basically, like, his whole history is, what the fuck? This is a pattern that I'm sure seems plenty ominous to those of you who read a lot of true crime stories. It's the kind of behavior that has a good chance of escalating to some very dark places. Yeah, the voyeurism in particular. Like Bundy would always do that too. He was always skulking around, peering in windows. And oh, God, it's so creepy. And to take the initiative to drill holes under the building is so disturbing.

It's so creepy. Very concerning. Yeah. In 1967, in several separate instances, William Baton abducted young boys, threatening them with a knife and forcing them to go into the woods with him. He tied them to trees or hung them from branches by their wrists, pulled down their pants, and threatened to castrate them with his knife. He didn't actually cut them. Either he enjoyed their fear more than the idea of actually harming them, or he'd already gotten to where he wanted. This is gross, so I'm just going to state it as flatly as I can. William often just ejaculated in his pants when he got sexually excited. Afterward, he'd just walk off through the woods, leaving the boys strung up and hollering for help once they were sure he'd got away.

One of them had been rescued by his dad, who'd cut the kid free and kept the knot, which he'd shown to Harold Sumter. It was a distinctive knot, an odd variant of a square knot with extra twists, unusual enough that eight years later, Sheriff Sumter recognized that the twine used to bind the hands of Tina Jacobson and Gail Burton had been tied in exactly the same way. Back in 1967, William Baton had been arrested and tried and committed to Western Washington State Hospital upon diagnosis as a sexual psychopath, what I guess today we'd call a sexual sadist. Infuriatingly, he'd been released after a really short stay and had moved up to Bremerton,

on Puget Sound, which is astonishing. Like, how, how did that not get you years and years and years and years? I don't understand. We don't know much about his life up there in Puget Sound, but I'm going to go ahead and guess it was nothing good. He'd recently moved back to the Gray's Harbor area with his wife, Carleen. An eight-year-old knot isn't a whole lot to go on, but the next day, with the sun shining and the storm having passed, investigators got their first real good look at the crime scene.

Tina and Gail's families had been told the awful news by then, and, from them, investigators knew Gail wore glasses, which they couldn't find. And Tina had only one earring, which as far as I know wasn't a fashion thing in 1975. Had their killer taken these things as trophies? They found a ball of twine, which at first glance looked to be of the same type used to bind Tina and Gail's wrists. And in the corner of the shelter, under four inches of wind-blown sand, they found buried treasure. A Puget Sound Power and Light Company receipt stub, with the name William C. Baton on it, and an envelope addressed to Mrs. Carleen Batten, William's wife. That envelope showed a MoClip's address, just a couple blocks down from the beach where the bodies had been found.

In fact, the address was for William's parents. He and Carleen were living in a trailer on their property. This is the kind of evidence that Detective salivate over. Like, they have dreams about killers stuffing their pockets full with receipts and, like, their birth certificates or social security card and, like, dropping them at the scene. Like, you know, that meme where it's like somebody dropping spaghetti out of their pockets? It's like that, but with identifying information. Yeah, I don't know that meme, but that's... But it's true, yeah.

I will send it to you right now. They're, and most of the time the criminals are not dipshit enough to actually do that. Yeah. Envelope with his name on it. Hi, I'm Darren Marler. Host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt. Spreaker is the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to record, host, and distribute your show everywhere. from Apple Podcasts to Spotify. But the real game changer for me

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Spreker's powerful tools scale effortlessly as your show grows. So if you're ready to podcast like a pro and get paid while doing it, check out Spreaker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. So a few deputies who had no idea that these papers had been uncovered were canvassing MoClips door to door, like the whole town. I can't stress enough how small this place is. 200 people live there now, and probably fewer in 1975.

The cops knocked on every door in town, including that of William Batten's parents. One of his siblings, helpfully told the cops, Hey, Billy said he'd picked up a couple girl hitchhikers, didn't you, Billy? When he was shown pictures of the victim, William said, yeah, they were possibly the girls he'd given a ride to. One of the deputies reported that William's dad had said to him, when did this happen about two days ago? And they were stabbed, right?

Neither the fact that Tina and Gail had lain dead for several days or that they had been stabbed had been made public yet. The autopsies on Tina and Gail's bodies had taken place just that morning. Among multiple stab wounds, both had very similar fatal injuries. injuries, deep cuts to the carotid artery that would have quickly led to their deaths by exangination, which in this case might have been a blessing. There was no sign of sexual trauma on either of them, and no trace of semen. Obviously, these were sexually motivated murders, and the lack of direct evidence of sexual assault didn't change that. Some sexual

sadists get all their pleasure from their victim's terror, rather than direct physical assault, and it's not particularly uncommon for these creeps to be either impotent or suffer from premature ejaculation. The medical examiner deduced that the women had been killed with a long knife, very sharp, but only sharpened on one side, a couple inches wide, like a butcher's knife. The autopsy also told investigators that the last meals Tina and Gail had were a salad for vegetarian gale and a burger for Tina.

There aren't a lot of ways to get to MoClips, and investigators checked at restaurants all along the likely roots, asking if anyone remembered two teenagers with backpacks who'd gotten a salad and a burger. The staff at the Colonial West Restaurant in Hocqueam, 25 miles down the road, remembered them. They were pretty memorable. They each wore big bright orange backpacks, so as to be extra visible when they were walking by the side of the road, and they'd paid for lunch with a $20 bill. For some mid-70s context, a Big Mac would have set you back just 50 cents. So this was like handing over a $100 bill today. People aren't necessarily going to be thrilled to make change for you. And yeah, I know, I'm crying.

I just spent $15 at Burger King when I was driving across the country. It hurt my heart. After lunch, Tina and Gail sat down on a log to rest for a while. And then they got picked up by a guy in a green 1964 Ford or Chevy. The witness to this was able to give police, the year of the car, but no description of the driver beyond man. That's just the way eyewitness testimony works, I guess. William Batten had a green Ford of the right age, but lots of people did. The 60s and 70s were something of a golden age for green cars. Sheriff Sumter did some quick

checking into what William Baton had been up to for the past eight years and found that two years earlier, he'd been convicted of second-degree assault against three young children. He'd been granted bail to undergo therapy at a clinic back home in Grey's Harbor. He and his wife, Carleen, had moved into his parents' trailer, and Batten went right back

to working at the same shingle mill he'd worked at eight years ago. Carleen had stuck with him throughout his trial and conviction, even though it meant losing custody of her own children because it was too dangerous for them to be around William. Wow. Stand by your man, huh? Yeah, you can tie your brain in knots trying to figure out what the hell Carlene was thinking,

but the simplest answer is probably that she was a creepy weirdo too whose kids were probably better off without her. No kidding. There was plenty that pointed to William Batten as a person of interest in the murders of Tina and Gale. More than enough for a search warrant, and at 7 a.m. on Sunday, April 20th, just a day and a half after the discovery of Tina and Gail's bodies, they executed the search. William was working, the early shift at the mill. In a kitchen drawer in Baton's trailer, investigators found a 10-inch knife razor sharp. Carleen said the knife hadn't been used for months, but a detective noticed fresh-looking paper towel residue on the blade and edge, the kind you get when you wipe something clean.

He also found a pair of jockey shorts that had been washed, but not very well. The FBI lab would soon find traces of blood and semen on them. The hypothesis was that William had gotten so excited by binding and stripping Tina and Gale that he'd ejaculated in his underwear, and then got blood on them while stripping off his bloody clothes. Ugh. In the washing machine in William's parents' house, investigators found a man's brown pants and a green shirt. The FBI lab would also find blood on these. In fact, it looked like they'd been covered in it before they'd been through the wash. This was not a good washing machine. Damn.

No kidding. But unfortunately, the wash, shitty or not, made it impossible to determine the type of blood that was all over Batten's pants. It still didn't look good for him, though. Yeah, I mean, try to convincingly finish the sentence. My clothes were totally drenched in blood because, and walk away free and clear in this situation. Probably not going to happen. Carleen was at home while the search warrant was carried out,

and she was cooperative. I find it hard to believe she didn't suspect her husband as soon as she'd heard two girls had been killed. After the autopsy, investigators believed, Tina and Gail had been killed on Monday, four days before their bodies were discovered. Carleen remembered William had been agitated all Monday night, but she thought it was just because he'd quit smoking. She asked him to come next door to his parents' place with her to watch TV, but he'd said he was too worked up, and he'd go for a walk instead to try and chill out.

This was apparently pretty common behavior for William to go out for long walks by himself in the dark of night. I don't want to judge anyone's relationship, but if a feature of your partner's daily routine includes something that makes them sound like a character and scary stories to tell in the dark, I would recommend seeing a divorce lawyer. I mean, listen, I'm not discriminating. The same goes for ladies with mysterious green ribbons around their necks. It's bad news. That they refused to take off. Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Carleen had come back from her in-laws about two and a half hours later, and William was already home. She hadn't noticed anything unusual about him. Investigators were piecing together what they thought might have happened.

William Batten had given Tina and Gail a ride from Hocquium up to Moclips, then left them on the beach and driven home just a few blocks south. He'd waited until dark, working himself up, thinking of them down there alone and helpless, fantasizing about what he could do to them, until finally he made his decision and went out for his walk. It wouldn't have been hard to find Tina and Gail in their simple shelter on the beach. And then all the bad things had happened, and he'd been home and in a change of clothes before his wife had gotten back from the in-laws next door. Investigators kept William Batten under 24-hour surveillance for a couple of reasons. First, they wanted to make sure he didn't skip town before they were ready to arrest him. And second, you don't conduct a full

forensic search of a property in a little place like MoClips without absolutely everyone knowing what's going on. And small towns have long memories. Everybody, knew what creepy Billy Baton had done to get committed all those years before. Police were worried the locals might decide to take justice into their own hands. William Batten was arrested at home on April 25th and driven to the state capital, Olympia, to be questioned. He was read his rights and agreed to take a polygraph, but as soon as he saw all the wires and cables and stuff, he freaked out and changed his mind. I'd never pass it, he muttered. Billy Boy, were you listening when they told you anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?

It was just a couple minutes ago. In fact, it didn't take much for William Batten to crack, and within a couple hours, he was writing out a sort of but not quite confession. Yes, he'd given Tina and Gail a ride to the beach. Creeply, given his particular history, he thought they were much younger than they actually were. He'd driven home after dropping him off, where he'd been nervous because he'd gotten hurt at work,

so he'd gone for a walk. It was kind of chilly, so he'd put on cover-alls over his clothes. He'd ended up down at the beach where he'd seen a fire and figured there'd be someone there to talk to. Investigators found no trace at all of a fire on the beach,

but Baton insisted he'd gone over to one and found the two young women he'd given a ride to. They talked for a while, then the women had said he should come into their shelter with them to get out of the wind. Inside, once he told him he was married,

they'd immediately tried to seduce him. Yeah, if you're buying that, I've got some great NFTs I'd like to sell you. It's bullshit, of course, and it's bullshit that comes up again and again in confessions of sexual crimes that the victims were actually the instigators trying to lead a good man astray. It's the old slut-shaming defense. I suspect it's because in their heads they already decided it was the victim's fault, so it's easy for them to justify what they did to authorities. Oh, yeah, yeah.

William said Tina and Gail had stripped off to try and entice him, apparently forgetting that in reality he'd tied their hands first, so he'd been unable to get their shirts off. He started to leave, but the women said they were going to find his wife and tell her they'd had sex. Uh-huh. Convincing. So William said he had no choice. He tied them up with twine, he just happened to have in his coveralls,

cutting it with a knife that he, again, just happened to have with him. They'd just laughed at him, he said. you know, a perfectly normal human reaction when you're naked and a large man with a knife has just tied you up. According to William, Tina and Gale told him they were just going to yell until somebody came and then tell them that William had sexually assaulted them. Because apparently they were old school mustache twirling comic book villains who loved to tell the hero their dastardly plans before they put them into action. So again, William had no choice. He had to cut some fabric from their shirts to gag Tina and Gail. And while he was gagging,

Gail, Tina, despite her gag, had managed to scream. And it startled him, and he spun around and, in his own words, just happened to stab Tina, killing her. He panicked, knowing Gail could tell what he'd done, so he stabbed her too. Then he stabbed them each several times more to make sure they were dead and headed home to ask Carleen what he should do. But she hadn't been there, so he'd just cleaned up and wiped the blood off the knife and put it back in the drawer. By the time Carleen actually did come home, he decided not to tell her.

He's like one of those like bumbling sitcom husbands. It's just like he's just just, I need to ask my wife. Yeah, I just need to ask my wife what to do. A dark version of King of Queens. Jesus. Yeah. I mean, that was his story at least. Given that his dad had known details of the murders before they weren't made public, William had obviously told him something. We'll never know whether that was the actual truth or some version of, I heard those two dead girls were stabbed. William was a chatterbox. He told a co-worker at the mill that he'd given the two murdered girls a ride while they were hitchhiking.

It's kind of hard to believe he didn't say anything to Carleen, the woman who was perfectly happy to stand by him when he was outed as a child abuser. His confession is obviously a fantasy and a ridiculous one too, since it doesn't exonerate him of murder, even if you believe it. In fact, the only thing it dodges is him being sexually interested in women other than his wife. We don't really know anything about Carleen, but it seems clear that William was scared shitless of her. Sure, guys, convict me of murder, but for the love of God, please don't make my wife mad at me. I know, right? It's such a weird hill to die on.

William Batten pled not guilty to two charges of first-degree murder and had his bail set at $2 million, close to $12 million in today's money. So he did not, of course, make bond. While waiting for trial, he was finally sentenced for his three cases of child abuse from two years before, 10 years each to be served concurrently. Yeah, and I'd like to point out that if that had happened in a timely manner, he wouldn't have been freaking out in the first place to kill these two girls. Mm-hmm. It's infuriating. His initial defense against the murder charges was predictable, not guilty by reason of insanity. I guess it's a reasonable play for a defense team to make when their client has spent time in psychiatric hospital.

but an examination showed that he clearly didn't fit the criteria. William Batten knew the difference between right and wrong, and he'd taken pains to cover up his crimes. Even in his fantasy version of what had happened, he wasn't free of responsibility. He said he'd killed Gail so no one would find out about his accidental stabbing of Tina. At trial, the prosecution put forward a much more likely version of what had happened on the beach. Tina and Gail, exhausted after a long day.

of travel had wanted to get some rest as soon as they arrived on the beach. They'd found the shelter and figured it would do as a place to spend the night. They were too tired to look for anywhere better. Inside, they hadn't done much other than take off their boots and get their sleeping bags out of their backpacks. They'd crawled into their sleeping bags to rest. They'd either been asleep or dozing when William Batten's bulky looming shape and coveralls with a long knife in his hand had blocked the entrance to the shelter. Tina and Gail were trapped in their sleeping bags. And even if they were free, this terrifying giant was between them and the only way out.

Prosecutor Curtis Jan Hunnan told the court, I suggest to you that a decision was made by two 19-year-old girls not to fight. It's a common response to the possibility of a violent assault and not necessarily an unreasonable one either, especially when the attacker is huge and has a knife. So Tina and Gale terrified me on end. anything we can understand, went along as William Batten bound them and gagged them, stripped them until the stabbing began. And I apologize for how gross this is, but I think it's very possible that the stabbing

happened soon after Batten ejaculated in his underwear. Maybe once the sexual excitement faded, he realized what a world of shit he was going to be in if these women were around to start talking. Or maybe, most likely, I think, he was driven to rage. by embarrassment at what he saw as a frequent sexual failing of his, premature, you know, before he was able to sexually assault them. I think it's incredibly telling that in his fantasy version of events, a central feature was Tina and Gale laughing at him, even when they were bound and naked and theoretically helpless. William Batten was in no way a smart man, but while

he was frantically inventing tall tales, his subconscious apparently had some insight that he didn't have himself. What's that famous Margaret Atwood quote? Women are afraid men will kill them, and men are afraid women will laugh at them. And the way he added that in as a way to justify his actions is supertelling. He thinks that laughing at his expense is punishable by death, something so ingrained in him that he thought the cops would understand. Yeah, there's some deep psychological stuff there, something I know the behavioral scientists

have done a lot of research into. So it took a jury just two and a half hours to find William Batten guilty on both counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms, finally. He served his time in Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, with his earliest possible release date in 2043, when he would have been 96 years old. But he died in prison in 2019, most likely mourned by absolutely no one. And we're not quite done yet. In fact, we're going to step sideways into another case.

On February 21st, 1969, Laura Flink, 21 years old and a few months pregnant, drove up to Moeclips from Aberdeen to collect a couch and some clothes for her young son Tom. The woman giving her the couch and clothes was Barb Askea, someone with whom Laura had a weird, strained relationship. Laura's ex-husband John had started proceedings for the Askias to adopt baby Tom, against Laura's wishes. So strange. John said Laura was just too young to be a single mom. Sounds to me like he was just trying to hurt her any way you could. Laura and Barb had some public blowups about the custody case and were about as far from friendly as you can get. Shortly before her

disappearance, Laura had won full custody of Tom. Laura's housemate asked her not to go up to MoClips alone. He'd go with her, but he had to work. Regardless of his worries, Laura barrow her housemates red ford Ranchero and headed up the coast. A friend of her housemate saw Laura in the Ranchero as he came out of his work, close by MoClips. He was the last person to see her, or at least the last person to see her who was willing to come forward. Two days later, Laura's wallet was found on the sidewalk down in Hoquiam. The day after that, the Ranchero was found outside a bar in the same town. But of Laura Flink, there was no sign at all. Barb Askia told Investors Lora had never made it to Moclips to pick up the couch and clothes, and she had no idea where she could be.

The investigation into Laura's disappearance would aspire to being called even half-assed, pretty much just a shrug of the administrative shoulders, and Laura's wafer-thin file was filed away and went ice-cold. Laura's parents raised Little Tom as their own son. He didn't find out they were technically his grandparents until he was 18 years old. The case heated up in 2006 when a Lieutenant Chastain started chasing down ancient leads. He got in touch with Barb Askiah, who was now 77 years old and living in Georgia. Now, Barb said Laura had in fact arrived to pick up the couch and clothes, and the two of them, old pals that they were, had gone to the Moeclips Tavern for a few beers. But before she could tell any more of the story, Barb said she felt sick. More likely, she realized she'd contradicted her old testimony,

and hung up. Next, Chastain flew down to Georgia to talk to Barb in person. He told her he just wanted to find Laura's remains so they could go to her family. I can't help you with that, Barb said. Barb was not in good health. Diabetes had taken both her legs and she was nearly blind. It looked like she didn't have long left in this world.

Chastain asked her to write out whatever she knew and put it in an envelope that wouldn't be opened until after she died. But when Barb died in 2008, there was no letter, and Laura's disappearance remains unsolved. So why are we bringing up this weird missing person's case? Well, it turns out that not long before she vanished, Laura Flink had gone out on a few dates with none other than William Batten, then recently released from his commitment to the Western Washington State Hospital as a sexual psychopath. I'm guessing that's not something he brought up on the first date. Probably not.

So what had happened here? For what it's worth, investigators don't consider William much of a suspect in Laura's disappearance. A detective went to interview him when Laura's cold case warmed up and he denied any involvement. As Lieutenant Chastain told the Daily World newspaper, when he killed two women, he couldn't stop confessing. So what happened to Laura Flink remains a mystery? But I certainly don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility that William Batten is full of shit. and killed her, in addition to Tina Jacobson and Gail Burton. It's really not much of a leap up from the offenses he was committed for back in 1967.

Yeah, there's a big difference between confessing when you know they've got you dead to rights for a crime you committed three days ago and confessing like decades later when there's no real incentive to do it. I think it's a definite possibility. This case bothers me for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I'd really love to live in a world where hitchhiking would just be a fun, safe way to get around. And don't get me wrong, I think it probably was that for a lot of people back then. I love the idea of thumbing rides across the country. The fact that there are William Batons out there to ruin it for everybody really chaps my ass. The Ed Kemper's, the Randy Crafts,

the Randy Woodfields, I could go on for 10 minutes and I wouldn't have listed them all. And those are just the ones they caught. I hate that these human dumpsters have to exist, that I have to worry when I'm just minding my own business in the world. I mean, the odds are very much in my favor, and yours, it's not like it's a likely scenario that you're going to come across a Ted Bundy, but it's there, isn't it? It's always there in the corner of your mind. I just wish it didn't have to be that way. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few

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