Carol Erickson

Carol Adele Erickson was a bright and ambitious 19-year-old with a passion for the culinary arts. In the winter of 1969, the White female was a student at the Renton Vocational Technical Institute, where she was honing her skills and planning for a future. Remembered as a kind and dedicated young woman, her life was anchored in the suburban community of Renton, Washington, a city just southeast of Seattle, where she had graduated from high school. She was a daughter and a friend whose sudden and violent death would leave a lasting scar on the community and become the first in a series of crimes that terrorized the region.

On the evening of Monday, December 15, 1969, Carol was walking home after a visit to the Renton Municipal Library. Her route took her along a quiet, secluded dirt road that ran beside the Cedar River. It was a familiar path, but on this night, it became the scene of a horrific ambush. A man attacked Carol, brutally stabbing and raping her before dragging her body into the nearby bushes. When she didn't return home, her family grew worried, but it would be days before her fate was known. The discovery of her remains by medical examiner investigators sent a shockwave of fear through Renton, a community then unaccustomed to such violent acts.

The Renton Police Department launched an investigation into the shocking homicide, but the case yielded few immediate clues. For months, the murder remained unsolved, casting a pall of anxiety over the community. The seemingly random nature of the attack left residents on edge, wondering if a killer was living among them. The investigation would eventually expand as more victims were discovered in the area over the next year and a half. The slayings of 17-year-old Joanne Zulauf in September 1970, and two six-year-old boys, Bradley Lyons and Scott Andrews, in April 1971, created a pattern of violence that detectives worked tirelessly to connect.

The breakthrough came in the spring of 1971. Investigators, piecing together witness sightings and forensic evidence from the multiple crime scenes, zeroed in on a suspect. The case was complicated when a mentally ill Army veteran, John Chance, falsely confessed to the murders of the two young boys. However, detectives patiently pursued other leads, which ultimately pointed them toward a different young man from Renton, 18-year-old Gary Gene Grant. After his apprehension on April 30, 1971, Grant confessed to the murders of all four victims, providing details that only the killer could have known.

Grant’s confession detailed the horrific events of the night he killed Carol Erickson. His arrest, however, was nearly jeopardized. A Renton police captain, William Frazee, had illegally installed recording devices in the room where Grant spoke with his attorneys. This misconduct led to criminal charges against the officer and a defense motion to have the entire case dismissed. In a crucial ruling on June 30, 1971, King County Superior Court Judge David Soukup decided that the trial should proceed, stating, "An innocent public should not be penalized because of an illegal act on the part of the police department."

The trial began on August 12, 1971. The defense argued that Grant was not sane at the time of the killings, suffering from a "split personality" and "unconscious rage." Prosecutors presented evidence including a shoe print consistent with Grant's tennis shoes found at one of the scenes and testimony from detectives about his confession. On August 25, 1971, after two days of deliberation, the jury found Gary Gene Grant guilty on four counts of first-degree murder.

The jury spared Grant the death penalty, and he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison. The verdict brought a difficult resolution to the series of brutal crimes that had haunted the Puget Sound area for nearly two years. As of August 2020, more than 50 years after he murdered Carol Erickson, Gary Gene Grant remained incarcerated for his crimes, his name now linked to the history of one of the Seattle area's forgotten serial killers.