Father Plays `Thorn In Side' To Son's Killer -- He'll Be There In Court As Dodd Is Questioned About Desire To Die

PORTLAND - There have been times, says Bob Iseli, when he's sat in the small Vancouver, Wash., courtroom, thinking how easy it might be to spring from his seat, leap over a rail and attack the man who murdered his son.

Tomorrow, he admits, may be one of those days.

"I think it's natural to feel that way, to want to hurt him, but I know I won't," Iseli said. "If I did, I wouldn't be any better than he is."

Westley Allan Dodd, sentenced to die for killing Iseli's 4-year-old son and two young Vancouver brothers in 1989, is scheduled to appear in Clark County Superior Court tomorrow to answer questions about his desire to waive his appeals and be executed.

If the courts go along with his request, Dodd, 29, could become the first person executed in Washington since 1963.

Iseli, sitting in the cluttered living room of his Southeast Portland triplex yesterday, said no one has a stronger desire to see Dodd die, but he's skeptical of what he believes might be a ploy on Dodd's part.

"I just keep thinking he may come back later and change his mind, and that he's just doing this to throw a curve at the system. Anytime you throw it a curve, you slow it down."

Iseli, 37, said it's painful for him to see Dodd in court, painful to discuss the case and painful to do what he did last month - speak directly to Dodd via satellite on a nationwide television talk show.

But Iseli does these things, he said, because he believes that on some level, it bothers Dodd.

"It's like being a thorn in his side," Iseli said. "As much as I would like him to go away, I know he would like me to go away, too."

And, Iseli said, he feels a sense of obligation to his murdered son, Lee. "For me, this is telling my son that I love him. I couldn't be there when he needed me the most. This is my way of being there for him now."

Dodd, a former Renton resident, was sentenced to die after he admitted raping and strangling the Iseli boy at Dodd's Vancouver home in October 1989. Dodd also admitted fatally stabbing Cole and William Neer, ages 11 and 10, at a Vancouver park two months before killing Lee Iseli.

Dodd was caught two weeks after Iseli's death, when he tried to abduct another boy at a Camas, Clark County, theater.

For Iseli, one effect of the killing is feeling especially protective of his remaining son, Justin, 11.

"If he goes to the video arcade, I drive him. When he goes riding his bike to a friend's house, the anxiety is there."

Iseli and Justin moved into the triplex last fall when the house they rented when Lee was alive was sold.

Moving was saying goodbye to part of Lee, Iseli said. "I could sit out on that back porch and feel he was there playing, and even though it was hard, it was being in touch with him."

In the unit Iseli and Justin now occupy, two baseball bats and a basketball sit in a living-room corner under Justin's Little League trophies. Board games are stacked alongside Nintendo cartridges under shelves that strain with the weight of stereo components and a large television.

There is no visible sign of the missing son; a single bare nail that supported his picture sticks out of the wall above the dinner table.

Iseli said he hung Lee's picture there when he moved in but took it down a month later. Most of the good photographs of Lee, he said, now have painful memories attached to them. One was displayed atop the closed casket at his funeral; others have been shown on Portland television news.

Iseli, a computer operator for a company that sells feed and supplies for horses, is a lifelong resident of the Portland area.

In addition to Westley Dodd, Iseli said he blames the state of Washington for his son's death, noting that Dodd had been arrested several times for making sexual advances to young boys.

A court report filed in conjunction with a 1987 King County case said Dodd admitted to being "predatory and uncontrollable."

Even if the courts accept Dodd's desire to skip the various appeals available to condemned inmates, it could still take a year or longer to resolve other legal issues in the case. The state Supreme Court, which ordered tomorrow's hearing, is required by law to closely review every death-penalty verdict, regardless of the convicted person's desires.

Iseli has been the most vocal of the parents touched by Dodd's crimes. He and Lee's mother, Jewell Cornell, had been divorced about two years when Lee was killed.

Cornell said last week she has been reluctant to speak out publicly about the case, but thinks of it constantly.

"He (Dodd) may have taken Lee away, but Lee will always be my son. He can't take that away."

Cornell, 35, a deli clerk at a Portland grocery store, attended Dodd's sentencing and had her sister read a statement saying to Dodd: "You are the scum of the earth . . . I hope you rot in hell."

Cornell said she has no plans to witness tomorrow's court hearing or any other proceeding in the case until Dodd's execution.

"I'll wait until he dies," she said, "and I'll go to that."