The Campbell Case: One More Victim

IN ONE paragraph of his suicide note, he wrote, "There is a file of papers and tapes re: the Campbell case that Dick Larsen of The Seattle Times may want."

That came as a surprise: I'd had no contact with Roger Button since I wrote about him six years ago. I didn't even know he was dead.

I'd last seen Button when I interviewed him at his apartment in the Green Lake neighborhood in 1985. A thin-faced, graying man, Button at the time was taking a pounding in news media reports - especially in some super-hyped TV "investigative" reports.

Those reports dealt with circumstances around the 1982 murders committed by Charles Campbell in Snohomish County. They were crimes that horrified and angered everyone.

While on work release, Campbell, a convicted rapist, went to the home of Renae Wicklund in the community of Clearview. There he killed Wicklund and Barbara Hendrickson - both of whom had testified against him in his rape trial - and Wicklund's 8-year-old daughter.

Button had a long career with the state, much of it as a corrections officer. In 1982 he was supervisor of an honor farm connected with the state reformatory at Monroe.

The 1985 uproar in the news media was triggered by documents contained in a million-dollar civil lawsuit filed by Wicklund's survivors. There was an unsubstantiated claim that Campbell got his work-release furlough in 1982 in return for homosexual favors.

There was a further allegation that Button was linked to drug trafficking inside the Monroe prison.

Button held his silence for awhile. But he seethed at the TV reports and the sight of a photo of him on the tube, associated with the killer Campbell. "When you're accused of something like that," he once asked me, "what do you do? Deny it? And then have them replay it all again?"

After interviewing Button and others, I wrote about the case in September, 1985. Campbell had been moved to the honor farm, later a work-release unit, not because someone inside the prison pulled strings, but because that was the recommendation of the state parole board.

Button told me he felt he'd been "set up" by others in the corrections system because, facing public outrage over the killings, "they needed a scapegoat." The only allegation made against Button was in an anonymous letter . . . but it was used in the civil suit and thus became public record. That triggered the media excitement.

Button was a natural for a set-up. Part of his job at Monroe was to be "grievance coordinator." That meant he had to take inmate complaints - about bad food or plugged toilets or other problems - to other prison officials.

"That didn't make me very popular with a whole lot of the staff," he said.

Button always received good work-performance evaluations. Former prison staff workers, ex-inmates, and others I interviewed, uniformly described him as professional. Ernie Johnson, an ex-con who went straight, described how Button helped him and others get jobs when they left prison.

"Roger was very professional," said Johnson. But he added that conditions in the corrections system at that time were impossible - with a flood of felons pouring into prisons, pressuring the parole board to hurry inmates' return to society.

"On any night you might have 15 staff in there and 1,300 inmates. No way they're gonna have any control," said Johnson.

One of Button's supervisors once said that Button failed a lie-detector test. That wasn't true. There'd been no test. Later, though, Button volunteered to take a lie-detector test: He passed.

Barry Fagan, a Snohomish County detective, did an independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding Campbell's work release. After numerous interviews and other investigative work, Fagan concluded that no one deliberately allowed Campbell to slip away.

"I don't believe he (Button) got involved with Charles Campbell or any other inmate on other than a personal basis. . . ," the detective reported at the time.

During my interviews with him, Button acknowledged he was homosexual. But he insisted his homosexuality never was a factor in his work.

Button subsequently asked for a transfer, saying the uproar made it impossible for him to work effectively at Monroe. "I'm more afraid of the staff, than I am of the inmates," he said.

His transfer request was denied. So Button resigned. He'd worked for 18 years for the state, but, at age 49, hadn't qualified for a pension.

In the years since, Button helped operate a tavern in Seattle. He continued to be tortured by the allegations brought against him and the publicity, says a sister who lives in Bellingham.

People often viewed him with suspicion and hatred, she adds. She described an incident in downtown Seattle. Two passersby recognized him, she recalled, "and said, `You're Roger Button, aren't you?' And they punched him out. They broke his ribs and blackened his eye. That's happened on more than one occasion."

By all accounts, Button was drinking heavily in recent years and broke.

Last July he wrote his suicide note to his sister:

"I've tried for almost 10 years to clear my name and get a fair hearing, so that we could all put our lives together again. Now I've decided to bring everything to an end and appeal to a higher judge of man."

Button also left a memo detailing what should be done with his belongings. His apartment rent was paid in advance, he said, adding. "There is a $200 damage deposit which should cover clean-up costs."

He shot himself in the head.

Recently his sister sent to me a large carton filled with documents and notes written by Button. In one note, he named some corrections officials and repeated "It is my firm belief that (they) have attempted to set me up."

A few pages later he predicted, in a deteriorating handwriting, that some of "the good old boys from Monroe . . . (will) have a good laugh over how they did that faggot Button in!"

I'll poke further into the case. But I doubt that the truth - of whatever happened - will ever be found.

Meanwhile, Campbell is on death row at the state prison in Walla Walla. He recently won a legal round in the federal courts that permits him to raise new issues in the appeal of his murder convictions nearly a decade ago.