One Last Look Back At '91 -- These Are The Eastside Stories We'll Remember From 1991, Just In Case You Forgot

Florida may seem to have dominated the national news as 1991 draws to a close, what with the media circus of a celebrity rape trial combined with the potential move of our baseball team to that state. And yes, there's been plenty of news internationally, from that little action in the Persian Gulf as the year opened to the release of hostages at year's end.

So what happened on the Eastside this year?

A lot.

Bellevueites squabbled over the future of downtown, and the wisdom of building a convention center. A lot of athletes came and went for the Washington State Games (oh - you didn't notice?). Census figures were released, demonstrating what we've all seen: there are a lot more of us in East King County, we're a little more diverse, our home prices are out of sight. . . . That sort of thing.

To help mark the end of 1991 by taking one last look back, the staff of the East bureau of the Times - 10 of us in all, looking out on the region from our office on Main Street in Bellevue - cast our ballots on the top local news stories of the year. Those top stories are summarized below, in the order they placed on our list.

CONVICTED SERIAL KILLER GEORGE RUSSELL

The first murder was the worst because it was so public. A woman in her 20s, dead, naked and battered, her body found posed grotesquely early one June morning near a dumpster in the parking lot of a Bellevue steakhouse and nightspot.

The second murder was the worst because it happened in a modest Bellevue home in a quiet Bellevue neighborhood as the woman's two daughters slept just down the hall.

The third murder was the worst because it was yet more brutal and calculated than the two savage killings before it. Another young woman dead, her skull shattered, her body scratched and stabbed more than 200 times after she died, and posed in sexually charged ways like the others, "to shock and degrade," according to an FBI expert on serial killings.

The sex murders of Mary Anne Pohlreich, 27, Carol Beethe, 36, and Andrea Levine, 24, in Bellevue and Kingsgate took place in the summer of 1990. But it was January of this year before an arrest was made - and later in the year that the murders were identified as "classic" serial killings, according to Bob Keppel, investigator for the state Attorney General's Office, and former investigator of Ted Bundy and the Green River killer.

"The taking of souvenirs . . . and I've never seen a signature quite so obvious," Keppel said, referring to rings taken from the victims and the way the killer had posed the bodies. "Everything I'd learned in 20 years came to light."

Serial killers existed even before Hollywood's Black Dahlia case in the 1940s, even before Jack the Ripper in 1899, Keppel said, and they're at work all over the country.

But for the Eastside, this was something new and terrible.

And it wasn't just the victims who lived on the Eastside. The man charged last January, and, in a precedent-setting trial, convicted of all three killings in October, turned out to be a 33-year-old Mercer Island thief, burglar and barfly named George W. Russell.

Russell, the thin, handsome stepson of one of a handful of local black dentists, was known for easy charm among his friends, including the young people with whom he spent most of his time after he dropped out of high school, and the local police who played basketball with him occasionally.

Despite the conviction and the mandatory life sentences, the three murders are likely to have a lasting impact on the community, according to George Bridges, associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington. "I think they're all very significant events for communities," Bridges said. "They represent very threatening kinds of behavior to the public."

The impact, he said, is that "fear will increase. People adopt coping mechanisms. We tend not to go out at night, we tend to adopt security measures. But coping has its consequences."

As population and density increase - a strong trend on the Eastside, of course - crime also increases, Bridges said, for two reasons.

"As density increases, contact increases. You expect to see more assaults," he said.

And as a population grows, the number of pathological personalities increases proportionately.

"It troubles people, and it should trouble people," Bridges said. "But as populations increase, these problems are inevitable." - Nancy Montgomery

HATE CRIMES

The sorts of demographic changes that the Census reflected in the Eastside haven't occurred without pain - and terror.

Local communities didn't just have to deal with the reality that there was a serial killer in their midst this year. They also had to come face to face with overt bigotry, in several different incidents of racially motivated harassment aimed at African Americans.

In April, a 19-year-old Maple Valley man was arrested after he set a cross on fire in his yard in an apparent effort to intimidate a racially mixed couple who planned to buy the house next door. The next week, not far to the north, youths torched a 7-foot cross on the front lawn of a Bothell family.

Then in July, an African-American couple in the Woodinville area went public with chilling accounts of harassment that included powerful firecrackers being placed in their mailbox and death threats over the telephone.

And in August, an African-American man returned to his Bellevue apartment to find a 6-inch cross burned into the carpet in front of his door.

The five youths charged in the Woodinville case and the youth convicted of the Bothell cross-burning all either graduated from or attended Northshore high schools. The district is now re-examining all subjects to determine how to infuse the curriculum with racial diversity and cultural appreciation.

As hurtful and troubling as the incidents have been, they have brought some frank discussion and self-examination, especially in the Bothell area. Earlier this month, for instance, more than 100 people gathered in the Northshore School District auditorium to talk about racial harassment - and ways to get beyond it.

Bothell Police Chief Mark Ericks confessed that he once tolerated racist jokes, but not anymore.

"It's time to say I am not going to listen to those jokes," Ericks said. "I am going to make a personal stand." - Stephen Clutter

ELECTION SURPRISES

Whoever said off-year elections were boring never lived in Redmond, where politics is historically turbulent and often surprising.

This year was no exception, as two-term Mayor Doreen Marchione barely survived a bushwhacking in the September primary by four other candidates to make it into the general election - only to be defeated last month by first-term Councilwoman Rosemarie Ives.

Marchione's flip-flopping on the King County jail issue last year, as well as the perception that her administration was trying to ignore a youth gang problem, bruised her campaign.

Although Marchione received high praise outside the city for her effectiveness in regional government issues, some criticized her for not paying enough attention to the homefront.

Ives, a slow-growth advocate who won an upset city council election in 1987, has made it clear that she would prefer to steer the city through a more isolationist course over the next four years.

"I have the weight of Redmond's problems on my shoulders," Ives said shortly after her victory. "Do I need the weight of the Puget Sound area's problems on my shoulders?"

Eastside voters, particularly those living in unincorporated areas, also flexed their ever-growing political muscle to help defeat the proposed Metro/King County merger.

Several Eastside leaders, including mayors Randy Barton of Kirkland and Terry Lukens of Bellevue, came out swinging against the deal, which would have transferred control of Metro's transit and sewer functions to an expanded King County Council.

A similar merger deal flopped in 1979, also with the help of suburban officials. But this year's election was significant because of the clout voters in the unincorporated areas of the county brought to the polls.

While the measure passed in Seattle, and only lost narrowly in suburban cities, voters living outside city limits pummeled it. They, after all, have the most dealings with King County government, and the prospect of giving the county even more power clearly struck a nerve - a raw one. - Stephen Clutter

THE MATTSON QUADS

Life has slowed down a bit for Caren and Gregg Mattson of Bellevue since they became the proud parents of quadruplets on June 25.

At least now they are getting some sleep, something they weren't able to get when the three boys and one girl made their appearance at Overlake Hospital Medical Center.

Make no mistake about it: this blessed multi-event was big news, and not just for the dazed parents. It was the first known spontaneous birth of quadruplets - no artifical means here - in the state since 1980, when the state started keeping records.

The Mattsons were taken by surprise when they first found out they were going to be parents again (they had an 8-year-old son). "Surprise" doesn't begin to describe how they felt when they later were told they were going to be parents of four more children.

Gregg, a computer consultant, started remodeling their home and they set up an assembly-line system for the changing and feeding of the babies. The babies were using 50 diapers a day, being fed 32 times and had more than 100 changes of clothes. For the first few months at home, the Mattsons didn't get much sleep. It would take almost two hours to feed everyone and it would start over again.

But as the quads' six-month birthday approaches - that's right, on Christmas Day - Caren Mattson says things are a little more calm. The babies are eating solid food and volunteers are still coming to help out. The family is still going places by a caravan of cars. But they are looking for a van, and Overlake Hospital has a fund for donations.

One thing hasn't changed. The Mattsons still cause a stir wherever they go. "The novelty hasn't worn down," Caren said. "People have been following the babies' progress." - Steve Johnston

THE SEARCH FOR A JAIL SITE

To be accurate, you could call this a top story of the decade, so far: overcrowding at King County's downtown jail led to a search for a new jail site that has been going on for more than two years.

The county is still trying to select a site. But many Eastside communities are breathing a little easier after the turbulent events of 1991 - because recommendations late this year said that the first of two regional justice centers should be situated in south King County.

During the long selection process, top spots for the jail were first identified in Woodinville and Redmond, then later in Bothell and Bellevue. And what constituted the "jail" also kept changing. The proposal started as a temporary facility that needed to be built immediately, then changed to a permanent jail, to be built in 1995 in order to carry the county into the 21st century.

Along the way, the naming of each potential site brought out hundreds of opponents who argued strenuously that their community was the wrong place for a regional justice center, or whatever you wanted to call it.

The issue mobilized communities like none other. Woodinville began discussing another incorporation drive. Redmond eventually voted Mayor Doreen Marchione out of office after she endorsed, then backed away from, property in Redmond as a jail site; the issue unquestionably did Marchione some harm. In Bothell, a loosely knit community was galvanized to form a solid association and brought more than 100 people out to a meeting, while an older Bellevue neighborhood renewed efforts to save itself.

In 1992, the fight is expected to continue. Both Surrey Downs in Bellevue and Bill's Dairy near Bothell remain on the list as potential sites for a second jail, to be built by the year 2000. - Katherine Long