Here's What Campbell Did To Deserve Date With Death

THE faint strumming of the executioner's song can be heard in the background.

It is not a tune Charles Rodman Campbell wants to hear. After 12 years of appeals, time is growing short for the condemned-to-die triple murderer. He needs a break from the one man in this state with the power to spare his life - Gov. Mike Lowry. Without it he will almost certainly die before year's end.

Lowry holds sincere doubts about the death penalty. He believes that it does not deter murder, that it has been used disproportionately to kill blacks, and that there is always the chance, however slight, of an innocent man being executed. In fairness to Lowry, allowing the taking of a life you have the power to spare is no easy task. He is right to reflect on the seriousness of the situation and has offered to meet with the families of Campbell's victims.

Those victims include a young mother, Renae Wicklund, her 8-year-old daughter, Shannah, and next-door neighbor Barbara Hendricksen. The slaughter of these three is often described as "brutal." But these killings involved more than just brutality, and they were committed for a purpose that should chill the spine of anyone who cares about the integrity and credibility of our criminal-justice system. In the past few days, I have talked to people who were at the crime scene where the bodies were discovered and who prosecuted the Campbell case. Here is what they saw. Be forewarned that it is more graphic than what you have read so far in the papers or seen on television.

Campbell was originally imprisoned for a sex offense he committed against Renae Wicklund. She was a randomly chosen victim who was chased, baby in arms, inside her house by Campbell. He demanded that she perform oral sex on him. When she refused, Campbell pressed a knife against the baby's neck, threatening to slice it. In order to save her infant's life, Renae Wicklund complied. Later, she cooperated with authorities to put Campbell away. It wasn't easy. The trial was a grueling ordeal and Renae feared Campbell. Her friend and neighbor, Betty Hendricksen, also testified against him.

Less than eight years later, Campbell had arranged a prison furlough and had also obtained a copy of the trial transcript. He set out for Renae Wicklund's house. The same criminal-justice system that persuaded her to testify had just let her attacker loose and left her completely defenseless.

When Campbell arrived at the Wicklund house, Renae was ill in bed. When she saw him enter the room she tried to frighten him off by telling him that her daughter was coming home soon from school and that Mrs. Hendricksen was coming by to check on her. Instead of frightening Campbell, it emboldened him. Instead of just killing Wicklund, he could execute all three people who were responsible for sending him to prison.

The newspapers call the killing of Renae Wicklund "brutal." According to Eric Lind, one of the prosecutors who sought and obtained the death penalty for Campbell, the young mother was "savagely destroyed."

"He (Campbell) slashed her throat to the point where he nearly decapitated her," Lind wrote in a letter to Lowry. But before killing her, Campbell "had severely beaten, tortured and sexually mutilated her prior to her death. . . ."

After that, Campbell left her body on the bedroom floor soaking in her own blood. Then he waited for Shannah to come home.

Shannah was the infant Campbell had menaced with a knife eight years earlier. When she came home, Campbell attacked her in the living room. But Campbell made sure the little girl didn't die there. He dragged her, screaming, back to her mother's bedroom, where Campbell forced her to look at her mother's body. Only then did Campbell murder her, violently slashing her throat. Authorities couldn't take a blood sample from her body. All of her blood was on the floor.

Afterwards, Campbell went to the kitchen - and fixed himself a snack. Then he waited. When 51-year-old Barbara Hendricksen walked through the door an hour later, she too was slaughtered, her throat cut and her head almost severed from her body.

With that, his work for the day done, Campbell stole some household items and jewelry, and left. Witnesses saw him leave, his fingerprints were all over the house. There is absolutely no doubt that he was responsible for these murders.

The savagery of these murders cannot be overstated. Even the version just given is sanitized. Campbell's own mother, in a tearful meeting with attorneys, said she felt the death penalty was appropriate for her son. Prosecutors declined to put her through the agony of telling that to her son's jury.

Our death-penalty law is reserved for the "worst of the worst" murderers among the state's convicted killers. Campbell ranks first on that list, not just because of his beastliness, but because these victims were targeted for cooperating with the criminal-justice system that is supposed to protect people and guard the integrity of the law. These murders were Campbell's way of telling his victims and that system that he, not they, would get the last word.

And he will, until the sentence he received is carried out. That is what is at stake. Campbell should have been executed more than 10 years ago. On with it. John Carlson is president of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies in Seattle and hosts an afternoon program on KVI (570 AM). His column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times.