Dead By Sunset By: Ann Rule Synopsis: Another chilling and creepy book from the reigning queen of true-crime, Ann Rule, who also penned the riveting bestseller Small Sacrifices. Here, we encounter a charismatic con-artist accused of brutally bludgeoning his wife and follow his case through to its strangely redemptive end. Pocket Books; ISBN: 0671001132 Copyright 1996 September 21, 1986, was a warm and beautiful Sunday in Portland?in the whole state of Oregon , for that matter. With any luck, the winter rains of the Northwest were a safe two months away. The temperature had topped off at sixty-nine degrees about four that afternoon, and even at 9 P.M. it was still a relatively balmy fifty-eight degrees. Randall Kelly Blighton had traveled west on Highway 26?the Sunset Highway?earlier that evening, driving his youngsters back to their mother s home inBeavertonafter their weekend visitation with him. A handsome, athletic-looking man with dark hair and a mustache, Blighton was in his twenties, a truck salesman. His divorce from his wife was amicable, and he was in a good mood as he headed back toward Portlandalong the same route. The Sunset Highway, which is actually a freeway, can often be a commuter's nightmare. It runs northwest from the center ofPortland, past the OMSI zoo and through forestlike parks. Somewhere near the crossroads of Sylvan, the Multnomah Washington county-line sign flashes by almost subliminally. Then the freeway angles toward the Pacific Ocean beaches as it skirtsBeavertonand the little town of Hillsboro. The land drops away past Sylvan, giving the area its name West Slope. trails off the Sunset Highway down the curves of the slope, past pleasant neighhorhoods, until it runs through a commercial zone indistinguishable from similar zones ananhere inAmerica: pizza parlors, supermarkets, car dealers, strip malls. Approaching Hillshoro, theWashingtonCountyseat, Route 8?the TVA Highc7ay?slices through what was only reccntly farmland. TheTualatinRivervalley, once richly agricultural, is now a technological wonderland. Its endless woods are dwindling and the area has become known as the SiliconForest. There are acres and acres of corporate parks inWashingtonCountynow: Intel, Fujitsu, NEC, and Tektronix. Intel is already the largest single employer in Oregon , soon there will be more workers in the computer and electronics industry in Oregon than there are timber employees. Apparently serenely untroubled by the encroachment of modern technology, the Sisters of Saint Mary have been stationed along the TVA Highway for many years, their nunnery and school on the left, their home for wayward boys on the right. In an instant Route 8 becomesTenth AvenueinHillsboro. A left turn onMain Streetleads toward the old city center and the county courthouse. Main Streetis idyllically lined with wide lawns, wonderful old houses with gingerbread touches, jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween and spectacular lights during the Christmas season. But it hasn't fared so well commercially since the new Target store and the mall went up south of town, its chief businesses are antique stores and, except for the Copper Stone restaurant and cocktail lounge, the kind of restaurants where ladies linger over tea. The Washington County Courthouse is surrounded by manicured grounds with magnolias and towering sequoias planted more than a century ago. It smells like a courthouse, at least the original structure does: wax, dust, the daily lunchroom special, and old paint baking on radiators. The people employed there are comfortable and at home, bantering with one another as they go about their work, the people who come there on all manner of missions are more often than not angry, worried, grieving, frightened, annoyed, or apprehensive. Some walk away with a sense of justice done, and some don't walk away at all, they are handcuffed and locked up in the jail next door. Not far from the courthouse, something terrible happened on the Sunset Highway onSeptember 21, 1986, at the Sylvan marker, just inside WashingtonCounty. And in the end, it would all be settled in this courthouse, as Christmas lights glowed in the branches of a tall fir on the corner ofMainand First Streets and icy rain pelted court watchers and witnesses alike. The end would be a long time coming. It was about8:30on that Sunday night in September, and dark enough so that Randy Blighton needed his headlights to see what lay ahead of him on the curving Sunset Highway. He was startled as he came around one of those curves near Sylvan in the West Slope area and saw that cars a half mile ahead of him were suddenly swerving out of the fast lane into the right-hand lane. It looked as if there might be something in the road ahead that they hadn't been able to see until the last moment. A dead animal perhaps, or maybe a truck tire. Whatever it was, it had to be dangerous, a last-minute lane switch only worked if the right lane was clear. Blighton traveled another hundred feet and now he could make out the dark hulk of aToyotavan turned crosswise on the freeway. Its lights were off and it was in a perilous position, completely blocking the fast lane. Luckily, the drivers ahead of Blighton had been alert, but it would be only a matter of time before someone came around the curve in the fast lane and smashed into the van. People usually drove the Sunset Highway between fifty-five and sixty-five miles an hour and a crash like that would undoubtedly escalate rapidly into a fatal multicar pileup. Blighton was grateful that, for the moment at least, the freeway was not heavily traveled. And that was only a freak circumstance. At8:30 on a Sunday night after a weekend of good weather, there had to be hundreds of vehicles heading back toPortlandfrom the coast. Randy Blighton's first inclination was to swerve around the van, he had things to do at home. "I was going to go on by too," he later recalled, "but then I spotted the silhouette of an infant seat in the van. I couldn't ignore that. I'd just left my own kids, and I could never live with myself if there was a baby or a little kid in that van." Blighton's reflexes were good. He tapped his brakes, pulled his car over on the right shoulder, grabbed a couple of flares, and then ran across the freeway toward the van. As he got close to it, he could see that it was perpendicular to the median that separated the eastbound and westbound lanes, its front bumper repeatedly tapping the concrete Jerseybarriers. The van's engine was still turning over, and it was in gear, inching forward and then being held back by the barriers. Blighton knew that he was as much a sitting duck as theToyotaif a car came around the curve, and he hurriedly lit the flares and set them out in the fast lane to warn motorists, in time he hoped, to veer to the right. He had no idea what he might find as he reached for the driver's door handle of the van?possibly someone who had had a stroke or a heart attack. It might even be a driverless vehicle that had slipped its brakes and somehow ended up on the freeway. In 1986, at this point on the Sunset, there were still some neighborhood streets from which cars could enter the freeway as if the Sunset was merely another intersection. Southwest 79th, just to the south of the accident, was one of those streets. Maybe the driver of the van, unfamiliar with the Sunset's eccentricities, had turned far too widely and rammed into the barriers. Blighton opened the driver's-side door. The van was not empty. He could make out a figure lying on the front seat. The person's legs were near the gearshift console and extended over the driver's seat. The back was on the passenger seat, and the head was tucked into the chest and drooping over toward the floor. He didn't know if it was a man or woman, but he saw a smallish loafer-type shoe on one foot that looked feminine. There was no time for Blighton to try to figure out who the driver was, or how he?or she?had ended up crosswise on the freeway. He stepped up into the driver's side, pushing the legs out of the way as much as he could. Now he could see that there was a woman's purse jammed between the accelerator and the firewall. That would explain why the van continued to move forward. Blighton felt along the dash to try to find the switch for the emergency flashers but he couldn't locate it, he didn't know that it was overhead. There was the child's carseat right behind the driver's seat. It was empty, but that didn't make Blighton feel much better, the baby could be on the floor someplace. Counting on the flares to warn other cars to go around, he slid the side passenger door open and patted the floor and seats with his hands. Everything he touched was wet and he realized why it had been so hard to see through the driver's-side window. Something dark splattered the glass. On some level, he knew he was running his hands through pooled blood, but finding the baby that might be there was more important than anything else. When he found nothing, he ran to the hack of the van, opened the hatchback, and looked in. No baby. Thank God. No baby. Instinctively, Blighton wiped his hands down his shirt and pants, wanting to get the wet, iodiney-smelling stuff off them. He shuddered, hut he didn't stop to consider how there could be blood if the van had not been hit by another vehicle. He ran back to the driver's door, hopped into the van, expertly shifted into reverse, and backed the van across the freeway and onto the shoulder of 79th where it met the Sunset Highway. Only when he had assured himself that theToyotawas no longer in danger of being hit by oncoming traffic did Blighton turn to look closely at the person lying across the seat. He thought it was a woman. Her hair was short and dark, but he didn't know if she was young or old. She did not respond to his questions, but he still kept asking, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Blighton ran around to the front passenger door and found it was slightly ajar. He opened it and picked up the woman's hand, feeling for a pulse in her wrist. There was no reassuring beat. He could see blood on her face, and one of her eyes protruded grotesquely, as big as a hardboiled egg. Even if he had known this woman, he would never have recognized her. His first thought was that he had to get help for her maybe she did have a pulse but too faint for him to detect. He ran back to the driver's side and reached in, running his hands along the dash, searching frantically again for the emergency flashers switch. He finally saw it overhead and switched them on. They clicked in eerie rhythm, hut that was the only sound he heard. The woman wasn't breathing. Blighton stuck more flares in the gravel along the shoulder of the freeway and traffic in both lanes slowed down as it passed, hundreds of cars whose occupants had no idea how close they had comc to being in a massive fatal pileup. Blighton then looked around for a place where he could call for help. He saw lights along S.W. 79th, the street that ran at a right angle onto the Sunset Highway. No one responded to his knock at the first house, even though he could hear voices inside. He pounded on the door of the second house and a young woman opened it. 'iTllerc's a had accident on the freeway," he gasped. "Call an ambulance. I'm going back out there." It was hard to judge the passage of time, but Blighton estimated that about ten minutes had passed since he first saw the Toyota van angled crazily across the freeway. Cars were inching by in a single lane now, and he caught glimpses of curious faces darting a look at what appeared to be nothing more than a roadside breakdown. who lay across the seat hadn't moved. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distancc, and soon Blighton could see the flashing red lights of an ambulance. Thomas Stewart Dulfy, Jr.?Tom?was on duty at W lshington County Fire District Number One, the West Slope station, that Sunday night. The station was just east of the I.G.A supermarket between Canyon Drive and Canyon lane at S.W. 78th Street. The alarm bells sounded at on the Sunset HighGhay. There were a lot of calls from the Sunset, and a fair amount of them were fatals, so Tom Duffy and his partner, Mike Morn, both paramedics, were familiar with the area. Running for their rig, a Chevrolet van, the two men leaped in and headed up Canyon Lane. turned left on West Slope Drive, and then went northhound on 79th toward the Sunset T,lighway. It was an older neighborhood with houses on big lots set far off the