Yes -
Pure Evil does exist in our world - Charles Rodman Campbell
Thank goodness we finally hung him and stopped him.

from
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/a-uw-student-was-murdered-in-1975-her-killer-was-never-known-until-now/

A UW student was murdered in 1975. Her killer was never known — until now
Dec. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated Dec. 30, 2023 at 6:00 am
Hallie Ann Seaman was working toward a master’s degree in architecture
at the University of Washington. (Seattle Times Archives)

Sara Jean Green By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times staff reporter
Hallie Ann Seaman was a standout University of Washington student two
terms away from earning a master’s degree in architecture.

Described by friends as intelligent, strong-willed and athletic, the
25-year-old was studying how to design quality low-income housing — and
she was at her drafting table in UW’s architecture building when she was
last seen alive on the night of April 29, 1975.

The next afternoon, a man on his lunch break discovered Seaman’s body
concealed in bushes bordering a parking lot on Eastlake Avenue East and
called Seattle police.

She had been sexually assaulted and repeatedly stabbed at an unknown
location hours earlier, and her station wagon had been set ablaze 4
miles south of where her body was found.

It would take nearly five decades — and a stroke of serendipity — for
her killer to be unmasked.

“Really, the craziness about this story is who ended up being the
suspect,” said Seattle police Detective Rolf Norton, who began reviewing
Seaman’s unsolved homicide in 2017.

In August, Norton received an email from William Stubbs, a forensic
scientist at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, saying a lab report
would be forthcoming.

“He’s like, ‘Well, I think it’s going to surprise you, what the result
is,’ and I’m like, ‘Pfft. OK, surprise me,’ ” recalled Norton, who’s
worked homicide cases for 22 years. “And so he sent me a copy of the
reports … and I was blown away.”

DNA found on Seaman’s body identified her likely killer as Charles
Rodman Campbell, a convicted triple-murderer who was executed by hanging
in 1994.

Campbell was a widely reviled figure whose trial, appeals, prison abuse
allegations and last-ditch efforts to avoid execution generated hundreds
of news stories — and his own Wikipedia page.

A prison psychologist in 1979 described Campbell as “conscienceless,”
“blithely uncaring of others” and “imminently harmful to all who
directly or indirectly capture his attention or interest,” The Seattle
Times reported. Even his parents considered him a “bad seed” and said
that executing him was the only way to ensure he never hurt anyone again.

Triple murder in Snohomish County
In December 1974, four months before Seaman was killed in Seattle,
Campbell forced Renae Wicklund to perform a sex act while he held a
knife to her 1-year-old daughter in Clearview.

He remained a fugitive for 13 months until he was arrested for burglary
in Okanogan County, then brought back to Snohomish County, where he was
convicted of assault and sodomy.

Wicklund and her friend and neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, testified
against Campbell at trial.

He was given a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison but served less
than six.

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Then, while on work release in April 1982, Campbell killed Wicklund and
her 8-year-old daughter, Shannah, in their Clearview home. He also
killed Hendrickson, who had arrived to make dinner for the mother and
daughter.

Shannah Wicklund was killed by Charles Rodman Campbell in 1982 when she
was 8 years old. (Seattle Times Archives)

Shannah Wicklund was killed by Charles Rodman Campbell in 1982 when she
was 8 years old. (Seattle Times Archives)
Campbell was quickly identified as a suspect and charged with aggravated
murder five days later.

Wicklund, 31, and Hendrickson, 51, were never told of Campbell’s release
from prison. State officials refused to provide The Times with records
showing who recommended Campbell be granted minimum-custody status or on
what basis, according to a news story published two weeks after the murders.

Renae Wicklund, top, was murdered by Charles Rodman Campbell in 1982.
(Seattle Times Archives)

Renae Wicklund, top, was murdered by Charles Rodman Campbell in 1982.
(Seattle Times Archives)
Campbell was convicted of aggravated murder, sentenced to die and, after
11 years of appeals, became the last person in Washington to be executed
by hanging.

Though Campbell will never be held accountable in court for Seaman’s
homicide, Norton said he’s gratified knowing Campbell “will be held
accountable historically.” He also praised the efforts of the detectives
who investigated Seaman’s killing and those who, decades later,
submitted forensic evidence for testing.

But it was a legislative change in 2019 — and a decision by a retired
Tacoma police detective working for the state attorney general — that
ultimately landed the surprising lab report in Norton’s inbox.

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Snohomish County sheriff’s Deputy John Hinds, center-left, and
Snohomish County chief criminal deputy prosecutor Jim Roche,
center-right, discuss a map during the murder trial of Charles Rodman
Campbell. Campbell was convicted of aggravated murder and later
executed. (Dave Hornor / The Associated Press, 1982)

Snohomish County sheriff’s Deputy John Hinds, center-left, and Snohomish
County chief criminal deputy prosecutor Jim Roche, center-right, discuss
a map during the murder trial of Charles... (Dave Hornor / The
Associated Press, 1982)More
A break in the case
There are more than 600 unsolved Seattle homicides dating to 1907, and
Norton said he’s personally looked through roughly 540 case files for
homicides committed before 2020, trying to identify which ones are
potentially solvable.

He’s pretty sure the 1907 case, for instance, was a domestic-violence
homicide of a woman whose body washed up on a West Seattle beach in a
chest — and that her killer fled to Australia.

No matter how old a homicide is, Norton never uses the term “cold case”
because it carries a connotation that an investigation is inactive or
that all leads have been exhausted.

“For some, a case is cold if it isn’t solved in six months, for others
it’s cold if it’s been a decade,” he said. “For me, you can call it cold
if it’s sitting in a closet and no one’s touching it. But don’t put that
value on my case — I’m hoping to go places with it.”

When he first cracked open the case file on Seaman’s homicide six years
ago, Norton said it immediately struck him as solvable because Seattle
Police Department detectives had submitted forensic evidence for testing
in 2002. Stubbs, the forensic scientist, was able to generate a male DNA
profile but didn’t have a name to match the sample.

Further, Norton said he had “incredibly exhaustive” police work to draw
on from the initial SPD detectives: Bennie DePalmo, Wayne Dorman and Don
Strunk.

This map shows key locations in the 1975 Seattle homicide investigation.
Hallie Ann Seaman, 25, was last seen by a fellow student at the
architecture building on the University of Washington campus at 9:40
p.m. on April 29, 1975. What turned out to be her car was set ablaze
hours later at Eighth Avenue South and South Holgate Street. Her body
was found just after noon on April 30, 1975, in a parking lot on
Eastlake Avenue East and East Roy Street, a couple miles south of her
apartment.

Those detectives, who have all since died, learned that a student last
saw Seaman working in her studio in the UW architecture building on the
night of April 29, 1975. By the time the student passed by again 10
minutes later, Seaman had left for the night.

Then, within the next 40 minutes, a witness saw a male lift a female,
who appeared to be passed out or unconscious, into a white vehicle at a
nearby intersection.

“Whether or not that was Hallie, I don’t know to this day,” Norton said.

Early the next morning, Seaman’s white Ford Fairlane station wagon was
found on fire in the Sodo neighborhood. Her body was found that
afternoon in South Lake Union, near Eastlake Avenue East.

It was clear to the detectives that she had been left there, Norton
said, but had been killed someplace else. The location was a couple of
miles south of Seaman’s Eastlake Avenue East apartment.

Detectives painstakingly logged 120 names of possible suspects that
arose during the investigation — but Campbell wasn’t one of them, Norton
said.