In the Name of the Children by Jeffrey L. Rinek

Author:Jeffrey L. Rinek [Rinek Jeffrey L. and Strong Marilee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946885289
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Joie

IN MID-JUNE OF 1999, as the FBI continued to focus on Dykes, Larwick, and their associates, Maddock dismissed the discrepancies in their statements, which had bothered me and made me doubt their credibility, as crank-induced memory impairment. It made sense: most of the suspects and witnesses in the case were heavy methamphetamine users.

“These are dopers who can’t remember what they did yesterday, much less weeks ago, or where a suspect was on a particular day, at a particular time,” he told the press.

Despite having conducted more than 10,000 interviews, he said the investigation was ongoing and he did not expect indictments in the near future. But he said he felt no urgency because he believed that the threat had been contained with the arrest of all the suspected conspirators on parole violations and other unrelated charges. The crown jewel of the national park system was deemed safe once again for the four million people a year who come to enjoy its scenic riches.

“I do feel we have all of the main players in jail,” he said.

One person who took those words to heart was Joie Armstrong. For nearly six months, the entire Yosemite community had been gripped by terror, wondering if a killer or killers still walked among them, as the mystery of the missing tourists unfolded and the gruesome details of their fate were revealed. Joie was a strong, hardy outdoorswoman. But the rustic cabin she rented within the park was so isolated that she couldn’t help but feel vulnerable.

For Joie, the park was hallowed ground to be treasured and preserved for generations to come. Her goal was to teach others, especially children, to love and appreciate the natural world so they would want to protect it. She majored in parks and resource management and worked at an Audubon center on the San Francisco Bay, the Marin Headlands Institute, and at an outdoor education camp for school kids in Sonora before getting what looked to be a dream job with the nonprofit Yosemite Institute teaching children about nature and wildlife in the park. She moved into the wood-framed cabin that still to this day is known simply as “the Green House in the Meadow,” even though its green paint has faded almost to white from the sun. She and her roommates paid just a dollar a year to live in the house, which was leased to the Institute by the Park Service. She lived in a picturesque enclave with the charming name of Foresta, just a half-hour drive west of Yosemite Valley but seemingly a world away from the hordes of tourists. There are no more than forty houses scattered around Foresta, mostly inhabited by park staff, but none particularly close to the Green House.

She had never spent the night alone in the cabin, but in the second week of July one of her roommates was going away and the other, her fiancé, was taking kids on a wilderness trek. So she made plans to drive down to the Bay Area and stay with a friend in Sausalito.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.