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Disturbing the peace
5/4/2011 8:47:07 AM
By Kelly Moore
Splash photo by Kelly Moore
Liberty Lake resident Bob Sullivan looks out the dining room window of his Kamiakin Drive home. He was sitting at the table with his wife when he witnessed the incident 35 years ago.
Splash Staff Writer
The women decided the road ahead, made treacherous by a late-season snow, looked impassible and decided to turn back. The new plan was to retrace the last 100 miles and stay another day in Missoula where they'd been visiting Peard's boyfriend, who played in a band.
They couldn't have known it, but the detour would prove more dangerous than the snowy pass. And it didn't end in Missoula, but on a narrow residential street across two state lines, almost 300 miles away.
The day closed only after a nightmare-drive with a madman in the backseat, who steered the women at gunpoint off a busy interstate and into what appeared to be a secluded community. The sign read, "Exit 296, Liberty Lake."
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The hitchhiker
It was just beginning to snow again when Sterenberg pulled over to pick up the scraggly-haired hitchhiker near Lincoln, Mont. David Antony Johnson, a 20-year-old from Everett, Wash., had been looking for work in Missoula, and now he was ready to move on.
Details from the trio's tragic drive are recounted from 35-year-old Spokane Daily Chronicle and Spokesman-Review articles covering the incident and court plea, as well as interviews with longtime residents who can't shake the memory.
Sterenberg told reporters she became "nearly hysterical" when Johnson immediately brandished a small revolver from the backseat. She pulled over to let Peard take the wheel and on Johnson's orders, they continued through Missoula - all the way into Washington.
As the car neared Spokane, Sterenberg said Johnson ordered the girls to take several off-ramps and then get back on the interstate while looking for back roads. She also told reporters Johnson had smoked a "marijuana cigarette" and became angry as they searched for a secluded area.
After taking the Liberty Lake exit, Peard drove around the area and was on South Liberty Drive near Kamiakin Drive when Sterenberg whispered, "He's going to kill us. Let's run."
The shooting
At that point, Peard slammed the brakes and the two women made a break for it. Johnson immediately shot Peard as she was exiting the car. A coroner's report showed the bullet entered the back of her neck, exiting her lower jaw and "death was immediate."
Before removing Peard from the car, he fired two shots in Sterenberg's direction. Sterenberg ran for cover behind a car driven by Helen Waller. News reports said a bullet went through the windshield of Waller's car, "narrowly missing" the driver.
Johnson then drove away in the women's car, and Sterenberg was hurried inside Liberty Lake resident Bob Sullivan's house. Sullivan, now 79, still lives in the house on Kamiakin Drive and remembers the event vividly.
"I'd just gotten back from San Francisco visiting my dad, and I was telling my wife how nice it was to be back in peaceful Liberty Lake," Sullivan said. "We were looking out the dining room window, and I saw this car slam on the brakes and I heard, ‘pop, pop, pop.'"
Sullivan ran outside and said he got a good look at Johnson. In fact it was "good enough for him to look back at me and aim the gun. He didn't pull the trigger, though. He just got back in the car and sped off."
Sullivan said he chased Johnson as he drove off, not knowing what he'd do if he actually caught up.
"I guess I didn't really think about that," Sullivan said. "I didn't have time to be scared."
After losing Johnson and his getaway car, Sullivan returned home to the aid of Sterenberg. He'd watched her fall into a ditch as she ran from Johnson's line of fire. He also saw her friend lying in the street with a gunshot wound to the head.
He said they sat Sterenberg down on the sofa and talked to her until she wanted to lie down. Later, she asked for a shower.
"All she wanted to do was wash her hair," Sullivan said. "She thought if she could wash her hair, then she wouldn't have to think about what had happened anymore."
Sullivan also said he gave his pistol to a friend who went up the road looking for Johnson. His friend never found the hitchhiker, and Sullivan said it was probably good that he didn't.
The manhunt
"It was very scary," resident Ross Schneidmiller recalls. "Nobody knew where this guy had gone. He was disturbed, and we knew he wasn't acting rationally."
The car stolen by Johnson was found abandoned about an hour after the shooting where the road dead-ended. Police said Johnson appeared to have driven the car as far as he could into a field before getting stuck in mud. Johnson then fled on foot into the wilderness.
Police were notified almost immediately after the shooting and a massive manhunt persisted throughout the evening. The search included aircraft, search dogs, Sheriff's deputies - including two SWAT teams - and Washington State Patrol.
Schneidmiller, a senior in high school at the time, was arriving for work at Valley View Golf Course (now Trailhead) when he said he noticed seven or eight patrol cars racing toward the lake.
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When he and the crew at Valley View were notified about the incident, Schneidmiller said he and fellow employee Howie Crosby drove the course on a tractor telling golfers to leave and find a safer place.
"We were yelling, ‘Get off the course. There's a madman on the loose with a gun,'" Schneidmiller said. "That cleared people out pretty quickly."
In fact, almost the entire small community was quickly affected as police continued their efforts.
"Several people around the community had stories after that," Schneidmiller said.
Children returning from school were escorted home by sheriff's deputies. Residents arriving home were greeted by SWAT teams ready to inspect the house before letting anyone else inside.
In the meantime, Sullivan said he covered Peard's body with a blanket in the street, where she remained untouched for six or seven hours until proper authorities were able to arrive on-scene and pronounce her dead.
"I don't remember if people really felt threatened that day," Reger said. "I remember it like it was just a normal day, but people were talking about it and people were worried."
The arrest
The countywide manhunt didn't end until early the next morning, when Johnson was found having breakfast in at the Country Kitchen Restaurant, 15606 E. Sprague Ave. in Spokane Valley. The restaurant would later change hands to become Saks Family Restaurant and is now an American West Bank.
The waitress, Judith Kirsten, 18, called police about a nervous-acting man who fit the suspect's description. Officers arrived about 30 minutes later and took Johnson into custody at about 6:40 a.m., and reports say he went without incident.
The public defender assigned to Johnson's case told the court Johnson wanted to return to Spokane to further his search for work. The defender said Johnson, "had no intent at the time (of the abduction) of doing them any harm."
Johnson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree assault and first-degree kidnapping on May 24 of that year and was sentenced to three terms of life in prison, two of which were to run concurrently.
Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney L.C. Kinnie said that, in exchange for Johnson's guilty plea, the state reduced a previous charge of first-degree murder.
The defense attorney said Johnson chose to turn off at Liberty Lake in hopes of leaving them in a remote area so that he could "be long gone" by the time they could contact authorities. He said the shooting was a "panic reaction" and for the shooting he "has no explanation."
"We talked about it for at least a week at the golf course," Reger said. "The paper would write about it, and people would come in every day with new bits of information. It started getting hard to get the truth filtered through what was becoming legend."
The talks eventually quieted, and then all but stopped. Sullivan said he never heard from Sterenberg again, and memories from the event were pushed back in residents' minds as Liberty Lake grew into the community it is today.
Despite the judge's sentence requiring a mandatory minimum of 20 years for each life term, Washington Department of Corrections records show Johnson was released in February 1991. He served time on parole until 1994, when the state's interest in him closed and his crime was considered adequately atoned. The details of Johnson's life as a free man are unknown.
Do you have memories of this day or of any other historical Liberty Lake crimes? Share comments or future story ideas by e-mail to kmoore@libertylakesplash.com.