Bloodthirsty Parolee:Tommy Ragan·Bruce Kim

In January 1977, thirteen-year-old Bruce Kim went to a party at the Lemac Apartments, a run-down building in Centralia, Washington, and never came home. A few days later the building burned.

Investigators soon turned their attention to Tommy Ragan, a parolee whose record already included assault and kidnapping. A pair of blood-stained jeans connected him to the missing boy, and detectives went through his green 1960 Corvair looking for more. The breakthrough came from inside Ragan’s own family. His sister gave police information that led them to an old logging road near Yelm, where Bruce was found buried in a shallow grave.

Ragan pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and admitted that he had also set the fire at the Lemac Apartments. The case never drew much attention beyond western Washington, but it raised a question that runs through several stories in this volume: how a man with Ragan’s history came to be back on the street, and who was supposed to be watching him.