Norman Boullion’s son, a teenager when his father disappeared, got some closure last year when the bones found at a Bean Road home in Port Angeles where Boullion last lived were positively identified as those of his father.
Boullion, 39, was reported missing Feb. 17, 1987.
“Jason all those years just thought his dad didn’t love him, thought he’d just run off and left him,” said Boullion’s stepsister, Linda Smith, who reported him missing in 1987.
A note tipped detectives to the location of Boullion’s body in 2007, but a search failed to find it.
It wasn’t until the homeowner began excavating for a volleyball court in 2008 that remains were revealed, and DNA testing revealed they were Boullion’s.
He’d been shot in the head.
The Boullion case is significant in that it is one longstanding case that the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office considers solved.
There are many other “cold cases” for which investigators still seek information, said Clallam County Detective Sgt. Lyman Moores.
They won’t close the books on a case until they know what happened.
Al Tyson, a retired sheriff’s deputy and deputy prosecutor from Los Angeles County, has been reviewing the Boullion case for Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly, who has requested more information.
There’s no estimate of when charges may be filed, Kelly said.
The suspect, a prison inmate in Ohio whom Moores declined to name, confessed in 2007 to burying Boullion’s body but not to the murder itself.
But with a release date of 2088, he isn’t going anywhere, Moores said.
The cold case, and others cases both old and recent, gets Moores excited to talk about the wonders of modern investigative techniques.
Boullion’s remains were identified by the Washington State Crime Lab using DNA evidence, and the science keeps progressing.
“We’ve come light years from where we were 10 years ago with DNA,” Moores said, with the technique now refined to pick up DNA from something that has merely been touched.
“A few years ago, we needed a sample the size of a quarter,” Moores said.
One major advance is the establishment of CODIS — or Combined DNA Index System — a national repository of DNA records that jurisdictions now routinely use to record DNA from new and old cases and from which matches can be processed.
“That’s what’s solving cases,” Moores said. “The DNA is not going to lie. It’s kind of like a fingerprint.
“There are a lot of police officers who don’t really understand the CODIS system and how it works,” Moores said.
“It’s not a substitute for good police work, but it’s a huge asset,” he said.
Categories on file include missing persons, relatives of missing persons, convicted offenders, crime scenes and unidentified human remains.
Boullion’s relatives were in it, and so is DNA evidence from Janet Rowland’s shooting death in 1984 at a home on state Highway 112 near the Elhwa River.
A baby sitter arriving to care for Rowland’s two young children found the 29-year-old waitress shot to death in her bed Dec. 14 of that year.
The children were asleep in their beds in the bedroom next to their mother, who had been a waitress at The Haguewoods, now the Port Angeles CrabHouse.
“She was a young, vibrant girl,” Moores said. “It caught everybody by surprise.”
But so far, DNA hasn’t helped with the Rowland case, Detective Tom Reyes said.
“We continue to make progress. We continue to talk to people,” he said.
Moores hopes the Rowland case may be the next to break among the old cases.
“We’ve been working hard on this for the last two years,” he said, with the help of a cold case squad of volunteer retired officers, who helped re-interview people.
“They do a lot of the footwork for us,” Moores said. “Without their help, we would not be able to investigate these cases.”
The Rowland case was even sent to the FBI Violent Crime Profiling Task Force, said Moores, who declined to offer further details.
Last year, the state crime lab notified the Sheriff’s Office that they had a DNA hit on evidence from a 2005 sex crime, Moores said, and a suspect has been identified.
“We’re in the final stages of the investigation, so I expect this is going to be a really strong case because of the evidence.”
And not too long ago, DNA on plastic zip ties used to bind a robbery suspect was used to identify a man convicted on multiple charges, including first-degree assault and theft.
“Now, we’re using it [DNA] for serial burglaries and stuff like that,” Moores said. “The crime lab is really good.
“If you have a really serious case, it doesn’t take months; it takes weeks,” he said.
It was the crime lab’s definitive answer that gave Norman Boullion’s extended family of siblings final relief after years of not knowing, then dashed hope with the first failed excavation.
Smith, who grew up with Boullion, remembered him fondly.
A veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Boullion “was a good-hearted soul, always laughing,” Smith said.
Not particularly ambitious, he liked making rhythm by playing spoons, she said, and had come to Port Angeles from California to find out more about his father, who had died in a logging accident years ago in the area.
After he disappeared, the family never gave up hope, Smith said, but it was painful.
“It was almost as if it was brand-new when it came up again.”
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Julie McCormick is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend. Contact her at juliemccormick10@gmail.com.
