http://www.msnbc.com/local/KHQ/default.asp
Mother of murder
victim upset with police education
by Scott Fralick
TACOMA,
Wash, Feb 2 - Karyl Greenwood looks at a picture of her
young daughter.
“She was my first one. My
very precious daughter.”
A daughter she no longer has.
Melinda Mercer, Greenwood’s
24 year old child, was killed, police say, by the same
serial killer who has murdered at least four Spokane
women.
Mercer’s body was found in
early December, thrown into an empty field in south
Tacoma.
The serial killer’s
Spokane’s victims also were disposed of in a similar
fashion. And like Mercer, they too were all shot in the
head.
Now police are worried that
Melinda’s death means that Spokane’s serial
killer is expanding his search for victims.
But Melinda’s mother has
something else on her mind. She was not prepared to deal
with the death of her oldest child. She was also not
prepared to find out her death was at the hands of a
serial killer.
“It was almost worse than
finding out the first time,” says Greenwood, talking
about when she was about how her daughter died. And just
the very thought has proved to be disturbing when she
considers the last terrifying moments of Melinda’s
life.
“The terror she went
through,” she says, sends shivers down her spin.
“What he may have put her through before he did what
he did.”
Making the situation worse is
that investigators did not tell Greenwood that her
daughter’s murder was at the hands of a serial
killer. Instead, she found out about it through the
media. That left her very upset.
“She’s my daughter. I
should have been the first to know.”
