Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder

Dennis Mackey promised Elaine that he wouldn’t rest till they caught the steroid freak and found Brenda. “Vietnam was my war,” he told her. “This is yours. We’re foxhole buddies.” His comrade IBar Arrington, the teetotaling former heavyweight boxer, had been suffering from bad dreams. He saw pretty little Brenda being dragged from the house by her hair, flung in the trunk of Green’s car, then chained and gagged in a basement.

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IBar said, “I promise you, Elaine. When we find Green, I’ll bring you his heart in my hands. Okay?” Elaine said it would be a pleasant sight.

In his junior year, Green began to show symptoms of “‘roid rage,” clashing with teammates and coaches. He became known as a difficult player and temporarily quit the team. He told friends that he was no longer welcome at his parents’ home in North Seattle, complaining that his father had kicked him out for good over marijuana.

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Both prosecution and defense attorneys had presumed from the beginning that Green’s best defense would be temporary insanity due to abusive use of steroids. Such a plea could result in a lesser verdict and shorter sentence, perhaps even a hospital commitment. Savage said, “I’d heard from everyone that he was a nice, nice guy as a young man. What changed him? The steroid defense was obvious.” It was not only obvious; it also represented the facts, to a greater or less degree. Anabolic steroids had long been known to cause aberrant behavior, including murder and mayhem. Dr. Harrison Pope Jr., associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, had examined Green’s records and concluded that his crimes “might well never have occurred if he had not been using steroids at the time.” Pope cited numerous examples of steroid abusers who’d developed “a veritable Jekyll-Hyde personality.”