he said if she interveered any longer, he would kill her. she left the house they rented making statements like, i m not going to put up with with this and i don t know why you re putting up with this either, to her daughter. ackley s brand of cigarettes was another interesting coincidence. when he bought cigarettes, he bought the cheapest cigarettes he could get his hands on. those were basic, b-a-s-i-c, brand cigarettes. that was the kind of cigarette butts located in the toilet of arlene jensen s house. and there was a box of basic brand dumped where arlen jensen s body was found some six weeks later. what was most telling to investigators was gary ackley s profession. gary ackley worked as a fabricator. he worked in a metal shop and much of his time he spent on a lathe. this was suspicious since metal fragments were found on both stephanie dittrick s body as well as arlene jensen s.
aluminum. the fragment samples contained steel and brass. the steel had the exact same combinations of iron, manganese and chromium. in the brass, copper and zinc were found in identical amounts. and all the samples had equal amounts of cerium, part of a compound used to ignite an oxyacetylene torch, a common item in machine shops. we examined all of them and could see the pattern that regardless of where they came from, they were basically the same kind of metal fragments, machining fragments. this proved that both arlene jensen and stephanie dittrick were killed by the same man. the science is starting to really catch up to the bad guys now. a serial killer was on the loose in the seattle area. he had to be stopped before he could kill again.
ackley said he loved his common-law mother-in-law and was devastated by her murder. but family members said that was a lie. well, he didn t like her. and it was no secret she didn t like him. but no one in the family did like him. their relationship can best be described as being acrimonious. arlene jensen was concerned about the welfare of her daughter whom she believed was at least verbally and psychologically being abused by gary ackley. arlene also didn t like the way ackley treated her grandchildren. when she would express those concerns, particularly in the presence of gary ackley, it became quite apparent that he didn t want her anywhere around. and ackley s fights with arlene were well-known to neighbors and family members. they got into a disagreement during which gary ackley called her at a minimum a bitch and depending on whose version you believe a [ bleep ].
the metal fragments found on arlene jensen s body and in her apartment were sent to the forensics lab for testing. under a microscope, scientists could see that the fragments were different shapes and sizes. the surfaces were corrugated and the composition of the metal varied from piece to piece. they were made of various types of steel, various grades of steel, various grades of brass. the unique shapes and the fact some were hollow were a clear indication of their origin. what that means to me is that s a piece of metal which is projected through the air. when it s projected through the air, metal, molten metal, when projected through the air is cooling very, very rapidly. with the air current as it goes through the air it dries to a soccer ball round shape. so investigators knew the killer was probably a machinist, someone who worked with metal at high heat on a lathe.
while they didn t know his last name, they knew his name was gary. they knew that he bragged about being a drummer in a rock band. stephanie s family identified the man as her oldest and dearest friend, gary ackley. when interviewed by police, ackley recalled he was at the party but wasn t there specifically to be with stephanie. one of the things he told us was he had gone there to locate somebody else, had seen stephanie, so stopped to talk. the witnesses said it seemed a little bit more than that. then police did a background check on 29-year-old gary ackley and discovered some alarming information. gary ackley was related to the first murder victim, arlene jensen. ackley lived with arlene s daughter and they had two children together. when questioned by police,