appeared up the Russian River area, and they were all on his days off or time off. The policed had come down and checked his time-card records behind closed doors. A lot of coincidences pointed to him, he said, but they were circumstantial. It seemed so beyond comprehension that I was afraid if I start repeating all these stories–Chirst! They could hang him on a story and I don’t want to tell them the wrong thing. This went on to probably nine o’clock at night. Nothing happened and we all parted ways.
“Leigh once told me he was at a Fosters Freeze in Vallejo. He was out of school and a couple of kids were teasing him about his new pair of tennis shoes. Before it was through they ended up in some kind of scuffle. Coincidentally police held it against him because the kid reported it and later on it turned out this was the kid killed up at Berryessa. He told me it was stuff like that that was getting him in trouble.Leigh was a pretty good-sized guy.
He started one of those, ‘You know how you get a guy down when you throw a punch at him?’ ‘Not really, Leigh.’ ‘Pretend like you’re going to hit me.’ ‘Leigh, I don’t want to hit you.’ ‘No. Just pretend. Just stick your arm out.’ ‘OK, get it over with, whatever you’re going to show me.’ I went to put my arm out and within a blink of an eye, I’m on my back and he’s got his knee in my chest. I didn’t think a big fat guy could move that quick.
I had no idea how capable he was. It was shocking, because of his stature, other than being big and strong, he wasn’t an athlete. To perform a move like that, to make it so rapid and smooth–there was no sensation of being thrown down. He just did like you were a feather.
“Old Leigh came into work one day after college. ‘This morning on the way back.’ he said, ‘I stopped by a place and checked it out. I was wandering around this house they were building and in this window sill was this unusual old gray J.C. Penny radio from the fifties.’ Boy that really opened my eyes! That was my radio I had when I was a little kid and we had it in the window of the house. I realized that he had bee out to the house my wife and I were building just off the front kitchen window of our family home. My mom was home constantly in the kitchen. We also had a dog, a collie, that was pretty vocal. He didn’t miss anything and somehow Leigh had come out there and made this visit and my mom didn’t see him and the dog never barked.”