the party to see someone named Mark, and that both Wood and Wells drank some beer. Wood drank ten to fifteen beers; Damon consumed six. âHe had a good buzz on,â remarked Wood.
âAccording to the report,â recounted Yerbury, âDetective Price returned to the house on Pacific Avenue and spoke to residents Christopher and Paul St. Pierre. The brothers confirmed Woodâs account. Chris St. Pierre said he didnât know Damon Wells, and wasnât paying attention to who was at the party. His older brother, Paul, said the same thing.â
Looking for any possible clue, police searched Damonâs room at Robertsonâs home on March 22, 1984. Per Detective Priceâs report, all they found were his wallet, one unidentified phone number, and his clothing. He also continued his investigation by calling the mystery phone number. Judy Kraft of Sumner, Washington, answered the call. She told Price that her husband, Jerry, knew Damon, but neither she nor her spouse had heard from him recently.
Detective Price kept working the case, and all trails brought him back to the house on Pacific Avenue, the venue for the Friday night fight of Steve Wood and Andrew Webb. On May 7, Price located Webb in an apartment on South M Street.
Separated from his wife and child, Andrew Webb said that when he arrived at the party, Steve Wood and Damon Wells were already there. He admitted having words with Steve Wood, and that their verbal exchange escalated into a fistfight.
âWebb said that after the fight he cleaned up in the bathroom and left,â said Price. âHe didnât know what happened to the victim, and he has no additional information.â The original investigation into Wellsâs disappearance was unable to establish Damon Wells at any location other than the Pacific Avenue party.
âThe circumstances surrounding the anonymous phone call were very unusual,â Yerbury later commented. âWe donât often receive detailed descriptions of alleged homicides. We took it very seriously.â
Based on the call to Crime Stoppers, and Yerburyâs prior knowledge of Paul St. Pierreâs potential for violence, the detectives decided to conduct interviews with the two men mentioned by the anonymous callerâMark Perez and Donald Marshall. âWe wanted to establish if the information received from the woman who called Crime Stoppers was correct,â explained Yerbury. âIf we were to request a search warrant for the house on Pacific Avenue, we would need more justification than a phone call. We would need some corroborating indications of reliability.â
Mark Perez, twenty-two, was contacted on June 14, 1984, and readily agreed to the interview. âI moved into [address] in September of 1983 with Don Marshall, my brother Steve Perez, and Chris St. Pierre,â he explained. âWe were all doing OK in the house, and my brother had a girlfriend there for a short time. They moved out, and we had Chrisâs brother Paul move in. Sometime after Paul moved in, there was an incident at the IGA grocery store where Paul shot someone at the store in self-defense. After that, Paul was on sort of a âpower tripâ and none of us could disagree with him in any way, so things got kind of tense around the house.â
Perez told detectives that Steve Wood was a friend of his, that Wood brought Damon Wells to the party, and described the fight between Steve Wood and Andrew Webb. âI told Steve I didnât know what had started the fight, but that heâd better leave. The last I saw of Damon,â Perez said, âhe was standing between the kitchen door and the hallway door. Steve jumped off the porch and ran down the street. Andrew held his nose and went straight into the bathroom. I assumed Paul was also in the bathroom because he came out and asked Don, Chris, and I where Steveâs friend Damon had gone. We looked around outside and came back into