By Marc Klaas

The killer spun a web of fear and intimidation around Polly’s neighborhood in the weeks and months preceding her abduction and murder. Many avoided the web. Only one was caught, and unable to escape.

Today, three more witnesses identified the lurking transient who seemed out of place in the quiet middle class section of Petaluma. One boy observed the killer puking in Wickersham Park in early September. He asked the sick man if he needed help. "Get the hell out of here you stupid kid," was the only response. An artist deliberately avoided the gaze of the man with the scary, darting eyes and the prison tattoos. A teacher, moonlighting as a house painter, unsuccessfully attempted to engage the man with the frightening demeanor in conversation on several occasions, as the killer wandered aimlessly around Polly’s neighborhood in early August.

Click here for a courtroom sketch of "Polly's Possessions". or "He did it". For permission to reproduce these images, or for information on court services, call Vicki Behringer (916) 972-8225.

A police evidence expert described many of Polly’s personal belongings. Her purse with the cut strap used to bind one of Polly’s girlfriends. A lipstick that has no lips to paint. The pillowcase he put over her head, smeared on the inside with Halloween makeup, perhaps her final impressions on this earth. A pair of red tights twisted into a thick knot. A Nintendo game, cords cut, to tie up her other girlfriend, covered with fingerprint dust. Little things that broke my heart, but made no impression on the smirking weaver of the web.

Court is played out in monotone, devoid of emotion. Clinical explanations of events that make me want to scream and throw furniture. Matter of fact pieces of a macabre jigsaw puzzle, slowly and deliberately assembled, until an image begins to emerge. A portrait of a spider in the shadows, dripping with twisted desire, weaving a web of fear and feeding the desires that have driven him for so long. Weaving a web to catch his prey, and feeding the desires that drive him.

As another endless day of mind numbing revelation comes to an end, the judge drops a bomb. Twenty-two hundred pages of sealed transcripts and the contents of sealed envelopes will be released to the media tomorrow. As we eat dinner and watch the news, the weaver of the web will explain between bites of cheeseburger, how he murdered her to get rid of the evidence. How he tossed her off the side of the freeway to rid himself of this minor inconvenience. How he traded his confession for two packs of camel cigarettes and protective custody.