Cowboy Mike: The Ladykiller

Lori Jones had actually intended to go out with someone else the night she met Michael Braae. She'd been planning all week to hook up with David Bowman, a man she'd met online. Her daughter Elisa, 11 at the time, was going fishing for the weekend with a family friend near Hoquiam. And Jones, a single mother of two who'd complained in instant messages to Bowman about having a rough week, was ready to kick up her heels.

Elisa left town, but Jones and Bowman had a last-second e-mail argument. So instead of the long-planned romantic rendezvous, Jones, who had an affinity for Crown Royal, ended up alone at Bailey's Lounge in Olympia. That's where she met Braae.

The bartender would later report that the pair danced all night like they knew each other. Jones had her Crown Royal on the rocks. Braae, also a fan of Canadian whiskey, drank Yukon Jack with a shot of lime juice—a drink known as a "snakebite." He was wearing a cowboy hat and jean jacket.

When Elisa came home on Sunday, she couldn't get a hold of her mom. The manager at Summer Ridge Apartments, where they lived, unlocked the Jones' home. There, hidden under the bed, was Jones' body, naked all but for a pillowcase over her head. She had been raped and strangled.

That summer, Jones, 44, wasn't the only Washington woman to disappear after being last seen with the man known in bars around these parts as "Cowboy Mike" for his western duds and penchant for serenading ladies with his guitar. In June and July 2001, Braae, 48, who at that time lived in a 1970's-era trailer on what he dubbed a "mini farm" in Pierce County, went on a rampage that left at least one woman dead, two women injured (one critically from a gunshot wound to the head), and one police dog nearly drowned. He's also suspected in the murders of two Oregon women in 1997.

But the evidence is scant in the other cases and complicated by time, lack of witnesses, and bodies. Susan Ault, a Wahkiakum County woman and girlfriend of Braae's, hasn't been seen since arguing with him in June 2001. Her body was never found. Marchelle Morgan identified Braae as the person who shot her in the head less than a week after Jones was found dead, but her condition had so deteriorated by the time her case went to trial in 2006 that she could no longer testify. The jury deadlocked 11-1, and the judge declared a mistrial.

Braae is serving time for aggravated assault and eluding a police officer in a high-speed chase in July 2001 that ended with him jumping off a 40-foot bridge into the Snake River. But that conviction still means he'll be eligible for release in 2011. The last hope for putting him away for good would eventually fall to a small-town detective and a longtime Thurston County prosecutor.

Situated just north of the state capital on the east side of Interstate 5, Lacey is home to more than 31,000 people. While it has all the trappings of any suburb—chain restaurants and stores surrounded by seas of parking spaces—it also has a distinctively small-town personality. The city hall, library, and police department are all located side by side in a densely wooded area that seems more suitable for a cabin or campground. And it's not unusual to see that Ward Cleaver–era relic, the Schwan's man, delivering frozen dinners to the rows of ranch houses that line Lacey's sleepy streets.

Detective Bev Reinhold has been with the Lacey Police Department for nearly two decades. She says that when it comes to murders, particularly those involving people who don't know each other, things are pretty quiet. "I've been here for 19 years and I can't think of another homicide in this jurisdiction that hasn't been domestic or gang-related," she says.

Reinhold remembers getting the call before dawn the morning that Jones' body was found. "We determined pretty quickly that it couldn't be an accidental death," she says. "People don't just die under their own bed, naked."

They had to take Jones' bed apart to get to her body. Reinhold says she thought it was odd that whoever put her there had removed all of the bedding, but draped the quilt over the top of the mattress. "But it wasn't a bloody scene," she says. "She hadn't been shot or stabbed, though there was some blood by her ear. There was a small screwdriver, about four inches long, on the bedside table, and some small cuts on her hand that seemed to be consistent with [the screwdriver]."

Given the suspicious circumstances, Reinhold—whose short black hair is coiffed in a no-nonsense cut, with frosted tips—knew early that this wasn't going to be any ordinary case. And it could be something the likes of which her department had never seen. So she took precautions, like calling Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jon Tunheim to the scene.