The Case of the Agitated Athletes P3 A Justice Story a 2 PJ in pa 2 03 PJ SO By ANN RULE ON THE SURFACE the four key players in the drama in Yakima, were all winners. In fact, by the time the bizarre case was over, all four turned out to be losers to some degree. Certainly Morris Blankenbaker seemed to be a winner. When he was graduated from high school in 1961 he was voted "Best Athlete of the Year" and awarded a four-year scholarship to Washington State University where he nated. Gabby Moore appealed to Dee Ann to return to him.
He was to be disappointed. She said she had no such intention. Indeed, she said she suspected him of involvement in Blankenbak-er's death. Moore returned to the bottle, to the photo album of himself and Dee Ann when they had been together, to the constant replaying of the love songs that had been special to them. He was told that his coaching contract would be dropped at the end of the school year but that was of minor interest to him compared with his yearnings for Dee Ann.
Shortly after 1 a.m. on Christmas Day, Moore's son returned to the home he shared with his father. The back door was propped open with a building block and, peering through the door, the youngster saw Moore lying between the kitchen and the living room. The wrestling coach was dead. Sergeant Brimmer was called and he determined that Moore had been killed who could talk only of his lost Dee Ann.
For 10 years he had suffered from high blood pressure ana now the drinking and his mental state his condition. In an effort to lower his blood pressure, his former father in-law, Dr. Myers, signed him into a hospital. He entered Nov. 20, 1975.
The following night Morris Blankenbaker worked his usual moonlighting job as a tavern bouncer in downtown Yakima. The tavern closed at 2 a.m., Nov. 22, but he didn't return home to Dee Ann. She wasn't alarmed because he had mentioned that he might stop for a couple of beers with friends. Shortly after 2 a.m., she thought she heard a door slam and some loud voices, but she drifted back to sleep.
When she awoke again at 5 a.m., she realized Blankenbaker was still not home. She looked outside there was his car parked in its usual spot. Blankenbaker was outside, too. He was lying in the yard, dead. played halfback for the Cougars.
AilCl UUllCgC, lie llldlllCU 1 dVCU-lldii CD -J ed Dee Ann, a petite but voluptuous beauty. Blankenbaker received offers to turn pro but instead settled comfortably into a post as teacher-coach at Wapato Intermediate School, not far from Yakima. Dee Ann was smart enough to find work in a local bank where she was elevated to a post in the trust department. had two children. It looked like a perfect marriage.
rl ll They had good friends, too. There was Talmadge Glenn "Gabby" Moore, another winner. He was a championship wrestling coach at Davis High School in Yakima. Twelve years older than Blank- As news of the discovery spread through the district, Brimmer received a telephone call from a young woman who said that her cousin, Angelo "Tuffy" Pleasant, 22, had borrowed her Colt 22 on two occasions once in October and November, and again on Christmas Eve. When it was returned the second time, she had thrown it into the river because she feared it was the weapon used in both homicides.
Police attention turned to Pleasant, the fourth in the quartet of winners. A student at Central Washington Stale College, he had turned into an athlete of championship caliber under the coaching of Gabby Moore. After becoming the state's outstanding wrestler, he kad competed in Tokyo and Hawaii. Tuffy Pleasant was arrested en suspicion of the two murders and now the mysteries behind the deaths of Blankenbaker and Moore were explained. In taped statements, Pleasant described how he had idolized his coach, Gabby Moore, the man who had promised that one day he, too, could be a coach at Davis High School.
Pleasant had seen the disintegration of his idol, his obsessive misery over Dee Ann, and had tried to talk him out of it. "It was Dee Ann this Dee Ann that," Pleasant said. "We were so close that what he felt, I felt. If he shed a tear, I shed a tear. This man, he's just tore up.
He's not himself, just bleeding inside. He said, if you have a problem, you eliminate it. And Morris was his number one problem Out of his admiration for his coach, out of his sympathy for the man's distress, Pleasant made a bloody pact. He would "eliminate" Moore's problem for him. Moore called him from the hospital on Nov.
21st and said, "Tonight's the night, while I'm in here." Pleasant borrowed the gun and went out to kill Blankenbaker. The death of Moore, Pleasant said, was a bizarre extension of the pact. Moore was determined to divert Dee Ann's suspicion that he had played a The Utile town of Y-tiima teas scandalized, but there teas worse to come. enbaker, he was married to Gay, the pretty blonde daughter of Yakima physician A. J.
Myers. The Moores also had two Another happy mar- kJj riage, -or so it seemed. Morris Blankenbaker, a splendid physical specimen, was a stronger swimmer than Gabby Moore, however, aswas proved a few years ago. On a river rafting trip, Gabby tumbled off the raft as it was caught in a whirlpool. He was sucked into the white water and pulled helplessly down until he found himself trapped beneath an overhanging bank.
who worked summers as a a guard and swimming pool manager, went after his friend. got a grip on Cabby's chin and hauled him to the surface. There's a saying that after saving a man's life, you are forever alter respon-v sible for him. Perhaps Morris believed that. when Gabby's marriage i foundered the first" sign that one of the four -might not'be a winner Mor- ris invited him to move into his home.
1 Perhaps the sequel was inevitable. A mutual attraction developed between Gabby and Dee Ann. The Blankenbaker marriage broke up. Shattered, Blankenbaker moved for a time to Hawaii. Dee Ann and Gabby were married.
The little town of Yakima was scandalized, but there was worse to come. 'We were so close that what he felt, I felt He said, if you hare a problem, you eliminate it.9 Morris and Dee Ann Blankenbaker (A) seemed to have life by the tail. So did Tuffy Pleasant until murder moved in. Gabby had been one of the finest wrestling coaches in the state of Washington. In 1972, his team won the AAA championship.
One reason for his suc- cessful coaching was the example he set for his wrestlers. He always followed his own training rules and he didn't smoke or drink. But now he began to drink and by the fall of 1975, Dee Ann was attacked by fears that she liad made a mistake. She came to believe that it was Morris Blankenbaker she loved after all. And so she divorced the wrestling coach and role in the death of Blankenbaker.
He became convinced that he had to suffer a wound from the same weapon so that she would believe someone else was bent on killing both her husbands. He wanted Pleasant to use the .22 pistol to shoot him, "just to wound him," in the shoulder. Then Moore planned to crawl across the street to Dee Ann's sister's house, winning both sympathy and freedom from suspicion. Pleasant said he had refused until Moore started to dial the police, threatening to report that it was Pleasant who had killed Blankenbaker. Trapped, Pleasant had agreed to the scenario.
But, he said, Moore had drunk so much whisky to help him endure the pain of the wound that as the shot was fired at him he stumbled and the bullet penetrated lower than planned. And Gabby Moore had died, the victim of his own weird plan. On August 29, a jury found Pleasant guilty of murder in the death of Blankenbaker and of manslaughter in the shooting of Moore, his beloved coach. He was sentenced to life for the murder and to 20 years for the manslaughter. The two wives, Dee Ann and Gay Moore, have found new husbands.
Dee Ann, it seems, still has a chance to turn jntoa -winner-. Somebody had shot him once in the mouth and twice behind the left ear. As snow began to fall that November morning, Detective Sergeant Robert Brimmer took charge of the investigation. The prospects of a quick solution to the case were grim. Clues were scant.
No footprints, no casings. Neighbors said they had heard sounds like firecrackers and running feet shortly after 2 a.m. But that was about it. Before the morning was over. Brimmer had learned the story of the mari-.
tal merry-go-round. Gabby Moore, naturally enough, emerged as the prime suspect. But he had been hospitalized until noon the day after the murder. A check showed that he could not have left his hospital room to commit the crime. All exits were locked after visiting hours and the windows could not be opened because cranking devices had been removed to conserve air conditioning.
Furthermore, his room had. been directly opposite the hgadnurse's station and she said she had never left her desk. a sffeiiiteto vtowteitfa aeiimi- by a .22 bullet, the same caliber that had killed Blankenbaker. There was no sign of the weapon. The bullet had entered just below Gabby Moore's left shoulder.
Probably the wound would not have been fatal except for one peculiarity of a .22 it can spiral inside the body if it hits a bone. An autopsy would show that this was what had happened. The bullet had changed course after hitting the fourth rib and it had penetrated both lungs and heart, resulting in almost instantaneous death. Ballistic tests produced a startling conclusion: Blankenbaker and Moore had been killed by the same weapon. Two months later that weapon was found.
A couple of youngsters fishing in the Naches River in Yakima pulled up a rusty Colt .22 semi-automatio pistol. i moved back to her first husband, re-, claiming the Blankenbaker name. Gabby couldn't accept it. He became obsessed with getting Dee Ann back. He couldn't believe she didn't still love him.
Continually- he telephoned her at home and at work. He tried to get her sister, who lived nearby, to intervene on his behalf. His drinking increased. Athletes, always welcome at his found not the man they remembered J4 4 man half-drunk much -of the times.
