SPOKANE, Wash. — A Washington Post story reveals that the suspect in a series of Spokane cold cases was a former Spokane County deputy who investigators believe dated one of the murder victims.
Dorothy Fielding was reported missing in August of 1967 and her decomposed body was found eight months later in a shallow grave near the area of the Seven-Mile ORV Park. The case had remained unsolved since that time, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office says investigators are continuing to work on two additional cold case reports that happened during that time, including a reported suicide of the suspect Duke Pierson’s wife Sandra and the case of 47-year-old Ruby Lampson, who was reported missing on June 6, 1967.
According to the Washington Post, a secret admirer left bouquets of flowers inside Fielding’s car with notes. She told her friends it creeped her out.
Fielding was married but her friends later told police she was having an affair, according to the Washington Post. According to the Washington Post, investigators believe her lover was Duke Pierson, who died on Jan. 22, 2019, just days before Spokane County detectives planned to arrest him.
Pierson was 85 years old when he died.
According to the Washington Post, Pierson was a security guard at Rosauers and a former Spokane County Sheriff’s deputy. He reportedly resigned in 1966 after he stopped coming to work and “threatened to kill colleagues who questioned him.”
Deputies interviewed Pierson for Fielding’s murder but ultimately let him go, according to the Washington Post.
Pierson’s two children, his second wife, his cousin, former coworkers and others believe he is responsible for one or multiple deaths, according to an affidavit released to the Washington Post. Right now, the case is based on circumstantial evidence rather than DNA.
According to the Washington Post, Pierson told his cousin Bob he was “in a bind” just weeks before Fielding vanished. Pierson reportedly said he and Sandra had repaired their crumbling marriage during a trip to Hawaii but learned his girlfriend was pregnant when he returned.
Pierson reportedly told Bob he had a vasectomy years earlier and did not think he was capable of impregnating a woman, according to the Washington Post.
Bob’s son told a detective that his father never stopped believing Pierson killed Fielding and was involved in Sandra’s death.
Pierson denied ever being accused of fathering a child with a coworker at Rosauers but later contradicted himself, saying he could not remember by which woman, according to the Washington Post. When a detective asked him about the affair with Fielding, he denied ever knowing a woman by that name and being interviewed by police about her disappearance.
According to the Washington Post, Pierson told a detective he dated “thousands” of women in that time period.
The detectives also asked Pierson about the flowers in Fielding’s car, and Pierson told he had “loved giving women flowers back then,” according to the Washington Post.
“Without any doubt,” he said, "it was from me.”
If you knew or associated with Dorothy Fielding from 1965 to 1967, you are asked to call Major Crimes Detective Kirk Keyser at 509-477-6611.
