By Eric Mathison

Burien’s most famous resident died last week.
Granted, few readers of true-crime author Ann Rule’s 33 New York Times best-seller books were aware she lived for 20 years on Burien’s waterfront.

In fact, not many Burien residents knew Rule was their neighbor. Having moved to Normandy Park a few years ago, Rule was actually a former Burien resident when she died at Highline Medical Center on July 26.
The fuzziness about her hometown wasn’t by accident.

When you’re a woman who has written books detailing the violent crimes of dangerous sociopaths you don’t advertise where you live.

Stories about Rule stated she lived in Seattle or on Puget Sound near Seattle. When I interviewed Rule, I explained the whole justification for a community newspaper column on her was that she was a local resident. We negotiated that I could say she lived on the Highline waterfront. That covers a much larger area.

But our copy editor got the story after I checked it and changed “Highline” to “Burien” just before it went to press.

In the twisted minds of some of those psychos featured in her writing it wasn’t the police, prosecutors, juries or even the fact they actually did the crime that was most to blame for them having to do hard time. It was the woman who wrote a book that said all those terrible things about them.

Rule’s actual Burien location was something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie or an Ann Rule book. She lived alone down by the water beneath a steep ravine. From the land side her home was accessible only (cue the scary music) by a creaky tram or by hiking down the pathless gorge through the woods. From the water side a public beach was located a few doors down from her.

No wonder she had two dogs and kept a baseball bat and gun next to her when she wrote.

Back in 2004, Rule said she could give a fellow reporter and me about 30 minutes for an interview. Rule chatted with us for a couple of hours and was very pleasant.

I might have been a little paranoid about her sizing me up knowing all the sociopathic men she had researched. But at one point her cat jumped on my lap and Rule looked at me kind of darkly and noted, “You know, cats supposedly go instinctively to people who don’t like them.”

Years later I certainly gave her reason to be suspicious of me.

In 2011, Rule put her dream waterfront home up for sale. Marge and I decided to drive by. But it had been a long time since I had been there and the streets were tricky. As we got close we spotted a jogger along the road but missed the house. On the second loop around--embarrassed, we waved at the jogger. On the third and fourth tries, we waved again as we drove slowly by.

Giving up, we returned home and found an open house notice for Rule’s house for the next day.

Oh, boy, not only could I show Marge where Ann Rule lived we could go inside!

The next day, guided by the “Open House “signs, I drove right to the house, even arriving early.

You true-crime fans might have already guessed it. The jogger was Rule’s real estate agent!

Maybe it was mechanical problems or maybe we didn’t look like qualified buyers but the agent couldn’t get the tram key to work. I didn’t get to show Marge the inside of Ann Rule’s house.

I can’t leave the subject of Rule without noting the sad irony of how she began her career and the unfortunate publicity that overshadowed her remarkable achievements near the end of her life.

How Rule found her career is typical of the stories of many women. After giving birth to four children, her marriage ended and she had to find a way to support her kids. They were 2, 5, 7 and 9 years old.

In a 2001 interview, Rule described the circumstances.

“I wrote in our basement, which used to be a garage: it was our rec. room too, “Rule recalled. “ The kids would be fighting and watching TV while I wrote. The only time I wouldn’t write was when they fought on top of the typewriter.

“It took years before they connected my typing to their eating—they didn’t realize it was my job.”

It took five years before she sold an article for $35 and a few more years after that before she was able to modestly support her kids through her writing, according to Rule.

It was ten years before her book about serial killer Ted Bundy was published. Bundy often escorted colleague Rule to her car after their night shift at the Seattle Crisis Clinic. (Cue the scary music again.)

A few months ago, two of her sons were accused by investigators of bilking the wheel chair bound Rule out of more than $100,000.

Eric Mathison is a former editor of the Highline Times. He can be reached care of Ken Robinson at kenr@robinsonnews.com.