Billy and Cole Neer, two little boys with a passion for baseball, hunted for golf balls outside a driving range near their home, selling them back for a penny apiece and spending the proceeds on baseball cards.
On Labor Day, they told their father they were going out to look for more golf balls. Hours later, the boys, age 10 and 11, were found stabbed to death in a nearby park."They were pretty quiet, and real polite," recalled Chad Johns, 19, a clerk at Diamond Kings Baseball Card Co., a tiny shop the brothers had frequented. "They wouldn't interrupt when you were helping somebody else."
"How could somebody murder two little kids like that?" Johns asked.
That question is heard often in the cafes, stores, churches and schools in this verdant Columbia River city of 46,000.
Autopsies showed Billy died of a stab wound in the abdomen and Cole of a stab wound in the chest. Police said both boys had been stabbed repeatedly, though there was no evidence they had been molested or tortured.
The boys were buried Saturday at their birthplace in North Dakota.
As police search for leads, school counselors are busy soothing the fears and grief of schoolmates and other children. Counselors and parents are warning their children to beware of strangers and to stay away from isolated areas.
The boys' bodies were found in David Douglas Park, which they often cut through to get to the driving range, said their father, Clair Neer.
The wooded, hilly park is often a place of shouting children, mothers with babies, joggers and bicyclists. But on a sunny afternoon four days after the bodies were found, few ventured there except police on small motorcycles.
There is widespread shock at the brutality and senselessness of the killings, and there is anger too, said Linda Herrington, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver School District.
"Children have lost their freedom to explore and enjoy the outdoors," she said, "and that is a real loss."
"The kids are telling us: `I'm scared, maybe this will happen to me, too," said Syreece McLean, a school counselor. Parents are turning out by the score to walk their children to schools, she said.
Parents must confront the fact that crime they read about in the newspaper can happen even in a peaceful community like this one, Herrington said.
"This kind of thing just doesn't happen in Vancouver," said Police Capt. Ray Anderson.
"We don't know who did this, but I've got to think that the killer had something really wrong with him," Anderson said. "Good Lord, to go out and kill 10- and 11-year-old boys . . ."
He said police have no motive for the killings and no suspects.
On Friday, Vancouver detectives contacted FBI agents in Washington, D.C., and received an initial psychological profile of a possible killer. Anderson said that it was helpful, but he would release no details. Detectives also combed David Douglas Park again during the weekend to make sure they missed no evidence.
The boys' father told The Columbian newspaper he also is convinced the boys were killed by "an awful sick person," a stranger.
Clair Neer, 35, a single parent and unemployed automobile glass repairman, moved with his surviving son, Richard, 6, across the Columbia River to Hillsboro, Ore., after the killings.
An estimated 200 people attended funeral services for the boys Saturday morning at Calvary Lutheran Church in Oberon, N.D., a town of about 200 near the Fort Totten Indian Reservation, where the boys were born. Their caskets were covered with star quilts, an Indian funeral tradition. Their mother is a member of the Devils Lake Sioux tribe.
The Rev. Kevin Brown called the slayings "a tragic injustice," but said Christians believe hope comes even through tragedy. Brown said the boys were baptized at the church.
"The sentiment of a lot of the people around here is like they lost someone from their family," he said.