As my father told me of his ordeal, he broke down in tears. “You know, Baby Hope, I did a lot of bad things in my life,” he said. “Maybe this is payback for all of that.”
He had gone to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer out of fear that I would be linked to the news story and that my reputation would be harmed. He agreed to an exclusive interview in exchange for withholding my name.
“I just want to make sure you’re protected,” he told me.
My father had damaged a lot of people in his life, and hadn’t cared about hurting the people who loved him. But now at sixty-two—at least that’s how old the newspaper reports said he was—he seemed determined to protect at least one relationship. Ours.
III.
That spring April named me to the national team squad that traveled to Europe and then on to the Algarve Cup in Portugal. She was taking a very young team: all the national team veterans were getting ready for the inaugural season of the WUSA, the professional league they had founded. So our traveling roster was full of college players, including a few I had never heard of. Our average age was nineteen. Despite the hodgepodge of talent, it was fun to be with players of my own generation—and not excluded by the veterans. But it felt a little too comfortable.
It was the worst U.S. performance ever in the prestigious Portuguese tournament. We lost three games, including the two I started, to teams that had brought their full senior rosters. In a 3–0 loss to Canada, their veteran star, Charmaine Hooper, chipped a ball over me in the first half. And a new Canadian player named Christine Sinclair scored off a corner kick: it was the first battle of many between us. Sweden beat us, 2–0, in my second start.
While I was traveling, I heard that my father had been cleared in the Emert murder case. Sort of. A story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer made it clear the police still had doubts about him. A King’s County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, John Urquhart, was quoted as saying: “We don’t believe that he was part and parcel to the homicide. We’re still trying to figure out what, if any, connections to the crime Mr. Solo may have.”
Urquhart also said that authorities had not ruled out the possibility that Emert’s killer may have set Solo up to look like the killer or that he was somehow involved in another way.
My father had taken and passed two polygraph tests, and his alibi was solid: a physician at the VA Hospital confirmed that he had seen my father that day.
“He has a very strong alibi for the day before the murder, which we fully believe,” Urquhart said.
But Solo says he and his family suffered greatly as a result of the investigation.
My dad told the paper that the investigators were threatening when they talked to my mom and Marcus, and had even used me as leverage to try to get him to confess to the slaying. Again, my father said he went public only to protect me.
When I returned to Seattle, I could tell my father was frustrated. He didn’t feel his name was fully cleared. He was still being harassed by police, banned by shopkeepers. The taint of the murder accusation lingered, and would for years. Marcus and I stood by him. Marcus had been traumatized by the murder investigation. The FBI had gone to Richland and talked to my mother, who had been storing my dad’s old duffel bag from Terry’s house in the secondhand store she now ran. Of course my mother had looked through it and seen the disgusting pictures of prostitutes. Marcus had taken the bag out of the store and destroyed the photos, but my mom told the FBI about the albums, so the FBI grilled Marcus. It was clear they thought that my father could be a suspect in the infamous Green River killings. Several prostitutes had been murdered over the years and at the time the killings were still unsolved. Just the mention of the Green River murders terrorized the Northwest at the time—and now someone was trying to link my father to that horror.
I knew that others in my family doubted whether my father was truly innocent. Their long-simmering animosity toward him was fueled by the lingering questions left by the police. My sister’s husband told a detective about a time that my father had stolen some knives from him. Any past slight or misdeed was hauled out and used against him.
For a long time, I would hear other family members speculate about my father’s role in the murder. Those doubts infuriated me. I knew he was innocent.
Meanwhile, the Emert murder remained unsolved. There wasn’t any real closure for his widow and daughter. Or for my father.
IV.
The VA Hospital did more than just provide an alibi for my father. It threw him a lifeline.
He liked hanging out at the VA Hospital, shooting the breeze with other veterans. Through an outpatient program, homeless vets could get secondhand clothes, a cup of coffee, a sandwich. The first floor of the hospital was a gathering place that offered a little more dignity than a homeless shelter. A Vietnam veteran named Mark Sakura started the program on a volunteer basis. He knew my dad as Johnny and became quite friendly with him. My dad liked to talk, and Mark liked to listen. Mark really wanted his program to be useful to the homeless population. He picked my father’s brain for information. What did the vets really need? Coats? Backpacks? Sleeping bags? Personal
