"On a Horrible Road"

For most of her 44 years, Mrs. Dorothy Gutheridge of Minneapolis has patiently endured an existence remarkable only for its bleakness. Deserted by her husband in 1945, Mrs. Gutheridge went to work as a hotel clerk at $32 a week. A year ago, when a foot infection forced her to give up the hotel job, she turned to unrewarding makeshifts: babysitting, caring for old people, tinting photos and painting figurines. She managed to support herself and take care of her crippled, 83-year-old father, but her weary eyes and tight mouth testified to her conviction that she was "on a horrible road of trying and not getting any place."

One night last January, after sitting up with some old people, Dorothy Gutheridge started home in her 1948 Ford. Her record as a driver was one thing about which Mrs. Gutheridge could boast. In 28 years of driving she had never been found guilty of a traffic violation. That night. however, as she was swinging into a left turn, she struck and killed 17-year-old LaVonne Anderson. "The first thing I knew, I saw this girl on my fender," said Mrs. Gutheridge. "I don't know where she came from."

Tragedy & Torment. Convinced that the tragedy had not been her fault, the police did not even book Mrs. Gutheridge. Later that night, however, the phone rang in her small apartment. When she picked up the receiver, a young man's voice asked harshly: "How does it feel to be a murderess, Mrs. Gutheridge?"

Nearly every day thereafter, Dorothy Gutheridge's phone rang--sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes about 7 as she was getting out of bed. Often when Mrs. Gutheridge picked up the phone, she was greeted with a silence broken only by the sound of breathing at the other end of the line. Sometimes, half-hypnotized, she waited for several minutes before her unknown tormentor slowly asked his question "How does it feel, Mrs. Gutheridge?" Then the phone would click and go dead.

Shadow & Substance. For 2 1/2 months Dorothy Gutheridge lived a haunted life. "I couldn't sleep at night," she remembers. "I just stared at the ceiling." Worst of all were the frequent occasions on which she had to use her car. "When I drove at night," she said last week, "I thought I saw people in every shadow, every dark spot."

One night two weeks ago, as Mrs. Gutheridge was driving home after a day spent caring for two elderly women, one of the shadows she feared took on substance. Seventy-five-year-old Mrs. Catherine Panko, jaywalking at an intersection, stepped out into the path of Dorothy Gutheridge's Ford. Next day Mrs. Panko died of her injuries.

Once again the police absolved Mrs. Gutheridge of blame. They suggested, too, that she try to arrange a meeting with her telephone tormentor so that they might trap him. But Dorothy Gutheridge, near collapse, could no longer endure the sound of her phone and the relentless daily question. With her father, she fled to a relative's home. "Sometimes I think I am an instrument of death," she said last week. "Sometimes it just seems I can never get in an automobile again. I don't know what I am going to do, but I think I'll go crazy if I ever hear that voice again."

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