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In Connelly's estimation, a good man to replace Griffies would be John Ladenburg, Christopher St. Pierre's defense attorney. The concept was not initially appealing to Mr. Ladenburg. “I had a successful practice, had won quite a few high-profile defense cases, and was quite happy doing what I was doing. I'm a real Tacoma ‘hometown' type of guy. I like doing a good job in my profession, and being of service to the community. I just never really seriously considered running for chief prosecutor.”
At age six, John Ladenburg was the third of sixteen children when his family settled in Tacoma. He graduated with honors from Stadium High School, then took off for Spokane, Washington, to attend Gonzaga University. In 1969, he married Connie Chapman, his high school sweetheart. To support his family and his education, Ladenburg worked in gas stations and grocery stores. “I also bused tables and cooked at a Denny's restaurant,” said Ladenburg. “I would attend classes during the day and then often work until two in the morning. This paid off in 1974 when I graduated from Gonzaga Law School and passed the bar exam. That's when Connie, the kids, and I returned to Tacoma, and I joined Binns, Petrich, Hester and Robson, a well-known law firm. In 1976, a good friend from childhood and I formed our own firm, Ladenburg and Haselman.”
It wasn't simply Ladenburg's legal background and expertise that prompted Connelly to suggest that he run against Griffies. A significant aura of civic service surrounded Ladenburg's career—he served as the president of the South Tacoma Business Club, several advisory committees to the Tacoma City Council, including the Urban Policy Committee. In 1982, he was appointed to the Tacoma City Council over twenty-seven other applicants, and was elected for another term in 1983, immediately prior to the St. Pierre case. During his tenure on the council, he chaired both the budget committee and the utilities committee. A strong and practical environmentalist, he was instrumental in saving local taxpayers tens of millions of dollars by pioneering energy conservation standards.
“Despite being an attorney who represented ‘the bad guys,' law enforcement personnel respected me because I strongly endorsed increased police and fire services for Tacoma,” Ladenburg said. “The police union and the sheriff's guild earlier suggested that I run for chief prosecutor, but I didn't seriously consider it. Everything was going great for me both personally and professionally. I appreciated Connelly's complimentary suggestion, and I tucked the idea away in the back of my mind. The defense of Christopher St. Pierre and the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution were my top professional priorities at that precise point in my career, and at that general point in our pleasant mealtime consultation.”
Eight
The bold-type headline of the
Tacoma News Tribune
on October 9 was a surefire attention grabber:
KILLER GIVEN LIFE SENTENCE; MURDERER IMPLICATES ST. PIERRES.
The opening paragraph referred directly to a new elaborate confessional statement by Andrew Webb in which he claimed that he “slashed Wells's throat because he feared he would be killed himself if he didn't.”
Webb's narrative of Damon Wells's tragic fate differed dramatically from those of Perez, Marshall, and the brothers St. Pierre. In Webb's version, he bravely opposed each and every instance of violence, came to the aid of Damon Wells, and did everything possible to mitigate the severity of the situation.
He and Wells were having a friendly postfight chat, he asserted, when Paul and Chris suddenly burst into the bathroom. “They started hitting and knocking him into the corner,” said Webb. “I stopped them and told them that Damon was OK, but Paul would kick him and tell him to shut up. I gave up arguing with him because he was getting mad at me, so I helped him walk Damon out to the car.”
Wells possibly died, according to Webb, from being kicked in the head by Christopher St. Pierre. “We all chased him and tackled him,” Webb said of Wells's attempted escape at Salmon Beach. “He was on his hands and knees and he raised his head up to yell for help. That's when Chris kicked him in the head, which either knocked him out or killed him. I thought he was dead because he wasn't breathing.”
It was then, said Webb, that Paul St. Pierre compelled him under implied threat of death to slit the throat of the already lifeless Damon Wells. “Paul then grabbed the knife from me and said, ‘This is how you kill somebody,' and stabbed him in the back. He then handed the knife to Chris and told him to stab him, so Chris did that once that I know of.”
“How did the newspaper get hold of Andrew Webb's blatantly self-serving plea-bargaining statement?” asked Ellsworth Connelly. He also provided the answer.
“The Tacoma News Tribune
got it courtesy of the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office.
“Here's how they did it,” offered Connelly, explaining that an ordinary guilty plea has a simple defendant's statement that merely acknowledges the essential elements of the offense. “They put in as part of his plea the entire statement that he gave when he wanted to make his deal. Yes, the whole statement covering every alleged murder, the decapitation, everything you can think of. The prosecution knew full well the press was dying to get their hands on that, and as soon as they got their hands on it, they'd print it. Which they did!”
The newspaper story, accompanied by a large picture of Andrew Webb, gave prominence to his recent version of events. “Andrew admitted slicing Wells's throat—although under pressure from Paul—and he absolutely threw the knife into that kid's back just like he used to throw knives and hatchets into his folks' garage door,” said Marty Webb. “In this version, almost all the blame or guilt is put directly on Paul and Chris, and he makes himself out to be the most innocent of the three. By pleading guilty and cutting this deal, he got a twenty-year minimum sentence, but he could serve as little as thirteen or fourteen years.”
Connelly, outraged by the apparent manipulation of Tacoma's print media by Prosecutor Griffies, was equally angered when Griffies and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Chris Quinn-Brintnall granted a special in-depth interview to television station KSTW. Broadcast two weeks before the trial, the “St. Pierre Case” was discussed in remarkable detail.
“We see the prosecutor and his chief deputy go on television, channel eleven, and talk about
this specific case,”
Connelly said with ill-concealed anger. “The purpose of this apparently is some sort of means by which the general public can be reached, every potential juror. This station goes out all over the state on cable. Presumably hundreds of thousands of people could have watched this program. Is that proper? No. Is it legal? No. Is it a violation of our ethical rules? Yes. Why is it done? Why would a man do this? The obvious reason is so he can have some sort of advantage outside the courtroom before anything really gets under way.”
Connelly sought dismissal of all charges, claiming that the prosecutor's reprehensible conduct made a fair trial impossible. “I submit to Your Honor that there has been a concerted effort of misconduct by the prosecutor in an effort to give themselves an edge with reference to Webb, and to hurt and prejudice St. Pierre in every way possible that they can. Not by coming and putting on a strong case in court, but before we even get there with this publicity business, this TV, this leaking to the newspaper, and finally this thing on the plea.
“I say it's an abuse of process,” Connelly insisted. “I say that it is misconduct, and I think that what you should do is to strike the death penalty. I don't know how they can act like this with someone's life hanging in the balance and expect to salvage a death penalty case.”
John Ladenburg joined Connelly in the motion to strike the death penalty, and filed a few of his own. Among those were a motion to drop the entire case against the St. Pierres because of prosecutorial misconduct, and a motion for a restraining order to gag the prosecutor from any further public comment on the case.
Judge Sauriol immediately granted the gag order silencing Bill Griffies and his staff, bringing the prosecution's recent media career to a dead halt.
“It is nothing short of amazing,” said Ladenburg, “the continual abuse of the rules and procedures in this case by the prosecuting attorney's office.” The court viewed the TV interview of October 6 on videotape, and studied a verbatim transcript. After watching the video, John Ladenburg quoted directly from Bill Griffies's comments about Webb's plea-bargain deal, drawing attention to several incongruent statements, including “there is no deal.”
“He's saying on TV that there is no deal with Andrew Webb,” stated Ladenburg firmly. “Well, that's hogwash! That is a blatant violation of disciplinary rules for attorneys in this state.”
“Griffies also said that Andrew Webb was pleading guilty because ‘it was the right thing to do,' and that was complete bullshit,” commented Anne Webb several years later. “Oh, yeah, sure. Andrew Webb: altruistic snitch and ace manipulator. He manipulated me for years, burying me under layer upon layer of fear, lies, and intimidation. He enjoyed burying those poor guys they killed, too,” she recalled. “Honest to God, he told me that when he was burying the bodies, the earth spoke to him—the ground opened up and spoke to him. Then he quoted something from the Bible about the ground speaking. There's probably nothing in the Bible like that, and if there is, I'm sure whoever wrote the Holy Bible wasn't talking about Andrew K. Webb.”
“I have practiced law for eleven years here,” Ladenburg told the court. “I have never had to accuse a fellow attorney in court of violating the rules, but I can see no way around it. Frankly, I am appalled at the conduct of the prosecuting attorney of this county.”
John Ladenburg presented a detailed legal argument, buttressed by extensive precedents and rulings. The prosecution's reprehensible behavior, he insisted, equally violated ethics and law, including the right of his client to a fair trial.
Carl Hultman, of course, did not agree with either Connelly or Ladenburg, and presented extensive arguments refuting their accusations. He also opined that Tacoma's television broadcasts and newspaper stories have little or no impact on citizens of nearby King County, the county from which jurors for the new trial would be selected. Results of his own unofficial poll concluded that only one out of fifty-four people in the prosecutor's office on the ninth floor knew about the television broadcast—hardly a major impact. Hultman did, however, agree that the so-called “gag order” was a fine idea.
“We never asked for a gag order before,” Connelly later explained, “because it never occurred to anyone on the defense side that the prosecutor was going to go on television with his chief criminal deputy and talk about the case. We never thought that was going to happen because nobody has ever heard of anybody doing that sort of thing in a death penalty case.”
Thomas Sauriol's reaction to “the first one through the door gets the deal” was dismay and disgust. “I am very troubled by that undisputed and obviously undenied remark,” said the judge. Sauriol recalled previously reprimanding the prosecutor, and his declaration from the bench that there must be no more “flirting with disaster,” and absolutely no ulcer-inducing aggravation. By the time Connelly, Ladenburg, and Hultman exhausted their arguments, Judge Sauriol was exhausted as well. “Right now I have Excedrin Headache Number four-sixty,” he loudly declared. “It's all generated by this case, and it's fierce!”
“Do you think for one minute that I don't consider a felony, first-degree aggravated circumstances murder case serious?” the angry judge asked rhetorically. “I wasn't on the bench five months when I had to impose the death penalty, and I choked it out. It hurts to say, ‘You shall be hanged by the neck until you're dead.' ”
His Honor then aimed his piercing gaze at Pierce County's chief prosecutor. “Do we have any more surprises now, Mr. Griffies?”
“Not that I know of, Your Honor,” replied Griffies politely. During a moment of stressful silence, Judge Sauriol collected his thoughts and found them disturbing. From his years of experience, he knew that disgruntled lawyers, having lost a case, often blame “the guy in the black robes. He's the reason we lost the case. I'm not going to take the blame for what's happened in this case,” Sauriol strongly asserted. “Just in case anybody has any funny ideas to lay it on my shoulders, I've got news for you, I'm going to fight back this time. It won't happen!”
The judge made it clear that he placed no blame on Carl Hultman. “There is no way in which Carl Hultman, the deputy prosecutor who was assigned to try this case, is at fault for anything that occurred here.” Sauriol put the blame one hundred percent on Prosecutor Bill Griffies.
Only steam shooting from his ears could have made Sauriol's anger more apparent. “Does it seem like I'm angry? You better believe I'm angry!” He then addressed Hultman's argument that the TV program had few viewers and little influence. “It's known by practically everybody in this building what happened on channel eleven that night,” said the judge. “You can't have Sauriol walk down these halls without somebody saying, ‘That's the judge that got to hear about the prosecutor going on channel eleven.' I'm not totally deaf. I hear these things.
“I'll tell you something about the code of professional responsibility,” Sauriol said to the prosecutor. “The disciplinary rules, unlike the ethical considerations, are mandatory in character. You don't have a choice; you don't have an option. The rules state the minimum, not maximum. I suggest you take a look at that. It's not that hard to read. It's stated in very simple language.”
For his finale, Judge Sauriol announced that “considering what this is doing to my blood pressure, there's no way in the world I can hear this case.” Judge Thomas Sauriol, for reasons of conflicting commitments, extended trial dates, and rapidly rising bile, stepped down from the case on October 15, the same day Dr. Lacsina, Pierce County medical examiner, performed an autopsy on the recently recovered severed head of John Achord.
The police knew John Achord's head was inside the orange five-gallon metal bucket filled with cement that Tony Youso tossed off the Lincoln Avenue Bridge into the Puyallup River. Tacoma Police Department divers had attempted retrieving the bucket on more than one occasion, but without success.
“There had been two unsuccessful attempts by the Tacoma Police Department to recover the head from the Puyallup River,” confirmed Sergeant Parkhurst. “Due to unfavorable river conditions—the current being extremely strong, visibility zero, and the depth of the river quite high—recover y attempts were discontinued until river conditions improved.”
On October 8, 1984, Lieutenant Moorhead and Sergeant Parkhurst requested Officer Donald E. Moore, SAR coordinator for Tacoma, to organize a comprehensive evidence search of the Puyallup River below the Lincoln Avenue Bridge. “Going through the chain of command,” recalled Parkhurst, “Officer Moore obtained permission from the Tacoma Police Department to obtain an evidence search number. Lieutenant Moorhead and I acted as police department liaison between the search and rescue operation and the Tacoma Police Department.”

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