By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
OLYMPIA – Whose voices were those talking about robbing Robert Maddaus Jr. of cash and drugs; voices that sounded like an accidental recording made from a cell phone in somebody’s pocket?
Shaun Allen Peterson
That was the question at the center of the Rochester drug dealer’s focus the weekend of Nov. 13, 2009, witnesses testified this week in Thurston County Superior Court.
Maddaus, 41, is on trial for first-degree murder and other charges in the case of 40-year-old Shaun A. Peterson, who was found handcuffed and fatally shot on an Olympia street, just blocks south of the state capitol. The Tumwater man died early the morning of Nov. 16 outside the nearby apartment of a drug dealer who said he got his supply of methamphetamine and heroin from “Bobby” Maddaus.
Defense attorney Richard Woodrow has said he plans to show it was another man who accompanied his client that night who shot Peterson, but witnesses for the prosecution have dominated the first two weeks of the trial in an Olympia courtroom.
Robert J. Maddaus Jr.
Daniel Leville, 41, told the court on Wednesday that Maddaus told him he’d been robbed of “$30,000, a pound of weed and I think five pounds of meth.”
Leville said he, Maddaus and Matthew Tremblay were mulling the possibilities of who did it and Maddaus wanted to find out.
“Everybody was suspect,” Leville said.
Did the defendant ever say what would happen to that person, when he found out, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Bruneau asked.
“He had been saying from the beginning when he found the money, when he got to the bottom of it, when he found out who did it, figured it out, that they were going to die, and he was going to kill them,” Leville said.
Maddaus had told him on the phone he and Peterson were headed to confront someone, Leville said.
Leville said the three men later the night of Nov. 15 came to his apartment on South Capitol Way, but Peterson walked through the door handcuffed, with a coat draped over his wrists. Leville was in his bedroom at the time, looking at a video monitor hooked to cameras at the home.
Leville, and his girlfriend Falyn Grimes who lived there with him, described a night of using drugs, drinking Tequila and listening repeatedly to a muffled tape recording.
All of them, except for “Jesse” ended up in the bedroom listening to it, Leville testified.
“I didn’t understand one single word, much less a voice of one particular person,” Leville said.
Leville explained the reason Peterson was handcuffed was “for his safety, our safety, everybody’ safety, so they could clear his name.”
Peterson said he was “okay” with the handcuffs on, while he was with friends, but “if they went anywhere else, he wanted them off so he could defend himself,” Grimes testified Thursday.
Maddaus believed it was Peterson’s voice on the tape, both Grimes and Leville testified. They were at the apartment for hours and both tried to convince Maddaus it wasn’t Peterson, the couple said.
“My girlfriend was pretty much pleading,” Leville said. “I had told him, killing somebody is final, it’s ‘game over’.”
Then, it was time for them to go confront somebody else, according to the couple’s testimony recalling how the visit ended.
“Nothing had been accomplished,” Leville testified.
Peterson went out the door, Tremblay went behind him and Maddaus left shortly after, they said.
Maddaus had come out of the bathroom, bumped the wall and his pistol fell to the kitchen floor. He asked Leville to give him the tape from the DVR, which he did.
Grimes said the couple stood at the porch briefly as the trio left.
“They were standing at the car, I never seen ’em get in the car,” Grimes said.
Leville said Peterson walked the opposite direction from the vehicle.
“Bobby followed him,” he said. “They were kind of arguing; they weren’t running or anything.”
The couple both testified they were inside when they heard gunshots.
They had already started gathering up belongings, like a backpack with drugs, to leave their home, they said. The couple stayed at an upstairs apartment of a friend until about 3 p.m., Grimes said.
They didn’t call the police; and they didn’t return to their apartment; she had a warrant, and they were scared, the couple testified.
Leville testified Maddaus contacted him a few days later.
“He told me a little bit,” Leville said in response to questioning from Bruneau. “He said he had shot Shaun, the gun jammed.”
“Matt had pulled up, he got in the car, they took off, the car stalled, it was a stick … he told him to get out, Matt headed back to the scene, he told him to get back in … Matt gets in the car, Bobby gets in the car, they took off.”
Maddaus was arrested on a murder warrant Nov. 27, 2009 in Chehalis.
Grimes and Leville were picked up by police about a week later at a casino in Mason County.
Both have entered into a plea agreements in conjunction with testifying in the Maddaus case.
The couple are among almost a dozen individuals acquainted with Maddaus who have testified for the prosecution in its case against the Rochester man.
At least four warrants have been issued to detain material witnesses in the case. It’s not clear how many of those people remain in jail as their testimony is secured.
Maddaus was being held on $2 million bail, but is now being held on no bail.
He is charged with first-degree murder, four counts of witness tampering and unlawful possession of a firearm. He is also charged in the same case with attempted kidnapping and second-degree assault of 25-year-old Jessica Abear who testified last week she was assaulted by Maddaus inside his Rochester trailer home for her alleged part in the robbery.
The trial resumes on Monday.
•••
Read about
• The robbery at Maddaus’s Rochester mobile home, here
• Day one of Maddaus’s trial, here
• Why the first jury pool had to be dismissed, here
• Why Maddaus was convicted of just simple possession in Lewis County last month, here
• How Maddaus refused to testify against Robbie Russell in September, here
• How Russell and Maddaus tried to outrun sheriff’s deputies a week and a half after Peterson’s death, here
Join us