Image of John A. Booth Jr., left, and Ryan J. McCarthy included in court file
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The unsealed document in the Aug. 21 triple homicide case offers a lot of details about what detectives think happened inside the Lewis County house that night.
The information comes primarily from a man who described himself as a friend of the slain David West Sr. and from West’s live-in girlfriend, both of whom were at the home off Gore Road and survived.
John C. Lindberg said he went to visit the West family about 11:30 p.m. or midnight on Aug. 20 at the Salkum-Onalaska area home. As Lindberg pulled into the driveway, a small, dark-colored vehicle arrived, Lindberg told sheriff’s deputies.
Detectives concluded the second set of visitors were John Booth Jr., who is also known by the nickname “Six” and Ryan J. McCarthy, according to the document.
John A. Booth Jr.
After a few minutes, West and Booth came back inside the house and West seemed extremely stressed, Lindberg said. Lindberg followed West down the hallway to the master bedroom and said he only had about $100 when his friend asked if he had any money on him.
“West told him that wasn’t going to work and it wasn’t enough,” Lindberg told detectives according to the allegations in the document.
West grabbed a shotgun and walked back out to the kitchen. Lindberg stayed in the bedroom. After Lindberg saw West level the shotgun, point it at Booth and tell the two men to leave, Lindberg heard gunshots and ran to hide in a bathroom for what he thought was about a half an hour, the document alleges. He then left and sped away in his white Camaro.
West Sr.’s girlfriend, Denise Salts, was interviewed later at Madigan Hospital.
Salts told detectives that after the two men arrived, she went out to feed her goats. When she heard gunshots, she ran in the backdoor and saw “Six” standing in her kitchen. He asked, “How are you doing” and shot her in the face, according to the allegations.
She fell to the floor and heard other gunshots, she said.
Neighbors reported they heard five to six gunshots that sounded as if they were small caliber and said they saw two vehicles leave the residence.
At 2:18 a.m., a deputy contacted the driver in a Camaro, Lindberg, who was crying and shaking and told the deputy there were people dying at the residence.
Two other deputies arrived at the house on the short street called Wings Way just off of Gore Road and assisted arriving medics with Salts. Three males also inside the house were dead.
Sheriff’s detective Bruce Kimsey described what he found when he entered the rambler later with crime scene specialists from the Washington State Patrol.
Sixteen-year-old David J. West Jr. was in the living room near the front door. Tony E. Williams, 50, of Randle, was across the hallway.
West Sr. was laying on the living room floor next to the kitchen with a single-barrel shotgun near his side with the hammer cocked back, Kimsey wrote in the now unsealed declaration of probable case.
Kimsey saw a projectile near the front door and a 9 mm casing near Williams.
The Lewis County Coroner’s Office has reported each died from a gunshot to the head.
WHY
Lewis County sheriff’s detectives interviewed several other people in the week following the shootings.
The declaration of probable cause caused filed with McCarthy’s charges shed light on what the the sheriff’s office believes was behind the two men’s visit to the West home that night: extortion.
The assistant manager at Booth’s workplace called detective Kimsey the Monday after the deaths. Ryan Miller said he last time he saw his co-worker about 3 p.m. the Friday before.
“Miller said Booth was talking about going to collect a $20,000 debt and the debt had something to do with bail money that was owed to him,” Kimsey wrote.
Also that week, Kimsey received a statement from an acquaintance of McCarthy’s. Angie Hoff said she got a call from McCarthy on Aug. 21 and met him in a park in Grays Harbor County.
He was with others, including someone she referred to as JB and she picked out from a photo montage as Booth.
“Hoff said McCarthy told her he ‘had a job to do’, that it was going to be ‘in and out’,” Kimsey wrote.
Early that week, Kimsey spoke with West Sr.’s step-daughter. Jessica Porter described a day in early August and her step-father got a visit from three men. She said they were “Robbie”, Booth, whose name she now knew from seeing pictures in the news and third person, a “buff” tan man with tattoos on his arms.
Porter told the detective “Robbie” went into the bedroom with her father, and when he came out, he winked at Booth and they left.
The document goes on to allege she said when she asked her dad why they were there, the only thing he said was he had to pay “Robbie” $1,000 to get him to leave. Porter told detectives her father said he was being blackmailed.
GOING AFTER THE SUSPECTS
Detectives Kimsey and Dan Riordan met with McCarthy’s wife in the couple’s home in Redmond, according to the declaration of probable cause.
Crystal McCarthy told the two she got a call from Booth around 2:30 that morning telling her to pick up her husband in Centralia. She found him sitting on a curb drinking from a bottle of water.
He wouldn’t talk about what was going on and he vomited out the window as they drove home, she said.
She told them that later on the 21st, her husband showed up at her workplace with a bag containing the clothes he had been wearing. She said she threw it into a dumpster.
Ryan J. McCarthy
Ryan J. McCarthy, 28, was picked up in Redmond about 1 a.m. on Sunday Aug. 22 by Department of Corrections officers on a DOC warrant for a violation of his community supervision. The warrant was issued the morning of Aug. 21 on information from the sheriff’s office.
McCarthy was charged on Friday with three counts of first-degree felony murder and extortion.
The particular murder charge alleges that while he was attempting to commit a felony – burglary – he or another participant caused the death of another person.
Olympia defense attorney Rick Cordes was appointed to represent him.
Booth, 31, was captured the night of Aug. 25 by federal marshals at a Spokane home. He was wanted on a a $10 million warrant for murder out of Lewis County Superior Court and also a DOC warrant issued the morning of the shootings.
The Onalaska man has been charged with three murders, extortion and attempted murder. James Dixon, of Olympia, is his court-appointed attorney.
THE ‘PERSON OF INTEREST’
Robbie Russell was named a person of interest a few days after the shooting but he has not been charged in the case.
A no-bail bench warrant was issued Aug. 24, when a deputy prosecutor told a judge he had information Russell had violated his conditions of release in another case by having contact with one of the witnesses. Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said authorities had knowledge Russell had earlier in August visited West Sr.’s home.
Russell and West are co-defendants in a case set for trial next month related to them allegedly ambushing a group of teenagers camping in Winlock in the summer of 2009.
Meagher also told the judge he wanted a hearing to increase Russell’s bail from $50,000 in the case to $500,000.
Robert "Robbie" Shawn Russell
The Centralia man’s last felony conviction in Lewis County was from 1998. It was for possession of methamphetamine and at that time, all his criminal history was for non-violent offenses, according to court documents.
However, during the last 14 months Russell has been charged in four different felony cases in Lewis County Superior Court.
One is the 2009 Winlock incident and another is set for trial in a little more than a week.
It involves his arrest for possession of a stolen vehicle that Lewis County deputies happened upon when they went to a Jackson Highway property in late 2009 on another matter, according to a court file.
Another is from May of this year when Centralia police, acting on a tip, went to Russell’s South Buckner Street home and found enough methamphetamine and other items such as ledgers that he was charged with possession with intent to deliver drugs, according to a court file. The trial is scheduled for the week of Sept. 20.
The fourth pending case was filed on June 23, but the charge is unclear because the court file has been repeatedly unavailable at the county clerk’s office. However, it followed Russell’s June 22 arrest in Centralia for unlawful possession of a firearm. Police Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald said a the time he also found in the car an amount of methamphetamine large enough it could be moulded into a clump the size of a tennis ball.
Russell, according to information in one of his court files, learned to be a welder in prison in the mid-1990s. After his release, he worked and lived in Snohomish County for almost a year. By late 1998, he had returned to his home, Lewis County, to take care of his father’s estate. He is married and in the late 90s had two children, one of which he wrote – in a court file – he lost because of drugs.
He has pleaded not guilty in all four pending cases.
According to his court files, in early 2010 his attorney asked to be removed from representing Russell because Russell wasn’t paying his fees. Centralia attorney Don Blair now represents Russell.
During the week after the shootings, not only was there a warrant for Russell’s arrest, but the Chehalis bondsman who put up bail in the four current cases decided he didn’t want to be involved with Russell any longer.
John Wickert, owner of Jail Sucks Bail Bond Co., had posted $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 and an unknown amount after the June charge.
“Based on what’s going on, we just decided we needed to revoke his bond,” Wickert said last week.
Wickert said Russell called him the week before last and said he was going to turn himself in and he told his attorney he was going to come in, but he didn’t.
Wickert, a former police officer in several Lewis County towns, said deputies had gotten a tip Russell had been calling around and telling everyone goodbye.
So on Thursday Aug. 26, Wickert and two of his recovery agents, along with some Lewis County law enforcement officers went looking for Russell.
At a location in south Tumwater, they found Russell’s wife and a couple of his friends loading up his belongings on a flatbed trailer, Wickert said. He wasn’t there.
Wickert learned Russell had been driving around in another motor home and he and his agents went to a Tumwater business property where they thought he might be. He was.
He saw them coming, according to Wickert. One man exited the motor home and Russell stood in the doorway when they advised him to come out, he said. Russell had shaved his head and his mustache, Wickert said.
“He stepped out and said, ‘I’m not running, I’m not’,” Wickert said.
The bondsman took Russell to the Lewis County Jail. They seized a couple of vehicles Russell had put up as collateral.
Russell remains in the Lewis County Jail.
“He’s always gone to court and said and done what he said he was gonna do, until this time,” Wickert said.
WHAT NEXT?
The Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office has said during both Booth and McCarthy’s court appearances it is considering upgrading the charges to aggravated first-degree murder, a move which means a decision would have to be made about whether to seek the death penalty.
Lewis County commissioners, who are responsible for the budgets for all county operations have already pondered the potential costs if that should happen.
“I’ve been told it could cost anywhere from $1 million to $3 million,” Commissioner Bill Schulte said last week.
The number came from a quick “penciling out” of expenses if the prosecutor sought the death penalty for three suspects, each of whom would need to have two court-appointed and qualified defense lawyers and if each filed two appeals, Schulte said.
“If it becomes an aggravated murder, death penalty case, we go from being the being the budget Lords to being the budget servants,” he said.
Prosecutor Michael Golden is an elected official and the decision will be his alone how to prosecute the case, Schulte said.
“It’s more than the prosecutor has in his budget,” Schulte said, noting it would likely be spread out over more than one year and there is also a special state fund they can apply to for such cases.
The prosecutor’s annual spending for this year is just over $2.85 million, although more than $1 million of that comes from outside grants and is required to be dedicated to specific activities.
The bulk of money spent however would be on the defense side and be paid from the county budget set aside for indigent defendants, according to Golden.
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