By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
An initial review of the state prison system’s supervision of triple murder suspect John Allen Booth Jr. after his December release suggested there were several months when the 31-year-old Onalaska man and his community corrections officer didn’t meet.
John A. Booth Jr.
The minimum number of contacts required for a high risk violent offender is four times each month.
“This is a case where, at first glance, it does not look like we did everything right,” Department of Corrections spokesperson Chad Lewis said yesterday.
Booth is charged with last weekend’s shooting of four people – including a 16-year-old boy – inside an Onalaska area home. Detectives believe the slayings were related to a drug debt collection.
Booth had served about five and a half years for assault after he hit a man in the head with a crowbar at a Saturday night dance in downtown Centralia, and then struck a bouncer in the forearm when he was chased down an alley behind the Aerie building where the event was held. It was his second prison term for assault.
The 2004 sentence from Lewis County Superior Court included at least 18 months of supervision from DOC after Booth’s release from prison.
Lewis said a look at the computer records documenting Booth’s supervision showed the last contact was in April.
The community corrections officer responsible for Booth was put on administrative leave on Wednesday, Lewis said.
The state agency doesn’t know if he didn’t meet with the ex-convict or if he just didn’t record the interactions into the database.
“We asked him and he said he had some contacts, he just had not entered it,” Lewis said.
The officer, Seth Skipworth, has been in trouble with his bosses before for not following proper policies and procedures in documenting his work, according to Lewis.
Skipworth has been given two “memos of concern” from his supervisor; one in October 2008 and the last one just a few days before the shootings, according to Lewis.
Community corrections officers are required to enter information about a contact within 72 hours.
The Secretary of Corrections, Eldon Vail, has requested what he described in a Friday memo to all DOC employees as a complete and thorough review, not just of front line workers but of all levels of the agency.
Vail noted in the memo he is concerned about the initial findings, and particularly the limited contact with Booth between April and August.
Booth was being supervised out of a DOC Tacoma office. He worked in Tacoma, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office. Skipworth has been a full time community corrections officer since July 2006.
On Monday and Tuesday, under the supervision of a superior, Skipworth retroactively entered information about contacts with Booth, ones which could be independently verified, into the database, according to Lewis.
The last entry, on Aug. 6, shows Booth was living with a girlfriend in Lakewood.
Skipworth had a caseload of more than 40 offenders, a number Lewis called a lot, but typical.
There are about 19,000 offenders across the state who are supervised by some 800 community corrections officers, according to DOC.
The DOC’s investigation will also be reviewing its supervision history of Ryan Joseph McCarthy, 28, one of two other people implicated in the case. McCarthy got out of prison about three weeks before the slayings.
Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield has named McCarthy and Robert Shawn Russell, 46, of Centralia, persons of interest in the case.
All three men are being held in the Lewis County Jail.
The victims include David J. West Sr. 52, his son David J. West Jr., 16, and Tony E. Williams, 50, of Randle. Each died of a gunshot in the head, according to the coroner’s office.
The senior West’s live-in girlfriend, Denise Salts, 51, survived a gunshot wound to her face.
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Read “Breaking news: Triple murder suspect captured in Spokane” here.
Read “Two were murdered to eliminate witnesses” here.
Read “Slain teenager described as tight with father” here.
Read “Manhunt spreads to Spokane and beyond after three fatally shot in Onalaska” here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Mr. Man be mad at the Department of corrections, they admit wrong doing right here.