Lewis County Sirens.com

Michael J. Dobbs is led back down to the jail after a bail setting hearing in Lewis County Superior Court.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Police believe a 47-year-old man forged a will making himself the sole heir of a Chehalis man who died, posed as his relative and took over his house, personal property and car.

Michael J. Dobbs, from Centralia, has been under investigation since last September when relatives of Walter Pettit went to Pettit’s home near Chehalis Middle School and  found it had been cleaned out and someone was remodeling it. Pettit was 55 when he passed away in January of last year, according to police.

Dobbs was arrested for theft and forgery but subsequently charged only with possession of methamphetamine, based on a baggie of meth found. At the time, Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Eric Eisenberg said further investigation needed to be conducted regarding the authenticity of the will.

Since then, a Chehalis Police Department detective has gotten Pettit’s purported signature on the document compared with his signature card at his bank by the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, which concluded the signature on the will does not appear to be Pettit’s, according to Eric Eisenberg. The name is also misspelled, according to Eisenberg.

In addition, an individual who supposedly signed as witness, was shown the will and said she recalled signing a document, but not the one she was shown, Eisenberg said.

Dobbs was booked into the Lewis County Jail last week, and went before a judge where his bail was set at $20,000, plus another $20,000 for a bail jumping charge.

According to court documents, he pleaded guilty to the drug possession and was supposed to serve 30 days on electronic home monitoring, but vanished.

Dobbs was described as a full time parent of three children when he appeared in court in September. Court documents show his address on Centralia College Boulevard.

He is charged with first-degree theft, forgery, theft of a motor vehicle and also false statement to transfer title. The charges were filed in Lewis County Superior Court on Feb. 10.

Charging documents allege Dobbs pretended to be Pettit’s son when he transferred the man’s car into his own name, and told a funeral home he was Pettit’s nephew when they released Pettit’s cremated remains to him.

Court documents state that when asked about the dead man’s belongings, Dobbs offered several improbable stories about how they’d been stolen, returned and then stolen again.

His arraignment is scheduled for Thursday in Lewis County Superior Court.

Court papers indicate Dobbs has state IDs in Oregon and Maryland. He also has prior convictions in California, from the 1990s through 2001 for offenses such as spousal assault, burglary and receiving stolen property.
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For background, read “Centralia man questioned about dead man’s vehicle, home, belongings” from Friday Sept. 19, 2014, here

Andres F. Santiago, in red, appears with a lawyer before a judge for a bail hearing in Lewis County Superior Court.

Updated at 7:09 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A 20-year-old Chehalis resident turned himself in yesterday, admitting to police he robbed a woman at the TwinStar Credit Union’s ATM machine two weeks ago.

Andres F. Santiago was booked into the Lewis County Jail for first-degree robbery, according to the Chehalis Police Department.

His arrest came the day after police arrested two younger males who reportedly were waiting in a car behind the bank.

The victim had gone to the 1500 block of South Market Boulevard to deposit a check in the ATM at about 9:15 p.m. on March 26. A male wearing a black bandana over his face approached her and said “empty all your cash,” but when she told him she had none, he demanded her cell phone, which she turned over, according to court documents.

James M. Rocha

Jean Gillmer was unhurt, according to police, but said the bandit showed her something in his waistband that was either the handle of a gun or a knife, according to authorities.

Earlier this week, Chehalis detective Jason Roberts was able to view security video from both sides of the building that showed what took place.

Detectives were led to their suspects by witnesses who saw a smaller, reddish oxidized car both before and after the event, according to charging documents. One of them who watched the car speed down 16th Street with its lights off took down its license plate numbers, according to the documents.

Police were able to “ping” the stolen cell phone, which helped them as well, Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said today.

The license plate led to a residence on Southwest 20th Street, where Roberts spoke with the registered owner and her teenage son on Wednesday, according to authorities. James M. Rocha, 18,  was arrested, according to Chehalis Police Department spokesperson Linda Bailey. Two detectives returned to the home later in the day and arrested a 15-year-old boy, Bailey said.

All are from Chehalis, according to police.

Charging documents state the 15-year-old told detectives he was there, but didn’t do anything. They also relate that Rocha admitted to being the driver of the car.

First-degree robbery is a class A felony, with a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Charging documents offer some of the details, as follows:

The owners of Dairy Dan’s, a drive-in restaurant across the street from the credit union, saw a reddish car parked in their lot, and watched it head over to behind the credit union, without its headlights turned on.

Rocha told police Santiago said he needed to go to the bank, to pull out some money to buy his daughter clothes and diapers. He said they stopped at Dairy Dan’s, so Santiago could make  phone call, and Santiago asked him to  drop him at the bank and wait for him.

Rocha said he parked in the back. When Santiago came back, he told them he’d just robbed a girl, and showed the two males a knife he had in a black holster.

When Santiago turned himself in, he told detective Roberts he’d forced Rocha and the 15-year-old to drive him around, and he wanted them released because they didn’t do anything wrong.

He also told the detective he’d had a 9 mm handgun in the rear of his waistband that night.

Santiago was contacted by police yesterday, after they learned he wanted to talk with them, at a Cascade Mental health safe house.

Prosecutor Meagher said he’s not sure if the phone has been found.

The 15-year-old is being held at the Lewis County Juvenile Detention Center on a probation violation, and has not yet been charged, according to Meagher.

Rocha, a graduate of W.F. West High School has a job, lives with his mother and has a 1-month-old baby. He has one juvenile felony from four years ago. His bail was set at $75,000 yesterday afternoon.

This afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court, defense attorney Joely O’Rourke asked for Santiago’s bail to be set at $25,000 and unsecured.

The unemployed father of a 7-month-old daughter has no felonies in his past, she said.

“He also turned himself in,” O’Rourke said.

She told the judge Santiago had recently gotten himself admitted into inpatient treatment to get help with drug addiction, and was working with Cascade Mental Health to “get back on track.”

Judge James Lawler set his bail at $100,000.

Santiago and Rocha both qualified for court-appointed attorneys. Their arraignments are set for next Thursday.
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For background, read “Shakedown at Chehalis ATM” from Friday March 27, 2015, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

The Tenino reserve police officer arrested this week for possession of child porn is the same officer who was getting paid for working there, in violation of a city statute that prohibits payment.

Michael C. Boone, 38, Olympia, was arrested by a state patrol task force on Tuesday, at his workplace, according to authorities. He is a community corrections officer with the state Department of Corrections.

A Thurston County Superior Court judge yesterday set bail at $5,000 after finding probable cause for three counts of second-degree possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Boone was ordered not to have any in-person contact with minor children or access the Internet, according to Thurston County Deputy Prosecutor Craig Juris who is handling the case.

Tenino Mayor Bret Brodersen revealed last week that one of the reasons he terminated Police Chief Chief John Hutchings a week earlier was he had recently learned Hutchings added a paid reserve police officer, not approved, not budgeted for and in violation of city statute. The reserve officer collected $10,574 over the previous few months, according to the mayor.

Hutchings was hired by Brodersen’s predecessor in the summer of 2012 and was let go on March 25.

A payroll document obtained from the city of Tenino through a public record request shows Boone earned $10,574 from the time he started with the city until his last pay check or pay period ending on March 20.

He earned $17 per hour, and during his last two-week pay period worked 26 hours, according to the document.

Brodersen said on Tuesday in a news release Boone is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the state patrol’s investigation. The case was handled by the state patrol’s Missing and Exploited Childrens Task Force.

In an email, Brodersen indicated he would not answer reporter’s questions about Boone because of the sensitive nature of the situation.

The mayor hasn’t yet been able to answer when Boone was hired as a reserve officer.

In his March 30 news release discussing reasons for firing the police chief, Brodersen noted the paid assignments to the un-named reserve officer were stopped effective immediately on March 20, and that staff involved in the addition to the payroll had received disciplinary actions and processes were established to prevent it from happening again.

Boone, a married father of two, denied intentionally receiving child porn on his computer, according to the declaration of prosecutor supporting probable cause document filed in Thurston County Superior Court.

The declaration states detectives found three images in a file on his Toshiba laptop when they got a search warrant to seize the computer at Boone’s Olympia home on Tuesday. These were same three images initially reported by Microsoft – as having been noted in Boone’s cloud-type storage – to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to the declaration.

According to the declaration, Boone told detectives he viewed adult pornography, and joined Internet groups that traded images and discussed sexual fetishes. He stated he would provide his email address to others to receive pornographic images, and on occasion he opened files that were of girls under 18 and would delete them, according to the declaration.

He was asked if he ever reported the sexually explicit images of children to police or to the Internet site and said no, he probably should have, but didn’t want people to know he viewed porn, the declaration states.

According to the declaration, and to Sgt. James Mjor of the state patrol’s MECTF, security officers at Microsoft noticed the electronic signature of well-known and frequently-traded images of child pornography on Boone’s Microsoft SkyDrive account. They  turned the information over to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who reported it on Dec. 19 to the Olympia Police Department.

And, an Olympia detective began investigating the IP address which led to a Comcast cable account registered to Boone’s wife on March 17. Once the detective learned Boone lived at the same address, the Olympia Police Department referred the case to the state patrol task force, because Olympia police have a working relationship with Boone, as a community corrections officer and an Tenino reserve officer.

The state patrol’s MECTF got the case on Friday.

Prosecutor Juris said he has until 5 p.m. tomorrow to file formal charges.
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For background, read “Microsoft tip leads to child porn arrest of Tenino officer, prison system employee” from Tuesday April 7, 2015, here