Posted on 12/27/2007 10:01:04 AM PST by Peace4EarthNow
CARNATION, Wash. — Detectives painstakingly picked their way Thursday through the rural property where six people were killed Christmas Eve, and prosecutors prepared charges against the property owners' daughter and her boyfriend, authorities said.
Hours after the bodies of the victims - reportedly three generations of the same family - were discovered, police arrested Michele Anderson, 29, and Joseph McEnroe, 29, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the names.
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The owners of the property are Wayne Anderson, 60, and Judy Anderson, 61, according to public records. Multiple media reports said the couple, along with their son, Scott; his wife, Erica; and their two children, Olivia and Nathan, were the victims.
The sheriff's office would only say the victims were the homeowners, ages 60 and 61, their daughter and son-in-law, both 32, and the younger couple's 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.
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The six were likely killed late afternoon or early evening on Christmas Eve, Urquhart said.
Authorities are trying to determine why deputies didn't further investigate a 911 hang-up call on Christmas Eve that came from the house. The call ended after about 10 seconds, and the operator reported hearing "a lot of yelling in the background ... sounded more like party noise than angry heated arguing."
Operators twice called back, but both calls went into voice mail. About 30 minutes later, two deputies arrived at the property, but found a locked gate and did not go onto the property. The dispatchers log reported the deputies saying, "gate is locked, unable to gain access."
"They didn't go past it," Urquhart said. "I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we're looking into."
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
Perhaps... but one would think if there was reason to suspect anything criminal was going on, they’d have gone in. I give them a lot of credit in judgment calls like that, sometimes there’s just know way to know at the time. Don’t FReepers often blame cops for NOT showing restraint? How does a house full of peaceful sleeping people look different than a house full of dead people?
I got lucky my whole family, minus one brother, all moved out of Jersey at the same time. We keep a shore house down at Cape May but may soon give that up as well. I do love summers in Jersey though, nothing like the boardwalks and the shore.
A King County Sheriff's deputy (L) lets a member of the Medical Examiner's office pass through police lines near a rural house in Carnation, Washington December 27, 2007, where the bodies of six people were found shot to death. According to a sheriff spokesperson, the victims were killed on Christmas Eve by the homeowners' daughter and her boyfriend.
A King County Sheriff's deputy tends to a dog found at a rural house in Carnation, Washington December 27, 2007, where the bodies of six people were found shot to death.
Clearly. They deserve the amount of mercy they showed to their own family. To butcher parents and then kids in cold blood. They have no conscience and are a threat to society.
A financial dispute might have led to the slayings of six family members, including Olivia Anderson, 5, and Nathan Anderson, 3, at a home near Carnation on Christmas Eve.
Seattle Times staff reporter
Joseph McEnroe shuffled into a visiting booth on the seventh floor of the King County Jail this afternoon and said he's sorry six members of the Anderson family are now gone and that he regretted cutting contact with his own family.
Dressed in a white jumpsuit reserved for "ultra security" inmates, McEnroe wouldn't talk about what happened Christmas Eve at a rural home near Carnation. There, police and prosecutors allege, he and his girlfriend, Michele Anderson, methodically shot Anderson's parents and brother, the brother's wife and their two young children.
"I'm sorry that they're gone. They were my family, too, you know?" McEnroe, 29, said of the victims. "I hope wherever they're at, they're at peace. That's all I'm going to say about them."
McEnroe and Anderson each were charged earlier today with six counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of three generations of the Anderson family.
Because his hands were chained to his waist, McEnroe had to hunch over and sit sideways to speak through a telephone in the visiting booth, where inmates and visitors are separated by a thick window. Tall and slim with a goatee and shoulder-length dark hair, McEnroe spoke softly. At times, his eyes appeared misty.
McEnroe said jail officials have placed him on suicide watch: "I was having a very hard time, but no matter how this turns out, I'm going to try and hold on... I decided I'm going to try and stay alive."
He asked about his family — his mother and siblings in Minneapolis and an aunt and cousins in California. McEnroe stopped talking to them five years ago after a financial dispute with his mother.
"I never really realized how much I need my family. God, how did I ever get in this situation, you know?" he said. "Tell them I love them, all of them."
The man who is accused of ending the Christmas Eve killings by shooting 3- and 5-year-old children in the head asked about a cousin in California who was "always like my big sister." Told she now has a 5-year-old daughter, he said, "I hope she's safe."
"This whole thing has made me realize how much I miss them," he said of his family. "It's easy enough to think they don't like you or don't care about you but I wish to God I got in touch with them before this. I would've even been able to visit them. I guess that's not going to happen now....
"You never really realize what life is worth until something like this happens."
Pinging you to a few updates posted since yesterday...
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