by Burl Barer
The next morning, Perez noticed that the living room carpet had been cut up, and the carpet mat had two large, round bloodstains approximately 3 1/2 feet from each other. According to Perez, Paul St. Pierre told him that he and Andrew Webb picked up a guy hitchhiking, invited him to party at the house, and then, later, Paul shot the man in the head. According to Mark Perez, Chris St. Pierre told him, “This guy’s body was over here and part of his head was here, and his brain could be seen, and there was a bullet hole in his head, and it looked like half his face was blown off.”
“He also told me,” related Perez, “that they just rolled up his body in the carpet and dumped it way up by the mountains—they drove about three hours. He said, ‘We hid the body so good, it’ll take ’em ten years to find the body, if they ever do.’ No one mentioned the incident again. Within a few days, I moved out of the house. My personal belongings were still there, but I didn’t spend any nights there.”
Detective Price remembered a Missing Persons case of a young man who inexplicably vanished after his mother dropped him off not far from the Tacoma Dome. A quick check of police files confirmed the date of his disappearance as May 18, the night of the Rush concert. The young man’s name was John Achord.
According to a Tacoma Police incident report, Mrs. Opal Bitney, mother of John Lynn Achord, contacted the Tacoma Police Department on Monday, May 21. “I spoke to her personally,” said David McNutt, communications officer with the Law Enforcement Support Agency. “We live in a rather enclosed environment down there, so our conversation was purely by phone. She called to file a Missing Persons report on her son, John Achord.”
Born in 1961, John Achord was a student at Tacoma’s Bates Vocational School. He stood six feet two, weighed 165 pounds, and had short, curly dark brown hair, a mustache, hazel eyes, a one-inch scar above his right eyebrow, and a severely scarred right shoulder.
Mrs. Bitney explained to police that John Achord was in an automobile accident in 1980. His injuries were of such severity that Achord had to learn to walk and talk all over again. Achord not only made the best of his situation, he improved upon it. Inspirational in accomplishment, and cheerful by attitude, the residual moderate brain damage primarily affected his memory. He was not dangerous or troublesome in any way. Able to care for himself, and in good physical health, he did not drink or use drugs. Open and friendly, John Achord would readily accept rides from strangers.
On May 18, his mother dropped him off at South Twenty-seventh Street and Pacific Avenue, not far from the Tacoma Dome. From there, he would walk to the Rush concert. Achord was carrying perhaps $50 and a concert ticket, which he had bought in advance from the Bon Marche outlet of Ticketmaster. He was last seen wearing a green fatigue jacket, white knit shirt, and blue jeans.
“The family did everything possible to create public awareness of his disappearance,” said Yerbury. “Virtually every business and building in Tacoma had the ‘Missing’ poster of John Achord.” One such business was a Mt. Tahoma 7-Eleven store.
“Andrew and I stopped to buy some cigarettes at that Seven-Eleven,” recounted Andrew Webb’s former wife, Anne, “and as I was leaving the store, I noticed a flyer on the window. It was all about John Achord being missing. I was standing there reading it, and when Andrew saw what I was looking at, he suddenly got all upset and angry and insisted we leave immediately. I told him I wanted to finish reading the poster, but he was so uptight I just stopped reading and we left.”
“They also had one of those posters up at Gene and Ray’s Tavern,” said Mark Ericson. “That really gives me chills. I would maybe have a beer after work with Chris, Andrew, or Paul because Chris worked for me and they lived right next door to the shop. I mean, we would be there right in front of that poster about John Achord and the whole time they knew what had happened to him. I don’t know how they could have done that.”
“Based on the Missing Persons report,” Detective Yerbury said, “it certainly seemed as if John Achord could be the unfortunate gentleman reportedly shot by Paul St. Pierre. At that point, Detective Price and I figured we had enough cause to seek a search warrant.”
Judge James Healy signed a search warrant on June 18, 1984. The warrant commanded “a diligent search of [house number] Pacific Avenue to retrieve a broken toilet lid, blood, hair, tissue trace evidence, a black handled, two edged hunting knife, bullet fragments, carpet samples, a large caliber handgun (possibly a .45 cal. automatic), evidence of burned shoes and trousers, and papers and documents attesting to persons living at the residence.”
“Also included in the search warrant,” noted Sergeant Parkhurst, “were two vehicles—a 1957 Ford station wagon, green and white in color, and a white 1967 Mercury.” Parkhurst and Lieutenant Moorhead decided the warrant would be served on June 19. Prior to heading over to Pacific Avenue, they called a conference in the County-City Building with Detectives Price and Yerbury, and Officers Brame, Cook, and Getz. “During the conference,” Parkhurst later explained, “a plan was devised on how the residence should be approached and searched.”
It was ten minutes before 9:00 A.M. when Tacoma Police arrived. There was no one home, but police knew that Chris St. Pierre worked next door for Ericson’s, and had done so since high school.
Chris St. Pierre had been nearly in tears ever since he arrived for work. Mark Ericson later commented, “I kept trying to reassure him that everything was going to be OK. I asked, ‘Chris, what is your problem?’ He said, ‘We’re just all going to go to jail. Paul just fucked it up for everybody.’ No matter how much I attempted to reassure him that everything would turn out OK, Chris just kept saying, ‘You don’t understand, you don’t understand.’
“It was bright and early when the cops showed up,” Ericson said. “It was such a nice day that I had the back door to the alley open. I just happened to walk to the ramp, look over, and there were all kinds of cops and plainclothes police. I figured maybe they were doing some follow-up on the shooting of Andrew Webb, maybe they needed to ask Chris some more questions since he was the one who called the cops in the first place.
“I said, ‘Chris, you got company over there.’ He had his white coveralls on, and he stopped what he was working on, hung his head down for a second; then, without saying a word, he just walked out that door. He had that kind of faraway look in his eyes. I never saw Chris St. Pierre face-to-face again. He walked out that door as if he were walking right out of this life.”
As Chris St. Pierre approached the house, Detective Yerbury greeted him. “I read him the search warrant and advised him of his rights,” the detective recalled, “and then Officers Cook and Brame secured Chris St. Pierre in an unused bedroom while the evidence search was conducted.”
Parkhurst, Moorhead, Price, Yerbury, and Identification Technician Doug Walker began an extensive search of the living room area. “Several blood spots were noticed on the stereo and speakers,” said Parkhurst. “We photographed them in detail, and the stereo and one large speaker were taken into evidence.”
The search temporarily ceased when Chris St. Pierre volunteered the location of the .45-caliber pistol listed on the search warrant. “After Paul St. Pierre shot Andrew Webb,” Yerbury explained, “he hid the gun. It was no secret that he stashed it somewhere; the secret was where he stashed it. Chris St. Pierre told us that his brother called him on the phone at work earlier that morning and told him where to find the forty-five.”
Officer Brame stayed with Chris St. Pierre while Parkhurst and Cook looked for the weapon. “Chris, who was seated on the floor, looked up at me,” said Brame, “then dropped his head and stated something to the effect, ‘I just don’t want to see anybody else hurt with it.’ ”
The .45, according to Chris, was hidden in a pile of bricks in a neighbor’s yard just south of the house. Sergeant Parkhurst knew that Bill Ericson, father of Mark Ericson, owned that property as well. “I contacted Bill Ericson,” reported Sergeant Parkhurst, “and presented him with the consent-to-search warrant, a
nd explained the details concerning what officers were looking for and what they had been told. He was informed that he did not have to allow us to search if he didn’t want us to.”
Bill Ericson authorized the search and Officer Cook located the weapon. “Sergeant Parkhurst and I went to the adjacent yard and observed a pile of stacked tile roofing,” reported Cook. “As I walked along the side of the tile, I observed a forty-five-caliber semiautomatic handgun on the ground between two stacks.” The gun was cocked when Cook found it, with one cartridge in the chamber. “I unloaded it,” Cook recalled, “by grasping the handle grips and the grooved area at the side. There was no clip. Identification Manager Walker photographed the weapon before taking it into evidence.”
Returning to the living room, officers noticed that the carpet and pad had been cut, new carpet installed, and the covering around the baseboards had been removed. “There was a sticker on the pad that appeared to be new,” said Parkhurst. “After rolling the pad and the carpet, we could see the oak hardwood floor, which looked like it had been recently sanded.”
“The sanding was so severe,” commented Yerbury, “that it was to the point that it almost caused a depression in the wood, and the wood was definitely lighter in these areas. Walker then checked these areas with a Hemo Stik Test, and it proved positive in all five areas. The bloodstains on the living room floor certainly corroborated the statements we’d received; so at that point, we arrested Christopher St. Pierre and charged him with rendering criminal assistance.”
Meanwhile, Mark Ericson wondered what in the world was going on next door that required Chris St. Pierre to be gone so long. “He was in there for hours, and then the detectives come over to me and asked if I’d come out and answer some questions. I said, ‘Sure. ‘Where’s Chris?’ They said he was inside, and that he was cooperating with them now. Cooperating with them? I mean, I had no idea what was happening. Then they did let me know that this is serious—‘We’re investigating a homicide,’ or something like that. He said, ‘You ever noticed that the carpet had been cut out underneath from the table in the living room?’ I didn’t go in there very often and I didn’t notice the carpet.
“By this time, I’m thinking, Paul must have done something stupid,” recalled Ericson. “Chris should have gone to the cops earlier. He’s an accessory now, but at least he’s cooperating. He should’ve got himself a lawyer.”
According to Yerbury, Christopher St. Pierre was advised off all his rights, including his right to a lawyer, and was repeatedly told that he need not speak to the detectives or answer any questions. When they arrived at Tacoma Police Central Station, Yerbury and Price again advised him of his rights, and St. Pierre signed the form indicating he fully understood.
Christopher St. Pierre, with full knowledge of exactly what he was doing, addressed the following words to Detective Robert Yerbury of the Tacoma Police: “I might as well tell you everything. I’m dead or I’m going to prison.” Yerbury asked St. Pierre to reveal everything, beginning with the night Andrew Webb and Steve Wood got into a fistfight at the house on Pacific Avenue. The recently arrested St. Pierre stared at the floor, took a breath, and began his bone-chilling narrative.
Three
“Paul St. Pierre wielded a toilet seat lid as a weapon, repeatedly striking Damon Wells over the head. The blows eventually rendered him unconscious or semi-unconscious,” said Christopher St. Pierre. He readily admitted that he and Andrew Webb joined the beating, each striking Wells several times.
“When Chris made the admission that he assisted in the beating of Damon Wells,” recalled Detective Yerbury, “he stopped speaking, and while continuing to stare at the floor, he stated in a reflective thinking-out-loud manner, ‘Maybe I should have an attorney.’ I advised him that if he was asking for an attorney that we would not talk to him any farther. He then asked, of no one in particular, ‘Can I get protective custody?’ ”
When St. Pierre inquired about protective custody, Yerbury left the room to seek advice from the chief deputy prosecutor. “St. Pierre was not advised of my intention to contact the prosecutor’s office,” said the detective. “Upon my return, Chris St. Pierre voluntarily started up the conversation again. I again warned him that if he was asking for an attorney, we would not talk to him unless he chose to do so.”
Christopher St. Pierre did not request an attorney. Instead, he related the tragic fate of young Damon Wells. “We were going to take Damon Wells to the other side of town, just to drop him off somewhere,” he told them. “Andrew came up with the idea to drop him off at Salmon Beach. We arrived at Salmon Beach and drove into a road about a half a mile. We all got out of the car.”
According to Christopher St. Pierre, Damon Wells’s shoes were removed and thrown away—the idea, coming from Paul St. Pierre, being for him to have to walk home shoeless. “Damon was yelling that he was going to get revenge,” said St. Pierre. “He started running, yelling for help. We ran after him, and Andrew caught him and knocked him to the ground. We were yelling at him to shut up. Andrew took out a Gerber knife that he had obtained from my brother earlier in the evening. I’m not sure what time Andrew had obtained the knife, but he did have it. While we were yelling at Damon to shut up, Andrew pulled out the knife and slit Damon’s throat. He had him facing down on the ground, pulled back his head by his hair, and drew the knife across the throat about three times.”
“Chris St. Pierre further adds,” wrote Detective Yerbury in his Official Supplementary Report filed June 16, 1984, “that he, Paul St. Pierre, and Andrew Webb then stood there for a period of time and watched as Damon Wells bled to death. He states that Damon Wells had no opportunity to fight back, and further states that Paul St. Pierre did not participate in that actual homicide event. Andrew Webb committed the actual act of slitting Wells’ throat.”
From Chris St. Pierre, Yerbury further learned: “At some point after Damon Wells’s throat had been cut, Andrew Webb stood over the victim and threw a knife at him on at least two occasions, both times sticking it into the back of the victim. After Damon Wells was dead, Andrew Webb and Paul St. Pierre removed his jacket and pants and threw them into the bushes.”
“As far as I know,” St. Pierre said, “the clothes are still out there. Paul and Andrew picked up Damon’s body and dragged him off about twenty-five feet into the brush. Paul was driving his ’67 Mercury Cougar. We went back to our house, took our clothes off that had blood on them, and threw them in the washing machine... . I took a pair of my boots that had blood on them—the blood was on my boots from being in the bathroom earlier—I threw them into the fireplace, along with the broken toilet seat lid. Don [Marshall] watched me throw my boots into the fireplace. Then we took showers to wash away the blood. After taking a shower, Paul gave Don the knife that was used to cut Damon’s throat, and told Don to hold on to it for him. About this time, I went to bed. The next morning, we discussed what happened the night before, and decided to go back to where Damon had been killed, and take his body and bury it.”
The St. Pierres returned to Salmon Beach and brought with them one of Paul St. Pierre’s old sleeping bags, noted Yerbury. “Chris said they put Wells’s body in the sleeping bag, and then placed it in the trunk of Paul St. Pierre’s 1967 Mercury Cougar. From that point, it was transported to the eventual burial site.”
“We drove up by Alder Lake,” explained Chris St. Pierre. “Paul knew a secluded spot from a friend of his, Bill, who was at the house the night Damon was killed. We picked a spot and buried Damon’s body. We had obtained two shovels, one was in our garage, I think it was Don Marshall’s. The other shovel we had obtained from my father’s toolshed. We camouflaged the grave, and we left.”
When Chris St. Pierre finished describing the death and burial of Damon Wells, the detectives asked him about John Achord. Once again, Chris St. Pierre did not hesitate giving them a full disclosure.
“[Chris] told us that his friend Tony Youso got drunk and was in some sort of auto accident. Andrew Webb
and he took Youso over to Webb’s apartment to calm him down and sober him up. Then the two of them went over to [house number]. As they walked in, they saw John Achord facedown in the dining room, and Paul St. Pierre standing over him with a gun. Paul told Chris that he had to shoot Mr. Achord in self-defense because Achord attacked him with a knife. Chris told us that he saw a rather small pocketknife on the floor, and they threw it out in the garbage. He went on to describe how they cut up the carpet, rolled Achord’s dead body up in it, obtained tools for burying Achord from Mr. and Mrs. St. Pierre’s garage, and then transported the body in Andrew Webb’s car. Chris St. Pierre followed in his station wagon.”
St. Pierre omitted a slight detail—prior to transporting the body, the men had a beer party and invited friends and relatives, including Wesley and Marty Webb. John Achord’s corpse, wrapped in carpet, was stashed away in the back bedroom. Marty was advised not to wander around the house alone, for Paul “wanted to do her.”
“We were almost all the way there,” said Chris St. Pierre, relating to Yerbury about taking Achord’s body to the proposed burial site, “when Andrew lost control of his car and put it into a ditch.” Perhaps that was when the carpet containing Achord’s body became unwrapped, exposing the lifeless corpse. Andrew Webb, looking in the rearview mirror, saw John Achord’s sightless eyes staring back at him. That image burned itself into Webb’s brain. Not a day or night goes by, Webb admits, that he does not see John Achord staring at him.