by Burl Barer
Detective Robert Yerbury’s distinguished career with the Tacoma Police Department earned him a well-deserved national reputation as a living example of what it means to protect and to serve with honesty, integrity, and dedication. He found it of interest that Christopher St. Pierre was recently summoned to jury duty in Tacoma, and Yerbury still regards the Wells/Achord homicides as among the most disturbing and senseless killings he’s encountered.
Prosecutor John Ladenburg, after a brutal sex crime occurred in Pierce County, created the nation’s first “Sex Predator Notification Law,” which was later approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. John was a major participant in the rewriting of Washington’s sex predator laws. John’s office wrote the nation’s first sex predator “Civil Commitment” law.
Ladenburg was also one of the founding members of Safe Streets of Pierce County, a nationally recognized neighborhood watch program, where he served ten years on its board of directors. In an effort to treat addiction as a disease, he helped organize the first “Drug Court” in Washington State.
The Webb family fully cooperated in the preparation of Head Shot, and shared a lot of sensitive information, much of which was not used in the book because we saw no reason to bring up potentially embarrassing details of people’s lives, especially when they were only linked to the story by virtue of birth. When recounting family stories, and the impact of various events, the family members didn’t always agree, but there is nothing unusual about that. The degree of disunity and animosity manifested after the book came out is another matter. Some of them felt my portrayals were honest and accurate. Others found the honesty and accuracy humiliating.
I didn’t create these lives, nor did I live them. None of us could take too much scrutiny, even though our worst indiscretions—short of murder—are worthy of no more than one night’s dinner conversation in someone else’s home. I write these books with the sincere hope that someone’s life will be saved, or improved, or we will somehow learn more about how to keep people from manifesting sociopathic or psychopathic behavior.
Burl Barer
December 2011
Victim John Achord, 22.
The St. Pierre brothers’ home in Tacoma, Washington, where victims Damon Wells and John Achord were last seen alive.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Wells was beaten almost unconscious with the lid from this toilet before he was stabbed to death.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Police found blood on the floor and a bullet hole in the refrigerator after Paul St. Pierre shot Andrew Webb.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
St. Pierre hid the gun between two stacks of roofing tiles.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Achord’s body was recovered from a shallow grave on June 19, 1984.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
The body was severely decomposed and missing its head.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
The autopsy revealed Achord’s head had been cut off after he had been killed.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Police later recovered Achord’s missing head in a cement-filled bucket from the Puyallup River.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
The body of Damon Wells, 20, was located near Achord’s body.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Wells was stabbed in the back several times.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
The autopsy revealed that the large open throat wound in Wells’s body was actually three slashes.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Cuts in Wells’s shirt showed where he had been stabbed.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Wells’s tennis shoes were thrown into the bushes by his killers.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Paul St. Pierre, 25.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department Tacoma, Washington)
Christopher St. Pierre, 21.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Andrew K. Webb, 24.
(Photo courtesy Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma, Washington)
Paul St. Pierre was given the choice of enlisting in the Marines orspending several years in a juvenile correction center.
Christopher St. Pierre as c senior at Lincoln High School in 1981.
Paul St. Pierre, Roy Kissler, and Christopher St. Pierre (right to left). Kissler provided information to the police linking Paul St. Pierre to the missing Wells and Achord.
(Photo courtesy Roy Kissler)
Webb’s personality changed for the worse when a badly broken collarbone resulted in the loss of his job.
Detective Robert Yerbury.
Prosecuting attorney Carl Hultman.
(Photo courtesy Pierce County, Washington Prosecutors Offices)
Defense attorney John W. Ladenburg.
(Photo courtesy Pierce County, Washington Prosecutors Office)
Judge Waldo F. Stone.
(Photo courtesy Waldo F. Stone)
Andrew Webb in Washington State Prison in December 1994.
Now diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Christopher St. Pierre remains in prison.
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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Copyright © 2001 by Burl Barer
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