by Ann Rule
Banks held out a photo of Peggy Sue Thomas, and Brenna identified her. She explained that Peggy rented a chair at Just B’s, and when she moved to Las Vegas, Brenna and Russ Douglas had rented her house in Langley.
“Did you keep in touch with her after she moved?”
“By phone, we did.”
“Have you ever visited Las Vegas?”
“Once.”
Brenna agreed that she had discussed her separation from Russ with Peggy Sue, who was separating from Kelvin Thomas at about the same time.
“Do you know Jim Huden?”
“I met him once. I didn’t really know him.”
Asked to identify the defendant in the courtroom, Brenna pointed to Jim at the defense table.
Banks asked her about the Christmas holiday nine years before. Would Brenna paint her late husband with as black a brush as she had to detectives? No. She spoke cautiously and with no apparent vitriol. She testified that she had known Russ was involved with someone who lived off-island.
“But he did come over to spend time with his family?”
“Yes.”
“Did he pay child support?”
“Yes, he did.”
As she recalled, Russ had stayed at their family home in Langley—Peggy Sue’s house—from December 23 to December 26. They had had a traditional Christmas with family and guests coming over, presents, and holiday food. The morning after Christmas, Russ told her that he needed to run some errands.
Brenna looked at the picture of a yellow GEO Tracker, and identified it as Russ’s vehicle.
“When did he return? Did he return?”
“He never came back. I didn’t know what to think. I thought our reconciliation was working well . . . I was worried, angry, confused . . .”
Brenna said that when Russ didn’t come home as the night wore on, she grew angry. “And then the detectives knocked on my door in the middle of the night to tell me what had happened.”
Banks changed the subject. “Did you see Peggy Thomas over the holidays?”
“She worked a couple of days in the salon.”
“Regarding Russel, prior to your separation, you had a restraining order against him,” Banks pressed. “What was the situation at home?”
“Well, he had a girlfriend on the side, and there was physical and verbal abuse toward me and our kids.”
“What happened to that restraining order?”
“It was withdrawn.”
“You did discuss the situation with Russel with Peggy Thomas, didn’t you?”
“Yes—we did talk about it.”
Matt Montoya cross-examined Brenna.
“Did you receive a gift of money from Peggy?”
“Yes.”
“And you discussed Russel’s abuse with Peggy and with others?”
“Yes.”
“While separated from Russel in April or May of 2003, how was their relationship?”
“It was amicable.”
The defense attorney often repeated the same questions that prosecutor Banks had asked, and it seemed counterproductive to Jim Huden’s case. Montoya’s cross-examinations thus far had lasted no more than five minutes.
“Do you recall what your husband was wearing on the morning of December 26?”
“Shorts—and some kind of top.”
“Witness excused,” Montoya said.
Next to testify were the residents who lived along Wahl Road and had seen the yellow car parked for so long with its door open in the cold rain, and those who finally saw the body and called the sheriff. And then there was the usual parade of the officers who responded to the crime scene, the coroner, and a number of criminologists from the Washington State Patrol who explained ballistics, DNA testing, and fingerprints that had helped to build the case against Jim Huden.
Greg Banks, Mark Plumberg, and the rest of the sheriff’s investigative team had worked so hard for so long to bring some kind of justice to Russel Douglas, now long dead. Banks was building a strong foundation, one he hoped would be so solid that nothing could tear it down.
With each day of trial, the testimony grew in intensity and one got the feeling that the strongest witnesses were yet to come.
July is almost always one month when northwesterners can count on sunny and rainless days. But now, the night sky burst open up with a series of frightening electrical storms. Chain lightning streaked shards of blue and white across the dark sky and hailstones as big as golf balls pounded down on windows and skylights, waking sleeping citizens in Coupeville and other island towns.
Jurors and those who had become familiar faces in the courtroom often had to run through wind-driven rain sluicing down the building’s exterior walls as the storm didn’t let up in daylight, either.
Inside Judge Vickie Churchill’s domain, there was another kind of storm building; without windows, no one could see or hear the raging lightning and thunder outside. Still, there was a heaviness here. When someone’s cell phone rang, spectators jumped in surprise. Peggy Sue’s mother, Doris, had forgotten to turn off the ringer on her phone. She fumbled with it quickly and the sound stopped. Judge Churchill chose to wait until the end of the day to chastise her for what is considered a blatant interruption in a court of law.
* * *
JEAN HUDEN’S NAME WAS not on the witness list, but William Hill’s of Port Charlotte, Florida, was. Jean was still married to Jim, and couldn’t testify against him because of the state’s marital disqualification law. She could, however, testify against Peggy Sue Thomas when her trial began in a few months. Detectives had interviewed Jean, who now admitted that both Jim and Peggy had told her they plotted to kill Russ. She also revealed that Peggy had traveled to Punta Gorda and come to the house Jean shared with Jim.
Peggy had confided they just needed to figure out “how to get Russel to where they needed him to be and take care of it.”
Bill Hill was scheduled to testify on a most inopportune date: Friday the thirteenth. It would be agonizing for him to face Jim Huden and the jurors and seal Jim’s fate.
Hill was a retired air force officer, a man of late middle age whose haircut was a spiky crew cut. He was one of the “X-hibitionists” in the band that Jim Huden headed, but he hardly resembled an aging rock star!
Bill Hill testified that he and Jim were driving along the Gulf Coast from Punta Gorda to Sarasota when Huden blurted out that he had shot and killed a man back in Washington State. As the man he considered his best friend gave details on Russ Douglas’s murder, Hill had said he had difficulty believing him. This wasn’t the Jim Huden that he had come to know.
But Jim told Bill Hill that he went up to the yellow Tracker and shot Russ Douglas point-blank in the face from about six inches away.
Jim had confided that his stepfather used to beat him and his mother, saying: “I always hated that man with a passion, and I wanted to find someone who was like him and get revenge.”
Jim told Hill that Peggy Sue, his mistress at the time, had convinced him that Russel Douglas was an abusive husband and father, and Huden had finally found the ideal target.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Hill testified. “I waited a couple of months before I contacted the authorities here [Whidbey Island]. I wasn’t sure whether I was gonna spill the beans or not.”
“Why was that?” Greg Banks asked.
“Partly out of fear, I guess. And loyalty,” Bill Hill finally said, fighting back his own emotions. “He’s my best friend.”
The witness said he and Jim were such good friends that he had flown to Las Vegas and walked Jean down the aisle when Jim and Jean got married.
“When did you talk to him last?” Banks asked.
Bill Hill recalled having lunch with Jim Huden sometime in 2004. Hill complained about his boss, and Jim had asked him: “Do you want your boss to be taken care of?”
Hill demurred, and Huden said: “Well, I’ve done it once. I could do it again.”
The “best friends” never saw each ot
her again until this moment in a courtroom in Coupeville, Washington.
On Monday, July 16, a witness who had not been in the news much took the witness stand. Cindy Francisco was the woman who once lived in the lavish estate next door to the murder site.
“What is your current residence?” Greg Banks asked.
“On Saratoga Road in Langley.”
“How long have you lived on Whidbey Island?”
“Since 1990, except for two years when I was in Las Vegas and Colorado.”
“How do you know the defendant?”
Cindy said she had met Jim Huden through her good friend Peggy Sue Thomas, whom she had known for a decade. At Banks’s direction, she pointed out Huden at the defense table. She said she had not seen him for “many years.”
Cindy Francisco said she had met Peggy Sue at a hair salon in Langley. “We were good friends, close at that time.”
She agreed that she had once lived on Wahl Road but thought that had to be almost ten years ago.
“Had Peggy Thomas spent time there?”
“Yes, she and her two girls once stayed with me for a few weeks.”
“Was Jim Huden ever there?”
“No.”
“Was Russel ever there?”
“Once—to pick up some plants I was getting rid of.”
The witness said she had traveled with Peggy, once to Florida, where she met Jim Huden.
“Did you ever spend time in Las Vegas with Peggy?”
“No.”
Dick Deposit was the next witness. He answered questions about his connection to Whidbey Island.
“I grew up here.”
“How long have you known Jim Huden?”
“Since fourth grade . . . I consider him a best friend.”
Deposit explained that he had met Peggy Sue at “Sweet Sue” Mahoney’s wedding. He recalled that Peggy and Jim had “become an item” in the summer of either 2002 or 2003.
Deposit owned a vacation home in the Useless Bay Colony and he testified that Jim and Peggy had stayed there several times when they visited the island.
“When was the last time?” Banks asked.
“They arrived the week before Christmas 2003, and left the twenty-third or twenty-fourth.”
Deposit said he’d left his key with the Hatts, who lived next door.
The retired CPA said that the last time he had heard from either Jim Huden or Peggy Sue was on December 26 when they called to say that they had forgotten to return the key on the twenty-third, but they had just dropped it off, and they were currently on their way to visit Bill Marlow, and then to drive south to Longview to have dinner with friends.
“Have you had any contact since then?”
“No.”
“Any attempts [on your part]?”
“No.”
Matt Montoya’s cross-examination questions continued to take only a few minutes. As before, he seemed to be asking the same questions that Banks had.
Even though the next few witnesses were testifying for the prosecution, it was obvious that this was difficult for them. They had all considered Jim Huden a good and close friend for many years.
Still, Bill Marlow had to tell the truth. He testified that neither Jim nor Peggy had visited him around midday on December 26, 2003. He agreed that Jim “consumed alcohol” and had been drinking his favorite Crown Royal whiskey more heavily than he did the last time Marlow had seen him earlier in 2003.
The next witness was Richard Early, one of the people Peggy Sue and Jim said they had dinner with the day after Christmas. And that, Early said, was true. The couple had joined their group in Longview late, and left after appetizers, but they were there.
Early looked at exhibit number 93, a copy of the receipt from the restaurant that he had signed at 7:41 P.M. on December 26, 2003.
“How did Jim appear that evening?” Banks asked.
“He looked like he’d been drinking heavily.”
“Was he driving?”
“Probably Peggy drove.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
* * *
THERE WAS PROBABLY NOTHING more important in the case against Jim Huden than the gun that was lost—and then found. In most cases, guns can be traced back to the day they came off the assembly line in the gun factory. It wasn’t necessary to go all the way back with the .380 Bersa that had killed Russel Douglas in an instant, but Prosecutor Greg Banks and the sheriff’s detectives knew its history through three owners.
Exhibit number 95 could well be the key to the entire case.
Martin Snytsheuvel, who was the manager of an Internet company and lived in Las Vegas, bought that gun in 2003. It wasn’t what he wanted, so he asked his father to place an ad in hopes of selling or trading it.
Around the same time, Jim Huden had asked his friend Keith Ogden, the retired Oregon law-enforcement officer, if he had a gun that Jim could buy. Ogden told him no.
He asked Jim why he wanted a gun, and Huden said that he wanted to shoot the pigeons that were becoming a nuisance around Peggy Sue’s pool in Henderson.
Jim called soon after to say he had purchased a gun and he asked Ogden if he would show him how to use it. Ogden said he would if Jim Huden would come to his house.
“Have you ever been to Jim’s residence?” Banks asked.
“Yes.”
“Does it have a pool?”
“Yes. He brought the gun—a Bersa—over to my house. I showed him how it worked—broke it down to show him how to clean it and how to fire it.”
Huden said he needed some way to silence the noise it made because he and Peggy lived in an upscale residential area in Henderson.
“I taped a one-quart plastic bottle over the muzzle and shot once. Then we tried it with a pillow,” Ogden testified. “That made it very quiet.”
Jim Huden was obviously an amateur with a gun, but Ogden hadn’t been concerned that he now owned one. Jim and Peggy Sue did have a pool and they did live in an exclusive neighborhood where gunfire wouldn’t be condoned. Ogden explained how the investigators from the Island County Sheriff’s Office had located the slugs and casings in the ground. Both he and his wife, Donna, had witnessed that.
The murder gun itself was probably worth between $250 and $300. But Jim Huden hadn’t been able to simply throw it away where no one would find it; he didn’t want to lose that much money.
Detective Bill Farr had taken DNA samples from Huden after he was captured in Mexico—but it was impossible to match those to the gun.
Mark Plumberg had obtained DNA from Peggy Thomas in February 2004, and he rolled the defendant’s fingerprints in May 2012.
Peggy’s DNA wasn’t helpful, either, although top criminalists from the Washington State Crime Lab, Margaret Barber and Lisa Collins, worked on microscopic evidence analysis that might link their bodily fluids, hairs, and fibers.
Kathy Geil, of the Washington State Patrol firearms exam team, had hit a bonanza and she testified that the bullet found in Russ Douglas’s head had tool marks identical to the bullet dug up in Keith Ogden’s backyard—where he and Jim had fired it long ago.
Jill Arwine of the WSP Latent Prints Unit in Olympia, Washington, had found something almost as valuable. Arwine, who has testified well over fifty times as an expert witness, gave the jurors a fast lesson in how to lift latent prints from both a hard surface and a soft surface such as paper. She also explained AFIS: Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which includes a massive volume of fingerprints.
“Did you process a .380 casing?” Banks asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you find any prints?”
“No.”
“Did you find any prints on the car [the yellow Tracker]?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do a comparison of the prints?”
“Yes—they belonged to Russel Douglas.”
Arwine had also found fingerprints belonging to Brenna Douglas, but that wasn’t significant. Brenna had long since told detectives t
hat she often drove Russ’s car.
Greg Banks asked her if she had been provided other items to test.
“Yes—a gun and a gun manual, magazine, and paperwork.”
“Were you able to obtain prints from the gun?”
“No.”
“How about the manual?”
“Yes, I processed each page and I made digital images of the prints found.”
“Were you able to compare images, and if so, to whom?”
“Yes—James Huden and Peggy Thomas: exhibit 92 belongs to Peggy Thomas, and exhibits 99 and 100 belong to Huden. There were nineteen prints identified—thirteen belong to Huden, and one on page fourteen of the manual belongs to Peggy Thomas.”
* * *
JIM DIDN’T BLINK. THROUGHOUT his trial, Huden had maintained a stoic presence. He occasionally wrote something on the yellow legal pad in front of him, or whispered briefly to Matt Montoya, but he didn’t make eye contact with anyone else in the courtroom.
The spectators behind the rail kept their hopes up that he would testify in his own defense. That, however, is a very risky endeavor. Once a defendant testifies, he opens himself up to cross-examination by the opposing attorneys. Prosecuting Attorney Greg Banks is a shrewd lawyer, and throughout the trial, he caught every inference or odd statement that the defense made. He would have a field day jousting with Jim Huden.
And what excuse would Huden have for the many times he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Although he and Peggy Sue Thomas had been seen (or not seen) by people who could validate where they showed up on the day of Russ Douglas’s murder, there appeared to be too many connections that led back to Huden. Banks had shown the link between the bullet in the victim’s head to the gun that the defendant owned. How could that be if Huden had no involvement in the homicide?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
* * *
MATTHEW MONTOYA HAD A witness for the defense that he was counting on. Dr. Jon Nordby’s fee to conduct tests on the way human blood drips, pools, spatters, and is otherwise emptied from a body after death by gunshot was well over thirty-five thousand dollars.