Stackhouse Gets Jail Time, Fiancee Woman Says She Wants To Marry Teen Despite His Role In Elk-Area Killing

Tobias Stackhouse may go to prison as a married man.

A 19-year-old Deer Park woman stepped forward in court Wednesday and said she wants to marry Stackhouse, 18, even though he participated in the Jan. 11 murder of Elk-area resident Steve Roscoe.

Stackhouse was sentenced Wednesday to 23 years and four months in prison.

Roscoe was shot to death when he caught Stackhouse and Jason Kukrall, 21, burglarizing his home. Although Stackhouse and Kukrall both shot at Roscoe, Kukrall fired the fatal shot.

Regardless, both men are equally guilty under Washington law. Kukrall pleaded guilty, and Stackhouse acknowledged enough facts to allow Pend Oreille County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson to convict him Wednesday. The arrangement allows Stackhouse to appeal Kristianson’s decision to treat him as an adult.

While friends of Roscoe’s asked Kristianson to throw the book at Stackhouse, his fiancee, Denae Kennedy, told the judge that Stackhouse’s crime was “totally out of character.”

Kennedy said she is three months pregnant with twins and hopes to marry Stackhouse in jail early next week. Undersheriff Dick Arend said no formal request to allow the marriage has been received.

“This whole thing has been very hard on me as well as him,” Kennedy told the court.

But Kristianson appeared to be influenced more by Roscoe family friends Bruce and Darlene Landahl, who called for the maximum possible sentence.

Bruce Landahl, 40, said he never had had a better friend than his Ponderay Newsprint co-worker Steve Roscoe. Landahl said he had worked with Roscoe since coming to Washington a little more than a year ago from Alabama and would have no qualms about a death penalty sentence for Stackhouse.

Turning to Stackhouse, Landahl said, “I hope that God can reach down from heaven and work a repentance in your heart.”

Darlene Landahl told Stackhouse that Debbie Roscoe has been her closest friend since the Landahls moved to Washington.

“I am sorry, but I have no sympathy for you whatsoever,” she said to Stackhouse. “My heart does not go out to you or anybody you care about, so I hope you understand that.”

Stackhouse apologized to Debbie Roscoe: “I know that this has been a great loss to you. I’m sorry that it had to happen. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

But Roscoe’s death didn’t “have to happen,” Kristianson told Stackhouse. “You made it happen.”

The judge accepted a midrange sentence recommended by Prosecutor Tom Metzger. It was halfway between the minimum and maximum standard range sentences under law. The sentence also gave consideration for sparing the family the ordeal of a trial.

Defense attorney Anna Nordtvedt asked for a minimum 20-year sentence.

She said Stackhouse had a troubled childhood and spent time in a “halfway house” even though he has no felony record.

Even if Stackhouse is a model inmate, he will spend more than 22 years in prison. Still, Kennedy said outside the courtroom that she is determined to stand by the man she thinks she knows better than anyone else.

She said she met Stackhouse Nov. 10 when she and a couple of her friends were walking down a street in Deer Park. Stackhouse approached them and asked where people hang out in that town.

“In Deer Park, I told him, mainly everybody hangs out at my house,” Kennedy recalled.

She said he came to her house later that evening and saw her every day after that until his arrest.

Kennedy said she’s not sure Stackhouse is responsible for her pregnancy. She just knows he is good with her 4-year-old daughter and her 1 1/2-year-old son.

“They both love him with all their heart,” she said.

Kennedy believes Stackhouse should have been convicted only of burglary. She is untroubled by the fact that Stackhouse also has confessed to stabbing prostitute Linda Guillen to death in Spokane on Dec. 1. She blames Kukrall for that crime as well as the Roscoe killing.

“They just went out and cruised around and Jason said, ‘Hey, let’s go out and get a hooker,”’ Kennedy said.

She said Stackhouse told her he was high on drugs and “just blanked out.”

“I know he knows it happened and he did it, but he doesn’t remember much of it,” Kennedy said.

Both Stackhouse and Kukrall have been charged in Spokane County with Guillen’s murder as well as a Jan. 7 burglary at Elk, in which they stole the guns they fired at Roscoe. Kukrall is to be arraigned today on those charges.