Accomplice Tarnishes Arrasmith’s Defense Richardson Says He Offered To Connect Arrasmith With Hitman

It was the morning of the day prosecutors say Kenneth Arrasmith killed Ron and Luella Bingham in a torrent of gunfire.

Arrasmith visited his friend and admitted drug dealer, Kyle Richardson, in his Clarkston, Wash., garage, where he borrowed a black T-shirt to wear over the 9 mm semiautomatic handgun in his shoulder holster.

“Play with the Bad Boys, you’re gonna get hurt,” the shirt read. Inside the white lettering Arrasmith wrote something like “protect our daughters” or “save the children,” then put it on.

“It’s time,” Arrasmith said. Then he left.

So went the scenario painted by Richardson on Wednesday in the sixth and - for the defense - most troubling day of testimony in Arrasmith’s first-degree murder trial.

Testifying in the hopes of avoiding a conspiracy conviction that could bring the death penalty, the 25-year-old Richardson spent two hours and 15 minutes in the witness box.

He substantially tarnished the squeaky-clean “just a dad” persona Arrasmith has asserted to local and national reporters while venting his outrage over the Binghams drugging and sexually abusing his 15-year-old daughter.

In February, Arrasmith - a man $31,000 behind in child support - fronted Richardson $10,000 to buy nearly two pounds of methamphetamine, Richardson said. When Richardson could not pay back $18,000 promised in the deal, Arrasmith acquired from him a Tec-9 semiautomatic handgun. A forensic scientist said Wednesday the gun was used to shoot Ronald Bingham 24 times.

In exchange for Richardson’s testimony, the former logger will be charged as an accessory to a felony and serve six months in a boot camp-style program at the North Idaho Correctional Institution at Cottonwood. If he completes another five years of probation, he will have a clean record.

But that is contingent on whether prosecutors feel he spoke the truth Wednesday. And just how much truth was in his remarks was unclear upon cross-examination.

Under direct examination by Special Prosecutor Michael Kane, Richardson said he and Arrasmith had been friends since last December, working on cars, going shopping and snorting methamphetamine “basically every time we were together.”

Around May 7, Arrasmith drove over from his Sunnyside, Wash., home after hearing his daughter Cynthia had been raped by the Binghams.

Over the next few days, Arrasmith said he would “like to kill” Ron Bingham and that “something has to be done” about him, Richardson said.

“He wanted to kill Ron and it would be nice to get Luella too but he didn’t want to do it at the house,” Richardson said.

At one point, Richardson said he offered to find someone among his Los Angeles drug connections who would kill the Binghams for $500. Arrasmith refused.

“This is something I have to take care of myself,” Richardson recalled him saying, prompting a flurry of scribbling from the jurors.

On cross-examination by defense attorney Craig Mosman, Richardson said Arrasmith’s remark that he would like to kill Ron Bingham came only after Richardson himself said, “If it was me, if I was in his (Arrasmith’s) shoes, I would kill the son of a bitch.”

Richardson said Arrasmith wrote on the Bad Boys shirt “protect our daughters” or “save our children” because, in Mosman’s words, “he wanted a message to be sent if he didn’t make it back alive.”

And when he left Richardson’s garage, Richardson did not know if he was going to confront the Binghams or record on a hidden tape recorder an implicating statement they might make, he said.

Richardson’s testimony to Mosman prompted an angry reaction from Kane.

“Any reason you didn’t bring any of this out before?” he asked.

Kane asked why Richardson offered to accompany Arrasmith the morning of May 17.

Richardson said he wanted “to do whatever I could to help him kill the Binghams.”

He said Arrasmith turned down the offer.

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