Man sentenced in two Seattle cold cases

SEATTLE – Don Keuler waited 43 years to confront his brother’s killer.

On Friday, the Alaska man minced few words when he came face to face in a Seattle courtroom with Samuel Evans, who stabbed James Keuler to death in his Madrona apartment in 1968.

“I would be indebted to you for my life … if I could either shoot the bastard, pull the trigger – one or the other – and just dump him in a Dumpster,” Don Keuler told Superior Court Judge Mary Yu.

Yu’s sentence, while not as harsh, may well be a life sentence for the 74-year-old Evans: 20 years in prison. The sentence was five years longer than the term agreed upon by King County prosecutors and the defense in a plea bargain.

Last month, Evans entered an Alford plea in the slayings of Keuler and Jackson Schley. He said in court Friday that he entered the pleas to two counts of manslaughter because he believed there was enough evidence for a jury to convict him after a trial.

Nonetheless, Evans denied any role in killing the two men.

“I’m the fall guy,” Evans said. “I feel sorry for the families, I do. If I can give the families some closure, let’s do that. I didn’t kill nobody.”

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Carla Carlstrom said DNA evidence linked Evans to both slayings. Robbery appeared to be the main motive in both killings, according to Seattle police Detective Mike Ciesynski.

In March 2010, Evans was charged with first-degree murder for Schley’s death. Several months later, he was charged with second-degree murder for Keuler’s death.

Ciesynski said Keuler’s slaying is the city’s oldest cold-case homicide to be resolved with an arrest and conviction.

The slaying of Schley had gone unsolved until November 2009, when investigators matched DNA from Evans with DNA found on the clothing of Schley’s wife, who had been raped by her husband’s killer.

Evans was tied to Keuler’s homicide through DNA from blood and on cigarette butts and other evidence collected from the slain man’s apartment, prosecutors said. It’s unclear why Evans was inside the apartment or how the men knew each other.