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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Accused killers planned to ‘kill more Jews’

Mike Carter Seattle Times

SEATTLE – An Oregon white supremacist and his girlfriend linked to four slayings in three states were driving to Sacramento, Calif., to “kill more Jews” when they were arrested by police, according to charging documents.

The documents filed in Snohomish County allege that David Joseph “Joey” Pedersen, 31, and his girlfriend, Holly Ann Grigsby, 24, had killed Pedersen’s father and stepmother in Everett, then drove to Oregon in the dead man’s car, where Grigsby said they shot and killed 19-year-old Cody Myers and stole his car.

Grigsby told police they shot Myers “because his last name made them think he was Jewish,” according to the charging documents. Prosecutors said Grigsby claimed that she and Pedersen then planned to drive to Sacramento to “kill more Jews.”

The couple are also suspected in the slaying of 53-year-old Reginald Alan Clark, an African-American man who was found shot to death Friday in the back seat of his pickup in Eureka, Calif.

Snohomish County prosecutors on Monday filed aggravated murder charges against Pedersen and Grigsby, accusing them of the Sept. 26 slayings of Pedersen’s father, David “Red” Jones Pedersen, 56, who was shot in the head while driving the couple to the bus station in Everett. Grigsby, in a five-hour video statement to police, said the couple then turned around and returned to the Pedersen home, where they taped the hands, feet and mouth of Leslie Pedersen, 69. The complaint says that Grigsby cut her throat, using two different knives.

Conviction on the aggravated murder charges carries two possible penalties: life without parole or death, although the prosecutor’s office has not indicated whether it will seek the death penalty.

The couple were arrested last Wednesday while driving Myers’ car in Yuba City, Calif., after a California Highway Patrol trooper encountered them parked along a road. The trooper inquired if they were OK, and left after the couple said they were just resting.

The trooper was driving away when he remembered a bulletin seeking Myers’ stolen car “and realized who he’d been dealing with.” He returned and executed a guns-drawn felony arrest on the pair after backup officers arrived, according to the complaint.

Pedersen had written a note to Grigsby outlining a plan where he would take responsibility for all of the killings, according to charging documents. In a jailhouse interview after his arrest, he told a California newspaper that he had killed his father because he had molested his sister when she was younger. There is no confirmation of the molestation allegations.

Pedersen is a three-time felon and an avowed white supremacist who in 2001 was sentenced to two years in federal prison for threatening to kill U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge in Boise. Lodge presided over the trial of Randy Weaver for slaying a U.S. marshal during a standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Pedersen was 13 at the time.