John Craig

Tobias Stackhouse is backing away from a plea bargain in the first-degree murder charge he faces in the Jan. 11 shooting of Elkarea resident Steve Roscoe. The decision didn't sit well with his attorney - now his former attorney.

BLM wrangler Lloyd Mulholland, in black hat, needed help with this wild palomino. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Randy and Suzie Sage knew their dog Charkee was in trouble when they heard the 40-pound pooch screaming about 3 a.m. on the front porch of their rural home 3 1/2 miles west of town. "It wasn't a real bark," Randy Sage recalled. "It was kind of a scream for help."

A blood-alcohol expert who testified on behalf of Exxon Valdez Capt. Joseph Hazelwood told a jury Thursday that Cathy Van Stedum may not have been drunk when she ran over and killed a 5-year-old girl last Halloween. University of Washington Professor Michael Hlastala said Van Stedum's blood-alcohol level may have been only 0.03 percent to 0.05 percent at the time of the accident, even though the level was measured at 0.17 an hour and 20 minutes later.

A Spokane resident who spent nine years on death row in California was sent back to prison last week after violating terms of his release as a sex offender in Pend Oreille County. Clay Hines, 56, was ordered to prison for the six years and nine months remaining on his suspended sentence for first-degree child molestation.

People in Hunters may not need an ark for the next "hundred-year storm" after all. Public officials are planning to put a giant drain through an abandoned 74-year-old earthen dam that has been declared the most dangerous dam in the state. A 6-foot-diameter pipe will let water pass through the dam before it can spill over the top and cause the structure to collapse from erosion.

Jason Kukrall faced Debbie Roscoe in court Thursday, then was sentenced to 26 years in prison for murdering her husband, Steve, during a burglary at the couple's Elk-area home. The emotional sentencing hearing came minutes after co-defendant Tobias Stackhouse, 18, announced his intention to join Kukrall, 21, in formally admitting his guilt in the Jan. 11 shooting.

Former L-Bar Products plant manager Stan McCurdy admitted Wednesday that he illegally buried hazardous chemicals at the plant site south of Chewelah, Wash. McCurdy, 47, also pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring with others to commit the crime, but was vague about who the co-conspirators were. He suggested he merely accepted the suggestion of a subordinate. "There was really no agreement to do anything," McCurdy told U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle. "... I did not discuss this with the company ahead of time."

The Oklahoma City bombing shows the need for a less-intrusive federal government, several people told U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt in a town hall meeting Tuesday. "If somebody doesn't rein in (U.S. Attorney General) Janet Reno, there will be more blows," Valley, Wash., resident John Axtell said.

The manager of Grand Coulee Dam is baking like a salmon for an injudicious remark about the threatened fish. Dam manager Steve Clark was addressing the Stevens County Federal Lands Advisory Committee last week when someone asked about salmon recovery plans.

Embezzlement charges are pending against two former executives of the Colville Tribal Services Corp., a construction company operated by the Colville Confederated Tribes. Company manager David S. Wells, 39, pleaded innocent to four counts of first-degree theft for allegedly taking about $5,000 in corporate funds for personal use. Wells' trial is to begin May 11 after a hearing to determine whether his confession to tribal police may be used in court.

The bankruptcy case of L-Bar Products of Chewelah, Wash., is back to square one after almost three years of legal wrangling and about $70,000 in legal fees. However, an attorney said L-Bar's largest creditor, Northwest Alloys, is considering paying about $90,000 in back wages that have been owed to 56 L-Bar employees since L-Bar closed in December 1991. "I think consideration has and is being given to that," Northwest Alloys attorney Bennett Young, of San Francisco, said Thursday. "That decision hasn't been made yet."

Bankrupt L-Bar Products Inc. and two of its top managers were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on charges that they illegally had buried 80 partially filled barrels of acid at the firm's Chewelah, Wash., plant. The charges came almost three years after investigators received an anonymous tip and dug up the barrels in May 1992. The barrels were within 500 yards of the Colville River, but federal environmental officials said there was no threat to public safety.

A millwright who was severely injured in a 1991 explosion at the Northwest Alloys magnesium smelter has won the largest jury award in Stevens County history. Superior Court Judge Fred Stewart was to take final action today on the $1.89 million award. Northwest Alloys spokesman Ozzie Wilkinson said company officials hadn't decided whether to appeal the judgment if Stewart approves it.

Martin Louie Sr., 88, holds a dried filet of salmon. He says his government check is poor payment for a river once full of salmon. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

An 18-year-old Kettle Falls High School senior has been sentenced to a year in jail for potentially lethal attacks he made after stalking a 15-year-old girl for months. Aaron King allegedly attempted to kill another girl, whom he blamed for thwarting his obsessive six-month effort to woo the 15-year-old.

There's still plenty of water behind Grand Coulee Dam, but federal support is drying up for the four small towns in the dam's shadow. Under pressure to help cut the federal budget, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to eliminate its fire department and emergency dispatching center at the dam.

Martin Hall on the campus of Eastern State Hospital is up for renovation as a juvenile detention facility. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Stevens County officials got a verbal dose of DDT at a meeting Wednesday night to explain a countywide roadside weed spraying program. Many of the 50 people who attended the informational meeting were more interested in presenting information than receiving it. Their message overwhelmingly was that they consider chemical herbicides unsafe and don't want the county to use them. Few of those who attended the meeting were satisfied with the county's offer not to spray roadsides along their property if they would sign a contract to control noxious weeds on their own. They worried that any spraying would harm people and animals and contaminate ground water. "I'm worried about everything, planetarily," Chewelah-area resident Phyllis Mueller said. "Couldn't we just mow?" Assistant Public Works Director Terry Davis said mowing sometimes spreads noxious weeds such as knapweed. Also, Davis said part of the $132,000 spraying program is for protection of paved roads. He said mowing allows roadside plants to grow back quickly and contribute to the breakup of asphalt. But Davis said herbicides aimed at controlling crop-killing noxious weeds would be sprayed only where needed. He said county officials hoped this year's spraying would be more selective because a professional contractor will be used for the first time. In the past, Public Works Department workers have sprayed onethird of the county roads each year. Davis said officials decided it would be more effective to hire Rumble Spray Inc. of Ellensburg, Wash., to spray the entire county road system. Contractor John Rumble assured the crowd he sympathized with their concerns and would use all the government-required precautions for the five chemicals his company would use. No soap. "The EPA is wrong" about the safety of the herbicides it approves, retired veterinarian Brian Cummings of Waitts Lake said. Most of the testing cited by the EPA actually was done by a couple of private companies, Cummings contended. Long-term studies of low-dose exposures to the chemicals have revealed risks of cancer and other problems not revealed in earlier flawed testing, Cummings declared to an applauding crowd. "The EPA is worthless," his wife, Jackie, agreed. "It took 30 years to get DDT off of the market and it almost eradicated some species of animals." Chewelah businesswoman Susanne Griepp worried about the possible effects of the unspecified "inert" ingredients in the weed sprays. "I find that very threatening, personally," Griepp said. Davis repeatedly called for people to ask questions instead of making statements as the meeting grew more contentious. "Why don't you want to hear our comments?" Waitts Lake resident Judy Pryse demanded. "We don't want it. Please don't kill my babies."

Commissioners in Nye County, Nev., have "worked hard" for 17 months to provoke the lawsuit the federal government filed against the county earlier this month, Nye County Commissioner Dick Carver declared Tuesday. Carver got several rounds of applause and a final standing ovation when he addressed about 100 sympathizers from Stevens, Pend Oreille and Ferry counties at the Fort Colville Grange Hall. The crowd loved his promises to give meddlesome federal bureaucrats their comeuppance.

Gifford, Wash., logger Rod Frunz won a silt fence as a door prize at a four-day school for loggers, sponsored by the Washington Association of Contract Loggers. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Bob Morris pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing $1,000 from the Pend Oreille County Economic Development Council while he was the director. Morris, 48, admitted one count of forgery and one count of second-degree theft for changing an expense check from $127.85 to $1,127.85. He is to be sentenced May 11.

The Washington Supreme Court Thursday overturned the conviction of a man who was linked by genetic evidence to the January 1988 rape and murder of a Loon Lake woman. Cynthia Ferguson, 23, was stabbed in the neck 15 times and her body was left along a rural road near Chewelah, Wash. Witnesses saw Curtis S. Buckner, then 20, also of Loon Lake, near the murder scene with a knife like the one found near Ferguson's body.

A trembling, red-eyed Jason Kukrall pleaded guilty Wednesday to the Jan. 11 murder of Elk-area homeowner Steve Roscoe and agreed to testify against co-defendant Tobias Stackhouse. Kukrall said nothing on his own behalf, but submitted a written statement that he was accepting a plea bargain "because I understand that I may be convicted if I go to trial and I wish to take advantage of the prosecutor's offer of a mid-range sentence." Pend Oreille County Prosecutor Tom Metzger sweetened the deal slightly in last-minute negotiations and agreed to recommend 26 years, or 312 months, when Kukrall is sentenced on April 20. The standard sentencing range for the first-degree murder conviction is 261 to 347 months in view of Kukrall's criminal history. Kukrall, 21, was convicted of raping a 4-year-old boy in 1989, when he was 16. "The evidence as I examined it was very strong," Public Defender Maryann Moreno said after the hearing. "We also had to think about additional charges that could have been filed: premeditated or something like that." Moreno said she didn't think the facts warranted an aggravated murder charge, but Kukrall "didn't even want to risk it." She said Kukrall also didn't want to put the Roscoe family through a trial. "He takes full responsibility for it," Moreno said of the bungled burglary that cost Steve Roscoe his life. Metzger said Roscoe, 43, died when he and his wife, Debbie came home and discovered their home had been burglarized. He walked behind his house and was surprised by the fleeing burglars. Both Kukrall and Stackhouse shot at Roscoe, but Kukrall is believed to have fired the fatal shot, Metzger said. Both Moreno and Metzger emphasized that the plea bargain has no connection to cases in Spokane, including the Dec. 1 murder of Linda Guillen. No charges have been filed in that case, but authorities say both defendants have admitted involvement in the murder. Minutes after Kukrall was sent back to the Pend Oreille County Jail, the 18-year-old Stackhouse entered Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson's courtroom to lay the grounds for an insanity defense. Kristianson granted Stackhouse's request for a mental examination by a Spokane psychologist.< The judge also ordered Stackhouse to undergo two weeks of examination at Eastern State Hospital. Stackhouse's trial was scheduled May 15.