Witness Violates Probation

Thu., May 16, 1996

From Staff And Wire Reports

(From For the Record of Friday, May 17, 1996): Pend Oreille County child-rapist Ryan Bliss was ordered to prison for 5-3/4 years for violating his probation. The term was wrong in Thursday’s edition.

A prosecution witness in a Spokane murder trial is to be sent to jail today for violating conditions of his release as a convicted child-rapist.

Pend Oreille County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson ruled earlier this week that Ryan Bliss, 22, failed his probation by flunking out of an outpatient treatment program for sex offenders.

Kristianson planned to send the Newport area resident back to jail today for nine months.

The judge found Bliss improperly had sexual relations with as many as three women and that he had unsupervised contact with girls. Bliss also possessed pornographic materials, was dishonest in treatment sessions and failed to pay for his treatment, Kristianson ruled.

Bliss pleaded guilty in October 1994 to two counts of second-degree child rape involving a female relative who baby-sat his child. He was 19 and the victim was 13 at the time of the rapes. In February, Bliss was a prosecution witness in the Spokane County murder trial of Deer Park resident Toby Stackhouse.

Bliss testified that while he and Stackhouse were together in the Pend Oreille County Jail, Stackhouse had told him about stabbing prostitute Linda Guillen to death near Playfair Race Course in Spokane in December 1994.

Stackhouse, who attempted to recant a similar confession to police, was convicted of first-degree murder. , DataTimes

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