Neighbors Can’t Forget Fatal Night Wilson Family Died In ‘Thrill Killings’

A year ago, the Wilson family of Bellevue died a hard death. The family’s quiet Woodridge neighborhood died a little that night, too.

It will be hard for neighbors to forget the horror of the night of Jan. 4, 1997. The quadruple slayings - police called them “thrill killings” - were the worst mass-homicide in the city’s history.

“It was very unnerving. … Everyone likes to think of their neighborhood as a safe place,” said Lorin Jurgensen, a Woodridge resident for 13 years. “I don’t think that any of us have the same sense of security.”

Said Jeanne Sager, who lives a few houses down: “It will always be fresh in our minds.”

Kimberly Wilson, 20, was strangled with a rope and beaten. Her body was left in brush in a park across the street from Woodridge Elementary.

Accountant Robert Wilson, 52, and his 46-year-old wife, Rose, were clubbed and stabbed to death before dawn in the bedroom of their home, about a half-mile from the park where their oldest daughter died.

Julia Wilson, Kimberly’s 17-year-old sister and a senior at Bellevue High School, tried to defend herself in her parents’ home. She was killed, too.

Within days, Bellevue police arrested two of Kimberly’s friends. Alex Baranyi and David Anderson, both 17 at the time, were each charged with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

Police said Baranyi confessed to all four deaths. He said he met Kimberly at the park before midnight and they talked for awhile and walked along the trails, police said.

He told police he didn’t know why he decided to thrust a rope around her neck and strangle her.

According to a police transcript, Baranyi said, “I couldn’t stop. I just, I felt angry, but I don’t know why.”

Afterward, he decided he needed to kill the other members of the family, too, police said. So he crept into the unlocked house and did the killings with his knife and a baseball bat he found in the garage, according to court documents.

Anderson was later arrested. He has not made a statement to police.

Baranyi and Anderson both pleaded innocent and are scheduled to go on trial May 11. They are in the King County Jail on $10 million bail.

Sky Stewart, 19, was Kimberly Wilson’s best friend. She said a year’s time has made the thoughts about the night of slaughter “easier to control, but not any less painful.”