Teen Says Killings Planned During Church Services

Starr Lake and her then-boyfriend Michael Jansen passed notes during church services that talked about their intent to kill Lake’s parents, Jansen said Friday.

The plot began as talk by the 16-year-old Lake about getting rid of her strict parents, who planned to send her to a nursing school in Florida, Jansen testified.

“It just grew from there,” he said at Lake’s trial on two counts of second-degree murder.

Less than a week before the slayings, the teenagers began a series of failed attempts to kill 66-year-old Lester Lake and 68-year-old Velma Lake of Walla Walla, Jansen said. He finally shot the couple to death in their bedroom last July 24.

Lake has testified that she never considered actually killing her adoptive parents, who were also her grandparents.

Jansen, 17, admitted in late October that he killed the couple, and pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.

Prosecutors argue that Starr Lake came up with “Operation Potatohead,” the plan to murder the Lakes.

She apparently referred to the couple as “the potatoheads.”

Lake denied any involvement. She told officials after the killings that she was in her basement bedroom when she heard the gunshots and found her parents’ bodies when she went up to the main floor.