Rapist sentenced after holding woman in ‘torture chamber’

A weaker woman might not have been in court Thursday to help send Jonathan Carl Hair to prison for kidnapping and sexually torturing her.

A weaker woman might have been dead, just as Hair threatened during a two-day ordeal in April 2003, the victim told Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price.

The tables were turned when Price handed down a sentence that probably will keep Hair, 27, behind bars until he dies. Even with good behavior, he won’t be eligible for a parole hearing until he’s almost 90.

Price agreed with the victim that Hair would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped from the “torture chamber” where Hair committed one “heinous and cruel” act after another.

The bearded, shaved-headed defendant was the “absolute epitome of evil,” Price said, calling his crimes “reprehensible and disgusting.”

“I do think things happen for a reason,” the 37-year-old victim told Price. “I think God chose me because I am one of those people who are strong enough to survive.”

So strong that she considered trying to break a wine bottle and cut off her own hand to escape the handcuffs Hair used to imprison her in his mother’s Cheney home, Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald said.

The victim said she was convinced Hair would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped, fortunately without having to mutilate herself. She said he told her he would have to kill her after three days of captivity because his absent mother was scheduled to come home on the fourth day.

The death threats were as brutal as the repeated rapes, beatings and humiliation, she said: “Being told I would be tied to a railroad track and gutted alive and have chunks of my flesh cut off until I died of the pain.”

She said she took comfort in the thought that her ability to escape may have kept him from killing another woman. But she regretted the need to show weakness to help convince Price to send Hair to prison for what’s likely to be the rest of his life.

“The last thing I want to do is to let that sorry excuse of a man know that he still gets to me,” the woman said, struggling unsuccessfully to hold back tears.

But, she said, she is reminded of his death threats every time she hears a train. And the drug addiction that made her Hair’s victim is worse now.

Hair chose his victim carefully, but badly, Fitzgerald said. He didn’t reckon on a graphic designer with a master’s degree when he used a 12-inch hunting knife to abduct a woman at Sprague and Altamont who agreed to perform a sex act for $30.

Court documents say Hair stripped the woman naked in his mother’s home and raped her repeatedly in various ways while she was restrained with handcuffs, ropes and gagging devices. He also beat her during 32 hours of imprisonment, and shaved her head and eyebrows.

“I finally have some hair,” the woman said Thursday in court. “That really takes away from your femininity as a woman.”

The woman untied herself after four hours of captivity, but Hair caught her as she tried to leave the house. She finally managed to escape when Hair left the house. She ran across Fifth Street, naked, to the home of Cheney Mayor Amy Sooy.

Fitzgerald said the victim was so determined to bring Hair to justice that she cooperated with a material-witness warrant that kept her in jail for nearly three weeks. Authorities weren’t confident she would remain available to investigators, otherwise. She spent two of those weeks in a cell one floor below Hair’s.

Hair confessed to police, but was two days into a jury trial last month before he agreed to plead guilty as charged – to one count of first-degree kidnapping with a deadly weapon, first-degree assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of first-degree rape, one count of attempted first-degree rape, and one count of second-degree assault.

Under a plea bargain, Fitzgerald agreed not to seek an exceptional sentence and Hair agreed not to raise arguments that could reduce his standard sentencing range.

By combining the new crimes with his three juvenile convictions – for two residential burglaries and malicious mischief – Hair faced a standard minimum sentence of 54 1/2 to 69 2/3 years in prison. State law required the sentences on all but one count to be served consecutively.

Hair’s maximum is automatically life. He can’t be released unless a parole board finds he is no longer dangerous.

Because so many of the counts require consecutive sentences, Assistant Public Defender Kenneth Knox argued that Price should select Hair’s minimum from the middle of his standard range.

“He might get out a retired citizen,” Knox said.

“He would get out and try to do that sick stuff all over again, even at 70,” Hair’s victim said.

Hair said nothing. And, as Price observed, he showed no emotion.

“You didn’t exhibit even a glimmer of compassion … not a hint of remorse,” Price said.