Victim of attack testifies he prayed for quick death

A Boise real estate developer said he was so sure he was going to die in Room 301 of Spokane’s Hotel Lusso last October that he prayed the man who beat and tortured him had a knife sharp enough to kill him quickly.

John W. Sieckert, 50, teared up as he told a Spokane County jury about that moment, at the hands of a man he said identified himself as Kevin and later as “the angel of death.”

Sieckert identified that man in court Wednesday as 27-year-old Erik R. Dickson. He said Dickson returned to his hotel room with him after a night of drinking and began a savage attack.

“He said, ‘You’re never leaving here, John,’ ” Sieckert testified.

Deputy Prosecutor Andi Jakkola said Dickson “saw Mr. Sieckert as an easy target” because Sieckert was celebrating the completion of a business deal and had been buying drinks at the Satellite Diner, where he met and befriended Dickson. She said Sieckert sympathized with Dickson’s complaints about not being able to find a good job.

Assistant Public Defender Al Rossi described his own client as “a man on the hustle,” who liked to brag about his business plans and his expensive jewelry.

Jakkola was not allowed to tell jurors that Dickson actually was a suspected felon, awaiting trial on a charge that he broke into the now-defunct Staccato’s restaurant downtown. Dickson pleaded guilty in June to second-degree burglary, second-degree malicious mischief and second-degree theft, and was sentenced to four months in jail.

Dickson is on trial now for alleged first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree extortion — all with a deadly weapon — as well as second-degree assault and second-degree theft.

Rossi suggested in his opening statement and cross-examination that someone else may have committed the crimes. Sieckert acknowledged he was drunk and that there were a number of inconsistencies and errors in his statements to police.

In addition to taking some of Sieckert’s personal effects, the robber withdrew $1,000 from a bank machine with Sieckert’s credit card. Jakkola promised to play a security video that appears to show Dickson making two unauthorized withdrawals at the convenience-store bank machine.

Sieckert said his memory is still patchy because he was unconscious at times during the attack and muddled from a fractured skull, a crushed eye socket that caused one of his eyeballs to recede 4 centimeters into his head and too much alcohol. He said his memory improved over time, and he immediately picked Dickson from a photo montage police showed him days after the assault.

Sieckert said he had a glass of wine at a business dinner and several more at Dempsey’s before he discovered it was a gay bar. Then he moved on to the Satellite and had several more drinks, followed by yet another at a bar whose name he couldn’t remember.

He said he shared a cab with Dickson and they somehow wound up in his room together. Then two people he had seen at the Satellite – a man with a red Mohawk haircut and a woman with black hair with a pink streak – showed up, expecting to find a party.

Sieckert said he stepped out to get change for cab fare to get rid of the couple. When he returned, Sieckert said, “I got a fist in the face I never saw coming.”

Dickson knocked him down, tied him up and stomped on the side of his face “just as hard as he could,” Sieckert said.

Dickson put a knife against his throat and into his ear and warned he would die if he struggled, Sieckert testified. He said Dickson demanded the personal identification number for a credit card.

“I would have given him anything,” Sieckert told jurors. “I didn’t want to die on that bathroom floor.”

He said he was in a pool of his own blood.

“My mouth was in shreds,” Sieckert said. “It was split in four places. It took 26 stitches to put it back together.”

Four staples were needed to close the wound in the back of his head, he added.

But Dickson wanted more than money, Sieckert testified. Dickson removed photos of his wife and four children from Sieckert’s wallet and arranged them in a pool of blood. Then he demanded that Sieckert identify the people in the photos and say goodbye to them one by one, Sieckert said.

Dickson put three of the photos in Sieckert’s mouth, and “that’s when I knew I was dead,” Sieckert told jurors.

But then, Sieckert said, Dickson moved him to a chair. Sieckert said he tried to hop to the door, but Dickson dragged him back and knocked him unconscious with a blow “so hard I still have no feeling in my chin.”

When he revived, Sieckert said, Dickson had changed into his clothes and asked how he looked.

Then, he said, Dickson put a blanket over his head.

“All of a sudden I got hit so hard my head just exploded,” Sieckert said. “I thought my eyeball had come out. That’s the first thing I thought — that I had my eyeball in my lap.”

Finally, Sieckert said, Dickson left and he yelled until a hotel employee came.

The hotel added $700 to his bill for the cost of removing his blood from the carpet, Sieckert said.