Donald Paradis and his well-heeled lawyers would have us believe that the former biker is the victim of a grave injustice committed a quarter century ago.

They’re telling all who will listen that Paradis was wronged when a Kootenai County jury found him guilty of the 1980 murder of 19-year-old Kimberly Palmer of Spokane. They’re saying the former death row inmate had nothing to do with the murders of Palmer or her boyfriend, Scott Currier, other than to help dump their bodies in the Post Falls area. That former Kootenai County deputy prosecutor Marc Haws is the villain of this legal drama for not disclosing at Paradis’ 1981 trial the contents of scribbled notes obtained secondhand from a coroner’s inquest.

Paradis and his partner in crime, Thomas Henry Gibson, are free today, in part because Haws’ action resulted in an unfair trial, but also because they knew how to play the judicial system. Paradis had wiggled off death row in 1996 when then-Gov. Phil Batt commuted the sentence to life without parole after concluding it was impossible to tell which of three bikers present that night actually killed Palmer. Paradis didn’t win a $900,000 settlement from Kootenai County last week because he was exonerated. He got it because the county’s insurance company knew a court fight over his $20 million lawsuit would be more expensive than trying Paradis again.

Rather than prolong the dispute in the absence of a court resolution, it’s best to move on. Sometimes, bad guys win. Sometimes, justice is denied by an insurance company worried about the bottom line. Haws, now a deputy U.S. attorney in Boise, adopted a proper attitude in a brief statement after the lawsuit was dismissed: “It is good to get this matter completely behind us after 25 years.”

Regrettably, the families and loved ones of the murder victims will never learn the whole truth about how their loved ones died or who killed them.

They know that Currier and Palmer made a fatal mistake by attending a biker party at the home of Paradis the night they died. Things got out of hand. Before the night was over, Currier was tortured, beaten with a baseball bat, and murdered. In 1988, biker Larry Evans was found guilty of that murder by a Spokane County jury. Paradis, Gibson and another biker, Charles Amacher, were acquitted. Paradis and Gibson would have been free at that point, but Haws convinced a Kootenai County jury that Palmer was killed after the three bikers transported her boyfriend’s body to Post Falls for disposal.

The location of her murder was crucial because it changed jurisdiction from Washington to Idaho.

Paradis has maintained his innocence all along. Gibson has changed his story depending on which version served him best.

If Paradis truly did nothing more than help dump the bodies, he still committed a cowardly act, and he isn’t worthy of sympathy. With the settlement, he’s set for the rest of his life, $50,000 up front and $3,541 per month until he dies. Few retirees are fixed that well.