Suspect sought in apparent homicide

Spokane police named a suspect Thursday in the apparent homicide of a missing Spokane man – a suspect who also is wanted by Longview, Wash., police in a similar disappearance there.

Officers all along the West Coast are looking for former Spokane resident John Wayne Thomson, 46, a three-time convicted rapist who is believed to have been in possession of missing Spokane resident James F. Ehrgott’s car.

More recently, Thomson was seen driving missing Longview resident Lori A. Hamm’s car.

Ehrgott’s Pontiac Sunfire was found two weeks ago in Lewis County, north of Longview. Longview police said Thursday they believe Thomson may have fled to California in a third stolen car. A nationwide warrant has been issued for his arrest.

Spokane police said Thomson has been charged with unlawful possession of a handgun, trafficking stolen property and first-degree possession of stolen property.

Ehrgott, 73, was last seen July 7 at the Sportsman Café on North Market Street.

Spokane police have released little information about the recovery of Ehrgott’s Pontiac Sunfire on July 12 but said someone unknown to Ehrgott’s family had been seen driving the vehicle.

Longview police say Thomson was seen leaving a church in nearby Kelso, Wash., with 36-year-old Hamm on July 16, and he was seen driving her car that day and the next. Neither Hamm nor her Pomeranian dog, Midge, has been seen since.

Officers said they didn’t know what relationship Thomson had with Hamm, who was mentally and physically disabled because of a traffic accident.

However, the Longview Daily News reported Wednesday that friends of Hamm’s said she liked to sing karaoke at a Kelso tavern where Thomson worked briefly as a bouncer in 2003.

According to the Daily News, Thomson was convicted of raping two Washington women in 1982, and was sent to Western State Hospital for sexual psychopath treatment before going to prison. Two years after his release in 1988, he raped a Castle Rock, Wash., woman and went back to prison until 2002.

State prison officials recommended civil commitment of Thomson as a sexually violent predator, but the state Attorney General’s Office said the commitment law didn’t fit his circumstances, the Longview newspaper reported Thursday.

Authorities believe Thomson may have fled to California in a two-door 1987 Honda Civic – Washington license 324-RRF – that he stole on Wednesday last week from a Kelso woman. They believe he is armed because the car’s owner saw a handgun in his waistband.

“He freaked me out so bad that I’ll never forget this man in my life,” Kelso resident Amber Davis told the Longview Daily News.

The newspaper reported Wednesday that Thomson had been talking to Davis’ husband about buying an inoperable Ford Probe. Then he came to their home while Davis was alone and demanded that she give him a ride.

Davis, 27, told the Daily News that Thomson directed her to drive him around town while he collected a stolen credit card and a sack of identity theft “profiles” and looked for someone to fix the car he wanted to buy.

Eventually, Davis told the newspaper, she and Thomson drove to a Goodwill store where they separated, and he stole her Honda Civic.

Hamm’s parents told the Daily News that police recovered her cellular telephone and learned that her credit cards were used six times in a three-hour period on the day she was last seen. Police told the newspaper they were having convenience store surveillance videos enhanced in an effort to see who used Hamm’s credit cards.

Thomson is described as white, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 190 pounds, with dark hair, hazel eyes and possibly wearing a goatee or moustache.