Suspect gambled wrong on alibi
Court records show a teenage gambler who allegedly robbed a woman of her card-game winnings was fingered by a girlfriend he thought would give him an alibi.
The suspect, 17-year-old Jonathan D. Clausen, 4238 E. 40th Ave., was sent home on electronic monitoring a day after his arrest on Feb. 21. His next appearance in Spokane County Juvenile Court is scheduled for Friday.
Spokane police say Clausen knocked a woman down and stole her purse, which contained $5,000 that Clausen saw her win at Big Daddy’s Poker Room, 3023 E. 28th Ave., on Feb. 20.
Two 18-year-old co-defendants, who allegedly waited in a car while Clausen robbed the woman, were charged in adult court. One of them, George A. Durgin, remained in jail Tuesday night in lieu of $25,000 bail. The other, Justin M. Leliefeld, left jail Monday after a judge reduced his bail to $5,000.
All three suspects are charged with second-degree robbery.
According to court documents, a Big Daddy’s employee recognized Clausen from the description the victim gave police. But the employee knew Clausen as Jeremiah Bouscher because of false identification Clausen told detectives he had been using to gamble regularly at the South Hill casino.
Detectives Tim Madsen and Marty Hill found Clausen in the casino on the day after the robbery. They arrested him after his girlfriend called and Clausen passed his cell phone to Madsen, expecting her to give him an alibi.
Clausen had admitted underage gambling but claimed he had been with his girlfriend at the time of the robbery, court documents say.
Instead of backing up Clausen’s story, though, the girlfriend told police he committed the robbery while he was with her. Court documents say she told Madsen that Clausen met her, Durgin and Leliefeld in the casino parking lot and talked to Durgin and Leliefeld about following and robbing a woman who had won a lot of money.
The girlfriend said she rode with Clausen, Leliefeld and Durgin while they followed the woman to her home, where Clausen got out and stole her purse, Madsen reported. The girlfriend said Clausen told the others the purse contained only $6, and Durgin later threw it in the Spokane River, near the Greene Street Bridge, according to Madsen.
Confronted with his girlfriend’s statement, Clausen said at first that he “thought he needed to talk to his mom and maybe a lawyer,” but he later confessed to the purse snatching, according to court documents.
Penalties often are much greater in adult court than in juvenile court but are similar in this case.
Assuming no prior convictions, Clausen could get 3 1/2 to 8 1/3 months in a state juvenile rehabilitation center if convicted as charged, while Leliefeld and Durgin would face standard ranges of three to nine months in jail.