Report: Suspect says he’s sorry they’re gone

SEATTLE – The man accused of joining his girlfriend in the slaughter of six of her family members in a rural home east of Seattle says he regrets they are dead, a newspaper reported.

“I’m sorry that they’re gone. They were my family, too, you know?” Joseph McEnroe told the Seattle Times on Friday afternoon.

“I hope wherever they’re at, they’re at peace. That’s all I’m going to say about them.”

McEnroe made his comments in the King County Jail after he and his girlfriend, Michele Anderson, both 29, were charged by prosecutors with aggravated first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Anderson’s parents and brother, the brother’s wife and their two young children.

McEnroe would not talk about what happened Christmas Eve at the elder Andersons’ rural home near Carnation. Prosecutors allege McEnroe and Michele Anderson killed the six – beginning with Anderson’s parents – over a perceived family debt.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, after filing the aggravated murder charges Friday, now has 30 days to decide whether to seek the death penalty against McEnroe and Michele Anderson.

Arraignment for the two was scheduled for Jan. 9.

Court documents said McEnroe, a store clerk, and Anderson, who is unemployed, told detectives they armed themselves on Christmas Eve and went to her parent’s home from the trailer where they lived on the parents’ rural property near Carnation, about 25 miles east of Seattle. There, they confronted Anderson’s parents, Wayne Anderson, 60, and Judy Anderson, 61, in their living room.

Michele Anderson told detectives her brother, a carpenter, owed her money she had loaned to him years earlier, and that she was upset with her parents because they did not take her side. Additionally, she said her parents were pressuring her to start paying rent for staying on their property.

“Michelle stated that she was tired of everybody stepping on her,” the court papers say. “She stated that she was upset with her parents and her brother and that if the problems did not get resolved on Dec. 24, then her intent was definitely to kill everybody.”

Satterberg said Michele Anderson fired once at her father’s head but missed. McEnroe stepped in, leveled his gun and fatally shot Wayne Anderson in the head.

Judy Anderson heard the shots and ran from the back room where she had been wrapping gifts. She was shot by McEnroe, who apologized to her before shooting her again, this time in the head, the court documents said.

Satterberg said that during the next 30 to 45 minutes, the two dragged the bodies to a shed behind the house, used towels and carpets to sop up blood stains and awaited the arrival of the dead couple’s son, Scott, his wife, Erica — both 32 — and their 3-year-old son, Nathan, and 6-year-old daughter, Olivia, for a Christmas Eve visit.

Scott and Erica Anderson put up a brave struggle, according to the documents:

“Michele told detectives that Scott charged her when she pulled out the gun and that she shot him at least twice and maybe as many as four times.”

Michele then shot Erica Anderson twice, but she was able to crawl over the back of a couch to call 911.

McEnroe told detectives he tore the phone from Erica’s hands and destroyed it.

Huddling with her children, Erica Anderson pleaded with McEnroe not to shoot her, saying: “You don’t have to do this.”

McEnroe told her: “Yes, we do,”’ and shot her in the head, according to the affidavit.

He then shot 6-year-old Olivia before turning to 3-year-old Nathan, who had picked up the batteries from the cordless phone his mother had used in her futile attempt to call for help.

“McEnroe told detectives that Nathan held the batteries up in one hand and gave … the look of complete comprehension … as if he understood.” McEnroe then fired one last bullet through Nathan’s head, according to the affidavit.

Satterberg said McEnroe apologized to each child before killing them.

McEnroe told the Times through a telephone at a jail visiting booth that jailers had placed him on suicide watch.

“I was having a very hard time, but no matter how this turns out, I’m going to try and hold on. … I decided I’m going to try and stay alive,” he said.

He also asked about his family – his mother and siblings in Minneapolis and an aunt and cousins in California. McEnroe reportedly stopped talking to them five years ago after a financial dispute with his mother.

“This whole thing has made me realize how much I miss them,” he said of his family. “It’s easy enough to think they don’t like you or don’t care about you but I wish to God I got in touch with them before this. I would’ve even been able to visit them. I guess that’s not going to happen now.”

Former neighbors and others who knew McEnroe and Michele Anderson described the couple as a volatile pair mired in financial troubles.

They reportedly met online five years ago. He moved to Washington from Glendale, Ariz., with plans to marry her, said McEnroe’s mother, Sean Johnson, of Minneapolis.