Murder-for-hire suspect James Henrikson moved to Yakima jail

Accused murder-for-hire mastermind James Henrikson has been moved to the Yakima County Jail following a suspected escape attempt in Spokane last month.

Officials from the Spokane County Jail, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would not say whether the ripped bedsheets leading from a fifth-floor window of the jail on Aug. 20 were part of a plot by Henrikson, who had been jailed in Spokane since he was indicted on charges stemming from the slaying of Doug Carlile on the South Hill in December 2013.

Henrikson’s attorneys, however, say they faced new restrictions on visiting their client after the time of the suspected escape attempt.

Mark Vovos, one of the attorneys representing Henrikson, said he visited his client the day after the attempt. Jail staff told him he “could not visit Mr. Henrikson in the attorney booth, but only in a public booth where all of our conversations were recorded, with an inability to pass documents for review and preparation,” Vovos said in paperwork filed this week in federal court. “The records and documents defense counsel had were delivered to Mr. Henrikson in the public booth, and then after the meeting were taken from him,” it said.

The same restrictions were in place when Vovos visited Henrikson later, according to Vovos’ statement. Henrikson was moved to the Yakima County Jail without notification of his attorneys or family on Aug. 27, and remained there as of Thursday.

Vovos and co-counsel Todd Maybrown have requested that Henrikson be moved back to Spokane to prepare for trial in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, which is scheduled for Oct. 5. They also have asked for a continuance to January, following the delivery of some 16,000 pages of phone records by prosecutors late last month.

The new evidence and the requirement to travel to Yakima to visit Henrikson necessitate the need for a trial continuance, Maybrown and Vovos argue.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office responded late Thursday that the records provided are largely redundant, repeating cellphone records that already had been released to the defense teams. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aine Ahmed, in his motion, said classification of the records as “entirely new” was inaccurate, and that the jury trial should proceed as scheduled.

U.S. District Judge Salvador Mendoza had previously ruled that the continuance to Oct. 5 would be the last one he would grant in the case, which began in earnest with the arrest of alleged triggerman Timothy Suckow in Spokane in January 2014. Mendoza is scheduled to rule on a possible new delay next week.

Prosecutors plan to argue that Henrikson hired Suckow to kill Carlile over botched oil dealings in North Dakota. They also plan to argue that Suckow was hired more than a year before Carlile’s death to kill Kristopher “K.C.” Clarke, an employee whom Henrikson suspected of striking out on his own. Clarke’s body has not been found.

Four other men – Lazaro Pesina, Robert Delao, Robby Wahrer and Todd Bates – face charges that include conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and drug crimes for their alleged roles in Henrikson’s criminal enterprise. All defendants have said they do not oppose a motion to continue the trial to January, with Wahrer’s attorney saying he anticipates a plea deal or removal of the case against him back to a Spokane County courtroom.

Spokane County Jail officials confirmed the FBI was investigating the Aug. 20 incident, and the cell where the sheets originated held two men. Guards discovered the sheets were being lowered from the cell window, which is less than 5 inches wide, shortly before 5 a.m.

Henrikson and Suckow, both convicted felons, face potential jail sentences spanning decades. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced earlier this year it would not seek the death penalty in the case.