Man accused of killing Spokane woman confessed to his girlfriend, court documents say

A 41-year-old man accused of killing a woman last month on North Hamilton Street admitted to shooting her, tossing the gun into a pond and asking his girlfriend whether she would leave for Costa Rica with him, according to the girlfriend in court documents.

Spokane Police detectives linked Travis R. Johnson to the death of 40-year-old Jackie Wessels, whose son found her unresponsive and lying in a pool of blood the morning of July 21 at her residence, 2518 N. Hamilton St., according to court records.

Johnson has been in the Kootenai County Jail since July 29 after he was arrested in Coeur d’Alene on suspicion of several drug charges.

Detectives are working with the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office to transfer Johnson to Spokane County to face a second-degree murder charge related to Wessels’ death, according to a police news release.

The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office said Wessels died from multiple gunshot wounds. The office said in documents Wessels also had a laceration on her head and what appeared to be stab wounds on her head.

Several people reported a shooting that morning, including Wessels’ son at about 7:25 a.m.

The son told police he checked on his mother every morning. When Wessels did not answer his knock at the door that morning, he went inside and found her in her bedroom lying face down on the floor with a dog next to her.

He told police he went outside to ask one of Wessels’ roommates, who was woodworking when the son arrived at the home, what happened. He said he had no idea but that he had warrants and wasn’t going to wait for police to arrive, so the roommate drove away, the son told police. Officers arrived moments later.

He said he saw his mother the night before when they went to Coeur d’Alene to celebrate his 18th birthday, documents say.

Surveillance video showed a man in a dark shirt at 5:06 a.m., July 21, enter the alley behind the Hamilton Street home and carrying something in his right hand behind his back, according to police in documents. Minutes earlier, three men left the home in Johnson’s black Jeep and a Subaru Impreza.

The video showed the man in the dark shirt come out of the alley at 5:08 a.m., followed by a dog, and run east.

Another video showed the man arriving on a motorcycle and hiding it behind a bush, police wrote. The man is seen on another camera riding away on the motorcycle at about 5:09 a.m.

Detectives believe the man was waiting for the Jeep and Subaru to leave the area before approaching the house, according to documents. Because the man left the house in a hurry and the dog followed close behind, police believe it was likely that the man was involved in the homicide and left quickly without securing the door, allowing the dog to escape.

A woman who lived at the home told police the man shown on surveillance was Johnson.

Johnson’s girlfriend, who was arrested with Johnson during the July 29 traffic stop in Coeur d’Alene, agreed to speak to Spokane detectives at the Kootenai County Jail.

She said Johnson told her he was held captive at Wessels’ house for three days and had to hit someone with a hammer to escape, court records say. Wessels put a bounty on Johnson’s head because she was worried about what he would say after escaping, the girlfriend said Johnson told her.

She said Johnson told her he went to his mother’s house, got a gun and went back to Wessels’ house. He then confronted her in a bedroom, they fought and he shot her. He told his girlfriend he did what he had to do because Wessels was going to kill him, she told police.

She said Johnson got into her car crying the night after the shooting and immediately told her the events of the shooting. He asked her if she would go to Costa Rica with him and that Johnson said he threw a pistol into a pond in Rockford after shooting Wessels, the girlfriend told police.

Johnson told detectives at the Kootenai County Jail he knew a woman who lived in the Hamilton Street area but could not remember her name. He said he planned to buy a hydro-dipping tank and a motorcycle from her and had given her $1,600.

Johnson said the woman was upset with him when he went to the house where the motorcycle was located without her, according to documents. It seemed the motorcycle was not hers to sell and she wanted him to get it in the middle of the night, but he instead had gone during the day. When he showed up with a trailer and the people at the house didn’t know anything about the motorcycle sale, he determined the woman had been tricking him into stealing it, Johnson told police.

He said his Jeep was stolen after that and suspected it was the woman from the house on Hamilton Street who stole it. He said his wallet and phone were in the Jeep.

Johnson told detectives his mother picked him up after his Jeep was stolen and he spent the rest of the weekend at her house.

Johnson said he didn’t know if he should be talking about the people at the house because it was scary and that there were bad people at that house, he told police. He eventually said he wanted to speak with a lawyer and the conversation with detectives ended.

Wessels’ son told police the man who drove the black Jeep was involved in his mother’s death. He said the man, Johnson, had gone to Wessels’ friend’s house July 19 and had misrepresented Wessels in a deal over a motorcycle. This angered Wessels, and the next day, the son noticed Wessels was driving the black Jeep.

Wessels told her son Johnson did something mean to her and she was going to take his Jeep as payment, the son told police.

One man told detectives Johnson was at his house July 17 and Johnson was driving the Jeep at that time.

On the morning of July 20, the man found Johnson in his kitchen eating cereal, documents say. The man said Johnson told him he had been kidnapped and held hostage at Wessels’ house for five hours. She and two men held him there and stole his Jeep, wallet and money.

The fatal shooting is the second one this year on that stretch of Hamilton Street.

The first one happened in February less than a block away from the home where Wessels lived. In that shooting, Gunnar Doughty, 32, was charged with murder after police say he shot 30-year-old Dylan McCorkle in the head.