Anatomy of a murder: Hearing gives details of Jerome man’s shooting death

Nov. 29—×

JEROME — “Hello. This is William Eakin.”

The voice sounded deliberate, almost halting.

It was the beginning of a 911 call that murder suspect Kevin Kuintzle purportedly made in an effort to persuade law enforcement officers that his victim, 84-year-old William Eakin, was actually alive.

In the call to a SIRCOMM dispatcher, the individual asks for an officer to be sent to Eakin’s house on Bob Barton Road, and to get people off his property. The caller, purporting to be Eakin, said he was in Twin Falls with his daughter, and would be home in an hour.

The dispatcher knew the call, which came in shortly about 4 p.m. Sept. 17, 2023, was suspicious. For one thing, the people on his property were law enforcement officers making a welfare check after Eakin hadn’t been seen that day, even to open the church he attended each Sunday morning.

Second, the dispatcher had been informed a short time earlier that Eakin had been found dead in his bed with what looked to be a bullet wound in his head. The victim was still wearing his CPAP mask.

The call ended with the dispatcher attempting to connect the caller with a deputy, while the caller complained about questions the dispatcher was asking him, including what phone number he was calling from, and the name of his daughter.

That was another reason for suspicion. Eakin didn’t have any children.

The caller hung up.

A case unfolds

Kuintzle sat in court in mid-November for his preliminary hearing with a case laid out by prosecuting attorney Sam Beus. Witnesses told of the suspect’s actions that led from Jerome to Twin Falls.

Many preliminary hearings in which a judge decides whether there is probable cause for a case to go forward for a defendant involve a handful of witnesses. This hearing revolving around a charge of first-degree murder, however, was different.

Beus called 21 witnesses to the stand.

At the end of the hearing, Judge John ruled that Kuintzle would be bound over to district court on murder, concealment of evidence and grand theft charges. A jury trial has been set for May.

Among the witnesses was Erika Brock, a woman who said she accompanied the defendant to the multi-acre property where Eakin was found dead. Kuintzle, according to her testimony, said the victim “wouldn’t be missed for a while,” and suggested that he might have committed suicide.

The night before the murder, Brock testified, Kuintzle called her, saying that if things worked out, they would be “set for life.”

Brock said she was confused by the comment and wondered if he had secured a good job that included benefits.

It ended up not being a job that paid benefits, but prosecutors say Kuintzle stole items from Eakin’s cluttered property. Brock said Kuintzle later told her the house was an “easy mark” — someone could steal from it easily.

There was a lot to pick from. One law enforcement officer said the inside of the house resembled something from the TV show “Hoarders.”

While there was a lot of trash, Jerome County Sheriff’s Detective Jon Daubner said, there were also some things of value.

Some 500 to 600 guns were prevalent on the property, behind almost every nook and cranny, Daubner said.

Brock, who said she met Kuintzle a month before the murder and communicated with him regularly, said the two drove in separate vehicles on a Sunday afternoon to the property.

A neighbor, who had been told earlier that day that Eakin was missing and his vehicle was gone, saw Eakin’s Toyota Rav4 at about 3 p.m. near a machine shop at the property.

“I kind of did a welfare check,” the neighbor said. “I thought it was really odd.”

The neighbor said he observed two people — a man and a woman — at the shed, with the man digging through items. The woman said she was Eakin’s granddaughter and that Eakin was in a care facility in Twin Falls.

The neighbor, although armed, had forgotten his cellphone, and the pair — allegedly Kuintzle and Brock — soon left.

Law enforcement was soon at the scene where they found Eakin’s body in bed.

Brock testified she drove Eakin’s vehicle and ended up leaving it along Golf Course Road upon Kuintzle’s insistence.

Kuintzle picked up Brock and they drove to the Twin Falls water treatment plant in the Snake River Canyon, where Kuintzle apparently threw a gun and Brock’s computer notebook in the river, saying it could be traced by police, she said.

They parted ways for the day and he let her take his car, a Honda Civic.

Kuintzle called Brock again the next Monday morning and told her to check the news, and she learned about the Jerome murder, Brock said.

That’s when puzzle pieces came together.

“Everything started falling into place in my head,” she said. The next day she went to an appointment with a Twin Falls County prosecutor about a separate case, and on the visit revealed she knew information about the Jerome murder.

Law enforcement started looking for Kuintzle. They spotted him in Heyburn and later apprehended him after a pursuit on Interstate 86 that ended near Pocatello, after the Camaro he was driving ran over spike strips.

While Kuintzle was charged with first-degree murder, grand theft and destruction of evidence, Brock had legal problems of her own in connection with the incident, being charged with grand theft, destruction of evidence and withholding knowledge of a felony.

She entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors in June in which prosecutors would recommend a suspended sentence with probation.

But her time out on court compliance has not been smooth and that could affect her sentence. She has failed to show up for drug testing and has failed tests, records say. Her sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 9.

Defense attorneys noted Brock did not see the killings and said Kuintzle did not admit to them.

But Brock said Kuintzle did admit to the killings, “in so many words,” Brock said.

Defenders also said Brock’s memory was unreliable because of drug use, and she can’t actually remember the events of the day without referring to notes from police interviews.

Besides Brock’s testimony, DNA evidence also connected Kuintzle to the scene, investigators say. Beus showed reports from analysis by the Idaho State Police Forensics Services that showed a strong reliability that he had touched a doorknob of a door that had been detached from its hinges and thrown in a stairwell, and he had been drinking from a bottle of Mountain Dew that was on a hood of a car.

In addition, Kuintzle told Brock that he returned to the Eakin property and stole some items, including a checkbook, according to testimony.

The lead investigator said two guns were also discovered to have been taken from the property, presumably by Kuintzle. One of the guns was later found in Kuintzle’s car after he was apprehended, and a pawn shop owner testified Kuintzle pawned the other one, police say.

The 9 mm pistol that was used in Eakin’s killing was found — with its hammer cocked — in January, tucked into a box on Eakin’s back porch.

A troubled past

A former halfway house roommate of Kuintzle testified about his relationship with the defendant. The two met a couple months before the murder, he said, and Kuintzle’s behavior went from stable to erratic near the time of the murder.

Kuintzle had started to use drugs, the former roommate said, and “his behavior changed very rapidly.”

He said Kuintzle had told stories about a property that had an building full of guns, and him getting into outbuildings on the property from which he would bring home valuables, including tools.

He said he received a call from Kuintzle on the morning of Sept. 17, who asked him about his favorite gun, and later that day when they met told a story about him using drugs with a property’s caretaker and shooting guns with him and later dividing guns into two piles.

In a Twin Falls County case, Kuintzle was charged with robbery and kidnapping after police say he confronted a woman near the campus on the evening of Sept. 17 and demanded a phone, money and a car. People playing disc golf nearby saw the woman was in distress and came to her aid and the suspect walked away, according to court records.

No court dates have been set in that case, as the Jerome County case has taken priority.

At the start of the hearing, a handcuffed Kuintzle asked Judge Lothspeich to have one of his hands released from handcuffs so he could take notes. Beus objected, saying that Kuintzle had regularly threatened deputies since his incarceration.

Lothspeich, noting that Kuintzle was still in belly chains, agreed to the defendant’s request while warning him not to cause disruptions.

Kuintzle has been charged with multiple offenses since he was taken into custody; he is being held at the Idaho Department of Correction facility in Kuna and was charged with injury to jail property when he removed an electronic device as he was being transported to Jerome for the preliminary hearing, records say.

Upon getting to Jerome, he resisted and made threats against officers as they attempted to have him go into a body scanner that could detect contraband, police say. A strip search found he had several plastic pieces, likely broken-off comb teeth, that police say could be used as picks or to tamper with locks, records say.

About the victim

Eakin, 84, had a colorful history.

Born in Jerome, he graduated from Jerome High School in 1957 and earned degrees in physics and engineering from the College of Idaho, according to his obituary.

He had a passion for airplanes and worked at Boeing before serving in the Air Force for eight years. He was a pilot for Delta Airlines and retired in 1999 as an international captain.

He made surgical instruments and spiral staircases and returned to Jerome to work on his ranch, Eakin Land & Livestock.

One reason he had so many guns — up to 600 — was that if he saw a squirrel or something that was bothering him, “he had something handy,” a neighbor said during the court hearing.

The neighbor said their friendship was “very tight,” and the two often shot skeet together. Eakin was very giving, he said, and cared more about others than he cared for himself.

Another neighbor said Eakin sometimes went by the name “Wild Willy,” and came to his house to introduce himself when he moved in.

A court hearing was held in November to close Eakin’s estate, a neighbor said. It was a huge undertaking. The cluttered condition of the house and property were mentioned several times during the preliminary hearing, and some of it had to do with his multitude of interests.

“Willy had more hobbies than more than 10 could have,” a neighbor said.

Eric Goodell reports for the Times-News. Reach him at Eric.goodell@magicvalley.com.