OLYMPIA – By the time Arlene Roberts’ killer came up for sentencing, the 80-year-old woman had been dead for more than three decades, and no friends or relatives were left to speak for her in a right Washington guarantees to victims and their families. So King County sheriff’s Detective Scott Tompkins, who cracked the “cold case” in 2010 by tracking a fingerprint left at the scene to Ronald Wayne MacDonald, spoke. He argued that MacDonald, who accepted a plea bargain to second-degree manslaughter to avoid a trial on first-degree murder, should get a stiffer sentence than the agreement stated. Roberts was strangled with a blouse and a hairnet, and died “a horrific death,” he said, producing photos from the crime scene in the elderly widow’s trailer.
