Anatomy of a murder
Fallout in wake of WA police ‘massacre’
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Authorities in Washington state and Arkansas have been playing a game of finger-pointing, the Los Angeles Times editorialized that gun shows need to be more strictly regulated, and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly heavily criticized a couple of Pierce County, WA, Superior Court judges for their apparent leniency toward accused cop killer Maurice Clemmons.
Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also came under heavy fire for having initially commuted a life sentence Clemmons received for crimes committed when he was a juvenile. Corrections agencies in both Arkansas and Washington also took some heat. Washington gun rights advocates are concerned that this crime will be used as political capital to push for tougher gun control laws, even though the perpetrator violated every existing gun statute in the state.
In the end, there appears to have been a combination of massive failures in the criminal justice system that contributed to what some are now calling the “Parkland massacre” of four Lakewood, WA, police officers in late November. The man who evidently killed them, convicted felon Maurice Clemmons, was fatally shot in a confrontation with a Seattle police officer 42 hours later and some 40 miles north, in south Seattle.
Recovered from the first crime scene were two handguns, a .38 Special revolver with all six rounds expended, and a 9mm semiautomatic with one spent shell casing on the ground. The 9mm, according to Pierce County court documents, had been reported stolen in Seattle.
What has emerged from this case is the profile of a remorseless killer surrounded by several people who ignored his threats to kill police hours before he did it, and aided him in the hours after he had “taken care of his business.” Clemmons has become the once-living symbol of what has gone wrong with the criminal justice system and a walking testimonial to the absolute failure of gun control laws.
In addition, the Los Angeles Times, in its editorial, tried to spin the crime in an effort to push its own gun control agenda, demanding that the so-called “gun show loophole” needed to be closed. There is no evidence that either gun used in the crime was obtained by Clemmons at a gun show or was ever bartered at a gun show.
Anti-gun cartoonist Milt Priggee circulated an editorial cartoon suggesting that the National Rifle Association’s support for armed personal protection was somehow at fault. That cartoon outraged Washingtonians.
How did this horrific crime happen, and—more importantly—why?
Maurice Clemmons’ long slide toward infamy began as a juvenile in Arkansas, where he was born in 1972. By his own account, he had fallen in with the wrong crowd. The Seattle Times did an in-depth report on Clemmons, noting that by the time he was 16, he was already a criminal. His first caper may have been the 1989 burglary of the home of an Arkansas State Trooper, where he stole that man’s handgun and other items, including a cellular phone. The trooper tracked Clemmons down by discovering phone calls Clemmons had made from Arkansas to Des Moines, WA, on his phone bill. But Clemmons was not a one-timer. He did a strong-arm robbery and was kicked out of school for having a handgun on campus. In 1990, Clemmons was convicted in back-to-back trials of several criminal acts including assault, robbery and theft and drew a prison sentence that seemed, by some standards, outrageous: 108 years for a juvenile. He was 17 years old, and if the sentence had stood, he would not have been eligible for parole until 2021.
It was argued at the time that a white youth with Clemmons’ criminal history would never have drawn such a sentence, yet published accounts about his trials suggest he was no ordinary juvenile offender. According to the Seattle Times (referring to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), one trial saw the teenage Clemmons wearing leg shackles because the judge felt threatened by him. He also reportedly threw a holding cell lock at a jail guard, but hit his own mother instead by accident.
He drew prison sentences of 48 and 60 years for various felonies and was facing even more prison time for other felony charges that included possession of a handgun on school property, according to the Seattle Times.
But it was the lengthy sentence that would ultimately draw Huckabee’s attention in 2000, after Clemmons had served a decade in prison. Clemmons appealed to Huckabee, insisting that he had become a changed person in prison. Huckabee, a Baptist minister and conservative politician with a penchant for handing out “second chances” while in office, commuted Clemmons’ sentence, making Clemmons then eligible for parole. KING-5 News quoted Arkansas prosecutor Larry Jegley, who contended that “Maurice Clemmons had no business being on the streets.”
He got out of prison and in 2004, moved to Washington state where he had family. There he held various jobs and started a landscaping business.
Since the murders, disturbing evidence has surfaced suggesting that Clemmons was anything but a rehabilitated model citizen.
The Seattle Times and Tacoma News Tribune reported that Clemmons may have been connected to a series of armed robberies in the Puget Sound area, and that he had also been investigated for drug trafficking and federal postal violations. He had also been a suspect in an Arkansas armed robbery in 2004, not long after he had officially relocated to Washington.
Clemmons also bears a striking resemblance to an artist’s sketch of an armed robbery suspect in Washington, which also caught the attention of a Corrections Department official. For unexplained reasons, there was no follow-up when that tip was forwarded to Seattle Crime Stoppers and apparently never got to detectives working those robbery cases.
Then in May 2009, Clemmons seems to have snapped. He started throwing rocks at cars and homes of neighbors and when sheriff’s deputies arrived, they tangled with two of Clemmons’ cousins, and finally with Clemmons, who ended up being charged with multiple felony counts.
Two days later deputies were back at Clemmons’ Parkland home again, this time on a complaint from his wife, Nicole Smith, that Clemmons had sexually assaulted her 12-year-old daughter. She reportedly recanted that complaint, but in July, Clemmons was arrested for the alleged attack.
Published accounts say Arkansas issued a fugitive warrant for Clemmons following those charges because he had violated conditions of his parole. The no-bail warrant reportedly called for arrest and extradition to Arkansas, but that warrant was later rescinded, and a war of words erupted in e-mails between Washington and Arkansas officials.
Throughout the Summer, the verbal battle continued but on Oct. 2—almost two months after an Arkansas corrections official told Washington authorities that they were putting the Clemmons case on hold until pending Washington criminal charges had been adjudicated—Arkansas reportedly asked Washington authorities to “Please continue supervision of this offender pending the disposition of the pending charges.” Arkansas promised to reconsider taking Clemmons back to prison, depending upon the outcome of his cases.
Anger and Planning
While he was in jail, psychologists from Western State Hospital interviewed Clemmons and found him competent to stand trial on the May charges. He was reportedly advised that prosecutors would seek a life sentence under Washington’s “Three Strikes” statute.
On Nov. 23, Clemmons’ wife posted a bail bond, and he was out. It was reportedly the third time in 2009 he had posted bond, and it was a costly chain of events, totaling $420,000. The Tacoma News Tribune also reported that over the Summer, liens had been placed against his properties. Perhaps angry that he was now in a financial free-fall and might be sent back to prison for life, Clemmons’ erratic behavior escalated, according to various accounts.
He spent Thanksgiving with family and friends at the home of a relative in south King County, where he first apparently announced his desire to kill police officers.
On the night of Nov. 28, Clemmons—the convicted felon out on bond who, under both state and federal firearms statutes could not legally possess a firearm—showed a pair of handguns to his half-brother, Rickey Hinton and his cousins, brothers Douglas and Eddie Davis—and repeated that he planned to kill police officers, according to court documents. Hinton and the Davis brothers lived on property owned by Clemmons, but in separate nearby homes. Clemmons asked Hinton to give him the keys to a white pickup truck, which he said he would need the following morning, and Hinton gave him the keys, according to court documents.
Whether they believed Clemmons, none of the three men took any action to notify authorities of the threats, or the fact that Clemmons had a couple of handguns. In the aftermath of what was about to happen, all three would be part of a larger group of friends and family members now facing serious charges in relation to the Parkland shooting.
Newspaper accounts and court documents have established a timeline of Clemmons’ activities and details of the morning of Nov. 29. It would become the single costliest day in the history of Washington State law enforcement.
Sunday, Nov. 29
Forza coffee shop is at the south end of a small strip mall where Steel Street South makes a long curve to the east, onto 116th Street South, south from the busy intersection of S. 112th Street and Steele. This is in unincorporated Pierce County, at the north end of McChord Air Force Base, about a quarter-mile south of Highway 512, a main tributary to Interstate 5 south of Tacoma.
At approximately 7:30 a.m., a man named Darcus Allen was awakened by Clemmons. He asked Allen, a convicted felon from Arkansas who had done time in prison for his involvement in a double homicide almost two decades ago and was currently wanted on an Arkansas robbery warrant, to drive him somewhere in the borrowed pickup. Allen, paroled in 2004, reportedly lived in the same prison barracks as Clemmons when both were incarcerated, according to the Associated Press. He allegedly dropped Clemmons off at a car wash near the coffee shop and drove around for a few minutes.
Shortly after 8 a.m., four Lakewood police officers—Sgt. Mark Renninger and Officers Tina Griswold, Greg Richards and Ronald Owens—are seated together preparing for their day shift. Through the door, a burly black male wearing a black jacket and blue jeans enters, walks past the four seated officers and goes up to the counter. One of two employees on duty at the shop would later tell police that the man had “a blank look on his face.” That man was Maurice Clemmons, standing 5-feet, 8 inches and weighing 235 pounds.
Without saying a word, Clemmons reached into his jacket and pulled out the .38 Special revolver and opened fire. Griswold and Renninger are apparently shot first, once each in the head, and Owens, apparently rising in reaction, is hit in the neck. All three wounds are fatal and it appears Griswold and Renninger are killed outright. Richards is able to get up and grapple with the gunman toward the door, drawing his .40-caliber Glock service pistol in the process and firing at least one round into Clemmons’ abdomen above the navel. At that distance, the wound should have been debilitating if not fatal, with the Speer Gold Dot hollow point bullet traveling at approximately 1,200 feet per second. Investigators later find two spent .40-caliber shell casings, but not the gun that fired them. Pierce County Sheriff’s Det. Ed Troyer, the agency’s public information officer, later tells reporters that he was surprised Clemmons wasn’t killed by that bullet.
But Clemmons manages to shoot Richards fatally in the head, dropping the now-empty .38 revolver and the 9mm semiautomatic.
The incident is over in seconds, but long enough for the two baristas to flee the coffee shop, jump into a car and drive to the nearby gas station where they borrow a telephone and call 911. They see the gunman first on foot, and then getting into the white pickup truck, which speeds away.
Minutes later, the first Pierce County sheriff’s deputy arrives to find the carnage. Quickly, the scene is a mass of flashing blue lights from several jurisdictions.
Massive manhunt
The killings ignite a massive manhunt spearheaded by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. Court papers and published accounts carefully document how Clemmons returned to Hinton’s house, saying he had been “shot by the cops.” Clemmons then awoke the Davis brothers. Hinton gave them the keys to his car and told them to get Clemmons “out of there,” court documents state. Hinton then gave his cell phone to a 12-year-old grandson and told the youth to delete Clemmons’ telephone numbers.
Court documents say the Davis brothers drove Clemmons to the home of his aunt, Letrecia Nelson, in the King County suburban Algona area. There he was treated for the gunshot wound, which was stuffed with gauze and cotton and sealed with duct tape.
Clemmons changed clothes and was driven to the Auburn Super Mall parking lot several miles to the north. There he was picked up by another woman who drove him to her house. She bought medical supplies and treated his wound again. He changed clothes again, did a load of laundry and then she drove him to another location and left him. She was stopped by Seattle police officers and questioned. Detectives found blood and other evidence in her car and residence.
By then, Clemmons had contacted other people in need of a place to stay. Before Clemmons arrived at that house, the residents, his aunt and her husband, left and drove to the Seattle Police Department’s nearby precinct to report what had happened. A SWAT team was deployed for several hours, heavily damaging the house, but Clemmons remained at large.
As the case unfolded, it took on national implications as media reports revealed the Huckabee connection. The “blame game” erupted, with liberal pundits, including the Post-Intelligencer’s Joel Connelly, fixing his sights on the conservative ex-governor and former Republican presidential hopeful, who might be considering another run in 2012. Linking Huckabee to a multiple police homicide because of his clemency for the suspected killer was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
Ironically, in the days following the shooting, it was only Huckabee who appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News The O’Reilly Factor program and accepted responsibility for having shown clemency toward the killer.
Amid the media frenzy, police continued patiently tightening the noose. Forty-two hours after the Parkland killings, that noose would close on a quiet residential street in Seattle as the lone gunman faced a lone patrol officer.
At approximately 2:45 a.m. on Dec. 1, Seattle Officer Benjamin Kelly was on routine patrol and spotted a car with the hood up and engine running on South Kenyon Street near its intersection with Rainier Avenue South. He checked the license plate and learned that the car had been reported stolen just hours earlier. As he sat in his patrol car, an alert Kelly spotted a man approaching his car from the rear and when the man moved out into the street, Kelly got out and confronted the dark figure.
According to statements to the press from Seattle Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel, the officer immediately recognized Clemmons from bulletins.
Clemmons had his hands in his pockets and Kelly ordered him to show his hands. Clemmons instead began to move around the rear of the car, in a counter-clockwise motion toward the sidewalk, simultaneously reaching into his waistband area, police said.
Kelly opened fire. Clemmons, fatally hit, staggered a few feet and fell near some bushes. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered the .40-caliber Glock taken from the Parkland shooting scene, in Clemmons’ jacket pocket. Police sources are convinced that Clemmons was intending to murder Kelly.
‘It ain’t right’
With Clemmons dead, authorities began rounding up everyone who had rendered him assistance during the previous two days. In addition to Hinton, the Davis brothers and Allen, two women, Quiana M. Williams and Letrecia Nelson, 52, were arrested.
According to court documents, Nelson told a Tacoma police detective that she had not seen Clemmons. In reality, the documents say, Nelson and Cicely Clemmons, another relative of the suspect, helped when Clemmons and the Davis brothers appeared at their home in Algona. Nelson made Cicely turn over car keys and cash to Clemmons.
Cicely later tells the detective that Clemmons dined with her, Letrecia and Darcus Allen on Thanksgiving and “he was telling everyone…that he planned to kill cops, he planned to kill children at a school, and he planned to kill as many people as he could in an intersection.”
This final entry in one court document perhaps best sums up the thinking of relatives who are facing charges now that Clemmons is gone.
Letrecia told Cicely “they would not call the police because family was more important.”
Cicely said, “It ain’t right.”
Letrecia said, “It ain’t right, but family’s more important.”
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