Last Dance, Last Chance

ministry again. If Jim had fooled him so completely, how could he ever know what any convict was really thinking?
    Eloise Fitzner was laid to rest, and her brother adopted the last two cats she had rescued—Bruce and Sheba—and took home a half-finished ceramic piece that she had been painting as a surprise for him when she died. Michael Helland said he had no interest in what happened to Jim Elledge as long as he couldn’t hurt anyone else. Whether her confessed killer lived or died, it wouldn’t bring Eloise back.
    On May 27, 1998, Jim Elledge pleaded guilty to aggravated first-degree murder. Snohomish County Prosecutor Jim Krider said he would seek the death penalty. Elledge instructed his attorney not to send arguments against his execution to the prosecutors. Not only did he not want to fight to live, he seemed anxious to embrace death.
    He would have no trial per se; when he faced a jury, they would decide only his punishment. Would he get a life without parole sentence? Or would he face death by hanging or lethal injection? In Washington State, he could choose the method of execution.
    Bill Jacquette, Elledge’s public defender, had promised him that he would argue—not for his client’s life—but for the death penalty, as Elledge wanted. But, as trial neared in mid-October, there were those who stepped up to try to save him. A Seattle attorney made a motion to Superior Court Judge Joseph Thibodeau, asking to raise potential defense issues that would block the death penalty. She said she was speaking for a lawyers’ group.
    Judge Thibodeau denied her motion. “I’m satisfied it’s not for the Court to override the constitutional rights of a fully informed and competent person in how he directs his particular defense.”
    If Jim Elledge wanted to die, he might just get his wish, although representatives of churches of many denominations wanted to rescue him. It was a most unusual situation: most accused killers fight to live; Jim Elledge was fighting to die.
    The actual trial began on October 20, 1998. It was an abbreviated affair, although too long for Elledge.
    Prosecutor Krider presented three witnesses the first day. Lynnwood detective James Nelson gave the jurors an overview of the case. He told them how Jim Elledge had hated Eloise and how he had carried out his plan. Nelson read a letter of warning that the victim had sent to the woman who was now the defendant’s wife: “Please don’t stay with that awful man anymore,” Eloise had pleaded with Ann Elledge. “He told me he is just using you for sex and because he needs the income from your job.”
    That letter had made Jim Elledge angry.
    The jurors learned of the grisly results of that anger from the forensic pathologist who performed the postmortem exam of Eloise Fitzner’s body. They blanched as autopsy photos were passed to them. The courtroom lights were dimmed, and they watched the Lynnwood investigators’ video footage of the crime scene.
    Next, they listened to Jim Elledge’s confession to murder. In a way, even he didn’t understand why he had done what he did, but there was no question that he had killed Eloise after planning and plotting how to accomplish it.
    “There’s something wrong with my nature,” his voice, amplified in the courtroom, began. “An evil I can’t control. I had to make my mind up that I was going to get even with this woman who tried to wreck my marriage earlier in the year. I had been carrying that anger inside of me for over a year…and it just spewed out.”
    Later in his confession, he seemed baffled. “I had no real reason to go after this woman. I mean, I have had a reason to be angry with her, but I didn’t have a reason to kill her…and I threw away a fairly good life, you know…I couldn’t control myself.”
    Elledge had written a letter to his wife before he lured Eloise and Rita into the church—a communiqué that added to the premeditation theory.
    “My Darling Wife,
    “I’m really sorry I screwed up our marriage…Do one thing for me. O.K.? Turn to God, honey. I know things will be bad for you for a while, but give God your heart and soul. I will always love you…
    “Jim.”
    Although they had been forced to look at terrible pictures and listen to a killer describe his crimes, the jurors held up well until Eloise’s brother testified in the late afternoon. At that point, several of them had tears in their eyes.
    Mike Helland told jurors of his sister’s strong faith.