Last Dance, Last Chance

Superior Court Judge Jay Hamilton in Kitsap County and was sentenced for his three earlier convictions on the second-degree assault charges involving the three children. He was sentenced to three concurrent 10-year terms on those charges, and returned to the Grays Harbor County Jail.
     
    William Batten’s initial defense was that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. It proved useless when he underwent psychiatric examination and the results did not establish mental illness that would meet the requirements under the M’Naughton Rule. Under M’Naughton, the killer has to have been unaware of the difference between right and wrong at the time of the crime, and to have made no attempt to escape or to cover up his crime. Batten knew that what he had done was wrong, and he told an elaborate story to take the blame off himself.
     
    During the second week in September 1975, William Batten appeared before a jury of seven women and five men. Prosecutor Janhunen told the jury that the crimes were vicious and premeditated, and he scoffed at Batten’s version of the fatal encounter wherein he asserted that the women had made sexual advances to him. Instead, Janhunen painted a picture of two young women stalked and taken by complete surprise.
    He surmised that Tina and Gaelisa were trapped in their mummy-type sleeping bags when Batten’s husky body loomed over them in their shelter.
    “I suggest to you that a decision was made by two 19-year-old girls not to fight.”
    Pinned in their sleeping bags, Tina and Gael could have been quickly subdued if the heavy defendant had merely lain across those bags.
    Prosecutor Janhunen pointed out that the girls’ desperate ploy of nonresistance meant “submitting to being tied up and gagged and going along with everything until the stabbing began.”
    Major Kendersei’s testimony regarding Batten’s oral and then written confession was one of the most damaging in the trial. That, combined with the profusion of physical and lab evidence gathered by Sheriff Sumpter and his men, convinced a jury. It took them only two and a half hours to find Batten guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. Batten showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
    On October 10, Batten was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison, plus the compulsory deadly weapon charge—meaning that he could not hope to be out of prison for more than 30 years.
    The investigation carried out by Sheriff Sumpter was a classic melding of old-time seat-of-the-pants lawman’s savvy and the utilization of modern forensic science. His detectives talked to hundreds of people, racking up more overtime hours than a small county’s budget could ever hope to reimburse. They knew that, but it didn’t matter to them. They found a killer, and they found him before he could harm anyone else. Prosecutor Janhunen’s courtroom expertise did the rest.
     
    Gaelisa Burton’s mother, Grace, had raised her as a single parent, and much of Gael’s gentleness and philosophies about life came from her mother. After she buried her daughter, Grace Burton became active in Washington State’s first group to support the rights of victims: Families and Friends of Victims of Violent Crimes and Missing Persons, volunteering to help other parents who had suffered similar losses. She worked at her full-time job as a caretaker for the ill and the elderly in their homes, and then gave many hours a week to Families and Friends.
    Harold Sumpter was named National Police Officer of the Month for his work on the Burton-Jacobsen case as well as for other successful investigations and service to the public in Grays Harbor County. He died of a heart attack in 1999.
    William Batten is still incarcerated in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, and his first possible release date is in 2043.

The Desperate Hours
    T here have probably been dozens of movies about killers on the run who burst into the homes of strangers and hold them hostage. It is a terrifying thought, particularly with the current rise of so-called home invasion robberies in cities. What would you do if you opened your door to find a man with a gun? Even worse, what would you do if you were a woman home alone with your three small children?

T hat ultimate nightmare happened to Patricia Jacque five days before Christmas. December 20 is the beginning of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. On that day it doesn’t get light until after eight and the sun