Practice to Deceive

earnest on Wednesday, July 11, 2012, there was room for many court watchers to sit. Russel Douglas’s family and friends sat in the front row of the gallery, and many of Huden’s longtime friends were there to support him. Doris Matz, Peggy Sue’s mother, was there—but not Peggy Sue herself. Doris sat far back in the corner of the gallery, well out of camera range.
    Shirley Hickman, whom I’ve known for almost fifty years and who lives on Whidbey Island, was there to help me and would be there every day to take notes and observe the body language of the defendant, the attorneys, witnesses—and the jury.
    The South Whidbey Record would be there each day, too, but they were no longer represented by Brian Kelly. Reporters Jessie Stensland and Ben Watanabe would spell each other, covering what was probably the most newsworthy trial Island County had seen in a decade or more.
    Every time the door opened, heads craned, mostly to see if Peggy Sue might walk in.
    Anyone who was listed as a possible witness waited in the hall outside the courtroom so they could not hear others’ testimony. Once they finished and were excused, they could come in and observe—if they wanted to.
    Prosecuting attorney Greg Banks began his opening remarks by saying that Russel Douglas’s death was not just murder; it was “an assassination.” He told the jury that the evidence would show that Jim Huden and his “accomplice” had deliberately lured Douglas to the cottage driveway off Wahl Road.
    “The defendant didn’t know the deceased,” he said. “Yet Jim Huden opened the victim’s car door, looked him in the face, and shot him.”
    Banks promised that he would provide jurors with a “framework” to help them in their deliberations.
    He gave them an overview of the whole case, and told them who the players were and what was happening in their lives over Christmas 2003.
    As the prosecutor referred to lead detective Mark Plumberg—who sat beside him every day at the prosecution table, and was available to testify or assist Banks throughout the trial—he said that as hard as the investigators worked, the case remained fallow from December 26, 2003, to July 2004, when Detective Sergeant Mike Beech began to receive phone calls from a man in Port Charlotte, Florida, who eventually revealed he was Bill Hill, a former member of Buck Naked and the X-hibitionists.
    “Mr. Hill will testify, and he will tell you that the defendant confessed a killing in this county. He told Mr. Hill that when he pulled the trigger, it gave him a rush.”
    Banks offered a possible motive for murder. Jim had detested his stepfather for the domestic violence with which he ruled his family when Huden was just a boy. Jim might well have carried a need for revenge most of his life. A witness for the state would explain that when he testified.
    Banks explained how a dissemination of facts about the search for the murder gun had led the detectives to retired Oregon law officer Keith Ogden, who had been holding on to it for Huden.
    (When I interviewed Greg Banks and Mark Plumberg later, they said that finding that gun and linking it to Jim Huden had turned a probable cold case into a winner. If Huden hadn’t wanted to someday sell that gun and get his money back— if he’d simply thrown it off a ferry that first day—he might have walked away free and clear.)
    But, of course, the .380 Bersa had become a vital piece of physical evidence that eventually trapped Jim Huden. They had almost enough to arrest him in late August 2004, but by then Huden had disappeared in the midst of a hurricane.
    Matt Montoya, whose brevity became familiar to the gallery, spent only two or three minutes in his opening remarks. He asked the jurors to view the “facts” critically, repeated that two or three times, and reminded them to be sure that the prosecuting attorney met the burden of proof.
    * * *
    B RENNA DOUGLAS WAS THE first witness for the state. Brenna had remained on Whidbey Island until about 2011 when she moved to Ellensburg on the promise of a job there. That hadn’t worked out, and she now lived in Ferndale, Washington—not far from Bellingham.
    Brenna was a large woman, but attractive. Her body was stiff as she took the witness chair, and she seemed nervous.
    Greg Banks asked her easy questions first. Her address and her profession.
    “How do you know Russel Douglas?”
    “My husband.”
    “When did he die?”
    “December 2003.”
    “Where did you meet