SEATTLE — The mother of a man suspected of killing his grandparents says her parents always “saw the good” in Michael Chadd Boysen and were like “second parents” to him.
Although Boysen, 26, had spent time in prison for burglary and robberies related to a drug addiction, Melanie Taylor said he “never threatened the family and the family never felt threatened by him.”
Taylor’s comments, made to King County sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West, were released Thursday. The family has requested privacy.
Robert R. Taylor, 82, and Norma J. Taylor, 80, were strangled last Saturday in their Renton home. They had hosted a family welcome home party for Boysen the night before, after his release from prison.
The King County medical examiner’s office released the cause of death Thursday.
Melanie Taylor found the bodies.
“When it came to Chadd, they saw the good in him and were forgiving of his choices,” she said of her parents. “They were warrior spirits fighting for a cause and that cause was Chadd.
“They still love him and I do too,” she said.
Taylor described a loving boy and good student who developed addictive behaviors as he grew up. She said she and her former husband adopted the boy as a baby and she “loved him from the minute he was put in my arm.”
Boysen was arrested Tuesday after a daylong standoff at a motel in Lincoln City, Ore. He’s in serious condition and conscious at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, West said Thursday.
The elderly couple had picked Boysen up last Friday from the Washington state prison at Monroe. They spent about six hours that day driving him on errands to get things he needed to start a six-month drug treatment and rehabilitation program, Melanie Taylor said.
At a family celebration dinner that night, “Chadd was upbeat and talked about the wonderful day he had with his grandparents,” she recalled.
After the bodies were found, King County Sheriff John Urquhart called Boysen extremely dangerous because of threats he had made while in prison against his family and law enforcement. Authorities didn’t learn of the threats until after he made the news, suspected of killing in his grandparents.
Detectives have determined that Boysen checked in under his own name and spent Saturday night at a motel in the south Seattle suburb of Tukwila, not far from his grandparents’ home, West said.
He surfaced next in Lincoln City, Ore.
The co-manager of a motel there said Boysen seemed normal. He was friendly, chatty, paid with cash and showed his identification as if he had nothing to hide.
Boysen said he was on a road trip when he checked in Monday, said Leah Kallimanis, the co-manager at WestShore OceanFront Suites.
It wasn’t until early Tuesday morning, as she and her husband and motel co-manager, Adrian Kallimanis, were watching TV news and going over the previous day’s guest log that it hit her.
“All of a sudden my wife said, ‘Oh my gosh, I checked that guy in yesterday.’ She looked at the registration form and the name and she said, ‘This is the guy who is on the news right now,’ ” Adrian Kallimanis told The Seattle Times.
They called police, which prompted the standoff that ended with officers storming Boysen’s room and finding him lying on the floor with self-inflicted cuts.
The King County prosecutor’s office is working on charges, but spokesman Dan Donohoe could not say when they’ll be filed.
Boysen is held on a no-bail warrant from the Washington Department of Corrections for violating terms of his release.
He could be returned to Washington in a matter of days. It could take weeks if he fights extradition, Donohoe said.
It could not be determined if Boysen has a lawyer.
Boysen had just finished serving nine months in prison on a burglary conviction, said Washington state Corrections Department spokesman Chad Lewis. He was previously in prison between 2006 and February 2011 for four robbery convictions. Those convictions were related to an addiction to narcotic painkillers, Lewis said.
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