Guilty plea in 2006 Everett killing

Published 10:51 pm Friday, June 5, 2009

EVERETT — A rollercoaster of a murder prosecution reached a resolution Friday after the defendant pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Carl Mattos, 48, admitted he killed Dennis Brockman in 2006. He was angry with Brockman, 63, for snitching on him during a federal investigation into illegal gun sales a couple of years earlier. He punched and kicked Brockman but didn’t intend to kill the Lynnwood man, Mattos admitted.

Mattos pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. As part of the plea, Mattos agreed to a 10-year prison sentence, the maximum under the law, his attorney Marybeth Dingledy said.

“It’s a sad case. He never intended to kill him,” the veteran Snohomish County public defender said.

Mattos twice faced first-degree murder charges in connection with the slaying.

Federal authorities also reviewed the killing as a potential death-penalty case after learning that Brockman provided information that helped send Mattos to prison for a couple of months.

Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Bonnie Tweten first dropped the murder charge in September after investigators were unable to find forensic evidence on a tennis shoe to link Mattos to the killing. Mattos was set free but not for long.

He was arrested and charged again after his co-defendant, Adam Ulanowski, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit ­second-degree murder and agreed to testify against Mattos. Ulanowski was expected to testify that he saw Mattos beat and choke Brockman during an apparent robbery at the man’s Lynnwood mobile home.

But there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed with the charge, Tweten said.

“We had minimal circumstantial evidence of his involvement,” she said. “We only had a motive and the testimony of the co-defendant.”

Mattos faced decades behind bars if convicted of first-degree murder. He is expected to be sentenced June 24.

Ulanowski, 31, is scheduled to be sentenced the same day. He faces more than six years in prison.

Investigators linked Ulanowski to the slaying through stolen property, court records show. Everett police reported to detectives they found an abandoned car full of checks, credit cards and paper ­documents. Some of the property belonged to Brockman.

Police were able to lift a fingerprint off one of the documents and traced the print back to a woman. She told investigators she got the documents from Ulanowski, who had traded them for methamphetamine, prosecutors wrote.

Brockman’s body was found Aug. 7, 2006, inside his ­Lynnwood-area mobile home.

He was a known drug dealer who kept large amounts of cash in his house, court records show. He also was a partner in a pawnshop and often had jewelry, watches and tools at home. Detectives believed Brockman had been robbed.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com.