Long term handed down to Gold Bar man who dismembered girlfriend

Published 4:30 pm Friday, June 18, 2010

EVERETT — A Gold Bar man was sentenced today to nearly 38 years in prison for murdering his girlfriend and dismembering her body after she broke what he claimed was a “blood oath” promise to stop seeing another man.

Eric Christensen, 40, committed “a barbaric act; the kind of act that is not tolerated in a civilized society,” Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne said.

His punishment for Christensen was the maximum allowed under state sentencing guidelines.

Christensen was convicted of first-degree murder in the Jan. 2 killing of Sherry Harlan, 35, of Lynnwood.

Jurors deliberated for about three hours June 4 before finding Christensen guilty. The verdict followed a two-week trial that featured “graphic and ghastly testimony,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson said in court papers.

Evidence showed Christensen fatally stabbed Harlan at her apartment, dismembered her body and then scattered most of her remains in wooded areas of east Snohomish County. Her skull — a knife tip embedded in the bone — was found on the front seat of her car. The vehicle had been torched and abandoned along a gravel road in the foothills of the Cascade Range.

Harlan’s mother, brother and aunt spoke today. They told the judge they felt cheated. Christensen took somebody who can’t be replaced, they said. They wished the law would have required him to pay with this life.

Christensen told Wynne that the truth didn’t emerge at trial, and that he doesn’t consider himself evil.

Wynne said there was overwhelming evidence that Christensen killed Harlan and that the primary question decided by jurors was whether the defendant had premeditated the killing.

In a sentencing memorandum, the prosecutor urged Wynne to lock up Christensen for as long as possible.

“What is clear, based on defendant’s ghoulish behavior towards Sherry Harlan and her remains is that defendant is an unrepentant killer,” Matheson wrote. “Based on defendant’s criminal history we also know that this savage killing was not an isolated act. (Christensen) is a mortal danger to any woman with whom he has a relationship and to the community in general.”

Christensen earlier served a dozen years in prison for domestic violence assault. In 1994, he showed up at a Seattle bus stop armed with a rifle and tried to shoot an ex-girlfriend. He missed, he told police, because the weapon’s sights were out of adjustment. He also has a 1990 conviction for first-degree sexual abuse in Oregon.

Harlan’s case started as a missing person investigation after she failed to show up for work. Christensen spoke with detectives and admitted that the couple had fought.

One of the defendant’s friends cooperated with investigators and led them to Harlan’s remains. Christensen told detectives he had been angry with Harlan over her breaking what he called a “blood oath” promise to stop seeing another man.

Christensen had told detectives that he would have been justified in harming Harlan under his Wiccan faith, a claim that attracted additional attention to the case. In closing arguments at trial, Matheson told jurors that Christensen’s behavior had nothing to do with Wicca, but instead reflected the compulsions of a controlling, violent man.