BELLINGHAM — A Whatcom County Superior Court jury has convicted a 67-year-old former Bellingham man of first-degree murder in the October 1990 disappearance of his wife.
Prosecutor Dave McEachran told the jury that Alice Hummel disappeared after she confronted her husband about an allegation that he had molested one of their daughters. The defense said the woman vanished after she decided to abandon her family.
Bruce Hummel was brought back to Bellingham from a prison in Minnesota, where he was serving a federal sentence for cashing Alice Hummel’s disability checks. Her body was never found.
Jurors deliberated for most of Thursday before returning their verdict. The Bellingham Herald said they declined to talk to reporters, as did defense lawyer Jon Komorowski.
McEachran said the three Hummel children, now grown, are “extremely relieved” by the verdict.
The prosecutor said Hummel is looking at a sentence between 34 and 45 years. No sentencing date has been set.
The backbone of the case was a nine-year investigation by Bellingham police detectives, who began looking into Alice Hummel’s disappearance after her oldest daughter filed a missing person’s report in 2001.
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