By Scott North and Jim Haley
Herald Writers
A Snohomish County jury on Friday listened to a Mountlake Terrace man accused of murder spin a skein of alleged falsehoods to explain the September 2000 disappearance of his mail-order bride.
Prosecutors spent much of the afternoon playing a taped statement that Indle Gifford King Jr., 40, gave to police not long after his wife, Anastasia S. King, 20, dropped from sight.
On the tape, King claimed his wife had ended their 2 1/2-year marriage by abandoning him at the airport in Moscow, Russia, while the couple was returning from a visit to her parents’ home in Kyrgyzstan. Anastasia King ran away to unite with a boyfriend somewhere in the former Soviet Union, King told police.
"We spent less than 10 minutes in that country, and she split," he said, insisting he hadn’t seen or heard from his wife since.
But investigators knew when they recorded King’s statement on Oct. 3, 2000, that the couple had returned to the United States on the same plane, passing through customs in Seattle one minute apart in adjacent lines, Mountlake Terrace police Sgt. Craig McCaul told jurors. Anastasia King’s body was found three months later in a shallow grave near Marysville.
Detectives confronted Indle King on Nov. 2, 2000, with documents showing the couple had arrived in the country together, Mountlake Terrace police detective Julie Jamison testified.
"Mr. King looked at me, searched my face, took a moment, slapped a knee and said, ‘You mean to tell me she was on that plane?’ " she testified.
McCaul said King "was absolutely amazed that could happen. He said it was a large plane with hundreds of people on it. If she was there, he didn’t see her."
King is charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors allege he was angry because his wife was planning to divorce him, so he recruited a tenant in his home, convicted sex offender Daniel K. Larson, 21, to strangle her with a necktie while he held her down.
King has pleaded innocent. In opening statements, defense attorney David Allen told jurors that no physical evidence links his client to the killing, and that Larson concocted the story about King participating in the killing as part of a bid to save his own skin. The attorney also said any falsehoods his client told about his wife’s whereabouts were motivated by embarrassment over her leaving him for a younger man.
On the tape played Friday, King made repeated claims that his wife had been cheating on him with younger men. He also asserted that Anastasia King had been interested in working as an escort to businessmen visiting Seattle and speculated that she may have engaged in prostitution.
Still, King said that he was committed to making the marriage work.
"I think a lot of people were telling me she was having a separate, secret life. I didn’t want to believe it. I really wanted this marriage."
Others have presented a different picture of the young woman.
Her friend, Tatyana Boland of Seattle, said she and Anastasia King met at the University of Washington, where both were hoping to study law. Both young women were mail-order brides from the former Soviet Union.
Anastasia King knew she had made a mistake in marrying Indle King, and their marriage "was like war. They were fighting every day," Boland said.
Life with Indle King was so bad that during the summer before her death, Anastasia King had attempted suicide by cutting her wrists, her friend said.
Allen later confronted Boland with an e-mail she had written shortly after Anastasia King’s disappearance, suggesting the suicide attempt was motivated by despair over being separated from a boyfriend, and that anybody looking for her missing friend should look for that man.
You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431
or send e-mail to north@heraldnet.com.
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