By Jim Haley
Herald Writer
E-mails described as "relevant and critical" by prosecutors in the ongoing mail-order bride murder trial may be viewed by a Snohomish County Superior Court jury after all, a judge ruled Friday.
The e-mails were allegedly sent by Indle Gifford King Jr. to prospective brides in Eastern Europe and Asia, either just before or just after King’s 20-year-old mail-order wife, Anastasia King, disappeared in September 2000, prosecutors said.
Indle King, 40, is on trial for first-degree murder and witness tampering in the death of his wife.
Earlier this month, Judge George Bowden said he wouldn’t let paper copies of the same letters, found in the King home, to come in as evidence. The judge ruled they weren’t included in the scope of a search warrant that detectives served in December 2000. The warrant covered electronic information, not hard copies.
At the time, computer experts couldn’t find electronic versions of those letters on King’s computers.
Deputy prosecutor Coleen St. Clair told Bowden that she sent the computer experts back to King’s computer hard drives, and on a second attempt they retrieved the letters.
"The timing of these letters is absolutely relevant and critical" to the prosecution case, St. Clair told the judge.
Among other things, she told the judge that the letters reflect King telling prospective brides that a co-defendant, Daniel K. Larson, 21, was his best friend. Larson has already pleaded guilty to murdering Anastasia King and is expected to testify next week.
The defense maintains it was Larson alone who killed Anastasia King and disposed of her body in a shallow grave near Marysville. The state’s position is that Indle King held control over Larson and recruited him to help kill his wife.
One letter gives a date when Indle King would be free to marry again, St. Clair said. Another refers to a "business trip" he’s about to take the day before he leaves to visit his wife and her parents in her hometown of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in the former Soviet Union.
Anastasia King disappeared soon after the couple returned to Mountlake Terrace from that trip. Her body was found three months later.
She met Indle King in 1998 after her name was submitted to a service in Bishkek and her photo wound up in a mail-order bride magazine.
Despite defense attorney David Allen’s objection, Bowden said he would generally allow the e-mails because they came off the computer and were covered under the warrant.
Testimony was suspended Friday while lawyers attended to other matters, including a hearing pertaining to the e-mails. Testimony is expected to resume Monday.
Jim Townsend, chief criminal deputy prosecutor, said the state could finish in as little as five or seven more days of court time. The defense case will take anywhere from two to five days, Allen told the judge.
You can call Herald Writer Jim Haley at 425-339-3447 or send e-mail to haley@heraldnet.com.
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