Former Everett bar owner now faces 22 felony sex charges

EVERETT — Former Anchor Pub owner and alleged serial rapist Christian Sayre has been arrested for the fourth time in six months.

Police placed the Everett man in handcuffs Wednesday after a Snohomish County Superior Court hearing and transported him to the Snohomish County Jail. Superior Court Judge Millie Judge set bail at $1 million.

Sayre, 35, now faces 22 felony sex charges. Sixteen of the alleged crimes happened in Snohomish County. The other eight allegations came from Washington County, Oregon, where Sayre used to live. New court documents indicate one victim was a child.

He owned the historic Anchor Pub on Hewitt Avenue in Everett for six years, until 2021. Police initially arrested him in October for investigation of two counts of second-degree rape and one count of indecent liberties. He posted $120,000 bond hours later.

An investigation during the ensuing months revealed dozens of other people who reported they’d been sexually assaulted by Sayre in the past 20 years. One woman told detectives she was a child when Sayre assaulted her in 2012.

The investigation turned up victims who reported in recent years that they went to Sayre’s bar in the 1000 block of Hewitt Avenue, “where they only had a few drinks but had no recollection of what occurred afterward. … Upon waking up, the victims believed they had been sexually assaulted,” according to an Everett police news release last fall.

Everett detectives searched Sayre’s home last November and found a notebook containing 32 names, as well as hard drives with child porn. Among the other evidence seized were seven old phones. The memory card in one of them had sexually explicit photos and videos of the 15-year-old girl Sayre allegedly assaulted in 2012, according to court documents.

One by one, detectives tried to contact people named in the notebook. At least four of those women reported Sayre sexually assaulted them in Oregon. The newly alleged assaults were dated as early as 2001.

A grand jury in Oregon indicted Sayre earlier this year for first-degree sodomy, first-degree sexual abuse and three counts of first-degree rape. A Washington County, Oregon, judge signed a felony warrant for police to arrest Sayre in Everett last month. He was arrested and booked into jail March 22.

Last week, Sayre posted a $700,000 bond and walked out of jail for the third time since his initial arrest in October. That same day, prosecutors charged Sayre with six additional felony sex crimes: four counts of third-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

In 2012, Sayre met a 14-year-old girl at the Everett Mall, deputy prosecutor Taryn Jones wrote in new charging papers. The girl told a detective she was “basically homeless,” the charges say. The girl reported she first told Sayre she was 16 when they met, but he found out she was younger than that weeks later. Sayre and the girl had repeated sexual contact when she was 15, she told detectives.

When the girl told Sayre no, or that she did not like something, he had a “so what attitude,” she reported.

On Wednesday, Jones filed a motion to increase bail from $700,000 to $1 million, essentially asking for Sayre to be placed in custody again.

The deputy prosecutor cited the new charges when asking the judge to set a new bail amount.

“This additional information frankly just adds to the wealth of information about Mr. Sayre’s risk to the community,” Jones told the courtroom. “… His behavior is incomparable to other cases that we have in this court, frankly by just the number of acts alleged, the number of alleged victims and the extent of time it was continuing on before intervention of the courts.”

Jones acknowledged that Sayre had complied with the conditions of electronic home monitoring but argued that was not enough security to protect the community.

“Multiple of the alleged incidents occurred in Mr. Sayre’s home,” Jones said. “The risk is not alleviated by Mr. Sayre being at his home.”

Defense attorney Kelly Canary filed a motion to maintain bail at $700,000, arguing Sayre has done everything he should since his initial arrest.

“Mr. Sayre is looking forward to proving his innocence in court,” Canary told the courtroom. “As the bail motion lays out, the state’s case is not as great as the state thinks that it is.”

In Canary’s motion, she wrote that much of the evidence in the case against Sayre is circumstantial.

“Many of the women who claim to be sexual assault victims of Mr. Sayre were intoxicated,” Canary wrote. “Many don’t remember what happened or if anything happened. One of the women who claimed Mr. Sayre sexually assaulted her messaged him for the next two years and made other dates with Mr. Sayre in theory to ‘hook up.’”

Canary also said there are a lot of people in the community supporting Sayre who volunteered collateral for him to be released from jail.

Jones argued the idea that Sayre has community support does not alleviate prosecutors’ concerns.

“He’s had community support this entire past decade,” Jones said. “In fact, what was indicated in the original affidavit of probable cause is that there were people aware of what was going on who did not intervene.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear if Gov. Jay Inslee planned to immediately sign a warrant of extradition for Sayre, surrendering custody of him to Washington County, Oregon.

The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office reportedly requested that Sayre not be extradited to Oregon until legal proceedings for his Snohomish County charges are completed.

“Now it is up to (Inslee’s) office to make a determination if Mr. Sayre is held until his local matters are resolved, or if he’s extradited,” Jones said in court. “Really, the question is not if Mr. Sayre is going to be extradited, it’s when.”

Washington County District Attorney Marie Atwood attended the court hearing via Zoom. She expressed concern that Sayre may not be extradited until his Snohomish County charges are resolved. That process could take years, she said.

“That leaves us speedy-trial questions down here in Oregon,” Atwood said. “It leaves our victims feeling like they’ve been lost in the shuffle and left hanging out to dry in the meantime.”

The Daily Herald plans to follow developments in these cases. If you have a story to share related to the investigation, please contact reporter Ellen Dennis at 425-339-3486; edennis@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterellen.