SEATTLE — A man was charged Wednesday with aggravated first-degree murder, rape and other charges in a stabbing that left one woman dead and her partner badly wounded, shocking a south Seattle neighborhood.
Isaac M. Kalebu was captured last week after a dragnet that at one point occupied at least one-tenth of the city’s 750 uniformed police officers. The charges against him, which also include attempted murder and burglary, are based on fingerprints, DNA tests and the survivor’s account following an attack that lasted an hour and a half, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said.
“It was a horrific nightmare, but it was all too real,” Satterberg said.
Kalebu, 23, was already under investigation in a fire that killed his aunt and a man who lived with her July 9 in a Tacoma suburb. He crawled through an open window about 3 a.m. on July 19 as Teresa Butz, 39, and her 36-year-old partner were asleep, the prosecutor said.
They awoke to find a naked, butcher knife-wielding man who said they wouldn’t be otherwise harmed if they submitted to rape, Police Detective Dana Duffy wrote in a probable-cause statement filed in court.
But Kalebu soon began cutting each woman in the neck and arms with increasing viciousness, slashing at one while sexually assaulting the other in various ways, Duffy wrote.
As he was raping the younger woman — who began losing a large amount of blood — Butz managed to kick him aside and the two women tried to defend themselves, Duffy wrote.
Kalebu hit Butz in the face and knocked her across the room, then stabbed her in the chest and upper arm before she hurled a night stand through the bedroom window and leaped outside as her partner ran from the room and out the front door, authorities said.
“Her strength in battling her attacker saved the life of her partner, though she paid the ultimate price,” Satterberg said.
Butz collapsed in the street and died of a stab wound to the heart. Her partner pounded on the door of a neighbor across the street.
Kalebu apparently chose the home in the industrial South Park section of Seattle at random, authorities said. He was arrested Friday after a Metro transit bus driver recognized a passenger and his pit bull dog from a video distributed by police.
Satterberg requested that bail remain set at $10 million pending Kalebu’s Aug. 12 arraignment.
Under state law, Satterberg has 30 days from Wednesday to decide whether to seek the death penalty. The last execution in the state was in 2001. Eight men are on death row, including three who could be given a lethal injection or hanged within a year.
Kalebu has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. One mitigating factor a jury may consider in deciding whether to impose the death penalty is “extreme mental disturbance,” but no evidence “suggests that he was acting under any symptom of mental illness,” Satterberg said,
“Quite the contrary. He seemed to be a very confident rapist, in charge,” the prosecutor said. “He also knew that what he was doing was wrong. At one point he told the women that he knew that as soon as he left, that they would call the police.”
Satterberg wouldn’t comment on Kalebu’s current mental condition or whether he would likely be sent to a state mental institution for an evaluation.
Kalebu was accused of harassing and threatening his mother in March 2008 after she confronted him about failing to take prescribed medication for “bipolar and manic-depressive” conditions. A state psychological evaluation found he “did not have the capacity to rationally understand” the case against him at that time.
He was free on bail in the harassment case when his aunt, Rachel Kalebu, 61, who had ordered him out of her house, and former NFL quarterback John Eddie Jones, 57, died in a house fire.
Prosecutors subsequently asked Judge Brian D. Gain to revoke bail, but the judge declined. Six days later, Butz and her partner were attacked.
Satterberg declined to criticize Gain, a 28-year Superior Court veteran.
“Judge Gain is a highly respected member of the bench,” he said. “Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, he might do things differently.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
