EVERETT – An Everett man arrested for investigation of murder allegedly told police he kept the victim’s body in his closest for up to three weeks before he dumped her in a trash bin outside his apartment.
Sean Thomas Hamill, 25, told Everett detectives he clubbed the woman in the head with a hammer and then slit her throat, according to a police affidavit filed Monday in Everett District Court.
Hamill has been jailed since Sunday, when he was arrested for investigation of second-degree murder. He appeared briefly in court Monday, where Everett District Court Judge Tom Kelly ordered him held in lieu of $500,000 bail.
The Everett man told investigators he attacked the woman after she threatened to instruct her sons to kill him and take marijuana plants he had growing, a detective wrote in court documents.
Hamill threw the woman’s body in a dumpster when the smell became unbearable in his apartment, according to court records.
Investigators on Monday were still trying to precisely determine who the woman was, Everett police Sgt. Boyd Bryant said. He didn’t believe anyone reported her missing.
The Snohomish County medical examiner didn’t release her name Monday.
Hamill’s family and friends gathered in court Monday to watch his bail hearing. They said they don’t think Hamill set out to harm the woman, whom he just met at a downtown Everett bar that night.
“He did a terrible thing but he’s not a terrible person,” his sister, Lindsey Hamill, said. “I know he’d never hurt me.”
Lindsey Hamill said she had stayed at his apartment after the death allegedly occurred. She didn’t detect anything amiss.
Deborah Moore, the man’s neighbor and friend, said she didn’t know anything had happened either until Sean Hamill asked her daughter to help him move the body. Her daughter refused and reported it to Moore, who called police Sunday.
“He was crying and saying ‘Please don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me,’” Moore said. “I think it was an accident and I think he panicked. He’s not a monster.”
Hamill, a construction worker, has a drug and alcohol problem, Moore said. She believes that may have contributed to his actions.
Hamill told detectives he met the woman in an alley at Jimmy Z’s about three weeks ago, court papers show. He didn’t remember her name, only that it may have started with an “A” and that she had a single front tooth.
The pair went to his apartment, where the woman demanded drugs, Hamill told investigators. He claimed she threatened to steal the 10 marijuana plants he had in his bedroom.
Detectives say Hamill admitted striking the woman on the head three times with a 26-ounce framing hammer. The woman was still alive when Hamill said he dragged her to the kitchen and slit her throat with a paring knife, according to court papers.
The man said he cut the victim’s throat because he didn’t want her to suffer, police said.
The next morning he wrapped the woman in large, black construction garbage bags and put her in the closest. He used some of the clothing she was carrying in a garbage bag to clean up the blood in the kitchen, according to police.
The smell eventually drove Hamill to load the woman in a 35-gallon trash can and dump her in the dumpster in the alley in the 2600 block of Rockefeller Avenue. He told police he rinsed blood from his jeans and went to bed.
Police arrested him a short time later at his apartment.
Hamill is a convicted felon. He was sentenced to three months in jail in 2002 after he clobbered one of his sisters in the head with an empty bottle as she lay sleeping. He also tried to strangle her but told police he stopped when he realized what he was doing, according to court papers.
Hamill had no criminal record before that attack.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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