TULALIP – Tulalip Tribes police and federal agents have arrested a man in connection with the death of a Tulalip woman who was found hanging from a tree in December.
Wesley Vernon Jefferson, 21, was charged with second-degree murder Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Prosecutors believe that Jefferson strangled Sophia Solomon, 23, during an argument and hung her from a tree to make it look like a suicide, according to court documents.
Police found Solomon’s body Dec. 22 near the entrance to a housing development on the Tulalip Reservation. The Snohomish County medical examiner concluded that Solomon, the mother of four children, had died of asphyxiation from hanging.
Detectives interviewed Jefferson three times during the four-month investigation. In the interviews, he gave differing statements about the events leading to the discovery of Solomon’s body, according to court documents.
He initially told police that Solomon had threatened to hang herself during an argument about Jefferson’s infidelity, according to court documents. He said he and his cousin searched the neighborhood for Solomon but were unable to find her.
Later he told police that it was possible that he had killed Solomon, but he couldn’t remember, court documents say.
A break in the case came Monday when tribal detectives interviewed Jefferson’s cousin.
He told police that he had watched Jefferson strangle Solomon unconscious in the woods near where her body was found, charging papers said. Jefferson threatened to hurt the man if he didn’t help hang Solomon from the tree to make it appear that she had killed herself.
The two then drove around the area asking if anyone had seen Solomon, court documents read.
One of the woman’s friends said Jefferson’s cousin came to her house asking about Solomon the night of her death. She told police that Solomon had confided to her that Jefferson had assaulted her in the past.
A day before Solomon’s death, Solomon and her friend planned to make Christmas candy for their children. The woman said that she didn’t believe Solomon would take her own life because she wouldn’t abandon her children, court documents said.
The children, two boys and two girls, now live with their grandmother, Tulalip Tribal Police Chief Jay Goss said.
Tulalip detectives and FBI agents arrested Jefferson about 6:30 p.m. Monday on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham, where Jefferson is a tribal member, Goss said.
He is being held in a federal detention center in SeaTac. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 1 in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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