Murder case evidence allowed

By Jim Haley

Herald Writer

Key evidence against a man accused of participating in last year’s murder of a mail-order-bride will be allowed at Daniel Kristopher Larson’s trial, a Snohomish County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

Defense attorneys tried to have some of Larson’s incriminating statements, as well as evidence of the body of Anastasia King, 20, excluded in Larson’s upcoming trial. However, Judge Gerald Knight said most of the material can be used by prosecutors.

Larson, 21, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of the young woman from the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan. Also charged with murder is her husband, Indle Gifford King Jr., 40.

Larson had rented a room in the Kings’ Mountlake Terrace home at the time Anastasia King disappeared in late September 2000.

In dispute was a Dec. 28 jailhouse interview of Larson by two Mountlake Terrace detectives who were trying to unravel the woman’s disappearance. Larson was in jail at the time awaiting trial on an unrelated charge.

During the interview at the jail, Larson was not advised of his constitutional rights against self-incrimination, the so-called Miranda warning named after a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case.

It was then he told detectives he knew Anastasia King was dead and also knew where her body was buried. He tried to cut a deal to divulge information in exchange for getting out of a charge of attempting to force sex on a 16-year-old girl he had met at Alderwood Mall.

A short time later, he led officers to a shallow grave northeast of Marysville, where they found her remains.

His defense lawyers, John Stellwagen and Susan Gaer, said the interview was conducted in a "coercive atmosphere" and termed it an "interrogation" that should have required officers to read Larson his constitutional rights.

Mara Rozzano, deputy prosecutor, said when officers interviewed Larson in the jail, they didn’t consider him a suspect. He was free to talk with officers or return to his cell, she said. Indle King was under suspicion, but not Larson, she added.

Detectives Julie Jamison and Donald Duncan wanted to know why Indle King repeatedly visited Larson in the jail after the younger man was arrested in the sex case.

"He was a witness who may have information from Mr. King," Rozzano argued. "It was not an interrogation. It was simply interviewing a witness."

The judge said the detectives were "getting pretty close to the Miranda line," but didn’t cross it.

After leading authorities to the body, Larson was taken to the Mountlake Terrace Police Department, where he was interviewed again — and this time read his Miranda rights.

Knight ruled the state couldn’t use any statements by Larson between the time he said he knew Anastasia King was dead and when his rights were read to him at the police station, but that isn’t expected to dampen the state’s case.

In a separate ruling, Knight threw out a defense bid to have the case dismissed because an autopsy had failed to conclusively show how Anastasia King was killed.

In later interviews after Larson was read his rights, he told authorities he strangled Anastasia King with a necktie while 270-pound Indle King pinned her to the ground, court papers said.

Larson is scheduled for trial Nov. 2, but Stellwagen said it’s likely to be delayed.

Indle King’s trial is set for January.

You can call Herald Writer Jim Haley at 425-339-3447

or send e-mail to haley@heraldnet.com.

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