Suspect in Monroe prison officer’s death due in court

EVERETT — The prime suspect in the death of Monroe corrections officer Jayme Biendl is expected to make his first court appearance in the case this afternoon.

Byron Scherf, 52, was booked Wednesday morning for investigation of aggravated first-degree murder and first-degree murder. He’s bein

g held at the Snohomish County Jail. He was moved there from the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe three days after Biendl’s body was discovered in the reformatory’s chapel.

This is the first step toward charging Scherf with aggravated murder. Killing a corrections officer is an aggravating circumstance under Washington law. A conviction could carry the death penalty.

Scherf is expected to appear in Everett District Court via video from jail. A judge will determine if there is probable cause to hold him on the murder allegations. The judge also likely will set a deadline for prosecutors to file charges in Superior Court.

Regardless of what happens in court, Scherf isn’t going anywhere — he is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Monroe police detectives filed the paperwork Wednesday to hold Scherf at the jail for investigation of aggravated murder, spokeswoman Debbie Willis said. Some of Scherf’s voluminous case file already has been forwarded to the prosecutor’s office, she said.

“The booking and the hearing are the initiation of the prosecution,” Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe said Wednesday.

Scherf is accused of attacking Biendl from behind at her post in the chapel Jan. 29. He reportedly told investigators that he became angry with the officer during a conversation earlier in the night. During a taped interview, Scherf told detectives that Biendl fought him, stomping on his foot, biting him and freeing herself from his choke holds, court documents said. Scherf allegedly admitted that he used an amplifier cord left on the stage to strangle Biendl.

“I’ll just get right to the point. I’m responsible for the death of the correctional officer at the Monroe, uh, correctional facility,” Scherf is quoted as saying during the interview.

Under the law, Roe will have to notify Scherf’s attorneys if he intends to seek the death penalty. Scherf’s lawyers then would have an opportunity to present information to Roe that might make him consider leniency. That information could include any mental health history or other mitigating circumstances.

Scherf’s past is extensively documented through his numerous contacts with the courts over the past three decades.

He was sentenced in 1997 to life without the possibility of parole for the 1995 rape and kidnapping of a Spokane real estate agent. That conviction was his third “strike” under the state’s persistent offender laws.

At the time of the Spokane County attack, Scherf was on parole and already had two strikes toward an automatic life sentence. His first strike was for a 1978 assault. His second was for a 1981 rape in Pierce County. In that case, Scherf kidnapped a waitress, raped her, and then set her afire. She survived the attack. Scherf received a life sentence, but under the laws then in effect, he won parole after a dozen years.

After the 1997 conviction, he was housed in close custody at Clallam Bay Correctional Center. He was transferred to reformatory in Monroe, initially still in close custody. But in 2002, five years after being sent to prison for life, he was moved to medium-security custody, based on his good behavior.

Biendl, 34, began working at the reformatory in 2002. The Granite Falls native became a corrections officer a year later and earned the solo post at the chapel in 2005. Prison officials and her coworkers described Biendl as a consummate professional who was fair and firm. More than 4,200 people attended her memorial service Feb. 8 in downtown Everett.

Biendl’s death has sparked questions about safety in the state’s prisons. Gov. Chris Gregoire has called for an independent review of the incident.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1981, two Snohomish County cases have led to execution.

Triple murderer Charles Rodman Campbell was put to death in 1994 after a protracted legal battle. James Homer Elledge was executed in 2001, three years after pleading guilty to murdering a woman in Lynnwood. Elledge requested the death penalty and directed his attorney not to fight to keep him alive.

Roe was one of the prosecutors who handled Elledge’s case, convincing a jury to sentence him to death.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.