An admittedly jealous ex-boyfriend was charged with first-degree murder Friday for what a prosecutor described as the “savaging” of an Everett-area woman.
Eric James Christensen, 40, killed Sherry Harlan in her apartment Jan. 2, apparently stabbing her multiple times, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson said in court papers.
Christensen then cut Harlan up and enlisted a friend's help for two days in trying to hide her remains at “multiple sites” near Gold Bar, including in shallow graves and in a car that was set afire, the prosecutor said.
Within days of Christensen's Jan. 7 arrest, the man who allegedly helped hide evidence led detectives to various sites where human remains were found. Those have been linked to Harlan based on fingerprints, court papers said.
[...]
Harlan's friends and co-workers became concerned when she failed to return phone calls or show up for her job at J.C. Penney at Alderwood mall. At their urging, sheriff's deputies went inside her south Everett apartment. They immediately recognized it had been the scene of a violent crime and somebody's botched attempt to eliminate evidence, court papers said.
Blood was spattered in numerous places, carpet had been cut up and the rooms reeked of bleach. A shoeprint left in blood also was found on a T-shirt.
When detectives later searched Christensen's Gold Bar-area home, they found shoes with a sole pattern that matched a bloody print. They found a pair of blood-soaked jeans and a shopping list for bleach, garbage bags, sponges and a mop. They also found receipts and later recovered store surveillance video showing Christensen after the killing at stores where those items were bought, Matheson wrote.
Detectives zeroed in on Christsensen almost immediately.
[...]
He said he'd gone to her home Jan. 1 for dinner and a movie and had stayed the night. In a sworn affidavit that was filed to get a judge's permission to search Christensen's home, detectives recounted how the defendant allegedly went into detail about sexual activity while at Harlan's home. He said the visit ended badly, however, after he found text messages on her cell phone from another man, somebody he called her “sugar daddy.”
Christensen told detectives that he'd found similar messages on Harlan's phone weeks earlier and that she'd promised to cease contact with the man. To seal the deal, Christensen said he and Harlan had gone through a “blood oath” ceremony.
“He said that in ‘ancient times' people that broke similar vows were sometimes killed,” a sheriff's detective wrote of the conversation.
Christensen said that on Jan. 2, when he confronted Harlan about the messages, the argument became physical and they traded blows. He told detectives that because she'd broken the oath, Harlan “in Scottish ... would be what's known as a warlock, which is evil, a traitor, an enemy,” court papers said.
During their search of Christensen's home, detectives found a computer printout about warlocks “that contained almost identical language as that used by defendant in describing Harlan,” Matheson wrote.
Within hours of Christensen's arrest, Harlan's burned-out Nissan Sentra was found near a gravel pit outside Gold Bar. Investigators discovered partial human remains inside, including a skull with the tip of a knife embedded in the bone.
Later, Christensen's friend approached detectives through a lawyer and offered to lead them to more of Harlan's body. Matheson said prosecutors agreed not to charge the man so long as no evidence surfaced that his involvement was more than assisting Christensen in trying to hide evidence. He remains free and is being treated as a key witness in the case, the prosecutor said.
[....]
In 1994, he showed up at a Seattle bus stop armed with a rifle. He tried to shoot the woman and others, but was unsuccessful.
“I missed because the sights to the rifle were off,” Christensen said at the time. “I was on what my ancestors call a ‘blood run.' ”