Cops: Men wanted in deaths of Wash. couple are on lam
SEATTLE — Two brothers wanted in the disappearance and presumed slayings of a Washington state couple may be heading for the Mexican border, prosecutors here said.
Snohomish County prosecutors have filed first-degree murder charges against the Reed brothers in connection with the deaths of Patrick Shunn and Monique Patenaude of Arlington, Wash.
On Monday, detectives found a red 2007 Volkswagen EOS Coupe in Phoenix that John Blaine Reed, 53, and his brother, Tony Clyde Reed, 49, had been driving since it was taken from Ellensburg, Wash., and said the suspects then took another car with an Arizona plate. A license plate reader captured that plate later Monday near Calexico, Calif., authorities said.
The Reed brothers are now believed to be driving a 2002 gold Acura 3.2TL with Arizona license plate BNN-9968. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said an acquaintance gave them that car, and the men are considered armed and dangerous.
Investigators say they found evidence that Shunn, 45, and Patenaude, 46, were killed, and teams have been searching for their bodies in a wooded 23-square-mile area around their home near Oso, 50 miles northeast of Seattle.
The couple has been missing for a week.
Inside Shunn's and Patenaude's cars, found dumped in a wooded area, court documents describe blood pooling and smearing,with the "largest concentration of blood ... in cargo area, consistent with a body laying there for some time."
Inside John Reed's former home, detectives found dried blood in the bathtub and on a pair of coveralls. Outside the home, detectives found two sacks "containing clothes and shoes that reeked of gasoline ... extensive apparent bloodstains on them."
Shunn and Patenaude had long worried about getting on the wrong side of John Reed, 53, who lived a little ways up an old logging road from their 21-acre spread in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. When they sued other neighbors over a property dispute more than two years ago, they avoided naming him as a defendant because they didn’t want to irk him, their former lawyer said Monday.
“They didn’t want to provoke any kind of an issue with him,” Thomas Adams said.
John Reed had threatened to shoot the couple for cutting brush between their two properties, according to The Seattle Times. Reed threatened to shoot or assault them if they didn’t leave him alone, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.
The grim mystery played out on land abutting the nation’s worst landslide disaster, the 2014 Oso landslide, which wiped out a rural neighborhood and killed 43 people. In an interview shortly afterward, John Reed told The Seattle Times he watched the slide as it roared past his front yard.
“This mountain of dirt taller than any trees near me cut off my view like a curtain,” he said. “And it shot right in front of me, right by my house.”
The county bought out Reed’s house last month to ease any risks from future flooding, but investigators believe Reed had been returning to the home since then. Court documents say the county warned Reed not to trespass after the couple had complained that he was squatting at his old house.
John Reed has received police citations for a number of mostly minor offenses.
Tony Reed, 49, has amassed dozens of arrests and twice was under state supervision — from 1989 to 1991 on drug charges, and from 1994 to 2003 for three misdemeanors, including an assault charge.
Contributing: The Associated Press. Follow Elisa Hahn on Twitter: @ElisaHahnK5