"King Case coming to an end"

Mail-order bride murder case should go to the jurors for deliberation today.

BY JIM HALEY
Herald reporter

EVERETT—Indle Gifford King Jr. has admitted he lied to police and schemed while in jail to improve his chances in the murder case against him.

“Nevertheless, that does not make him guilty of killing his adored wife,” his defense lawyer said in a courtroom Wednesday. “It accomplishes nothing to convict an innocent person.”

With that, lawyer David Allen begged a Snohomish County Superior Court jury to acquit King of first-degree murder and witness tampering, two charges that have occupied the jurors since the middle of January.

Allen and chief deputy prosecutor Jim Townsend spend all day Wednesday delivering their closing arguments in the case, in which King is accused of the strangulation death of Anastasia King, his wife of 2-1/2 years. He met her through a foreign matchmaking organization, and she became his mail-order bride.

More argument by the prosecution is scheduled for this morning before the jurors retire to deliberate the case.

King, 40, of Mountlake Terrace is accused of enlisting a boarder at his home to help him kill his wife.

The boarder is Daniel K. Larson, 21, a convicted sex offender who has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for helping kill Anastasia King. He testified against King during the trial.

Allen squarely put the blame on Larson, saying he alone killed Anastasia King and buried her in a shallow grave on the Tulalip Indian Reservation.

Not so, said Townsend, who argued the evidence shows King was jealous, resentful, had an obsession with money and needed to control people.

Townsend read letters King wrote to other prospective mail-order brides within a month of marrying Anastasia King in 1998. And when his marriage seemed to be falling apart in September 2000, he wrote to more foreign women – just as he was preparing to join Anastasia King on a visit to her parents in Kyrgyzstan in the former Soviet Union.

“Mr. King never stopped looking for the perfect, obedient wife; the wife who would bear him the children he so desperately needed,” Townsend told the jurors.

Townsend talked about King’s first mail-order bride, a Russian who divorced him in the 1990s. King told friends he was bitter that she took half his assets and used him to get permanent residence status in this country.

The prosecutor also alluded to King earning money by renting out rooms in the Mountlake Terrace home he shared with his wife, and charging his boarders extra when their guests stayed over or when King gave his boarders rides.

On money issues, “every nickel and dime was critical to Mr. King. In his own twisted mind, he was not going to be used by another mail-order bride,” Townsend said.

As for the lies he told to police when they were looking for Anastasia King for three months, Townsend said someone who wasn’t guilty would have backed off and helped officers look for “his princess,” Townsend said.

The prosecutor also insisted that Larson could not have killed her alone, much less bury her without help.

“There’s overwhelming evidence in this case supporting what Dan Larson tells us about the murder and burial of Anastasia King,” Townsend said.

Allen spent a large part of his time telling jurors they should have reasonable doubts about King’s guilt and therefore should acquit him.

“Ask yourselves on each of the counts: ‘Do you have one doubt?’ And then ask, ‘Is there a reason?’” Allen asked.

Larson had incentive to please prosecutors, who agreed to help him get a lighter prison sentence for his second-degree murder conviction, Allen said.

Rather than being a follower and someone who could be talked into helping someone commit a murder, Allen said the evidence shows Larson is “schemer, a manipulator and a conniver. He is the person who killed Anastasia King on his own.”

Townsend acknowledged the state was stuck with Larson in the case, but neither Larson nor King can be trusted.

“If either Daniel Larson or Indle King tell you the sky is blue, you better go outside and check before you leave your umbrella in the house, Townsend told jurors.