Jack Owen Spillman III pleaded guilty in April 1996 to killing a mother and daughter, Rita Huffman, 48, and Mandy Huffman, 15, in their home in East Wenatchee, Washington, on the night of April 12, 1995. In the same hearing he admitted a killing he had not been charged with until that day: the death of Penny Davis, a 9-year-old girl who had disappeared from her home in Okanogan County in September 1994. Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty at a trial set for August. Instead Superior Court Judge Carol Wardell sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for Rita Huffman's death, 70 years for Mandy Huffman's and 45 and a half years for Penny Davis's.
The case was solved quickly. A neighbor saw a pickup in a lot near the Huffman house at about the time of the killings, and two hours later a police officer found a man sitting alone in a black pickup in a parking lot not far away. Police watched Spillman around the clock while they waited for laboratory results, then arrested him. A year later the plea closed both cases at once.
Little about Spillman's early life appears in the newspaper record. When he was arrested in April 1995, The Spokesman-Review described him as a ninth-grade dropout from Tonasket, in Okanogan County. For several years he had lived in a trailer in the Spokane Valley. He described himself in court as unemployed, with no assets except a 1978 Chevrolet pickup; the paper called him a jobless roofer. The Associated Press described him as tall and lanky, with a mustache and goatee.
He had a long record. In Spokane he had convictions for burglary, theft, assault and malicious mischief, The Spokesman-Review reported. He had escaped at least twice from minimum-security centers, one of them the Pine Lodge Pre-Release Center at Medical Lake. Officials had not considered him violent, and the public had not been told of the escapes.
From July 1993 to February 1994 he shared a cell at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla with another inmate. What that cellmate later told investigators about those months became part of the court file in the Huffman case.
By April 1995 Spillman had moved to the Wenatchee area. Officials said at the time of his arrest that he had lived in East Wenatchee for at least three weeks; a year later the paper said he had lived in Wenatchee for about a month before the killings. He was living in a rented apartment with a woman who later spoke to police.
Penny Lynn Davis was 9 years old. She lived in the Aeneas Valley, near Tonasket in Okanogan County. On September 17, 1994, she disappeared from her home. A search found no trace of her.
Okanogan County sheriff's investigators questioned Spillman that same month, after the girl disappeared. The sheriff said later that there had not been enough physical evidence to treat him as a suspect at the time. By 1996 the Spokesman-Review reported that he had been considered a prime suspect.
In late March 1995 hikers found the remains of a child near Tonasket, The Spokesman-Review reported on March 30. The sheriff said it was too early to say whether they were Penny's. "We don't want to lose any evidence at the site so we're not rushing into this," he said. A King County medical examiner's investigator went to the scene. Detectives believed an adult had been involved in the girl's disappearance, but the sheriff declined to give details.
In early July 1995 the Okanogan County Sheriff's Office announced that the remains were Penny's. Investigators had matched her DNA to that of her mother. At that point no one had been arrested in her disappearance.
Okanogan County authorities were never able to determine how Penny died. When Spillman admitted killing her in 1996, he gave no details.
Rita Huffman was 48 and sold cars. Her daughter, Amanda, known as Mandy, was 15. They lived together in East Wenatchee, in Douglas County. The newspaper record says little more about either of them. Douglas County Sheriff Dan LaRoche said after the arrest that the killings appeared to be random, and that detectives did not believe the Huffmans knew the man who killed them. A year later police repeated that Spillman had not known them.
On the morning of April 13, 1995, at about 8 a.m., a relative who went to check on the Huffmans found them dead in their home. There was no sign of a break-in.
The Chelan County coroner, Gerald Rappe, performed the autopsies. Rita Huffman died of stab wounds. Mandy died of a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. Rita Huffman's broken watch had stopped at about 11:30 p.m., and investigators concluded that she died at about that time on April 12.
Douglas County Prosecutor Steven Clem said that robbery was doubtful as a motive.
The first lead was a vehicle. At about 11:30 p.m. on April 12, a neighbor saw a pickup in a parking lot near the Huffman home. A witness also reported a black Chevrolet pickup in a school parking lot behind the house.
Spillman had left his apartment at about 11 p.m. that night. The woman who shared it with him told police he said he was going out for a drive, and that he did not come back until about 2 a.m.
At about 1:30 a.m. on April 13, two hours after the time on Rita Huffman's watch, East Wenatchee police officer Dan Reierson stopped to check on a man sitting alone in a black pickup in the parking lot of a veterans' hall. The man got out of the truck with his hands up. Reierson thought this was unusual, Sheriff LaRoche said later, but not incriminating. The bodies were not found until several hours later.
When the killings were discovered that morning, the stop took on new weight. The sheriff said Spillman became a "person of interest" because of it. Prosecutor Clem later said that the black pickup seen near the house was what led police to him.
Investigators then found a 12-inch knife in a garbage can outside the same hall. It carried traces of what appeared to be the victims' blood, and it appeared to match a knife missing from a three-piece set in the Huffman home.
Police began watching Spillman around the clock on the day after the killings. They did not arrest him at once. For days Sheriff LaRoche told the public that there were no suspects and no leads. In fact detectives had Spillman under constant watch while they waited for laboratory results.
The results came back on a Wednesday, and police arrested Spillman the same day in a rented apartment a few blocks from the veterans' hall, the Associated Press reported. Detectives searched the apartment and a black pickup that he was believed to own, and a knife believed to be the murder weapon had been recovered near where he was staying. LaRoche still would not say publicly what had first drawn police to him. He called the arrest "a big relief to the public."
Spillman was booked into the Chelan-Douglas County Regional Jail on two counts of first-degree murder and held without bail. He was 25, according to the 1995 reports.
The next day, a Thursday, Spillman appeared for a 15-minute bail hearing by closed-circuit television from the jail before Douglas County District Court Judge Judith McCauley. He told the judge that he understood the charges and the penalties he could face if convicted. McCauley said that a lawyer would be appointed for him.
Prosecutors said he was expected to be charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder at an arraignment the following Tuesday. In Washington, a conviction for aggravated first-degree murder carries either life in prison without parole or the death penalty. Clem would not yet say whether he would seek a death sentence.
On the same day, Okanogan County Sheriff Dan Weed said one of his detectives had been sent to Douglas County to look into a possible link between Spillman and Penny Davis's disappearance the previous September.
Over the following year, the man who had shared Spillman's cell at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1993 and 1994, gave investigators an account of their time together. Court papers recorded his statement that Spillman had declared he wanted to be "the world's greatest serial killer." According to the cellmate, Spillman read books about serial killers and about police forensic methods, and talked about the precautions he would take to avoid leaving clues. Court papers alleged, on the basis of that account, that Spillman had planned to kill young women.
The cellmate's account was an allegation in a court file. It was never tested at trial, because there was no trial.
By the spring of 1996 the Huffman case was headed for an August trial, and prosecutors planned to ask for the death penalty. On a Monday in late April 1996, Spillman, then reported as 27, appeared in Superior Court in Wenatchee and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of Rita and Mandy Huffman.
He also pleaded guilty to killing Penny Davis. Until that day he had not been formally charged with her death, according to The Seattle Times of April 30 and The Spokesman-Review of May 1, 1996. The plea surprised authorities.
Judge Carol Wardell sentenced him the same day. For the death of Rita Huffman she imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole. For Mandy Huffman's death she imposed 70 years, and for Penny Davis's 45 and a half years.
Prosecutor Clem said the sentences were close to what a jury would have imposed if it had not returned a death sentence. "For the law-enforcement officers, for the families, for the prosecutors, we all feel good about it," he said. Okanogan County Prosecutor Rick Weber said, "I believe we are satisfied with the outcome," and added, "Mr. Spillman will never be on the streets again, we're guaranteed that."
The newspaper reports of the hearing do not record any statement by Spillman or by the victims' families.
The plea ended both cases without a trial, and it left some questions without public answers. Because Spillman gave no details about Penny's death, the cause was never established.
At the time of the plea Spillman still faced other charges: charges in King County arising from an attack on a woman in Kent, and a burglary charge in Spokane County. How those cases ended was not reported.
The sentence for Rita Huffman's death is life without the possibility of parole; as the Okanogan County prosecutor put it in 1996, Spillman would never be on the streets again.
Several details about Spillman that circulate widely are not supported by the newspaper and court record.
Television programs and true-crime websites call him "the Werewolf Butcher" and say that he thought of himself as a werewolf. No newspaper or court report of the time uses the name or reports that claim.
Some accounts give his birth name as Roy Wilson and his birthplace as Spokane, with a birth date in August 1969. None of these details appears in the newspaper or court record, and the 1995 and 1996 reports give his age inconsistently (25 in April 1995, 27 in April 1996).
Some accounts say that a ski mask, animal hair or bite-mark comparisons tied him to the Huffman house. None of the 1995 or 1996 reports mentions such evidence. They describe the pickup sightings, the stop by the officer, the knife and unspecified laboratory results.
Some accounts say he had been watching the Huffman household for months before the killings. The sheriff said at the time that the killings appeared random and that the Huffmans did not know the killer, and the newspaper reports of the time do not say he had watched them.
Claims about what happened to Penny Davis after her death, and about her body, find no support in the newspaper or court record. Okanogan County authorities could not determine how she died.
September 17, 1994: Penny Lynn Davis, 9, disappears from her home in the Aeneas Valley, Okanogan County. Investigators question Spillman that month but do not treat him as a suspect.
Late March 1995: Hikers find a child's remains near Tonasket (reported March 30, 1995).
About 11 p.m., April 12, 1995: Spillman leaves his apartment, telling the woman who shares it that he is going for a drive.
About 11:30 p.m., April 12, 1995: A pickup is seen near the Huffman home in East Wenatchee. Investigators later fix Rita Huffman's death at about this time.
About 1:30 a.m., April 13, 1995: An East Wenatchee officer checks on a man alone in a black pickup in a veterans' hall parking lot.
About 8 a.m., April 13, 1995: A relative finds Rita Huffman, 48, and Mandy Huffman, 15, dead in their home.
From the day after the killings: Police keep Spillman under round-the-clock surveillance. A knife is found in a garbage can outside the veterans' hall.
A Wednesday in April 1995, days after the killings: Laboratory results come back and Spillman is arrested; he is booked on two counts of first-degree murder.
The next day, a Thursday: Bail hearing by closed-circuit television; an Okanogan County detective is sent to look into a link to Penny Davis.
Early July 1995: The remains found near Tonasket are identified as Penny's through DNA matched to her mother's (reported July 7, 1995).
April 1996, a Monday: Spillman pleads guilty to first-degree murder in the Huffman deaths and to killing Penny Davis, and is sentenced by Judge Carol Wardell to life without parole, 70 years and 45 and a half years.