On the evening of Saturday, April 18, 1998, a part-time church janitor named James Elledge showed two women around the Lighthouse Methodist Church in Lynnwood, north of Seattle. He had invited them out for the night with a promise of dinner and gifts. They met the pastor on the way through. After the pastor left, Elledge led them into a Bible study room, closed the door and took out a knife. One of the women, Eloise Fitzner, was dead within the hour. The other survived.
Elledge was 55, and he had killed before. In 1974 he had beaten the night manager of a Seattle motel to death in an argument over rent, and in 1998 he was still on parole for that murder. Within three days of Fitzner's death he had confessed, and within six weeks he had pleaded guilty. He then did something few defendants in Washington have done: he asked a jury to sentence him to death, refused every appeal and went to the execution chamber at Walla Walla three years and four months after the crime. His lawyer, who opposed capital punishment, argued for the death sentence because his client wanted it. The case raised a question that the courts, the state clemency board and the governor all had to answer: what the state owes a defendant who will not defend himself.
James Homer Elledge was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in December 1942, according to records the Snohomish County prosecutor's office later assembled. Those records, more than 30 years of reports from prison officials, parole officers, police and prosecutors, filled four boxes by 2001, the Everett Herald reported.
His first conviction came in 1953, when he was 10, for breaking and entering in Louisiana. He was sent to a juvenile corrections facility. A second breaking and entering conviction and a theft followed in September 1954, then another theft in 1956, each time with a return to a juvenile facility. The Herald counted four stays in reform school before 1959, all for property crimes. A state corrections official wrote in 1974 that reform school "was the vehicle for his socialization, and juvenile delinquents were his peers." His home life, the same official wrote, "was so deplorable that he asked his parole officer to return him to reform school so that he could escape the unhappiness and poverty at home."
In 2001 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer looked into the parts of his life that his jury never heard. Its findings are known here through Amnesty International's summary of them. According to that account, Elledge was traumatized by the death of a sister when he was six or seven, began drinking alcohol at seven or eight, which he reportedly believed had "destroyed" him, and was first taken into custody at 10, shortly after his father was hospitalized for mental illness. After his father died, when James was 13, two of his half-siblings killed themselves. Psychiatric evaluations over 35 years, the paper reported, described a man of average to above-average intelligence who was mentally ill. None of this was tested in court, because Elledge never allowed it to be presented.
His first known violent crime came in October 1964 in Roswell, New Mexico, when he was 21. During a robbery at a Western Union office he took the woman working there hostage, hit her over the head with a gun until she was unconscious and poured gasoline on her. Court papers later described in the Herald say he also tried to rape her before she escaped. He was convicted of armed robbery in February 1965 and sentenced to 10 to 50 years in prison. A kidnapping charge was dropped, the Seattle Times reported.
He escaped from prison in 1966 and was convicted of an attempt to commit a felony, for which he received a concurrent sentence of two to 10 years. In 1969 a second escape attempt was stopped after he had nearly sawed through the bars of his cell, according to the Herald. He served seven and a half years and was paroled in 1972. After further time in Texas and New Mexico for parole violations, he went to Seattle in May 1974.
In Seattle Elledge checked into the Eldorado Motel on Aurora Avenue. The night manager was Bertha M. Lush, 63. The sources available for this bio say very little about her beyond her age and her job; no account found describes her family or her life before May 1974.
Lush's body was found in her office at the motel on May 18, 1974. She had been struck in the head repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer. Elledge left the hammer, a bloodstained shirt and his fingerprints behind and fled Washington. He was soon back in custody, and he admitted killing her during an argument over the rent. He said he had planned to rob her after she refused to let him stay at the motel without paying, according to court papers the Herald reviewed in 2001.
He was convicted of first-degree murder in King County Superior Court. The judgment, entered on April 29, 1975, by Judge Horton Smith, was appealed and affirmed in an unpublished opinion by Division One of the Washington Court of Appeals on March 29, 1976. The Post-Intelligencer reported in 2001, according to Amnesty International, that Elledge had pleaded insanity in a previous case; that appears to refer to this trial, but the sources found do not say so directly. Under the sentencing law of the time he received a life sentence with eligibility for parole.
Two episodes from his years inside later became part of the argument over whether he should die. In 1977, at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, he warned officials that inmates were trying to tunnel out of the maximum security prison. In 1987, while held at a federal prison in Atlanta, he protected a prison guard when Cuban inmates rioted there. The Seattle Times wrote that he was credited with saving the guard's life.
He was paroled in July 1989 to live with his daughter in Ruston, Louisiana. Five months later, in November 1989, he was accused of attempted burglary after four windows were broken at a bar, and his parole was revoked. He disputed the burglary charge but told Washington parole officials in 1990 that he had broken the windows out of a mix of alcohol and frustration. Asking for another chance, he wrote: "I have been confined since July 1974, and in this period of 16 years there was no violent acts committed by this inmate. And there will never be one again on any human life."
The parole board was not persuaded. In 1992 it described him as a man with "a long history of criminality and violence who has been incarcerated for most of his adult life and has spent his brief moments of freedom unemployed, wandering the countryside, drinking and committing crimes." He was paroled again in April 1994 and was caught using amphetamines within four days. "This man's periods of parole are getting shorter instead of longer," a corrections official wrote. "He is without question serving life on the installment plan." He left a Seattle work-release center and went to Bellingham for a few days, and in September 1994 his parole was revoked again. Ralph Ensign, a community corrections supervisor, urged the state to be "extremely careful" with him. "I am strongly of the opinion that he is at high risk to reoffend in a manner similar to his original crime," Ensign wrote.
Elledge was released for the last time in August 1995. Parole board members noted then that he had been locked up for all but about two years of the previous three decades and had become "highly institutionalized."
After his release Elledge worked in machine shops, the Herald reported, and as a part-time janitor at a Boeing assembly plant, according to his wife's statement to police in 1998. He began attending the Lighthouse Free Methodist church in Lynnwood, which hired him as a janitor and found him a place to live in a Lynnwood apartment with one of its regular members. The sources name the church slightly differently: Lighthouse Methodist Church in the Supreme Court opinion and the 1998 Seattle Times report, Lighthouse Free Methodist in the 2001 Seattle Times, and Lynnwood Free Methodist Church, its earlier name, in the Herald. It stood at 6519 188th St. S.W.
The member who shared the apartment was Bill Hubbard, a former Lynnwood City Council member. He told the Herald in 2001 that Elledge was his roommate for three months in 1997, that the congregation "took him under its collective wing" as a struggling ex-convict trying to turn his life around, and that it was Hubbard who introduced Elledge to Eloise Fitzner at the church. The apartment was in the Sherwood Springs complex in Lynnwood, and Fitzner lived in the unit above.
Elledge met the woman he would marry at the Boeing plant. In 1997, before the wedding, Fitzner wrote her a letter. According to the Supreme Court's summary, she urged the woman not to "stay with that awful man any more," wrote that Elledge "does not even love you" and was "just using you for sex, and because he needs the income from your job," and accused him of making sexual advances toward Fitzner herself. Elledge read the letter shortly after it arrived. The couple married anyway, in October 1997. His wife told police in 1998 that she knew about his criminal record but did not believe he was still capable of violence. Elledge did not forget the letter.
Eloise Jane Fitzner was born Eloise Helland in March 1951 and grew up in Spokane. She graduated from North Central High School in 1969 and was baptized and active in youth groups at Spokane's Knox Presbyterian Church. She married and later divorced, lived for a time in New Orleans and Houston, and moved to Lynnwood in 1992. She shared her apartment with three cats.
For the last 16 years of her life she had severe fibromyalgia. At her memorial service at Knox Presbyterian in 1998, attended by about 100 people, the Rev. Keith Beebe said she had relied on her religious faith through years of great pain. "She was someone who had a very caring nature for those who needed help," he said. "She loved those who had deep needs." Her brother, Mike Helland, told the Herald that she cared for cats left at animal shelters and for "people abandoned by good fortune." He said in 2001 that he was frustrated that the attention given to Elledge's fate had overshadowed his sister's life and her compassion. She was survived by her mother and by Helland, both of the Spokane area.
Elledge told detectives that he had carried his anger over the letter for more than a year. "That Saturday," he said in his taped confession, "I don't know, twelve, twelve-thirty, something like that was when this whatever it is inside of me came out. The rage." He decided to kill Fitzner. He bought rope at a Fred Meyer store, went to the church to prepare and wrote two letters, one to his wife and one to his employer. "It was premeditated," he told detectives. "The whole thing was." His wife was away that weekend on a retreat with members of the church.
That afternoon he invited Fitzner and her friend, a 39-year-old Seattle woman identified in court records only as S.C., out for the evening. They met him at the church at about 8:30 p.m. After the tour, in the Bible study room, Room 102, he told Fitzner he "didn't appreciate what she had done about a year ago," trying to break up his marriage. He tied both women's wrists and ankles with nylon cord. He put S.C. on an upper riser at the edge of the room, pulled a black sweatshirt over her head, turned her to face the wall and set a Bible beside her, telling her it would keep her safe. When he caught her looking, he told her to turn around or she would be next.
Fitzner's last words, as S.C. later testified, were "No, stop, I can't breathe," as Elledge taped her mouth. He strangled her with his hands, and then stabbed her once in the neck because, he told detectives, he did not want to take any chances. The medical examiner testified that either injury alone would have killed her and that she was probably alive, though perhaps unconscious, when she was stabbed. Elledge hid her body beneath a riser and covered it with blankets, shirts and boxes.
He then left in Fitzner's car, a Buick Skylark, taking S.C. with him to his trailer in north Everett, where he had moved. Police and prosecutors said he sexually assaulted her there; he always denied it (see "What was alleged but not proved," below). The next morning, Sunday, he drove her back toward Lynnwood and released her, threatening to find her if she went to the police. She called them as soon as she reached her home in north Seattle.
Lynnwood police began looking for Elledge on Sunday. Fitzner's body was found at the church that night. Elledge had driven the Buick to Tacoma and checked into the Morgan Motel, at 7031 Pacific Ave., on Sunday. A Tacoma patrolman found the car at about 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21. Inside was a note Elledge had written to his wife, apologizing for leaving her that way.
At about 9:30 that morning Elledge called Tacoma homicide detectives from the motel and said he wanted to surrender. Lynnwood police attributed his decision to the heavy press coverage and to the likelihood that he had little money left. An affidavit filed by deputy prosecutor Mark Roe said he had tried twice to kill himself before he made the call; it gave no details.
Tacoma police held him until Lynnwood detectives arrived. After being read his Miranda rights and waiving them orally and in writing, he confessed and described the killing in detail. He explained why he was talking: "I've already been convicted once of a first degree murder and I'm still on parole for that. The Parole Board is obviously gonna revoke my parole and that is still carrying a life sentence, so I don't feel that I have anything to gain or lose by holding back. I've already made my bed, now I've gotta sleep in it the rest of my life." He said he was not looking for an insanity plea, but that "there's something wrong with my nature," "an evil that I can't control." He said he had kept it down for years "by power of prayer," and added, "I am a Christian but this particular time, Saturday, it was just something I couldn't control." According to the Seattle Times, he also told police: "I hope that I get the justice that Eloise got. And that's death. I want it so bad you can't believe it." He denied the sexual assault.
Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder in Everett District Court on April 21, and a judge set bail at $1 million. Jim Townsend, Snohomish County's chief criminal deputy prosecutor, said the office would consider raising the charge to aggravated first-degree murder, which carried only two possible sentences: death or life in prison without parole. On April 24 it did so, with first-degree kidnapping as the aggravating circumstance.
At his arraignment on April 28 Elledge refused to enter a plea, so Superior Court Judge Larry McKeeman entered a plea of not guilty for him, ordered him held without bail and set a trial date of June 19. His lawyer was Bill Jaquette, Snohomish County's chief public defender. Before the plea, a clinical and forensic neuropsychologist, Dr. Kenneth Muscatel, examined Elledge and found him competent to make decisions about his defense. The report was sealed.
On May 27, 1998, the state filed an amended charge and a formal notice that it would seek the death penalty, and Prosecutor Jim Krider announced the decision publicly. The same day Elledge pleaded guilty. His written statement said that on April 18 he had tied up Fitzner and S.C., held them where they were not likely to be found, threatened them with deadly force, and "choked Eloise Fitzner and stabbed Eloise Fitzner with the premeditated intent to kill her." Judge Thibodeau questioned him at length about his rights and the voluntariness of the plea and asked Jaquette whether he had any doubt about his client's competence. "Mr. Elledge is competent and we have had a number of intelligent conversations about this whole matter," Jaquette said, "and I'm satisfied that he knows exactly what he's doing." Townsend added that Department of Corrections records described Elledge as consistently competent and "of above-average intelligence." The court accepted the plea.
Because Elledge had pleaded guilty, the only question left was the sentence, and in Washington that question went to a jury. After several delays, jury selection began on September 30, 1998. Most of the prospective jurors were told that Elledge would not contest a death sentence.
The penalty trial opened on October 20. The state called three witnesses: Detective Jim Nelson, the lead investigator, who described the crime; Dr. Daniel Selove, the medical examiner, who described the autopsy; and Michael Helland, Fitzner's brother, who spoke about her and her family's loss. Selove testified that Fitzner's suffering "was both physical and psychological as strangulation was occurring," including "the fear of the terror of having your airway cut off."
The jury also heard a stipulation, read aloud, listing Elledge's record from his first reform school conviction at 10 through the Roswell robbery, the escape, the killing of Bertha Lush and the three paroles and two revocations that followed. It heard a letter Elledge had written to his wife explaining the crime.
The defense presented no mitigating evidence. Jaquette made an opening statement and introduced his client, who addressed the jury. Elledge expressed remorse for the killing and then asked for the death penalty. "There is a very wicked part of me," he said, "and this wicked part of me needs to die." On October 21, 1998, after deliberating for about 90 minutes, the jury answered yes to the question the law put to it: whether it was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that there were not sufficient mitigating circumstances to merit leniency. The judge sentenced Elledge to death the same day.
After sentencing, the court held a hearing on the record in which Elledge was told of his right to appeal and of what an appeal would involve. Jaquette read aloud a written waiver Elledge had signed, which set out his right to appointed counsel and a full review, and the difference between life without parole and execution. Asked whether anyone had forced or threatened him to sign it, Elledge said no. Asked whether this was what he wanted, he said yes. The judge found that the waiver was knowing, voluntary and intelligent. In May 1999 Elledge filed another written waiver, this time with the state Supreme Court, asking it to speed up his execution.
Washington law did not let a death sentence go forward on a waiver alone. Under RCW 10.95.130 the Supreme Court had to review every death sentence and answer four questions: whether the evidence supported the jury's finding on leniency; whether the sentence was excessive or disproportionate compared with similar cases; whether it was brought about by passion or prejudice; and whether the defendant was intellectually disabled. Since neither Elledge nor the state would argue against the sentence, the court appointed lawyers, Carl Sonderman of Kennewick and Paul Wasson of Spokane, as amici to brief the case against it. The Washington Appellate Project also appeared, alongside Jaquette, and Elledge filed his own papers. Deputy prosecutor Seth Fine argued for the state. The case was heard on November 9, 2000.
On July 5, 2001, the court affirmed the death sentence by a vote of 7 to 1, in an opinion by Justice Madsen. It held that Elledge's waiver met the test set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Whitmore v. Arkansas, even though the trial court had not heard expert testimony, noting that Elledge had been "unequivocal" in seeking death since May 1998.
On the four statutory questions, the court found:
The jury's finding was justified. The killing was premeditated over more than a year and involved what the medical examiner described as conscious suffering, but "the most significant aggravating circumstance" was Elledge's record, above all that he was on parole for one murder when he committed another. The court declined amici's request to require special counsel to present mitigating evidence on behalf of a defendant who refused to, as it had in two earlier cases involving defendants who sought execution, Westley Allan Dodd and Jeremy Sagastegui.
The sentence was not disproportionate. A single aggravating factor put the case at the low end of the pool of similar cases, but his criminal history was "among the most extensive of any" in that pool "and shows a pattern of violence towards others."
There was no sign of passion or prejudice. Amici argued that with both sides seeking death, the adversarial process had broken down. The court disagreed and noted that Elledge, Fitzner and all 12 jurors were white, so racial bias was not at issue.
There was no evidence that Elledge was intellectually disabled. The court advised that in future cases, any competency evaluation should also address that question.
Justice Sanders dissented. He did not dispute the facts of the crime; his objection was to how the court did proportionality review at all. The statute, he wrote, asked whether death was the usual penalty for similar conduct, but the court had reduced the question to whether a sentence was "wanton and freakish," a standard that had become "little more than lip service." He also objected that the court counted, as support for death, cases in which death sentences had later been overturned. "Absent any demonstration in the instant case that the death sentence is imposed more often than not for similar conduct," he wrote, "I dissent." The opinion was amended on September 4, 2001, after the execution.
On July 30, 2001, more than a dozen groups opposed to the death penalty, among them the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, asked the state Clemency and Pardons Board to recommend that Gov. Gary Locke spare Elledge's life. Elledge had signed court papers saying such efforts were unwelcome. The petitioners argued that the jury had decided without hearing what might have argued for life: his childhood, his possible mental illness, the 1977 tunnel warning and his protection of the guard in Atlanta in 1987.
Snohomish County prosecutors answered that those acts were to his credit but did not outweigh the case for death. "Mr. Elledge has a lengthy history of extreme violence against women," Seth Fine wrote in a filing to the board.
The board heard the case in Olympia on August 6 and voted 3 to 2 to recommend that Locke deny clemency. One member who voted for clemency called the situation "very troubling," because the outcome might have been different "depending on whether [the jury] got the full story or not," according to Amnesty International's account. On August 17 Locke declined to intervene. "After reviewing the entire record and giving the matter great thought, I have concluded that there are no extraordinary circumstances in this case that would require my intervention," he wrote. Seattle Archbishop Alex Brunett asked him to reconsider, noting that Elledge would be the third of the four men executed in Washington since 1993 who had given up their appeals. The governor's spokeswoman, Dana Middleton, said Locke felt "the law was followed in this case," and noted that Elledge had volunteered. On August 27 the governor's legal counsel said that while the office was aware of the arguments about "volunteers" and the problems they presented, "particularly in this case," Locke did not believe the circumstances called for clemency.
Bill Jaquette was, in the Herald's words, "a passionate opponent of the death penalty." He told the Seattle Times he believed he could have won a life sentence. He chose to carry out his client's wishes instead, arguing for execution at every stage. On the day before the execution he drove from Edmonds to Walla Walla. "It is a frightening business to have a client who is going to be executed, regardless of the circumstances," he told the Herald. He said he was convinced Elledge saw the execution as a necessary, affirmative act: "as strange as that may sound, this is his way of reaching for redemption and this deserves his lawyer to be there."
Elledge also spoke in his last week with Bill Hubbard, his former roommate. Hubbard told the Herald that Elledge confessed to having taken $400 that Hubbard had once lost, said that his death alone would not make up for killing Fitzner, and appeared resigned. "He was not necessarily happy about what was to come, but he seemed to be reflecting in the faith of God," Hubbard said. "I think Jim Elledge is ready to die, and his peace is a paradox of faith."
Elledge spent his last day in the holding cell area of the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. He ate the regular prison breakfast early on Monday, August 27, had two hours in the yard and made phone calls. He had asked for a last meal of breakfast foods that evening, then declined it. His only visitor was Jaquette. A prison chaplain, Gil Alden, also saw him. He declined a sedative and asked that there be no autopsy. A Department of Corrections spokesman, Veltry Johnson, described his mood as "somber."
No family members of Elledge or Fitzner attended. The witnesses were eight reporters, Jaquette, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor John Adcock and two Lynnwood police detectives who had worked the case. The curtain opened shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 28. Superintendent John Lambert said into a microphone, "Inmate Elledge has no last words." After a telephone call from Corrections Secretary Joseph Lehman, the injection began at 12:39 a.m. Elledge was pronounced dead at 12:52 a.m. No legal motions had been filed to stop it.
Outside, about 100 people opposed to the death penalty held a candlelight vigil, and a handful of supporters gathered in a separate enclosure. The crowds were much smaller than at the hangings of Westley Allan Dodd in 1993 and Charles Campbell in 1994. "This one's been very quiet," said Timothy Kaufman-Osborn of the ACLU of Washington. "And that's a problem, because it becomes all too easy for us to forget that officials acting in our name are killing for punishment."
The Walla Walla County coroner, Stephen Ames, did not perform an autopsy. Elledge's family paid for his cremation. At 58 he was the oldest man executed in Washington in more than 70 years. He was the fourth person executed since the state restored the death penalty in 1981 and the second by lethal injection. The Washington Department of Corrections lists him among persons executed since 1904 as a Caucasian janitor from Snohomish County.
Fitzner's brother spent the night with their mother at a convalescent home in Spokane, waiting for a call from prosecutors. "It's good that there'll be an end to this," he said the day before. "I think we were dealing with it pretty well, but all of the commotion and the process caused us to relive things."
James Elledge was executed on August 28, 2001; the Washington DOC's list of persons executed since 1904, checked in this run, records the date. There are no pending proceedings in his case.
Washington carried out one more execution after his: Cal Coburn Brown, by lethal injection, in September 2010. In 2018, in State v. Gregory, the Washington Supreme Court held the state's death penalty unconstitutional "because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner," and on April 19, 2023, Gov. Jay Inslee signed SB 5087, repealing it, according to Prison Legal News. That report gives Brown as the last of 78 people executed in Washington since 1904.
Elledge's case was one of three in Washington between 1993 and 2001 in which a condemned man gave up his appeals; Dodd and Sagastegui were the others. Kevin Glackin-Coley of the Seattle archdiocese's detention ministry said on the night of the execution that the death penalty was supposed to be for the worst criminals, "not to put to death only those who want to be executed," and called for a moratorium while the state's law was studied. Around the same time, the Post-Intelligencer published a series arguing that Washington's capital system was "riddled with incompetence, inequities and inadequate funding."
The Supreme Court's opinion in his case has been cited in later Washington capital cases on proportionality and racial bias, including In re Gentry in 2014. Its instruction that competency evaluations should also address intellectual disability came out of his case.
In 2010, before Brown's execution, Judith Kay, a professor of religion at the University of Puget Sound, pointed to Elledge in arguing that the penalty was applied at random: both Elledge and Brown had been convicted of killing one person in their capital cases, she said, while Gary Ridgway, who pleaded guilty to killing 48 women in King County, received life in prison.
The sexual assault on S.C. Police and prosecutors said in 1998 that Elledge took S.C. to his Everett trailer and sexually assaulted her. Elledge denied it, and he was never charged with it. Deputy prosecutor Seth Fine told Reuters in 2001 that she did not want it prosecuted: "She said she had done her best to convince (Elledge) she was willing to have sex with him because she didn't want to die like her friend." The jury did not hear this allegation.
The attempted rape in Roswell. The 1964 conviction was for armed robbery. The attempted rape is reported from court papers by the Herald but was not a conviction and was not in the stipulation read to the jury.
The 1989 bar incident. It was charged as attempted burglary and led to a parole revocation; Elledge disputed the burglary and said he had only broken the windows. The Seattle Times described it in 1998 as an attempt to rob a tavern.
Mental illness and childhood trauma. These come from the Post-Intelligencer's 2001 reporting, as summarized by Amnesty International, and from the clemency petition. They were never presented to a court, and the Supreme Court record contains only the finding that he was competent.
The suicide attempts. The 1998 affidavit says he tried twice to kill himself before surrendering but gives no details.
December 1942: born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1953: first conviction, for breaking and entering, at 10; sent to a juvenile facility. Further juvenile convictions in 1954 and 1956.
October 1964: armed robbery of a Western Union office in Roswell, New Mexico; convicted February 1965, sentenced to 10 to 50 years.
1966: escapes from prison; 1969: escape attempt stopped.
1972: paroled.
May 1974: kills Bertha M. Lush, 63, at the Eldorado Motel in Seattle; her body is found May 18.
April 29, 1975: judgment of first-degree murder entered in King County; life sentence with eligibility for parole. Affirmed by the Court of Appeals on March 29, 1976.
1977: warns Walla Walla officials of an inmate tunnel.
1987: protects a guard during a riot by Cuban inmates at the federal prison in Atlanta.
July 1989: paroled to Ruston, Louisiana; revoked after a November 1989 arrest.
April 1994: paroled; revoked September 1994.
August 1995: released for the last time.
1997: Eloise Fitzner writes to Elledge's future wife; Elledge marries in October.
April 18, 1998: kills Eloise Fitzner, 47, at the Lynnwood church; takes S.C. to Everett.
April 19, 1998: releases S.C., who calls police; Fitzner's body is found that night.
April 21, 1998: surrenders from the Morgan Motel in Tacoma; confesses; charged with first-degree murder.
April 24, 1998: charged with aggravated first-degree murder.
May 27, 1998: state files notice to seek death; Elledge pleads guilty.
October 20 and 21, 1998: penalty trial; jury returns a death verdict after about 90 minutes; Elledge waives appeal.
May 1999: files a waiver with the Supreme Court asking for a speedy execution.
November 9, 2000: Supreme Court hears the mandatory review.
July 5, 2001: Supreme Court affirms, 7 to 1.
July 30, 2001: clemency petition filed by opponents of the death penalty.
August 6, 2001: Clemency and Pardons Board votes 3 to 2 against recommending clemency.
August 17, 2001: Gov. Gary Locke declines to intervene.
August 28, 2001: executed at Walla Walla, 12:52 a.m.
2018: Washington Supreme Court strikes down the death penalty in State v. Gregory.
April 19, 2023: Washington repeals the death penalty (SB 5087).