Summary: After allegedly killing her family eight years ago, the trial against a Washington woman is finally starting.
After eight years, Michele Anderson is finally seeing her day in court, King 5 reports. Anderson is facing first-degree murder for killing six members of her family on Christmas Eve in 2007 in Carnation, Washington.
Anderson is accused of killing her parents, older brother, sister-in-law, 5-year-old niece and 3-year-old nephew. Anderson’s former boyfriend, Joseph McEnroe, was also accused of the murders and was convicted last year and will face life in prison. Prosecutors have argued that she is the mastermind behind the attack after her family starting requiring her to pay her own bills.
The two were living on a mobile home on the family’s property so her parents started charging her rent, which made her angry. She has admitted that she went to her parents home that night to “kill everybody if we couldn’t make things work with mom and dad.” They also wanted her to pay her own car insurance and other bills.
Prosecutors argued in the opening statement that the two acted in cold blood: “They were well-prepared and well-armed. She carried, hidden in a sweatshirt, a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. He carried a 357-caliber revolver. But they also were armed with something else. The trust of the people inside that home and hatred for the people inside that home.”
Investigators refer to the murder as a massacre because of its gruesomeness. Five-year-old Olivia was found hidden underneath her mother in what is assumed her attempt to escape the shooting before she was shot. McEnroe alleges that Anderson told him to kill the kids since they would be scarred for life after seeing their parents shot.
Despite aggravated murder charges and the premeditation involved in the murder, Anderson will not face the death penalty. She has been uncooperative and now her lawyers are trying for an insanity plea after first trying to be removed from the case. A judge denied their request to be removed.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg removed capital punishment from the table before using it to get a guilty plea. The trial is expected to last six weeks and has already cost taxpayers $1.5 million.
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