Murderer gets 90-year prison term

Project proposed on 646 acres near the foot of Ashley Lake

To the end, Lawrence Roedel maintained that when he and shot and killed his common-law wife, it was accidental.

But at Roedel's sentencing Thursday, County Attorney Ed Corrigan said that given Roedel's long and violent history, "I think Dawn [Thompson's] death was an historical inevitability."

District Judge Kitty Curtis sentenced Roedel to 80 years in prison, plus 10 for the use of a .357-caliber gun.

Thompson died Aug. 27, 2005, of a gunshot to the back in the garage of the Ferndale home she shared with Roedel, her cousin. A jury found him guilty of deliberate homicide in April.

Roedel, who didn't testify during the trial, called the jury a lynch mob at his sentencing. He accused prosecutors of rushing to judgment about his guilt and alienating his children. He blamed a "homeless" woman to whom he gave power of attorney for selling his and his children's assets. He blamed a former wife who testified that he abused her, for allegedly receiving love letters from an old flame. He blamed Thompson for allegedly having affairs and scheming about property they owned.

"The carnage just hasn't stopped yet," he said.

He didn't win any sympathy from Curtis, who summed up what he said as "You're just basically not responsible for anything."

"I hate to tell you this, Mr. Roedel, but I don't believe it. I don't buy it … I guess you can call me a lynch mob, too, if you want to."

In imposing a sentence that will ensure that Roedel, 68, dies in prison, she told him that she believes he is violent.

Shirley Barrett testified that she was married to Roedel for seven years in the 1960s.

He was jealous and violent and didn't like women, she said.

When she was in labor with their daughter, he told her that was "God's punishment against me for being a woman," Barrett said.

Roedel delivered his own punishments, she said.

He pushed her and hit her, and was smart enough not to leave bruises that showed, Barrett said. She'd awaken in the night with his hands around her throat, she said. If she were late coming home from work because she stopped for groceries, he would accuse her of having an affair.

His treatment of their children "nowadays would be called abuse."

It was too humiliating to report to police, Barrett said.

"Yes, I did," she said when Corrigan asked whether she had feared for her life.

Eventually, Barrett sought help from her pastor and neighbors. She found a safe place to stay until she and her children could get out-of-state, she said.

She faced Roedel on Thursday in the safety of the courtroom.

When she heard that Roedel was charged with killing Thompson, "I had no doubt that you're capable of it," she told him.

"I want to represent some of the people you have hurt who can't be here … I think your vendetta against women has finally caught up with you."

Another ex-wife of Roedel's, Sandra Johnson, told a story similar to Barrett's. She was married to Roedel for five years in 1966.

"He would put me down and call me filthy names," she said.

"He ran me off the road one night. He pulled me out of the car and beat me up so bad, I missed two weeks of work.

"He tried to strangle me. He tried to kill me. He told me that he would kill me. He told me that other women had left him and he found every one of them."

Johnson said Roedel was "outrageously jealous."

She sobbed throughout her testimony.

"I spent years living in corners and under the bed and in the closet."

After Thompson was killed, "I had to go to the hospital for four days for post-traumatic stress syndrome," she said.

But she leveled her gaze at Roedel in the courtroom and quoted Scripture about what would be his fate "when Jehovah God gets hold of you."

Emily Thompson, Roedel's and Thompson's daughter, also testified. She had testified at Roedel's trial that he awoke her after the shooting and took her out to the garage where her mother lay dead. The 15-year-old girl vainly tried to resuscitate her mother.

On Thursday, her attention was on her father.

"So much of what you think you've been robbed of, you brought upon yourself," she told him. "I believe that you have taken advantage of your freedoms in life.

"I never thought I would say this about my own father.

"As sorry as I am, it is you who should be sorry," she said.

"I miss her so much," she said about her mother.

So does Bridget Michlig, who testified that Dawn Thompson was her best friend.

"She was sweet. She was calm and gentle. She was generous in spirit.

"She loved you and you killed her," Michlig said.

Two people testified on Roedel's behalf - someone who neighbored Roedel's property near Olney, and Robert Klein, who rented a mobile home from Roedel. Klein described Roedel as someone who "would give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it."

Finally, Roedel testified.

"We had as horrible a tragedy in our family as I could ever imagine. When we needed compassion … the state rushed in to inform various family members that this was a murder and a deliberate one. It was anything but that," he said.

He maligned and praised Thompson.

"I know of everything she has done, but I'm not going to speak of it," he said. He said he "found Dawnie in situations where many women would have been shot."

He accused her of trying to kill him on the night she died, of putting a gun to his head and saying, "Goodbye, Larry."

He didn't say that when he called 911 after she died. On that night, he told the dispatcher that Thompson merely had pointed a gun at him.

"I was still trying to protect Dawnie from the authorities," he said.

"God bless that woman," he said. "If you had a day's work to do, that's who you wanted beside you … She was a good mother, an excellent cook, an excellent companion. To be married to Dawnie, it was like winning the lottery.

"I didn't dominate that girl like I might have with Shirley," he said.

She had her own vehicle, her own bedroom, a job, and a separate mailing address, he said.

In response to questions from Corrigan, Roedel admitted he also searched Thompson's room for her diary, locked her out of the house, and listened outside her window to her phone calls.

He testified about how the shooting happened - a different version than he originally told police and one that Corrigan deemed "bunk."

Corrigan also asked Flathead County Sheriff's detective Jeanne Landis to play a tape recording of a phone call between Roedel and a deputy after a 13-year-old girl accused Roedel of kissing her on the mouth. In it is a long, intensely profane and threatening diatribe by Roedel.

It registered with Curtis, who said that after hearing that, she also would be afraid of Roedel.

Roedel's attorney, Jack Quatman, asked for leniency "because he is not all bad." He asked that Roedel be freed from prison for at least the last year or two of his life so that he might make amends to his children and others.

Corrigan recommended the maximum 100-year sentence, enhanced by 10 years for the use of a weapon.

He was satisfied with Curtis' judgment, he said later.

It accomplishes the goal of protecting the community from someone who, "in the four or five marriages we know of, has demeaned women, physically abused them, and ultimately killed one," he said.