It was about 7 p.m. on Monday, December 31, 2007 when Shannon Harps, 31, a Sierra Club organizer, left her newly-purchased condominium on East Howell Street in Seattle's Capitol Hill area to do some last-minute shopping for a New Year's Eve dinner she was planning to have with friends. She had sent an e-mail to a relative in Ohio that partially explained her plans for the evening, the last time that anyone would hear from her. About 30 minutes later, only moments before she approached the entrance to the building where she lived on the return trip from a nearby grocery store, neighbors heard her screams and shrieks. When they came to her aid they could see that she had been stabbed, and witnesses saw a man fleeing the scene after hearing him shouting, "Die, die, die."
When officers from the Seattle Police Department arrived at the scene, they found Harps bleeding profusely from stab wounds to her chest. They provided what first-aid that they could, and she was rushed off by ambulance to Harborview Medical Center where she was pronounced dead a short time later.
Witnesses told police that the man seen fleeing the scene of the crime was a white male, approximately 6 feet tall, with a beard. He was dressed in baggy pants, a blue jacket with a hood, and a stocking cap. When witnesses lost sight of him he was running east on Howell Street, but had turned south on 16th Avenue. Interviews with friends and witnesses failed to turn up anyone who may have had a motive to kill her, and by the time the investigation had been completed the police believed that Harps' murder had been the result of a random, motiveless attack.
Despite the random aspect of the senseless killing, the case did not take long for detectives to solve. Less than three weeks later investigators focused on James Anthony Williams, 50, who was by then in jail on an alleged parole violation. The cops linked Williams, who has a fifth-grade education, to the murder when his DNA matched that found on the knife handle used in the slaying. Williams, it turned out, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who had resided about 10 blocks from the victim, and detectives concluded that Williams and Harps did not know each other. Apparently Williams had a long police record for crimes ranging from drug charges, assault and battery, to the shooting of a man at a bus stop in 1995 for which he had served time in prison. More recently he had been arrested for failing to check in with probation authorities and his mental health provider - he was being supervised under Washington's dangerous mentally ill offender program. He had also made threats to kill a community corrections officer and a case manager, and had threatened his landlord. He was deemed a threat "to the safety of officers and those around him," but unfortunately the assessment came too late to prevent future acts of violence. He also had been refusing to take his medication, and told a reporter that he "may" have committed the killing because he was being forced to take the antipsychotic medications.
"I don't really remember doing it because God erased my memory," Williams said.
On Thursday, May 21, 2009, Williams pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Harps' slaying who, police had said, had been "in the wrong place at the wrong time." His sentencing is scheduled for next week, where he will likely receive a prison term of between 27 and 35 years.
"This is a good resolution to a tragic case which will result in, essentially, a life sentence for the defendant," King County Prosecutor Dan Satterburg said. "This case highlighted a lot of work that still needs to be done in improving the overlap between the mental health system and the criminal justice system."
Photo Credit: Police file photo
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