By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
OLYMPIA – After the slaying of a drug dealer in Olympia almost 15 months ago, the Rochester man who came to be the prime suspect hid out in places like a woman friend’s home in Rochester, a motel in Centralia and, briefly, at Robbie Russell’s Chehalis residence, while his get away car got put in an Onalaska body shop to be repainted, according to witness testimony.
[1]Robert John Maddaus Jr.
Robert J. Maddaus Jr., 41, of Rochester, and four others at the Capitol Way Southeast apartment scattered after 40-year-old Shaun Allen Peterson was fatally shot.
Maddaus was convicted [2] last week of first-degree murder and other charges in Thurston County Superior Court. Peterson, who resided in Tumwater when he was killed, was found handcuffed and dying on the street outside another drug dealer’s apartment early on the morning of November 16, 2009.
Jurors began hearing the case in Judge Christine Pomeroy’s courtroom on Jan. 12 [3].
Witnesses for Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Bruneau described the days prior to the shooting as a weekend in which the Rochester supplier of drugs to street level dealers through Thurston and Lewis counties was trying to track down who had robbed [4] his home of five pounds of methamphetamine and $30,000.
[5]Shaun Allen Peterson
Defense attorney Richard Woodrow attempted to show it was Maddaus’s acquaintance Matthew Tremblay who killed Peterson, and probably by accident.
Witnesses described themselves and others as smoking methamphetamine and sometimes heroin at many of the locations “visited” throughout trial testimony, including the 1819 Capitol Way SE apartment [6] of Dan Leville and Falyn Grimes that night.
Olympia police were called to the shooting scene at 2:43 a.m. that morning.
Maddaus and Matthew Tremblay, now 30, both testified the other was the shooter but agree they fled the area together in Maddaus’s dark green Volkswagen Jetta.
They drove to Rochester to the mobile home of Josephine Lundy, a woman who has said she’s known Maddaus some 20 years.
Lundy testified only that Maddaus called her and said he was coming over. She said she went to bed and didn’t even know where in her home on U.S. Highway 12 that Maddaus slept.
Tremblay testified Maddaus told him to start cleaning out the car and that Maddaus hid the gun and handcuffs. Tremblay stayed there a couple of hours during which Maddaus made several calls, looked for gasoline to put on his arms, took a shower and went to sleep, Tremblay told the court.
Tremblay’s girlfriend Amanda Harader testified she got a call from him, asking her to pick him up. “He sounded like he was scared, upset, he wasn’t acting normal,” the 23-year-old woman testified.
The couple said she brought Tremblay’s supply of methamphetamine and Tremblay sold three ounces to Lundy at Maddaus’s request before they left.
The couple said they then switched motels, from the Quality Inn in Olympia to one in Lacey.
They were picked up by police on Nov. 17, on Highway 101 headed toward Mason County on the way to meet her sister and David “Nate” Hoffman, according to witness testimony. “Fat Nate” – who said he was Tremblay’s business partner – testified he and Tremblay were going to leave town.
The other three individuals at the Capitol Way apartment testified that after they heard, but didn’t see, gunshots, they fled to an upstairs apartment of a friend.
Leville and Grimes said they stayed upstairs into the following day, hiding out because she had a warrant and they were scared. Jesse Rivera said he later went back downstairs to their apartment and slept until he had to go to work at Fishtail Brewery where he was a cook, while police conducted an investigation out on the street. Rivera wasn’t contacted by police until Dec. 9.
Maddaus testified [7] last week when he left Lundy’s in Rochester he met Robbie Russell in Grand Mound and went to Russell’s home in Chehalis while Russell arranged for someone else to pick up the Jetta.
“I needed to kind of hide out for a minute, because I needed to figure out what was going on,” Maddaus said.
Maddaus didn’t describe who Russell was, but one witness testified he was a drug dealer who was supplied by Maddaus.
Maddaus only stayed at the Jackson Highway residence a short time because there were a “bunch of people hanging out”, he said. Then Russell found a friend’s place for him to say, Maddaus said.
As the Olympia Police Department continued to investigate the death and round up those they thought might be involved, Maddaus stopped answering his cell phone, according to phone records in the case.
Maddaus testified he spent a couple of days at the King Oscar Motel off Harrison Avenue in Centralia, at another motel and then, if he remembered correctly, back to the King Oscar. Russell helped him get rooms, he said.
A now-23-year-old who calls herself Maddaus’s niece, spoke of visiting him twice at a motel across from the Centralia Factory Outlets. Chelsea Williams said she brought a girlfriend of her “uncle” over to stay there and picked her up two days later.
Dale Carter, who has an auto body and paint shop at his Burnt Ridge Road home in Onalaska, testified that Maddaus contacted him and said he wanted to bring his Jetta in and get the rest of the body work done on it.
Carter was already doing work on an Acura that belonged to Maddaus and he was told to put that “on hold”, he said. Two men he didn’t know delivered the Jetta the next day, Carter testified.
The dark green metallic Jetta was being primed so it could be painted a charcoal color when Olympia police detective Chris Johnstone and a Lewis County sheriff’s deputy came and impounded the car, according to witness testimony.
Testimony didn’t reveal all the places those from the apartment hid out until their arrests, but did show Leville and Grimes were not arrested until Dec. 5 at the Little Creek Casino in Mason County.
At one point before Maddaus was captured, he visited the Tumwater home of another drug dealer, Theodore Farmer.
Farmer testified Maddaus was wearing a long blondish wig when he was brought there by a “Hispanic guy”. They spoke of creating an alibi that Maddaus was with him getting a tattoo done between midnight and 3 a.m. when Peterson was shot, Farmer testified.
Maddaus was coming from the home of a Nisqually man when he met up with Russell at Russell’s Chehalis travel trailer home on Nov. 27.
Maddaus said Russell contacted him and said they needed to go check on the progress of the Jetta.
However, what he didn’t know was three days earlier, detective Johnstone had contacted Russell in Rochester – when he had been stopped by deputies – and asked him to cooperate in picking Maddaus up. He agreed.
Russell asked the detective if he would help out with some charges he had in Lewis County, Johnstone said.
Johnstone testified he spoke with the prosecutor, “who only said he would take any assistance that he gave the police into consideration for his charges, but no formal agreements or promises were made.”
Maddaus knew a warrant had been issued for his arrest. In court last week, he described what happened next on Nov. 27, 2009: “Robbie had the cops waiting [8] for me.”
Johnstone testified he knew ahead of time Russell would be driving a red Corvette and had been in phone contact with Russell throughout the night. Lewis County sheriff’s deputies and their SWAT team had assembled hours earlier to assist in the capture.
“I was at the bottom of his driveway,” Johnstone said.
Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Rob Snaza and detective Dan Riordan got word the car was leaving and got behind it as it turned off Jackson Highway onto Rush Road, according to Lewis County Sheriff’s Office incident reports.
The driver at first pulled over, but then sped away fishtailing. Snaza used his patrol car to tap the rear of the Corvette, intentionally spinning out the fleeing car. The car slid sideways into the ongoing lane, hit a culvert and went airborne.
Maddaus was taken into custody.
The Corvette was held at Lewis County’s evidence facility.
When the car was searched, detectives found a loaded nine millimeter pistol beneath the passenger floor mat, more than $35,000 cash and a green backpack which contained pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin, according to testimony.
The $35,920 in currency was inside a locked bank bag which was in a black Tommy Hilfiger bag found on the floorboard, Olympia Police Officer Dan Smith testified. The Hilfiger bag also contained a copy of the search warrant for Maddaus’s residence, he said.
The drugs were inside a pea-green backpack found behind the seats, according to Smith. It also held a prescription with Maddaus’s name, a passport and an M-80, along with the “food saver” containers, he said.
The drugs inside the backpack amounted to a little less, according to Smith’s testimony, than charging documents initially alleged.
They included: approximately one and three-quarters pounds of methamphetamine (street value of more than $120,000); nearly a half pound of cocaine (street value of more than $15,000); and about one third pound of heroin (street value of $12,000).
Maddaus was sentenced [9] to one year and a day on the drug possession charges in Lewis County.
Russell was not charged in connection with the events of Nov. 27, 2009, but in December got a six-year prison sentence [10] when his four Lewis County cases were wrapped up into one plea agreement.
Testimony in the murder trial didn’t reveal exactly the status of everyone who was in the apartment the night of the fatal shooting, but:
Tremblay said he is in prison now for trafficking in stolen property and gets out in September.
Leville said he made a plea deal for attempted possession of a controlled substance, but has not yet been sentenced.
Grimes said she also made a deal, avoiding prison, and thinks she’s already served her time.
Rivera got “use” immunity in exchange for his testimony. He’s the only one of the group that didn’t have a prior felony record, according to the prosecutor.
Detective Johnstone says he doesn’t know who robbed Maddaus’s home of drugs, it wasn’t part of the investigation.
On the witness stand, Maddaus said he believed Jessica Abear – a woman who was staying with him – was in on it with Jason Juneau who had been in the mobile home the day before and saw where Maddaus kept his drugs.
Also not answered during the lengthy trial or in court proceedings during Maddaus’s related drug possession case is how it was he seemingly replenished his supply after the robbery.
Maddaus will be sentenced on Tuesday afternoon for first-degree murder, two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and four counts of witness tampering, as well as second-degree assault and attempted kidnapping.
Both attorneys estimates he faces around 50 years in prison.