Settlement Expected In Ballasiotes Death Suit

An assistant attorney general says he expects to resolve a wrongful-death suit filed against the state Department of Corrections in the case of murder victim Diane Ballasiotes without difficulty.

Jon Ferguson says he considers it appropriate for the state to settle the case brought by the victim's parents, Ida Ballasiotes, a prominent victim-rights advocate, and her husband, Andrew.

Ballasiotes' slayer, Gene Raymond Kane, 32, also is a defendant in the complaint filed last month in King County Superior Court.

Kane was convicted of aggravated first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without release in the death of Ballasiotes, 29, on Sept. 26, 1988. She was abducted in Pioneer Square, stabbed and beaten before her body was found on Beacon Hill.

Kane, who previously had served time for assaulting women in Eastern Washington, had walked away from the Reynolds Work Release Center in Pioneer Square before the murder. His case focused statewide attention on the release of sex offenders and on the placement of many released offenders in downtown Seattle.

The civil suit accuses the state and the Corrections Department of negligence, recklessness and misconduct in permitting Kane to be placed in work release even after he had committed infractions in the program there.

The Ballasioteses also accuse the state of negligence in hiring, inadequately training and supervising employees assigned to work with

Kane.

The suit asks for unspecified damages and changes in the corrections system.

``We want accountability from those people,'' Ida Ballasiotes said yesterday, stressing that the changes are more important to the family than the monetary damages. ``If they had followed their own guidelines, we wouldn't be in this position.''

She said she doesn't know of any substantial changes in procedures made by the department. The couple wants more supervision of people in work-release programs and more care in who is placed in them.

Ferguson of the attorney general's office said the Kane case is different from that of Charles Rodman Campbell, who killed two women and a little girl in Clearview, Snohomish County, in 1982. Kane committed a random killing, whereas Campbell went back to murder one victim who had testified against him in an assault and sodomy trial in 1976, Ferguson said.

A Snohomish County Superior Court jury awarded about $1 million to the estate of Renae Wicklund, the witness against Campbell, and her daughter, Shannah, 8. The state agreed to pay what will be more than $1 million in damages to the estate of Barbara Hendrickson, Wicklund's neighbor.

Ferguson said damages in the Ballasiotes case would be less because the victim was not married and had no children.