A Murder In Orting -- Portrait Of A Teen Suspect -- Court Files Say Everything About Slaying But Why

TACOMA - At 6 feet 4 inches and 240 pounds, Ansel Wolfgang Hofstetter, 16, is big enough to be a linebacker on the school football team.

With an exquisite touch on penciled line drawings, he's probably talented enough to win a scholarship to art school.

But none of those things interested him. Instead, the boy everyone called Wolf used his size and imagination to hurt and intimidate others, according to friends and family members.

Today, Wolf stands accused of a killing police say is one of the most cold-blooded they've ever seen, a pointless act for $97 and a half-dozen packs of Marlboro cigarettes.

He pleaded not guilty yesterday to killing Linda Miller, a 25-year-old single mother and convenience-store clerk in Orting, about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma. He is being held without bail in the Pierce County Jail.

Prosecutors told him they may seek the death penalty. His lawyer now has 20 days to come up with any mitigating reason why his life should be spared, if he is convicted. Prosecutors would take that information into account before making a final decision whether to seek the death penalty. Wolf, who is to be tried as an adult, could become this state's youngest resident on death row.

The two other teenagers charged with conspiring to kill Miller last March have pleaded guilty and face sentencing in adult court early next year. The fourth person in the group, 19-year-old Dwayne Satterfield, has told police he and Wolf masterminded the plan to rob the store and kill the clerk, according to police and court statements. Satterfield faces trial next month.

One of the teens, Virden Lee Leonard, a 15-year-old who wears braces and met Wolf in a physical-education class, told police Wolf joked about the murder when the group went to a Denny's restaurant afterward for a burger and fries.

He said Wolf clapped his hands to simulate the sound of the gun and pretended that catsup was Miller's blood, laughing at this macabre re-enactment. Miller was shot twice in the back of the head by Wolf, prosecutors say.

The details of how the crime was purportedly planned are laid out in court affidavits by prosecutors, plea agreements and a 300-plus page police investigative file provided to The Times.

What the files do not contain is the reason why.

Wolf's lawyer declined to allow the youth to be interviewed by The Times, nor did Wolf give a statement to police. The gag order requested by Wolf's attorney is so tight that even Wolf's probation officer in juvenile detention said she was only allowed to tell him "good morning" and deliver his mail.

During his 4 1/2-month incarceration at Remann Hall, Wolf grew out his mohawk haircut. He was polite and cooperative with staff but had plotted several escapes - including hiding a broken spoon in a wad of toilet paper, according to court testimony this week.

Those who know Wolf say he doesn't appear to care about anyone or anything, except perhaps his family. Tucked into a dresser drawer next to Wolf's bed at his Lakewood apartment are dozens and dozens of baby pictures, school pictures, party pictures.

But not all the family memories are happy ones. Wolf's mother, Esther, had been institutionalized for schizophrenia while a teenager in Chicago. His father, John Hofstetter, said he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome after serving in Korea.

Hofstetter, 56, whom Judge Donald Thompson earlier this week referred to as an "abusive father," said in an interview the boy and his mother rejected one another practically from the time of his birth.

When Wolf was 6, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. For the next 10 years, she blamed the children - especially Wolf, the second oldest - for stress that she said caused the cancer.

Esther died of cancer last year. Wolf's brother Brandt, 11, a friendly, outgoing child, imitates the way the mother blamed the kids for her cancer. "You're killing me! You're killing me!," he whines in a high-pitched voice.

Wolf's older brother Nate, 17, says, "We're supposed to be sorry she's dead, but we're better off without her."

Almost from the start, no one could control Wolf, his father and brothers said.

"He believes that might makes right," said the father, a psychiatric nurse at Veterans Hospital in American Lake, Pierce County.

Though he didn't hit his mother, Wolf would act like he was going to, and found his intimidating size could work on other people that way, too, family members said. He got into a lot of fights.

"If you weren't his friend, you were his enemy," said Nate.

According to Marti Sorenson, Wolf's probation officer, Wolf would beat up Nate and two younger brothers.

Wolf's father said he was afraid to get counseling for his son as a teenager because he thought it would destroy Wolf's faith in him. Wolf's brothers said their father was the only person Wolf really trusted.

Nate added, "Dad cares a lot, but he never says, `No, don't do that.' "

In fact, according to Sorenson, John Hofstetter gave his son an AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle and two other guns.

Wolf's father missed repeated meetings with school counselors, Sorenson testified at Wolf's court hearing this week. No one doubted Wolf's intelligence, she said, yet he failed second grade. Teachers described him as having a short fuse. He was frequently suspended from Lockburn Junior High School in Lakewood for cutting classes. In fact, he hasn't attended school since a month before the murder. He can barely read or write.

Yet on his desk at school was scrawled this message: "I will kill again," according to Sorenson.

Art was something he taught himself. He showed real talent. Above his bed is a pencil drawing of a wolf's head with teeth bared, an image, his brothers say, of how Wolf saw himself.

The family broke up after the mother was stricken by breast cancer again three years ago. She moved out of the family's Tacoma house, taking the three younger children. A year later, Wolf, then 14, and his father moved to an apartment in nearby Lakewood. To this day, there is a TV and stereo equipment but nothing other than the floor to sit on in the living room.

Meanwhile, Wolf was sporting a mohawk haircut and wide-banded gold bracelet that said "Preservation." He told friends that meant preservation of the Aryan race. His family, however, says Wolf was not a white supremacist.

"He preferred the skateboarders and heavy metal," his father said.

His family says girls adored Wolf, calling the apartment day and night. "He'd slap them around," Nate said. "He was pretty mean with girls."

Nate, who also sports a mohawk, may look like his brother, but that's where the resemblence ends. Instead, he's been interested in drama and ballet since he was a child. He tried to interest Wolf in ballet but says his younger brother didn't like the idea of wearing tights.

Left unsupervised most of the time while his father worked the night shift, Wolf had his share of run-ins with police. He was arrested for burglary, shoplifting, assault, malicious mischief and criminal trespassing. But he was never charged, according to Sorenson's testimony.

Friends told police Wolf and a friend once broke into an industrial park, pulled their pants down and sat on a copying machine, and faxed pictures of their posteriors to other companies.

Once the police were called to Wolf's apartment because he was shooting a rifle out the window, said neighbor Virginia Robinson. Deputies took three guns away from him last February, but he kept at least one, a .22-caliber rifle.

In early March, Wolf met Olivia Chambliss-Mathers, a 15-year-old runaway, at a teenage hangout in Olympia.

In an interview, she said that she, like Wolf, had a troubled family background. She and her mother hated one another, Olivia said. But her criminal history consisted only of one stolen candy bar.

Now she's facing 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to taking part in the murder of Linda Miller.

Police and prosecutors say Wolf and Olivia were joined in the crime by Satterfield, an unemployed friend of Wolf's who had just started dating Olivia, and Leonard, the former junior-high classmate of Wolf's.

According to Pierce County prosecutors, the four spent more than five hours cruising around the sleepy town of Orting during the night of March 17-18, waiting for the right moment to strike an isolated Jackpot food market.

Wolf and Satterfield had planned the crime for several days, according to the court papers. When they walked in the door, each of the four had a job to do:

Olivia was to distract the clerk by asking where the coffee machine was. Wolf was to shoot the clerk with his rifle. Satterfield was to unplug the cash register. Lee was to carry the cash register and gun to the car.

The crime was carried out as planned, according to statements by three of the teenagers. Wolf approached Miller from behind, put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. When she fell, he fired again.

Transcripts of taped confessions say that while the group was eating at Denny's afterward, one of the teenagers went in the bathroom and threw up. Not Wolf.