Police Still Puzzled By Tacoma Slaying -- Victim Was Acquitted Of Child Molestation

TACOMA - It had been two years since Kaare Sortland and his wife were facing charges of molesting children at their home day-care center, but the harassment never ended even after a court found them innocent.

So when Sortland was shot to death in his back yard on Halloween, police naturally asked: Was it a case of vigilantism?

"We just don't know," police Sgt. Mike Miller said yesterday. "There's any number of possibilities that still exist."

Detectives had interviewed most of the dozen parents who had accused the Sortlands of molesting children at their Hugs and Kisses Day-Care Center in the 1980s. All their alibis checked out and police had no suspects.

Other possibilities were being explored. Sortland was a supervisor at a construction firm, and the killer may have been someone upset over his work, Miller said. Or Sortland could have confronted a Halloween vandal who panicked and shot him.

Hours before the killing, someone sprayed an obscenity in huge black letters across a back window of the Sortlands' home. Police don't know if it was connected to the killing.

Sortland, 49, answered his back door about 7 p.m. Saturday, police said. His wife, Judy, who was inside the house, said she heard her husband shout something like, "I didn't do it!" just before several shots rang out.

Sortland was shot several times in the chest and died later at Tacoma General Hospital.

"He made some brief, one-line statements," Miller said. "I have a hunch he knew who it was. Unfortunately, he didn't give us anything that specific."

The Sortlands were accused of molesting children 18 months to 4 years of age at their now-defunct day-care center. Charges were filed in three cases.

The two were acquitted at a trial involving one boy. A judge threw out another case involving the two other boys, ruling their testimony was unreliable because they changed their stories after therapy and interviews with investigators.

Prosecutors have appealed the second case. In September, the Sortlands filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Pierce County officials.

Friends and neighbors of the Sortlands say the parents' anger never subsided.

Before the trial, a vandal broke the Sortlands' windows. After the acquittal, parents often confronted the Sortlands with insults.

But Miller said that except for those incidents, he didn't know of any harassment incidents the Sortlands reported to police.

"Nobody's been firebombing their cars or trying to throw Molotov cocktails through the windows of their house," Miller said. "It was mostly just people running into them in public and making disgracing remarks."

But Miller said that Judy Sortland and other relatives "have some strong feelings about what happened and why and who did it."

A brother of Sortland, Oskar Sortland of Tacoma, said the couple were so crushed by the molestation backlash that they put their home up for sale about six months ago and planned to move.

He wouldn't say if he believed a vigilante killed his brother.

"I just know there was anger, and it's got to come to an end," he said.