Details Emerge In Death Of Family -- Two 14-Year-Olds Charged In Murders

OUTLOOK, Yakima County - Michael Skelton, crippled and on crutches, was beaten to death by intruders wielding pieces of his firewood.

Jason Skelton, 12, was killed running to his father's aid.

Lynn Skelton, 34, was beaten and stabbed to death in the shower, oblivious to the deaths of her husband and son.

Bryan Skelton, 6, was clubbed and stabbed to death as he peered at the killers from beneath the covers of his bed.

Perhaps most horrific of all, the two people arrested for last month's gruesome murders are just 14 years old, and schoolmates of Jason.

The slaughter of an entire family in their rural home March 24 has shocked this farming area. It also has the potential to inflame already-shaky race relations.

The defendants are Hispanics, a group that in the past decade has become the majority in the towns of the agricultural Yakima Valley.

One of the teenagers was arrested April 5 in Yakima. The other was arrested the next day at an aunt's home in Oxnard, Calif.

They have each been charged with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder and are being held in jail without bail.

Normally those charges can bring the death penalty, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that people under age 16 cannot be executed.

Yakima County prosecutors are seeking to try the suspects as adults, which would bring a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.

"The maximum sentence in juvenile court is until they are 21 (years old)," deputy prosecutor Doug Haynes said. "On the 21st birthday you walk, no parole, nothing."

Haynes said children as young as 13 have been tried as adults in Washington state.

But attorney Antonio Salazar of Seattle, representing one defendant, contends state law appears to set a minimum age of 15 for trial as an adult.

Both defendants had court hearings on the issue last week.

One of the defendants sat quietly in a juvenile courtroom as lawyers sparred over legalities. No members of the youth's family appeared, and he was assigned a public defender.

The slightly built boy, dressed in a ripped sweatshirt and wearing his hair with a tail in back, said nothing during the hearing.

In determining if a youth can be tried as an adult, the U.S. Supreme Court has established eight criteria dealing with the seriousness of the crime and the maturity level of the suspect, Haynes said. There is no specific age limit in federal law, he said.

Meanwhile, the community struggles to comprehend the enormity of the crime.

Coroner Leonard Birkinbine said all four victims died of multiple stab wounds and blows to the head.

Law officers have declined to speculate on a motive. Earlier, they said one motive offered by the suspects was not believable. That motive was that they were attacking the father for beating Jason, their schoolmate.

Details of the Skelton killings have emerged in court files.

According to transcripts, the intruders allegedly kicked in the front door of the mobile home about 11 p.m.

They apparently thought the family was not home because a car was missing.

They were confronted by Michael Skelton, 34, who was partially disabled by a work-related back injury two years ago. He was clubbed with firewood and stabbed.

Jason Skelton emerged and threatened to call police, and he too was attacked, records showed.

Lynn Skelton died in the bathroom, and Bryan in his room, records showed.

The assailants loaded Michael Skelton's car with some of the family's electronic equipment, records showed.

But the car failed to start so they returned the equipment and escaped on foot, records showed.

Missing from the house was one portable stereo, law officers said.

The Skelton family moved to the Yakima Valley two years ago, in part to escape violence in the Fresno, Calif., area. The parents had worked in department stores in Fresno and Dinuba, Calif.

Lynn Skelton worked for a store in nearby Prosser.

Officers estimate the killings occurred in the family's mobile home between 6 p.m. and midnight March 24.

The bodies were discovered the next day by two of Jason's friends who were seeking him to play baseball.

The two teenagers have led troubled lives.

One youth had not spent much time at home in recent years, his single mother told the Yakima Herald-Republic.

The boy's father left when he was 3 and has never returned, she said. Her son had not been in trouble before, although she worried about the people he associated with, she said.

The mother of the other boy said her son was incapable of the violence he is charged with.

"The police are very interested to solve this problem no matter what," she told the newspaper. "I don't think he did a thing like that."

She said her son was sleeping over at the other defendant's home the evening of the killings.

Jason Skelton often visited her home to play with her son, the woman said.

That defendant's family had moved to the Yakima Valley from Oxnard in 1988, after his father was strangled to death during a robbery in the family's home.

Officers initially said they had no suspects in the family's slaying. They got a break when a 13-year-old boy from nearby Granger in early April began disclosing details of the murders to detectives. The boy said he learned the details in a conversation with one of the defendants.

Outlook is just north of Sunnyside, where race relations were strained last year during a widely publicized case in which a white high-school wrestler claimed four Hispanic teammates raped him with a mop handle.

The case prompted several marches by demonstrators and brought unwelcome recruiting activities from a white-supremacist group based in Goldendale.

Sunnyside police chief Wallace Anderson said there have been no signs of racial tension or new racist recruiting because of the murders.

"But that would certainly be something they would want to take advantage of," Anderson said.