Sex Offender Convicted In Rape, Slaying Of Teen Girl

A King County jury today convicted a sex offender of aggravated first-degree murder for the slaying of a 13-year-old runaway girl near Gas Works Park three years ago.

Keith Montgomery Dyer, who also was found guilty today of second-degree rape of a child, will spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance for release.

The body of Karen Hutchison was found partially disrobed in a converted bus near the park on April 15, 1991. She had been stabbed more than 20 times in the head and neck.

Investigators tested semen from used condoms left at the scene and found the DNA in it matched Dyer's, a 2 million-to-one proposition, said special prosecutor Paul Stern. Dyer's hair and fingerprints were also found near the body.

DNA is being increasingly used in courtrooms as genetic fingerprinting evidence.

The jury deliberated only about four hours.

Arrested shortly after the killing, Dyer told Seattle police that he'd had sex with the seventh-grader, but he called it consensual. He denied killing her.

Stern told jurors Dyer's story was impossible and completely refuted by the physical evidence.

Defense attorney Peter Connick told jurors that police immediately focused on Dyer, who had been released from prison just a month before the murder. They manipulated evidence, he said, to make it fit Dyer.

"The real killer created an illusion of a sex crime and because detectives ruled out anything but that possibility, the illusion was successful," Connick said.

But Stern maintained Dyer's guilt is inescapable.

"Mr. Dyer is not here just because his DNA matched that found on the bus," said Stern. "Here is a guy whose fingerprints were there, who admitted having sex with her, who lies about the details surrounding it and who knew facts only the killer would."

Stern also alleged that Dyer spent several more hours in the bus after the killing.

Hutchison had run away from home and had become involved in Persian Gulf War protests. She met Dyer through a "vigil house" in Wallingford where people would congregate.

Stern and fellow Snohomish County Prosecutor Steve Garvey handled the case for the King County prosecutor's office, which disqualified itself when a relative of a deputy prosecutor was an initial suspect.

Dyer, who stands 6 feet 6 inches and weighed more than 200 pounds when last arrested, was convicted in 1989 of attempted indecent liberties for attacking a female convenience-store clerk in the store's walk-in cooler. He also has been convicted on drug charges.

He was living in the Wallingford area at the time of the attack.