`Homicide Waiting To Happen' Does -- Legal System Had Treated Enumclaw Man Leniently Before Murder Of Woman

The day after everyone agreed to keep Donald Dunn Jr. out of jail, his probation officer began to worry.

"I consider him very dangerous and a homicide waiting to happen," Nancy Larsen wrote to Dunn's therapist.

There wasn't much of a wait. One month later, on June 2, 1993, Dunn - just spared from jail despite attacking a 14-year-old girl while on probation for assaulting his wife with a rifle - acted again. He fired a fatal gunshot into the back of his 17-year-old girlfriend after holding her hostage in a stolen van near Snoqualmie.

Dunn, 23, is to be sentenced tomorrow for Vanessa Baisden's murder. Prosecutors have recommended a 20-year prison term, the lightest sentence allowed, in exchange for the Enumclaw man's guilty plea to first-degree murder. With good time in prison, he could be out in 17 years.

It wouldn't be the first time Dunn received leniency from the court.

Some of those familiar with the case say the legal system has failed to hold Dunn accountable for his crimes or protect his victims, both key elements of the state's domestic-violence law.

Court records show Dunn repeatedly got off easy in part because those supposedly in charge of him often weren't aware of his activities. Even when they were, they decided he needed treatment, not punishment.

"Here's a person who came to the attention of so many, without action being taken that would prevent further violence," said Laura Inveen, a King County Superior Court judge. "I hope it is a highly unusual case. The concern is that it isn't."

Louis Frantz, Dunn's attorney, said his client is a "nice guy" who "made some mistakes." Dunn killed Baisden because the two had entered into a murder-suicide pact, he said. Dunn told detectives that Baisden ordered him to kill her and he complied.

"That's just bull," said Sgt. Jim Fuda, head of the King County police hostage-negotiating team, who was at the scene. "She was saying, `Please help me.' She wanted to come out."

Baisden `always trying to help'

Baisden met Dunn just a few months before her death. A troubled teenager who had dropped out of Twin Rivers Alternative High School, she lived with her parents and eight brothers and sisters at the end of a country road outside Snoqualmie. According to her mother, Vanessa was vivacious but willful and often associated with questionable companions.

"She was always trying to help these down-and-out kind of guys," said Charmaine Baisden. "She could always find something to love in them."

The Baisdens said their daughter was afraid of Dunn; she told them he had threatened to harm them and she wanted to protect them.

The night before Vanessa Baisden was killed, she called from where she was staying with Dunn and asked whether she could come home. "I said, `Of course,' " her mother said. "She said, `OK, . . . I'll see you in the morning.' "

Baisden died a mile from home in the driveway of an abandoned house. Dunn killed her in the van after telling police hostage negotiators they had 30 seconds to bring him a cellular phone.

Dunn first came to the attention of law enforcement in January 1992, after he loaded a hunting rifle, pointed it at his wife and said he was going to kill her, according to court papers prosecutors filed in the case.

That's a felony, but prosecutors allowed Dunn to plead guilty to fourth-degree assault, a misdemeanor. The change was made because Dunn's wife recanted her testimony, said Dan Satterberg, chief of staff for the King County prosecutor's office.

Victims fearful of retaliation often recant; prosecutors sometimes use other evidence to take the case to trial. Satterberg said he doesn't know why that didn't happen this time. "We do, on occasion, prosecute domestic-violence cases despite recantations," he said, "but it wasn't done in this case."

Promise of clean slate

In May 1992, King County Superior Court Judge Norma Huggins gave Dunn 12 days in jail and a deferred sentence of 24 months and probation. If he stayed crime-free for two years, the crime would be erased from his record; if he didn't, jail time could be imposed immediately.

Dunn was assigned the minimal level of supervision offered to those on probation. His case was to be reviewed every six months, and he was to report any changes in his status by calling a 1-900 number. There were no visits to his home or work; probation officers never knew he was packing pistols.

Over the next year, Dunn violated probation repeatedly and with impunity. He failed to show up to serve his 12 days. He ignored the court's order to get a mental-health evaluation. And he continued to assault and harass women.

Protection order sought

An ex-girlfriend eight months pregnant with Dunn's child asked for a protection order in November. When she filed the papers, she said she'd suffered six months of slaps and shoves and other attacks. Dunn was threatening "to go to the hospital while I am having the baby and take the baby with an AK-47, and if he doesn't get the baby, he will shoot it," she told the court.

Five months later, Dunn again threatened to kill his wife. He was stalking her and threatening to kidnap their 3-month-old son, according to papers she filed in requesting a protection order.

Either complaint would have been enough to bust Dunn's probation. But probation officers don't routinely keep in touch with victims - or check civil-court proceedings for offenders they're supervising.

Such omissions are gaps in the system, Inveen says.

The state Court Administrator's Office is seeking a federal grant for King County to create a unified court-information system that would make it easier for probation officers and judges to keep track of an offender's status in other courts.

When Dunn's case came before Huggins again in February 1993, probation officer Lisa Grimsley told the judge that Dunn still had not gotten a mental-health evaluation and had assaulted a 14-year-old runaway the month before.

Grimsley brought the girl to testify at a hearing in March 1993 and recommended that Dunn's deferred sentence be revoked and he spend a year in jail.

`You blew it'

But Huggins declined. She rescheduled the hearing for May 5, two months later, to see whether Dunn would be convicted of hitting the girl, and to give him more time to get a mental-health evaluation.

Grimsley says Dunn was mishandled by the court.

"I think if you commit a crime and you're on probation for the same crime, you shouldn't be given another chance," Grimsley said. "You were given a chance, and you blew it."

The next month, on April 20, Dunn was convicted in Enumclaw Municipal Court of assaulting the 14-year-old. Judge Roger Lewis gave him 90 days and told him to report to jail within a month. Dunn never showed up.

Dunn signed up for batterers' treatment at New Directions in Auburn on May 4, five days after his wife filed for the protection order in civil court - and the day before his next court date with Huggins.

Huggins, citing Dunn's long failure to get a mental-health evaluation and his assault of the girl, revoked the deferred sentence. She imposed a 365-day sentence in its place - but suspended all 365 days on condition of continued batterers' treatment and good behavior.

Explained Huggins recently, "If I'd put him in jail for 30 days or 60 days, I think he would have still have had the problems with anger and hostility when he got out."

Probation officer Larsen, who'd been assigned Dunn's case that spring, recommended he stay out of jail because there's no treatment there for batterers, and she thought he needed and wanted treatment.

Dunn attended group-therapy sessions for two hours twice a week for three weeks. In a May 25 report, therapist Theron Morgan said Dunn "appeared to be progressing" and categorized him as a "moderate risk."

Eight days later, Dunn killed Baisden.

Morgan says he cried when he heard about the murder.

"I didn't see he was as big a threat to society as he was," said Morgan. "We saw all the danger signs in him and put him in our strictest program. But there was a whole lot of stuff we didn't know."