Blackwell Gets Life Without Parole -- Triple Murderer Told: `You Will Never Be Free'

EVERETT - The lawyer for Susana Blackwell faced her client's murderer in court yesterday and told him he deserved his fate.

"You will never be free," Mimi Castillo told triple-killer Timothy Blackwell.

"You will live the rest of your life in a guarded, dreary, fearful state of consciousness. There will be no rest for you. You will be remembered as a murderer, and you leave a legacy of unspeakable sadness."

At Blackwell's sentencing yesterday for the 1995 slaying of his wife and her friends Phoebe Dizon and Veronica Laureta Johnson, Castillo said if not for a "slight twist of fate," she, too, may well have been killed. Castillo was just footsteps away from joining the women when Timothy Blackwell approached them inside the King County Courthouse and shot them to death.

"You are not a Charles Campbell," Castillo said, referring to the man who was hanged in May 1994 for the fatal stabbing of two women and an 8-year-old girl in Snohomish County in 1982. "But what you did, and what you are guilty of, is equally inhuman, senseless and cowardly."

The only other person to address Blackwell was Johnson's brother, Joseph Laureta. "Remember," Laureta said, "your accountability is not to man but to God."

In one of his few speaking moments throughout his trial, Blackwell told Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Joseph Thibodeau that he would not file an appeal.

Blackwell appeared relaxed, smiling occasionally and chatting

quietly with his lawyers before the judge entered the room. After wearing a jacket and tie for the duration of his two-month trial, yesterday he wore shackles, handcuffs and a blue prison uniform.

Thibodeau chose not to address Blackwell, closing the proceeding by praising the lawyers on both sides for their conduct and skill.

A restitution hearing will be scheduled later. King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Lisa Marchese requested that Blackwell use money he will earn in prison to reimburse the families of the victims for funeral expenses.

On the morning of March 2, 1995, Blackwell entered the King County Courthouse and killed the women as they sat on a bench outside a courtroom. The women were awaiting final arguments in the Blackwells' divorce proceedings.

Last month, a jury convicted Blackwell of three counts of aggravated-first-degree murder for the women's deaths and one count of first-degree manslaughter for the death of Susana Blackwell's unborn child.

Last week, the same jurors spared Blackwell from the death penalty when they were unable to come to a unanimous decision. Instead, Blackwell will spend his life in prison without the possibility of parole, the only other penalty under state law for aggravated murder. Eight jurors voted for the death penalty; four voted for life imprisonment.

The trial was moved to Snohomish County because the King County Courthouse was the scene of the slayings.