Trucker Pleads Guilty In Woman's Murder

KENT - A 37-year-old Massachusetts trucker pleaded guilty in King County Superior Court today to the murder of a Kent woman whose body was found behind a moving and storage facility last November.

Paul Michael Goyette maintained that he shot Elizabeth Laura Lamphere in self-defense Sept. 23 after offering her a ride home from Sappho's, a tavern in Kent.

Goyette entered an Alford plea, a plea in which the defendant believes he would be found guilty of the charge against him - in this case, first-degree murder - if the case had gone to trial, so he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder. The lesser charge reduces his possible sentence from 22 years or more, to a maximum of 14 years.

"It was a difficult case to evaluate," said his attorney Anthony Savage. He maintained that Lamphere had a knife, which was never found at the scene, and was attempting to steal money from Goyette. He said he shot her in the head in self-defense.

The self-defense claim was "a preposterous story," said Lisa Marchese, a King County deputy prosecutor.

According to court documents, Lamphere, 28, went to Sappho's one night and while there met Goyette, who was in town after making a delivery for a trucking company. Friends said they overhead Lamphere and Goyette discussing their sexuality.

The documents said that Goyette was going to give Lamphere a ride home. No one ever saw her alive again.

They described her as the sole caregiver to her critically ill mother and a mother to an 11-year-old son.

After Lamphere didn't show up for her mother's funeral Oct. 6, her family and friends called police.

On Nov. 29, her body was found in an irrigation ditch in the 8900 block of South 190th Street.

Police got their break when media attention to the case prompted another woman to come forward. She maintained that Goyette had tried to pick her up in a bar a few days earlier and had given her the business card of an equipment buyer for the Boston Red Sox, saying that he used to play on the team.

When police checked, the man whose name was on the card said his business cards had been stolen by a long-haul truck driver who had used them around the country to pick up women. According to court documents, police traced the cards to Goyette.

Goyette, who has a wife and two children, will be sentenced June 20.