Janitor Charged With Murder -- $1 Million Bail Set In Lynnwood Church Slaying

A man who authorities think killed a woman in a Lynnwood church and then kidnapped and sexually assaulted her friend has been charged with first-degree murder.

James Homer Elledge, a 55-year-old with a previous murder conviction, surrendered to police yesterday morning at a south Tacoma motel after a brief manhunt. Police booked him into the Snohomish County Jail last evening.

Prosecutors charged Elledge in Everett District Court yesterday, and a judge set bail at $1 million. Prosecutors now have about two weeks to file formal charges against him in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Authorities will consider raising the charge against Elledge to aggravated first-degree murder, said Jim Townsend, the county's chief criminal deputy prosecutor. Conviction of such a charge carries the penalty of death or life in prison without parole.

Elledge worked as a janitor at the Lighthouse Methodist Church. He lured Eloise Fitzner and her friend to the church Saturday night with the promise of gifts and dinner, prosecutors said.

Elledge had met Fitzner, 47, and her friend when he lived below Fitzner in the Sherwood Springs Apartments in Lynnwood.

At the church, 6519 188th St. S.W., he bound both women, separated them and then stabbed and strangled Fitzner and hid her body at the church, authorities said. He took her 39-year-old friend to his North Everett trailer home, sexually assaulted her and released her Sunday morning in Lynnwood, they said. The woman called police from her home in North Seattle.

The attacks occurred while Elledge's new wife attended a retreat with members of the Lynnwood church where Fitzner's body was found Sunday night. Elledge had recently become a member there. The wife said yesterday that she met her husband at a Boeing assembly plant, where he had worked as a part-time janitor after being released from prison, according to Trudy Dana, a police spokesman.

In 1975, Elledge was convicted of killing a Seattle motel owner by hitting her more than 28 times with a hammer. He was paroled in 1989 but sent back to prison after trying to rob a tavern in Louisiana. He was released in 1994, then reimprisoned after disappearing from a work-release program. He was freed again in 1995.

Elledge also pleaded guilty to an armed robbery in 1965 and spent several years in a New Mexico prison. A kidnapping charge was dropped.

The wife said she knew about her husband's criminal background but did not believe he still harbored violent behavior, according to Dana.

The wife also said that her husband disliked the slain woman in part because Fitzner had written letters to the wife trying to break up the couple's marriage, which was less than a year old, according to court papers filed yesterday.

Elledge also told the assault victim he disliked Fitzner because she had hampered his attempts to get to know the victim, the papers say.

After the slaying and assault, Elledge drove Fitzner's Buick Skylark to Tacoma, police said. He checked into the Morgan Motel, 7031 Pacific Ave., on Sunday.

A patrolman found the car about 2:30 a.m. yesterday. About 9:30 a.m. Elledge called Tacoma homicide detectives from the motel and told them he wanted to surrender. Lynnwood police attributed his surrender to intense media coverage and the fact that Elledge probably didn't have much money.

Police said they found a note in the Buick that Elledge wrote to his wife, apologizing for having left her in this way.