Abuse Suspect Arrested -- Victor David Faces Charge 2 Years After Wife Rescued

PRIEST POINT, Snohomish County - A man who apparently imprisoned and battered his disabled wife on a decrepit sailboat for many years has been arrested, two years after police discovered the severely beaten woman jammed into the bow of the boat.

Victor Matthew David, 59, smirked as he was handcuffed yesterday afternoon by Snohomish County deputies near his boat, which is tied to pilings here. The arrest came two hours after prosecutors issued a warrant charging him with second-degree assault, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The story of Victor David and his wife, Linda, was revealed in Sunday's Seattle Times. The article told how the state Department of Social and Health Services had paid David since the mid-1980s to care for his wife, even as indications mounted that he was imprisoning her.

The state aid came because she was disabled, apparently with multiple sclerosis (MS). But the charging papers issued yesterday quote doctors saying that Linda David's MS was mild and that the majority of her symptoms - including her inability to walk, slurred speech and near-blindness - were caused by beatings.

All along, David has denied abusing his wife and said she was injured falling out of a truck.

In January 1997, Everett police took Linda David from the boat, finding her immobilized, living in filth and deformed by fractures that had healed without treatment. At that time, they questioned Victor David, but then gave him back a gun he carried and let him go.

Until yesterday.

"I can't understand what took so long," said Priscilla Retzlaff, one of the neighbors who watched the arrest.

Officers almost missed him

In fact, sheriff's deputies nearly missed David yesterday. Twenty-five minutes before they arrived, he got into a dinghy and came ashore. He got into his car and started the engine, but it wouldn't go.

Then two glass technicians from Mill Creek, Allen Kuppler and Chad McRae, drove up. They had stopped by on a lark during their day off, having recognized David's boat from a picture in the newspaper. When they saw David up close, they recognized him from another newspaper photo.

"I was going to give him a piece of my mind," said Kuppler. But he thought better of it and simply asked David what time it was. It was shortly after 3 p.m.

David then walked to a neighbor's house a block from the boat and was on the porch when three sheriff's cars carrying four officers whizzed by. Only after officers realized they'd passed their target was he captured and handcuffed, without resistance.

Though David has been known to carry a gun and has a concealed-weapons permit, he wasn't armed. Officers found keys, an oarlock and a loaf of bread in his pockets.

As he was hauled away, his whining and barking dogs remained barricaded inside the sailboat with a piece of plywood jammed over the cabin door. At the time Linda David was rescued, David had seven German shepherds aboard the boat, which was littered with dog feces.

Yesterday, the exterior deck at the rear of the boat was covered with old buckets, a generator, pieces of wood, oars, loaves of bread, garbage and chocolate Easter eggs. A strong, nauseating smell emanated from the interior.

Neighbors said they knew David was an odd man, and perhaps dangerous, but none were aware of his wife's treatment until they read about it Sunday.

The worst that they knew of was a case where he fired a pistol at a fellow live-aboard boater during an argument in April 1997. He was arrested but never charged. The incident occurred three months after his wife was rescued and after he moved to the cove near Priest Point across the water from the Everett marina, where he had lived since September 1995.

"I feel safer now," said Retzlaff after the arrest.

Story shocks public

Sunday's article struck a chord with readers. More than 200 called and sent e-mails to The Times, questioning why the state had continued to pay David and had ignored signs he was beating his wife. They also demanded he be prosecuted and offered help to the disabled woman.

Linda David, 50, is now safe in a nursing home, under the protection of a state-appointed guardian.

The charging papers say her husband admits that at the time of her rescue, she had not been off the vessel in at least a year and a half. She had not seen a doctor since 1991, the charges say, though Victor David claimed he took her to one about two years before her rescue.

Doctors, prosecutors and other experts say this was one of the most severe spousal-abuse cases ever. Said one physician who examined Linda shortly after she was removed from the boat: "It doesn't get much worse than this."

"I'd put it at the top 1 percent, for severity and extremity," said Don Dutton, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia who has written books on spousal abuse.

How case got passed around

The abuse had apparently occurred over two decades, even before the couple's 1980 marriage. Linda David complained to relatives about beatings and fled her future husband but always returned. After the couple moved to a boat moored in Seattle, few people ever saw her. Neighbors worried and wondered, but never reported the situation, as the couple moved from marina to marina in Tacoma and Everett.

Welfare caseworkers seldom saw Linda David, either, despite regulations requiring them to interview aid recipients and check on their living conditions. The few times they did, the questioning was strictly controlled by the husband, who usually answered for her. The last time she was seen by a caseworker, through a pickup-truck window in 1993, the caseworker had to stay 5 feet away because of snarling dogs. Yet nothing was done.

The state finally cut off Victor David's money in January 1997 and then, because he complained vociferously, a DSHS supervisor visited the boat. When the supervisor encountered a resistant and agitated David, he called Everett police.

They found a boat so filthy that rescue workers had to wear masks. Inside the cabin, police found a disoriented, dirty and malnourished Linda David - her face grossly distorted by bumps and scars, her legs trapped by an upended computer printer.

Everett police spokesman Elliott Woodall said though officers might have had suspicions about Victor David at that time, they had no probable cause to arrest him.

"Their main priority was to get her out of there and get her to a safe situation," he said.

Everett police investigated the case, then turned it over to the state attorney general two weeks later, Woodall said. But according to the Attorney General's Office, Everett police had concluded they had no case against Victor David, so DSHS asked the attorney general to investigate.

An investigator put together a case quickly, but it sat inactive for more than a year and a half before it was turned over to Snohomish County prosecutors in August 1998.

Senior Assistant State Attorney General Scott Blonien said the case was slowed, in part, by jurisdictional issues; the investigation was done by his office but, under the law, ultimate authority to prosecute lies with the county prosecutor. He said everyone involved felt the first priority was to get the victim "out of harm's way."

Snohomish County prosecutors had the case for eight months before filing charges yesterday. Jim Townsend, the county's chief criminal deputy prosecutor, said attorneys needed that time because more investigation was necessary and the case was complicated from both a legal and factual standpoint.

"It's been taken extremely seriously," he said. Prosecutors charged David with "the most serious offense we believe we can prove."

The crime of second-degree assault carries a standard sentencing range of three to nine months. But Townsend said prosecutors would seriously consider asking for the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

An element of the more serious crime of first-degree assault is an intent to kill.

Gregoire gets involved

Before the DSHS assistance was cut off, Victor David was making $18,000 to $23,000 annually from the state, from his wife's Social Security disability and from her mother's estate. Since January 1998, he had been getting gasoline vouchers and other help from St. Vincent de Paul in Everett, said the director there.

Reached last night at his home in the Washington, D.C., area, Linda David's cousin, Martin Pitt, expressed relief at the arrest.

"I think it's long overdue," he said. "Even if for some reason they don't convict, it's become part of the public record and I think that's very, very important."

Meanwhile, Attorney General Christine Gregoire has called for statewide meetings with law-enforcement and welfare officials to prevent prolonged delays in investigating and prosecuting cases such as Linda David's.

Karl Parrick is the attorney general's investigator who handled the David case, and had expressed frustration over the delays. He is encouraged by Gregoire's new initiative.

"I'm glad that she's concerned and actively becoming involved because it's so important," Parrick said. "I've expressed my concerns about these issues in the past, in memos, and it gives me peace of mind to know it will be one of her priorities, also - for the sake of the victims."

Eric Nalder's phone message number is 206-464-2056. His e-mail address is: enalder@seattletimes.com

Anne Koch's phone message number is 425-745-7814. Her e-mail address is: akoch@seattletimes.com