Dna Links Man To 1976 Slaying -- Charges Filed After 23-Year Gap

EVERETT - In 1976, Snohomish County prosecutors filed first-degree rape and murder charges against James Lucius Stephens Jr. in the sexual assault and slaying of his sister-in-law, Kimberly Marie Kuntz.

But eventually they dismissed the case, believing they needed more evidence.

Yesterday, more than 23 years later, prosecutors again filed first-degree murder charges against Stephens, now 46. And this time they think the charge will stick.

What's different? Technology.

Earlier this week, Lynnwood police got word from a private Seattle crime lab that DNA evidence linked Stephens to the slaying: DNA extracted from Stephens' blood matched DNA from a semen stain found on the shirt the victim wore the night she died.

Scientists say such a match would be found in about one in every 377 million white people, according to charges filed in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Jim Townsend, chief criminal deputy prosecutor for Snohomish County, said it's the first time an unsolved slaying case has been revived in the county because of DNA.

He praised Lynnwood police, who have reviewed the case periodically during the past 20 years and have had two detectives, Steve Rider and Jim Nelson, working on it the past two years.

At a news conference last night, Rider and Nelson said they reread piles of old reports, sifted through boxes of evidence and contacted dozens of old witnesses. They said they also got crucial help from the State Patrol crime lab in Marysville and the private lab GeneLex.

They credited Lynnwood police Sgt. Steve Bredeson, who at one time worked the case and now supervises the detective unit, for his support.

Working with Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Paul Stern, Rider and Nelson obtained a search warrant about six weeks ago to get a blood sample from Stephens.

Since then, they conducted surveillance on Stephens.

Early May 9, 1976, Lynnwood police found Kuntz, 18, fatally stabbed inside her sister's Lynnwood apartment.

The Mountlake Terrace woman had been baby-sitting her 3-year-old niece, the child of Donna and James Stephens. The couple had recently separated.

When Donna Stephens returned home about 2:15 a.m., she knocked but didn't get an answer, court documents say. As she continued knocking, she saw a man wearing a stocking mask just 15 feet away, who fled. She went to a store and called police.

Responding officers entered the home through an open bedroom window and found Kuntz's body, partly clothed, on the bedroom floor. Kuntz had been stabbed in the heart and lungs. Evidence suggested her wrists and mouth had been bound with tape, according to the charges.

The little girl, whom police found unharmed, told her mother that Stephens had been by that night, the charges say.

When police questioned Stephens at his Lynnwood home, he acknowledged he had dropped by his wife's apartment that evening and talked to Kuntz, but he said he didn't stay long.

Kuntz had told friends she was afraid of Stephens and was hesitant to baby-sit her niece at her sister's apartment in case Stephens showed up, court papers say.

Prosecutors ran into key obstacles in 1976: There was no decisive evidence linking a suspect to the slaying. Although Stephens' fingerprints were found in the home - even on pieces of paper near the body - he had lived in the apartment until shortly before the slaying.

Another stumbling block was a state statute regarding marital privilege, court papers say. It prevented Donna Stephens from testifying against her husband.

Prosecutors filed a motion to postpone the trial, eager to call Donna Stephens as a witness after the couple's divorce became final in 1977. But prosecutors withdrew the motion when Stephens' defense attorneys objected. They ended up dropping the case, leaving the door open to retry it again.

A few months later, Stephens pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife and spent a short time in jail.

"It was an extremely frustrating case at the time," said Snohomish County District Judge Timothy Ryan, one of two prosecutors on the case. "I always hoped there would be a resolution to it."

At the news conference yesterday, Lynnwood police spokeswoman Trudy Dana read a joint statement from Kuntz's mother, Gwen Kuntz, and sister Donna Morris:

"We want the public to know about Kim, that she was a real person, not just a statistic. . . . Not a day passes that we don't think of her."

Stephens, who is being held in Snohomish County Jail, was to be arraigned this afternoon in Snohomish County Superior Court.

He has lived most of the time since the slaying in Washington and was recently working in shipping, police said. He has remarried and has a child from his second marriage.

Lynnwood police arrested him yesterday afternoon at a West Seattle McDonald's.

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