Thrill killer hangs self in prison
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WALLA WALLA - One of three men convicted in the thrill killing of a Navy officer has hanged himself in his cell at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Seth Anderson, 23, wrote a suicide note to his family, fashioned bedsheets into a noose and hanged himself on Jan. 2, police Sgt. Matt Wood said. Wood would not disclose what was in the note but said it did not mention the shooting death of Lt. j.g. Scott Kinkele.
"People make a mistake and they can pay for their crime, but you can't wipe out their humanity," Eva Anderson, the inmate's mother, said.
"The judge said when he sentenced Seth that everything good that he had ever done was wiped away, and Seth asked me, 'Do you think he's right?' I said that every good thing that you've done lives in your heart, and that can't go away."
On July 27, Anderson, his half-brother Eben Berriault, 36, and a friend, Adam Moore, 25, all of Anacortes, went out to drink and poach deer.
They never found any deer, but Anderson drove for hours as Berriault fired out the front passenger window at signs, animals, vehicles and people.
Kinkele, 23, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., died of a shotgun blast through the rear window of his car that night as he drove along Washington 20 toward the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, where he was stationed.
Anderson and Berriault pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and were sentenced to 35 and 55 years, respectively. Moore pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to two years and three months.
Anderson arrived at the penitentiary Nov. 16. He was confined to a cell by himself for 23 hours a day, standard procedure for inmates new to the state's prison system, and was not on a suicide watch, a penal official said.
A guard delivering mail found Anderson hanging in his cell, Wood said. Prison personnel began resuscitation and he was taken to St. Mary Medical Center in Walla Walla, where he remained on life support for two days.
Anderson's family authorized removal of life support on Jan. 4.
"I guess now Mrs. Anderson can sit on the grave and talk to her son like I can," said Mary Kinkele, Scott Kinkele's mother, from her home in San Francisco. "When you can't get justice in the courts, sometimes you get justice from God."