Ex-wife says robber killed pair in '63; Montana murder case to be reopened
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SPOKANE - It was 38 years ago this week that the bodies of Richard and Alice Easton were discovered at their lake resort near Kalispell, Mont.
Their killer was never caught.
But a former Spokane resident now has named a suspect: Kenneth Lloyd Pendleton, a notorious bank robber and escape artist recently found beaten to death near Edmonton, Alberta. He was buried Friday in his hometown of Ferndale, near Bellingham.
Arlene LaPierre, now 59, was married to Pendleton and living in Montana with him and their young daughter when the Eastons' bodies were found Feb. 19, 1963, at the resort they'd built nearby in the 1940s - Paradise Lodge on McGregor Lake.
LaPierre says Pendleton "returned to our cabin one day covered with blood."
In an interview, she said when she asked him what happened, he said: "I hit a deer. Don't ask any more questions."
"He took his bloody clothes off, took them outside and burned them," LaPierre said. "That's the last time we talked about it."
She was afraid to tell anyone about her ex-husband's activities until she learned earlier this month that Pendleton, also 59, was dead.
"We're reopening this cold case, based on this information, and will be doing follow-up interviews as soon as possible," said Flathead County, Mont., sheriff's detective Phil Meredith of LaPierre's disclosures.
Local records confirm that Pendleton was in the area about the time of the murders. He was booked into the Kalispell jail on an unrelated theft charge a few months later.
'A lot of false leads'
For the past 38 years, LaPierre says, she has believed her ex-husband was responsible for the Eastons' deaths.
One of the Eastons' daughters, retired teacher Eleanor Norman of Seattle, found their bodies. She learned Thursday of the allegation against Pendleton.
"We've had a lot of false leads, things that just went nowhere. ... It would be a relief to me and bring some closure if we could find out who did it," said Norman, 76.
Her father, 65 when he died, was a former Iowa farmer, Norman said. He kept most of his money in his wallet, which was missing along with the resort's cash register.
"He very well could have fought with somebody trying to rob him," Norman said.
His body was found in a locked garage at the resort. Her mother was 66 and suffering from Parkinson's disease, unable to walk. Her body was found on the kitchen floor. The missing cash register was found a few years later in nearby woods.
Norman's sister, Clarissa Waller of Seattle, is somewhat skeptical of the new lead.
"There have been a number of times that they thought they had new information, had another suspect, and it went nowhere," said Waller, 69. "I hope this time is different."
LaPierre couldn't recall the victims' names - only that the killings were at a McGregor Lake resort. She did provide the name of the Boisvert Cabin Camp about three miles away, the resort - since torn down - where she and Pendleton were living. Pendleton robbed as many as 80 banks in at least eight states.
He escaped from three prisons including McNeil Island, where he buried himself in a ditch to escape guards and search dogs who walked over him.
Released from a federal prison in Oregon last summer, he was found slain in a frozen creek north of Edmonton on Jan. 11.
It's not clear why he was in Canada, or what he had done since his release. But there were four Spokane-area bank robberies between Nov. 10 and Dec. 26 by a masked robber who generally matched the description of the 6-foot, 200-pound Pendleton, authorities say.
Held wife hostage
He and Arlene were married in November 1959. "I fell in love with him, and that's when the hell started," LaPierre said. "I was held hostage by him for three years or more, usually in backwoods cabins with no phone and no way to get out.
"In just over three years, we lived in more than 20 places," she said. "He told me that if I ever left while he was gone, he would go kill my parents who lived in Spokane, and I never doubted him one minute."
About a year after the Easton slayings, LaPierre fled with her two daughters, returning to Spokane to live with her parents. She was given a police escort to her job as a waitress at the Davenport Hotel, LaPierre recalled.
She divorced Pendleton in January 1965. Her second husband, Wally LaPierre, was killed in a car accident in Spokane in 1972. In 1979, she moved to California.