Murder suspect's life called chaotic

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In the seven years he has gone without seeing his 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, Bill Opel says he has never stopped thinking about them. But he has long since given up on their mother.

Barbara Opel refused to stick to the custody agreement after she and Bill Opel divorced in 1991, he says, keeping the children from him for years. Prosecutors charged her with custodial interference for not letting her ex-husband see the children in 1997 but dropped the charge because they didn't think a jury would convict, according to court records.

Finally, Bill Opel says, he stopped trying and moved to Wenatchee with his current wife and their children.

"I couldn't chase it anymore," said Bill Opel, who was reluctant to speak about his ex-wife. "I've just been writing my child-support checks and hoping they go to a good cause.

"Guess they didn't."

Bill Opel now reads about his daughter on newspapers' Internet sites as she sits in Snohomish County's juvenile-detention center, accused along with four other teens of carrying out a bizarre murder plot allegedly masterminded by her mother.

Prosecutors say Barbara Opel, 37, goaded and bribed the teens into stabbing and beating her boss, Jerry Heimann, with baseball bats April 13. She also forced her two youngest children - Bill Opel's son and a 7-year-old daughter from a different father - to help clean up the bloody mess, according to court papers.

Barbara Opel has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated first-degree murder in the beating death of Heimann, 64, who took her and her children into his home and gave her a job caring for his 89-year-old mother.

Opel's daughter's boyfriend, 17-year-old Jeffrey Grote, who has been charged as an adult, also pleaded not guilty to aggravated first-degree murder. The four other teens - Opel's daughter, a 14-year-old Everett girl and two Marysville boys, 13- and 15-year-old cousins - have been charged in juvenile court with first-degree murder but might be tried as adults.

People who know Barbara Opel describe her as a shrill, angry mother who enmeshed herself in her children's lives to an unhealthy - even criminal - extreme. She encouraged her 13-year-old daughter to date from an early age, they say, and even hosted a Valentine's Day party for youngsters that included beer, marijuana and sex.

Bill Opel, 40, says his former wife only sporadically held jobs and lived a chaotic life. Others who know her say she might have had good intentions as a mother, but the way she carried out the role was all wrong.

Former next-door neighbor Megan Slaker used to pray for Barbara Opel's children.

"I wanted them to feel some love," said Slaker, who lives in an Everett neighborhood where Barbara Opel rented a home in the mid-1990s. She said Opel's kids were often locked out of the house, so Slaker would let them help her do yard work.

"She just didn't want them in the house, I guess," she said. "You feel compassion for children who you don't think are getting the love and attention they need."

But Barbara Opel's sister, Shirley McGee of Spokane, said Opel is a caring, protective mother.

"She is not the type of person who would do something like this," McGee said of the murder charges. "Unless she was feeling her kids were in jeopardy."

But McGee also said she has not had too much contact with her sister over the years.

Former neighbors in three neighborhoods describe Barbara Opel as a foul-mouthed woman who constantly screamed at her children.

She grew up in Bothell, according to her ex-husband, and moved frequently. Court records show she was evicted at least three times for not paying rent.

"She was a lady I would never forget in my entire life," said Chris Perry, 25, who lived across the street from her for a couple of years. Barbara Opel had previously lived next door to Perry's best friend, and she was dismayed when the woman moved into her neighborhood.

"She was just so mean," Perry said. "Screaming at her kids all the time, all hours of the night. You would never hear her lovingly talking to her children."

The family vanished from Perry's and Slaker's neighborhood in the middle of the night, during an eviction process.

Barbara Opel and her children moved into Heimann's home late last year.

In February, she helped her kids host a Valentine's party and invited some girls to spend the night.

One 12-year-old guest said Barbara Opel let teens drink beer, smoke marijuana, use the backyard hot tub and have sex in Opel's bedroom. The girl, who attends Evergreen Middle School with Opel's daughter and the other girl accused of murder, said she didn't engage in any illicit behavior that night.

The girl's father, Mike Wassemiller, was furious when he found out weeks later what had gone on at the party. He had gone into the house and chatted with Barbara Opel when he dropped off his daughter and her best friend, to make sure the party would be safe, he said.

"I'm absolutely shocked - I'm ashamed I let my daughter spend the night there," he said. "I trusted (Opel)."

Candy Ochs, whose son was a classmate of Barbara Opel's 13-year-old daughter at Everett's View Ridge Elementary, said the woman used to say mean, derogatory things to children and pushed them into fights in the cafeteria.

Grote, the 17-year-old accused in the slaying, didn't know the Opels until early this month. Soon after meeting the 13-year-old daughter, he moved into Heimann's basement without the man's knowledge, according to prosecutors.

That's when Grote began to change, said Dianne Groves, owner of the Marysville Skate Inn, where he had skated for years.

She said Barbara Opel and the two teen girls recently came to the skating rink to see Grote, and they caused a scene by swearing and harassing her staff and customers.

"I kicked them out," Groves said. "We run a real tight ship in here."

Grote is now in the Snohomish County jail on $2 million bail; Barbara Opel is being held without bail. Her daughter and the other teens are being held in the juvenile center on $100,000 cash-only bail.

Barbara Opel's two youngest children, including Bill Opel's 11-year-old son, have been placed in protective custody.

The last time Bill Opel saw the boy, he was 4, and his older sister was a bubbly, spunky 6-year-old.

"I've always hoped they would come find me," he said of his two children. "You always see that on TV - you know, how the kids try to find their parent when they grow up. I guess that probably won't happen with my daughter."

Janet Burkitt can be reached at 206-515-5689 or jburkitt@seattletimes.com. Diane Brooks can be reached at 206-464-2567 or dbrooks@seattletimes.com.