Man sentenced to 39 years for helping kill Bellevue teen
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"You just have to deal with it," he said wearily. "When something like this happens, you just can't forget it's there."
Rose, 59, watched yesterday as Thomas Mullin-Coston was sentenced in King County Superior Court to more than 39 years in prison for first-degree murder of Rose's stepdaughter, Sarah Starling, a Bellevue teenager who was killed March 9, 1999.
Mullin-Coston, 21, is the fourth and final person to be convicted in a series of related cases that prosecutors and police describe as among the most bizarre they've seen.
Starling, a bright 15-year-old who liked to draw and was struggling to fit in during her first year at a new school, was found dumped in a Kirkland park, face down in thick grass — strangled, jaw broken and stabbed through the neck with a kitchen knife.
Her ex-boyfriend, Jason McDaniels, was arrested and sentenced to 41 years in prison. That investigation also implicated him in a separate murder-for-hire scheme, hatched by Starling's mother, Teresa Rose, but never carried out. The target was Jerry Rose.
Rose, grimly and patiently, sat through each of the ensuing trials.
"I can't imagine walking in his shoes," said Superior Court Judge Michael Hayden. "We only can hope that starting today, he can somehow begin to heal."
Drifter with no money, family
Jason McDaniels was 19 when he met Starling through mutual friends in December 1998. He had a reputation of being a ladies' man, and made it a point to show up at a Bellevue High School art show where some of Sarah's sketches were being displayed.
McDaniels grew up in Chelan, Douglas County, and was described during his trial as a drifter with neither family nor money. His life fit into a duffel bag and he wandered from friend to friend.
Starling, who had grown up attending religious schools, had hooked up with an older fringe group that first year at Bellevue High and was charmed by McDaniels almost immediately.
Within weeks, he had moved in with her at her parents' Newport Hills home in southeast Bellevue. He found a gold mine, he admitted during his trial.
"It was the coolest thing," he said then. "I could go into the refrigerator and grab a Pizza Pocket, a Coke; I could have whatever I wanted."
Teresa Rose sanctioned the relationship, buying McDaniels clothes, letting him use the family car, and giving him money for drugs and alcohol.
He had stolen a Texaco credit card from the Rose family and was using it to splurge on cigarettes, alcohol and candy at every Texaco store in Bellevue.
According to prosecutors, Teresa Rose, now 47, lived vicariously through her daughter, acting like a girlfriend despite her age.
"Teresa shared more information with her child than any adult should," said Patricia Eakes, senior deputy prosecutor assigned to the case when Starling's body was found. "Sarah took on her mother's burdens."
The plot to kill Jerry Rose
Sometime in February 1999, Teresa talked to Starling and McDaniels about killing her second husband, Jerry Rose.
The couple, who had met and married in Hawaii, were not happy. Teresa was attending a support group at a local church for people diagnosed with multiple-personality disorder. She was also unemployed and crushed under debts.
It didn't help that Jerry Rose was growing more disapproving of Starling's relationship with McDaniels. Teresa Rose told him that Sarah was her daughter, not his.
"In her mind, the way it works, there was only one way out, which was to kill him," Eakes said. "You get the life insurance, and you're free to go. That's all we could surmise."
The plan was supposed to be carried out Feb. 16, 1999. McDaniels and a friend, Justin Hanson, would wait in a utility closet near the garage with rope, strangle Jerry Rose and dump his body in Granite Falls.
But Jerry Rose rushed in through the front door instead of the garage, startling McDaniels and Hanson and throwing off the plan.
Teresa Rose admitted later to promising McDaniels $10,000 in cash, plane tickets to Hawaii and a Dodge Durango belonging to Jerry Rose.
She was found guilty last year of conspiracy to commit murder and is serving a five-year-prison term.
Hanson, 20, pleaded guilty to rendering criminal assistance and served a 17-month sentence.
Starling is slain
By late February 1999, McDaniels and Starling had broken up and he had moved out. That's also when McDaniels met Mullin-Coston, a burly teenager nicknamed T.J., with a cross tattooed on his left forearm and more than 20 juvenile convictions on his record.
Mullin-Coston's father, a former Kirkland police officer, was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of the youth's mother in 1995.
On March 9, 1999, McDaniels and Starling talked on the phone about fixing their broken relationship. Starling met McDaniels at a mutual friend's apartment around 8 p.m., after dropping her mother off at a nearby store. Mullin-Coston came along and the trio drove to Kingsgate Park.
There was some brief conversation, and then suddenly Mullin-Coston grabbed Starling from the back seat and put her in a chokehold.
He helped McDaniels drag Starling, now unconscious, out of the car and into a heavily wooded ravine. McDaniels stabbed her in the neck. The knife plunged so deep it nicked her spine.
Right after the killing, the two picked up Teresa Rose and drove around with her for hours, pretending to look for Starling.
Mullin-Coston was arrested the next day. McDaniels was arrested a few days later in Spokane. During their respective trials, they blamed the killing on each other.
Prosecutors have never nailed down an exact motive for Starling's murder.
Eakes said the most prominent theory is that McDaniels and Mullin-Coston wanted to kill off the entire family for financial gain.
"I have no doubt that to T.J. and Jason, the idea of killing somebody was not a big deal," Eakes said.
Jerry Rose watched yesterday as Mullin-Coston was led away by deputies, just as he had watched McDaniels and his wife.
His dark hair is much whiter than it used to be. He is attending a court-sponsored support group for victims of violent crime. And he says he is much closer to his remaining family.
The story of Sarah Starling's death appeared in a supermarket tabloid a few years ago, and he remembers senior citizens on a tour bus coming by soon after, pointing out his house.
"When you lose a child, you don't know how to deal with it," he said. "You just learn. It's like when you learn how to walk. You just go with the flow."
Michael Ko can be reached at 206-515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com.