Mother pleads guilty in slayings

STEVENSON, Skamania County — A Vancouver, Wash., woman who led police to the bodies of her two daughters in a rock quarry nearly a year ago pleaded guilty yesterday to two counts of first-degree murder in a plea deal that will send her to prison for 63 years.

Charlene Dorcy originally had been charged with aggravated murder, which could have carried a sentence of life in prison without parole. Prosecutors had earlier decided not to pursue the death penalty.

Dorcy pleaded guilty to the lesser charges during a hearing at Skamania County Courthouse. The sentence means that Dorcy, 39, will effectively spend the rest of her life in prison, said her attorney, Chris Lanz.

On June 12, 2004, Dorcy led detectives to an abandoned rock quarry deep inside the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where the bodies of her 2- and 4-year-old daughters were found.

Dorcy later told investigators she had shot her daughters multiple times with her husband's .22-caliber rifle.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic about four years before the murders, Dorcy stopped taking an anti-psychotic medication in favor of herbal remedies because of concern about side effects, her husband has said.

During yesterday's court hearing, Dorcy delivered a rambling statement that talked about injustices in the world, but she did not mention her children.

"Unless you are a vegetarian, every time you eat meat you're a murderer," she said.

In tears, she railed against holding animals in zoos.

"I know how they feel," she said.

Asked to comment on Dorcy's statement, Skamania County Prosecutor Peter Banks said: "One thing we've never heard from her is that she's sorry."

"I have no doubt she knew that what she was doing was wrong," Banks said of the murders.

Lanz, Dorcy's attorney, was asked by reporters whether his client felt remorse.

"She did shed tears — the cause of those emotions only she can know," Lanz replied.