Murder Victim's Ring Leads To Suspect

The people who knew her well say 24-year-old Andrea ``Randy'' Levine had one piece of jewelry she loved best: a gold ring set with an oval amethyst.

When they found the ring in a pawnshop 3,000 miles away, King County police knew they had a critical piece of evidence they needed to link a Bellevue man to Levine's savage slaying six months ago.

Yesterday, 32-year-old Bellevue resident George Waterfield Russell was charged with aggravated murder in the death of Levine and first-degree murder in the death of Carol Marie Beethe, 35, of Bellevue.

Russell already had been charged with rape and murder in the killing of 27-year-old Mary Ann Pohlreich of Redmond.

He has pleaded not guilty in all three killings.

The Eastside women were killed last summer in what police describe as a string of violent, sexually motivated murders. After their deaths, their bodies were stabbed repeatedly, moved and placed in poses, according to court documents.

Levine died Aug. 31 after suffering repeated blows to her skull in her Kingsgate apartment. Her body had been stabbed, slashed and punctured hundreds of times after her death.

``It was a very savage death,'' said veteran King County police Detective Larry Petersen. ``The injuries were very dramatic.''

Pohlreich was bludgeoned to death June 22, and Beethe died Aug. 9, also of repeated blows to the head. Both were sexually assaulted after they were dead, according to court documents.

Pohlreich's body was found next to a trash bin outside a Bellevue restaurant; Beethe was killed in her home.

Police arrested Russell last fall on an outstanding trespassing warrant. Shortly afterward, Bellevue and King County detectives became increasingly convinced that the Mercer Island High School dropout was the killer.

In January, lab-test results submitted by Bellevue police enabled prosecutors to charge him with first-degree murder in the death of Polhreich, the first victim. But they lacked evidence to link Russell to the Levine and Beethe murders.

Prosecutors say the way Beethe's body was treated led them to link Russell to Beethe's death.

The ring was the key in Levine's death, they say.

Family members convinced King County police that Levine would not have taken the ring off; yet no jewelry was found on her body, Petersen said.

Both Bellevue and King County detectives had started to interview scores of Russell's acquaintances, whose names and numbers were found written on scraps of paper Russell kept in his apartment. Each time, they asked about the ring, Petersen said.

In November, police found a woman who once had Levine's ring. She told police that Russell had broken a date with her around Labor Day. Shortly afterward, the woman had a chance encounter with Russell in a restaurant, and berated him for breaking the date, according to court papers.

As a peace offering, Russell reached in his pocket and presented her with the gold-and-amethyst ring.

Petersen says it was the same ring Levine treasured, the one she had received as a present from her sister-in-law, who inherited it from her mother.

The woman kept the ring until November, when she learned that Russell was a suspect in the killing of Mary Ann Pohlreich. Then she started to grow uncomfortable about its origins and gave it to a male friend, Petersen said.

The man soon took off with his girlfriend on a cross-country hitchhiking trip that would lead them to the Florida Keys, where the two volunteered at a dolphin research institute.

Petersen found him in Florida in February, after learning his whereabouts from his mother. But the man no longer had the ring.

He'd sold it less than two weeks before - for $5, to a Key West pawnshop. The ring had gotten so tight on his finger that the pawnshop clerk had to cut it off his hand.

The man remembered the name of the pawnshop, and Petersen tracked the ring down immediately. He asked the ring's original owner, Levine's sister-in-law, to drive down to the pawnshop and identify the ring.

The sister-in-law lived in Florida, only 200 miles from the pawnshop.

The murder of Levine is considered aggravated because it was committed along with a burglary, authorities say. In this state, first-degree murder carries a minimum of 20 years in prison, while aggravated murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole, or death.

The aggravating circumstance, police say, is the theft of a gold ring.