Man Pleads Guilty To Mutilation Slayings

WENATCHEE - A man who killed and sexually mutilated an East Wenatchee woman and her daughter will spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to their murders.

Jack Owen Spillman III also surprised authorities by confessing to the slaying of a 9-year-old Okanogan County girl.

Spillman, 27, who allegedly once told a cellmate he wanted to be "the world's greatest serial killer," pleaded guilty yesterday to first-degree murder in the April 1995 deaths of Rita and Mandy Huffman.

Spillman also pleaded guilty to the 1994 slaying of Penny Davis of Tonasket, a crime he was not formally charged with until yesterday. Okanogan County authorities were unable to determine how the little girl died.

Trial had been set for August in the Huffman slayings. Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty. Superior Court Judge Carol Wardell sentenced Spillman to life in prison without possibility of parole for fatally stabbing Rita Huffman, 48, and 70 years for the bludgeoning death of Mandy Huffman, 15. He received a 45 1/2-year sentence for killing the Tonasket child.

He still faces charges of first-degree rape and robbery in an attack on a woman in a Kent business two years ago, and a burglary charge in Spokane County.