Husband found guilty in '97 death; Bremerton house fire originally ruled accidental

PORT ORCHARD — Five years to the day after Dawn Hacheney was found dead in a Bremerton house fire that was originally ruled accidental, a Kitsap County Superior Court jury found that her husband was to blame.

Nicholas Hacheney, 32, a former preacher in a charismatic Bainbridge Island church, was found guilty of first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances yesterday after a full day of deliberations and a nearly seven-week trial.

The case was reopened two years ago when Sandra Glass — a member of the church and Hacheney's former lover — told police he'd admitted killing his wife.

Hacheney will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Deputy Prosecutor Neil Wachter. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

"The common wisdom is that justice delayed is justice denied," Wachter said. "It's good to know that wasn't true in this case."

Prosecutors claimed the original investigation was botched. They said Hacheney, in a desire for sexual freedom, drugged his wife with an overdose of Benadryl, suffocated her with a plastic bag and then set a fire to cover up what he'd done.

Hacheney's lawyers, however, argued that everything about the prosecution's case was based on theory, speculation and rumor.

The defense also argued that Glass, who initiated the investigation after she discovered Hacheney was engaged to another woman, was an unreliable witness.

"That woman lives on an island all by herself," said defense attorney Aaron Talney in his closing statement Monday. "She and the state are trying to prove murder through prophecy-colored glasses."

In her testimony against Hacheney, Glass said that while they were having an affair, she had a prophecy foretelling the death of both their spouses. Prosecutors speculated that might have spurred Nicholas Hacheney to action.

Glass's husband, from whom she is now divorced, is still alive.

An initial investigation by the Bremerton police and fire departments determined that the death of Dawn Hacheney, who was 28 at the time, was the accidental result of a fire caused by wrapping paper piled too close to a space heater in the couple's bedroom.

A medical examiner ruled that the absence of smoke in her lungs could have been caused by a laryngeal spasm that shut the windpipe down in the face of searing heat.

During Hacheney's trial, however, that same medical examiner, Emmanuel Lacsina, said the physical evidence could also mean that Dawn Hacheney was dead before the fire began.

The defense argued that Hacheney, who had gone on a spur-of-the moment hunting trip very early on the morning his wife died, would not have been home at the right time to have set the fire and that the fire was a tragic accident that occurred when an electrical arc met gas that had leaked out of a propane canister in the bedroom.

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.