Jury convicts Opel in death of her boss

EVERETT — After two weeks of testimony and just five hours of deliberation, jurors confidently marched back into a Snohomish County courtroom yesterday to tell Barbara Opel she was guilty of aggravated first-degree murder.

But when those same jurors return to court tomorrow, they will begin a process that could lead to something no jury in the state has ever done: Sentence a woman to death.

If condemned to die for soliciting the murder of Jerry Heimann, Opel would be the first woman on Washington's death row.

When the sentencing phase of Opel's murder trial begins tomorrow, her attorneys plan to spend up to five days calling character witnesses to convince jurors that Opel's life should be spared.

For their part, prosecutors plan to call just one witness — Heimann's son, Greg.

"She described living at my dad's house as a living hell," Greg Heimann said yesterday after the guilty verdict. "I describe the last two years as a living hell."

Opel, 39, was convicted for bribing a group of teenagers, including her then-13-year-old daughter, to kill Heimann in his home, where Opel was a live-in caregiver for Heimann's 89-year-old mother.

With the temptation of money, a car and free tickets to a roller rink, the five teens ambushed Heimann on the night of April 13, 2001.

Opel and her three children had lived with Heimann since the previous December.

In addition to caring for Evelyn Heimann, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Opel's job included cooking Heimann's meals and cleaning his house.

Although Opel didn't participate in the baseball-bat clubbings, punches or kitchen-knife stabbings and slashings that killed her 64-year-old boss, jurors convicted her of murder because she solicited others to do the task for her.

On the stand last week, Opel said she had some access to Heimann's checking account when he was alive, but she denied prosecutors' allegation that she wanted the Boeing retiree dead so she could steal some of the nearly $40,000 he had in the bank.

Heimann was a drunk, Opel testified, a man who often screamed at her and her daughter. Because of his abuse, she said, she didn't see a problem with her daughter's boyfriend and his friends attacking and beating Heimann.

When the verdict was announced in court yesterday, Opel sat motionless. Brian Phillips, one of her attorneys, occasionally touched her arm or patted her back.

From the bench where Heimann's relatives sat, there was a loud gasp of "yes!" They wiped away tears, linked arms and hugged each other. When they shuffled out of court, they left behind balls of tissue they had been clenching.

Greg Heimann and his sister Kelly Muller said their father wasn't perfect.

He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but instead of undergoing chemotherapy or other treatments he spent his days at bars socializing with friends.

"Dad wasn't evil," Greg Heimann said yesterday, adding that no one deserves what happened to his father.

When Greg Heimann showed up at his father's house on April 18, 2001, the house was dark.

He and his wife were worried because Jerry Heimann hadn't picked them up at the airport.

They found Evelyn Heimann alone inside the house. She was eating the pages from a phone book and a TV guide. Doctors later determined she was severely dehydrated.

Jurors also found Opel guilty of second-degree abandonment, for the treatment of Evelyn Heimann, and second-degree theft, for stealing Heimann's money and credit cards to buy clothes and food and pay $6,000 of rent on a house.

Times staff reporters Rachel Tuinstra and Emily Heffter contributed to this report.

Jennifer Sullivan: 425-783-0604 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com