PORT TOWNSEND — The mother of accused double-murderer Michael J. Pierce took the stand Thursday to testify for prosecutors who want to put her son in prison for life.
Ila Rettig of Quilcene, called as a witness for the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, offered vague recollections of the events surrounding March 18, 2009, when longtime Jefferson County residents Patrick Yarr, 60, and Janice Yarr, 57, were brutally slain in their homes with a rifle blast to the head and their Boulton Farm Road home north of Lake Leland set afire.
Pierce, 35, was arrested 10 days later on investigation of theft for allegedly using the Yarrs’ debit card at US Bank’s Quilcene branch. He later was charged with murder, arson, burglary and theft.
He could receive life in prison if convicted by the nine-woman, three-man Jefferson County Superior Court jury.
Rettig, the final witness to testify on Thursday, said she did not recognize the cap worn by the man whose face was hidden in a bank’s surveillance video, but who prosecutors say is Pierce.
The man’s cap, which has a sunburst on the bill, was unfamiliar to her, she said.
“I can’t remember all that painting on it and stuff,” Rettig said.
On video evidence
She also said her son is heavier than the man depicted in a surveillance video from Henery’s Hardware in Port Town Âsend, where police say that Pierce, on the day of the murders, allegedly stole a long-barreled pellet pistol, presumably, authorities said, to use in the robbery-gone-sour.
“It looks like my son, but I think he’s heavier,” Rettig said.
During her testimony, Rettig also could not say for sure when Pierce left her house the night of the fire, at first saying he left at about the same time she called Pierce, according to cell phone records.
She also told authorities Pierce was at her house at the same time that, according to a store receipt, they were at the QFC in Port Townsend.
“I must have been a little off,” Rettig said when shown the store receipt.
Trial resumes Monday
Her testimony continues when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. Monday in the courtroom of Judge Craddock Verser at the county courthouse in Port Townsend, 820 Jefferson St.
Pierce appeared in court dressed as he has been throughout the trial in a suit and tie, with his back to about 30 spectators.
In other testimony, Joe Nole, a detective and the chief criminal deputy for the county Sheriff’s Office, said the color of the shirt worn by the man in the bank video appeared to be tinted a different color than a shirt believed to be Pierce’s and entered into evidence to connect Pierce to the ATM theft.
The shirt, sized “big guy” on the inside tag, was retrieved from a trash container at Pierce’s Sequim residence during a March 31 search of the premises.
Under questioning from county Public Defender Richard Davies, director of Jefferson Associated Counsel, Nole said he agreed with Davies’ description that the shirt in the video “certainly looks more gray” than the shirt plucked from the trash.
Items in Honda
Also retrieved when the search warrant was executed were a butcher block and five knives from Rondeau’s Honda, a find that provided dramatic and tearful testimony from the Yarrs’ daughters.
Michelle Ham of Port Hadlock and Patty Waters of Portland, Ore., were the first witnesses called in the trial, which began March 11, and now are among the two dozen who have taken the stand on the prosecution’s behalf after a week of testimony.
Under questioning from county Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Scott Rosekrans, the sisters on Thursday tearfully recalled going to the Sheriff’s Office under the general request of identifying items that may have belonged to their parents and that may have been stolen from the Yarrs’ home when they were killed.
Some items had been seized during the search of Pierce’s Sequim residence, including a butcher block and five knives — a find authorities have said links Pierce to the murders.
Daughters ID knives
“I watched her use them,” Ham said of the butcher block assemblage, adding that as a teenager, she watched her mother prepare meals with the utensils.
“We kind of remembered it when we lived back in Forks.”
Pat Yarr was a logger and cattle rancher well known throughout the North Olympic Peninsula, while Pat Yarr was a longtime bookkeeper.
When Waters saw the knives at the Sheriff’s Office, “I think I stopped breathing,” Waters said.
“I was standing in disbelief. I couldn’t move. . . . I said, ‘That’s Mom’s.”
Waters said her family put great store in family meals and the closeness that ensued from the daily get-togethers.
The Yarrs had a working relationship with Pierce, Rettig testified.
Rettig said her son and his girlfriend, Tiffany Rondeau, lived with her for six months in Quilcene before moving to Sequim so he could attend Peninsula College.
Her home on on Boulton Farm Road is a couple of hundred yards south of the Yarrs’ farmhouse.
Pierce would feed Pat Yarrs’ herd “every once in a while,” Rettig said.
“He would go up to the Yarrs up the road,” she recalled.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily news.com.