PORT TOWNSEND — The man who used the ATM card of Pat and Janice Yarr the same night they were slain was likely Michael J. Pierce, a forensic photographer testified Monday.
“There was a high degree of confidence that the person in the ATM video was indeed Michael Pierce,” Todd Reeves of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at Pierce’s trial in Jefferson County Superior Court.
The 35-year-old Peninsula College student from Quilcene is standing trial in Port Townsend for the deaths of the Yarrs and setting their home afire to cover up the killings on March 18, 2009.
Patrick Yarr, 60, and Janice Yarr, 57, were a logging and cattle-ranching couple who had lived in Forks but were living on Boulton Farm Road north of Lake Leland. Janice Yarr also was a bookkeeper.
Scott Rosekrans, Jefferson County chief deputy prosecuting attorney who has called 38 witnesses — some of them several times — will likely wrap up his case today, he said.
Testimony resumes at 9 a.m. in the second full week of the trial in the second-floor courtroom of Judge Craddock Verser at the Jefferson County Courthouse, 820 Jefferson St., Port Townsend.
84 photos
For his comparative analysis of the ATM images, Reeves took 84 photos of Pierce during Pierce’s stay in the county jail.
Reeves compared them with video photos of a man believed to be Pierce who allegedly stole a pellet pistol from Henery’s Hardware Inc. in Port Townsend at 6:40 p.m. the evening of the killings.
Reeves also compared them with video photos from the Quilcene branch of US Bank that were taken at 8:10 p.m. the same evening — 11 minutes before the Yarr house fire was reported to authorities.
In leading up to what Reeves called his “crescendo of photographic analysis,” Reeves said Pierce’s build, stomach, shoulders, wrists, hands, fingers, cheek contours, cap, hair, sideburns and ears — for which he said their were 10 matching points –were “very similar.”
Others testify
Those also testifying Monday included Pierce’s mother, Ila Rettig of Quilcene, and Pierce’s girlfriend, Tiffany Rondeau of Sequim.
They challenged the prosecution’s assertion that a butcher block and Chicago Cutlery knives and some mismatched knives — allegedly taken from the Yarrs’ home — linked Pierce to the murder.
Authorities found the kitchenware in Rondeau’s late 1980s Honda Accord during a search of the car on March 31, 2009, three days after Pierce was arrested for stealing the ATM card.
In dramatic, tearful testimony last week, the Yarrs’ daughters, Michele Ham of Port Hadlock and Patty Waters of Portland, Ore., said the block and knives were immediately recognizable as their parents’ and recalled Janice Yarr using the knives as they grew up.
But Rettig said the block and the knives were given to her by Jerry Merrill of Poulsbo, for whom she was a caretaker.
“I used them all the time at Jerry’s house, so I knew what they were,” Rettig testified.
She said she gave them around November 2008 to her son and Rondeau, who were renting a mobile home in Sequim while they attended Peninsula College in Port Angeles.
Richard Merrill, Jerry Merrill’s brother, testified that his brother had owned a block and knives that were “basically the same” as those identified as the Yarrs.
When Rondeau realized the block and knives were tied to the slayings, she tried calling lead investigator Mark Apeland of the county Sheriff’s Office, but her calls were not returned, she said.
Cross-examination
Under cross examination from Rosekrans, she said she did not recall telling Apeland when he interviewed her that she bought them at a garage sale.
In addition, Apeland testified that he was “not aware” of the multiple phone calls.
Among those testifying Monday were Tommy Boyd of Quilcene, whom Pierce visited for about an hour beginning between 8:50 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. the night of the killings, Boyd said.
Boyd said that during the visit to Boyd’s 23-foot Winnebago motor home, where Boyd lives, Pierce asked Boyd if he could find someone to sell him methamphetamine and said Pierce mostly talked about his girlfriend.
Pierce has told police he and a man whom he would identify only as having a last name beginning with “B” were at the man’s house the night of the murders.
Pierce has said the man went to the Yarrs’ house to borrow money and because Pat Yarr owed the man money.
The man returned with a rifle believed to be the murder weapon and his clothes covered with blood, Pierce told Apeland.
The authorities have eliminated Boyd as a suspect.
Also at Boyd’s were Mike Donahue, who was living in a van on property where Boyd lives, and a man Rosekrans said he does not intend to call to testify.
Donahue said Pierce was wearing cleaner clothes than normal and that Pierce “smelled like he had just come out of the shower.”
Pierce could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted by the nine-woman, three man jury.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.