Sequim: How double murderer fled private Seattle transitional home

When John V. Carothers’ community corrections officer last visited him at his residential facility in Seattle on Nov. 8, she told him to report back to her in two days.

He didn’t.

Now, five months after being paroled from prison and 32 years after being sent there for murdering a Sequim-area couple, Carothers’ name is on a national warrant for his arrest, state Department of Corrections Spokeswoman Cheryl Davidson said Tuesday.

The 68-year-old Carothers — sentenced to life for the 1971 murders of Ronald and Wanda Buck during a random burglary at their home west of Sequim — was released from Airway Heights Corrections Center on the outskirts of Spokane in June, said Davidson, Corrections’ public information officer for the West Central Region.

Nine years after first coming before the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board, Carothers was paroled in June and went to Seattle, where he moved into Transition House, a Central Seattle residential facility operated by Interaction/Transition.

Assisting ex-offenders

A Web site about the organization calls it a small, private nonprofit aimed at assisting ex-offenders who are serious about making a successful transition from prison life into the free community.

Davidson said Corrections does not operate the home, but it approved Carothers to live there.

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