by When the mutilated body of Mavis Kindness Nelson, a Seattle woman who worked as a front desk worker at a halfway house, was found a year ago in a wooded ravine near the University of Washington campus, her family was left with little. confidence that his killer will be caught.
They knew the statistics surrounding missing and murdered Native American women like Nelson were grim, particularly in Washington state, where the rate of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women is about four times greater than that of white women.
“I didn’t think they were going to listen to me then,” Ernestine Morning Owl, Nelson’s older sister, told this week. “I thought we were going to be alone in all of this.”
But a steadfast police investigation led to what advocates of missing and murdered Indian awareness say is a remarkable result: One suspect, 33-year-old Charles Becker, was arrested in October. pleaded guilty this month and was scheduled to be sentenced Friday afternoon. He faces 34 years in prison for first-degree murder and other charges of unlawful imprisonment and rape of human remains, while the sexually motivated component could also lead to additional prison time, authorities said.
The crisis of missing and murdered Native Americans has gained renewed attention in recent years, and the Department of Justice announced this week which will assign a team of attorneys and coordinators to regions across the West to investigate cold cases.
Morning Owl traveled to Seattle, a few hours’ drive from her home in Pendleton, Oregon, so she could attend the sentencing and get a glimpse of the man who took her sister’s life in a manner described as “extreme and disturbing” by the media. prosecutors.
Now, with justice at hand for 56-year-old Nelson, his loved ones want to make sure his death was not in vain and that other Native families have hope.
“I feel like my sister’s voice is speaking through me,” Morning Owl said.
find the killer
Those who knew Nelson, who had a studio apartment in Seattle but was a registered citizen of the Yakama Nation in Washington state, they said they had no idea why anyone would want to hurt her. A perpetually smiling woman, they said, she was nicknamed Boots because as a child, she loved to dance to the Nancy Sinatra song, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
“I used to think she was so beautiful. But not just beautiful, but so kind and sweet,” said Roxanne White, a friend of Nelson’s and founder of a Washington state grassroots group that advocates for missing and murdered indigenous peoples. . “She left a lasting impression on a lot of people.”
But the way she was killed belied that caring spirit.
According to charging documents, Seattle police responded to a 911 call and found three bags of trash strewn across a ravine and a trail under an elevated highway. It appeared that they had been thrown from the road and one of the bags ruptured on impact. Inside, investigators made a grisly discovery: a bag contained organs and meat; another, dismembered arms and legs; and the third, a head and a torso.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide from multiple stab wounds. Nelson was believed to have been dead for almost two weeks, although the remains were at the site for about 24 hours. Investigators said they also found synthetic rubber gloves and an unwrapped condom.
Morning Owl said a hummingbird tattoo on his sister’s arm helped investigators confirm the victim was Nelson, who at the time had been reported missing to Seattle police.
The lead investigator on the case, Seattle Police Detective. Josh Rurey later determined that Nelson had been involved in a domestic violence altercation about a month earlier in the neighboring city of Auburn, where local police records also indicated that she said she would take a carpool back home in Seattle. Morning Owl said that incident involved a boyfriend.
Seattle police later obtained a search warrant for Nelson’s home and found empty beer cans, which were examined for fingerprints, according to charging documents.
Rurey said he had never led a homicide investigation involving a Native American victim before, but this case struck him as gruesome.
With the help of other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, he set out to pursue every potential lead. She obtained Nelson’s cell phone records and noticed that the same number came up multiple times the night she took the carpool home. The number, which did not belong to her boyfriend, no longer contacted Nelson after that night.
Rurey filed a search warrant for the phone number. When the results came in, he had a name: Charles Becker.
Putting the puzzle together
Becker was already known to law enforcement.
His DNA was in state and federal databases after his arrest in 2015 death of their 4-month-old son, who was found suffocated in the family’s apartment after choking on a plastic clothing bag, according to Whitman County prosecutors.
The death was ruled accidental, but Becker was charged with second-degree manslaughter and convicted in 2016. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison, the maximum term given that he had no criminal record. reported the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
At his sentencing, the judge rebuked him: “I’m surprised your other children have survived this long. It’s just outrageous, shocking and disgusting.”
DNA would prove to be a crucial component in Nelson’s case.
A forensic examination of the synthetic rubber gloves found at the crime scene returned a match to Becker’s DNA, Rurey said. Plus, she said, the fingerprints on the empty beer cans collected from Nelson’s apartment also matched hers.
“I was on Charles Becker pretty early on this case, but I had to keep an open mind,” Rurey said. “Everything kept coming back to him.”
Armed with the evidence, investigators brought Becker in for questioning in early October. Rurey said Becker was read his Miranda rights and agreed to be interviewed.
It was during that nine-hour interrogation, Rurey said, that Becker provided firsthand knowledge of details and events that only someone who participated in the crime would have known.
Becker said she knew Nelson and claimed they had a consensual sexual relationship, and admitted to being with her the night she died, according to charging documents.
Rurey said she provided multiple shifting stories about how she died, even suggesting another person was involved in her death. He then said that Nelson’s corpse was stored in a bedroom closet and that he and someone else would engage in necrophilia before disposing of his body because it had degraded too much.
During cross-examination, Becker claimed that he did not dismember Nelson’s body, but rather helped someone else do it, the charging documents say.
Rurey said there is no evidence currently to indicate that a second person was involved. She said she hopes to interview Becker more to better understand how she got to know Nelson, though it appears they worked at the same halfway house at some point and had mutual acquaintances.
Morning Owl believes that her sister was a friend of Becker’s and on the night of the domestic violence incident, she may have reached out to him for support.
“Unfortunately, that kindness was manipulated,” Rurey said. “Becker even made the comment, like, ‘She was too nice.'”
Justice at your fingertips
White, a longtime friend of Nelson’s, said she met Nelson when they lived on the Yakama Reservation a decade ago. White had been having personal problems and Nelson gave him a hot meal and a place to rest.
“We are all happy and thankful that they caught the person,” White said. “I hope he receives the harsher hand of justice, whatever it is.”
Most of the families White advocates for don’t always receive the same resolved police work, he said. The lack of urgency is exacerbated by an undercount of cases, with indigenous women misclassified as white or Hispanic; law enforcement often does not note tribal affiliations on paperwork; and Native communities generally mistrust the police amid widespread cases of sexual violence and human trafficking.
Although Rurey had not previously worked on a case involving an Indian victim, she was conscious of being careful with Nelson’s family and tribe. He personally traveled to the Yakama Reservation in October to break the news of Becker’s arrest and discuss the case with them.
Morning Owl said how Rurey built a bridge throughout the process was important and necessary.
“Josh has been really good,” he said. “He’s a super good detective.”
Rurey plans to be at Becker’s sentencing. He said the case needed to be solved, both to bring comfort to Nelson’s family and to stop a person he might have killed again.
“We definitely feel like we took a monster off the streets,” Rurey said.
For Becker’s sentencing, Morning Owl wrote a victim impact statement explaining how the loss of her sister has devastated the family. Becker was the kind of person Nelson would help and befriend, she said, and he betrayed her kindness.
“He took from the world a woman who cared for the well-being of those who suffered in their lives,” he wrote to the judge. “She showed compassion for those whose lives were affected by circumstances that left them depressed and in need of help. She was there for them.”
