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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
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Listener discretion is advised. It's almost like he would rather live in his car and spend his money on stupid things like games and stuff like that instead of reality.
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This is Season 12, Episode 285 of Sword and Scale. a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real
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well we got lots of goodies in the store store.swordandscale.com lots of them are on a deep discount because i need to get them out of my garage
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Thank you. We have this saying we throw around here a lot. The worst monsters are real.
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It's not something we came up with in a focus group or that someone threw around in a water cooler discussion.
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Something that would be great for a t-shirt. No, it's something that developed a lot more organically than that.
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When you get hit over the head with an idea over and over and over again, even for the dumbest of us,
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something eventually sticks. What happened on New Year's Day in Everett, Washington
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is a great example of that. The misty city of Everett was boasting its typical winter colors
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of gray and green. Nestled in Puget Sound, it's your typical Pacific Northwest port town
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where the drab, rainy skies are offset by the endless green shrubbery and towering Douglas fir trees.
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Beautiful, but super depressing. Outside the Cedar Creek apartments, two officers arrived to do a welfare check on 35-year-old Sherry Harlan.
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She had grown up until she was a teenager in Oregon, had moved to Washington with her mother.
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She was working at J.C. Penney and had just moved to a new apartment. This is former deputy district attorney,
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Craig Matheson. My name is Craig Matheson. I was a deputy prosecuting attorney for Snohomish County.
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I did that for 35 years and retired in June of 2024. Shelly hadn't shown up for the last few shifts at JCPenney.
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One of my first jobs worked in the men's underwear department. Wore a suit and everything.
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It's crazy. Imagine young Mike Boudet in a suit at JCPenney, selling you underwear.
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Neither can I. Anyway, Sherry's co-workers grew more and more concerned every time they tried to call her.
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Because they weren't getting an answer. And as we've heard before, this just wasn't like Sherry.
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Again, I'm not sure who the type is that just disappears and doesn't answer people.
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Oh right, that's me. That's me. Don't call me. Anyway, she actually enjoyed working at JCPenney.
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She had a lot of fun with her co-workers who teased her about the awkward laugh she had.
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This awkward laugh happened so often they decided to catch it on video. Make her laugh.
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Laugh, Sherry. Just follow the whale. She can't stop laughing. Now you have to do the second part of the laugh.
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No, we didn't get the trigger warnings on this episode incorrectly. That was not a wounded animal.
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That was Sherry's laugh. Anyway, Sherry had left her shift at JCPenney on January 1st and hadn't been seen since.
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Her co-workers called the police and asked for a welfare check on January 5th. several uniformed deputies showed up at the apartment complex, which was the Cedar Creek
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Apartments, and the maintenance man on duty at the apartment complex got his keys and allowed
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law enforcement entry into Sherry's apartment. And once the deputies entered the apartment,
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it became pretty clear pretty quickly that they were not going to be dealing with a missing
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person's case, but a homicide case. Sherry's small one-bedroom apartment was a complete disaster.
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There was a heavy odor of bleach in the air inside the apartment. There had been some linoleum
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that had been cut off the floor of the kitchen in the apartment. There had been an amount of
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carpeting that had been cut off the floor in the bedroom of the apartment. Inside the apartment
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bedroom where the carpeting had been cut off on all four walls there was a blood spatter So essentially kind of in a 360 radius Law enforcement also found a T that had what appeared to be a bloody footprint on it
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There was a futon mattress that appeared to have several cuts that you might expect from a knife being plunged into it.
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and there was a pair of gloves, those nitrile gloves, and one of them had what looked like tissue.
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And when I say tissue, I mean human tissue on the glove. But there was no sign of Sherry or her beloved dog, Roscoe.
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She was gone. The deputies could tell that something horrific had happened in her apartment.
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They slowly backed up, closed the door to the crime scene, and called in the higher-ups.
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Sherry's welfare check had quickly turned into something much more sinister. When detectives descended on the Cedar Creek Apartments,
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they got to work trying to figure out what happened. Detectives started fanning out and doing a canvas of neighbors of Sherry's,
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seeing whether they either saw something or heard anything. And several of Sherry's neighbors indicated that they either heard what sounded like a relatively loud, violent argument on Saturday morning, which would have been January 2 at approximately 8 a.m.
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Neighbors who shared the walls with Sherry all heard the commotion during the early morning hours of January 2.
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They hadn't seen anything, but they confirmed that they all heard Sherry fighting with someone.
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But it just sounded like a heated argument. Sherry's blue Nissan should have been parked in its regular spot outside the complex, but it was gone.
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As officers examined the spot where she usually parked, another neighbor piped up.
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But there was also a neighbor that saw a man who met the description of Eric Christensen kind of loitering around Sherry's vehicle.
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What was important about this neighbor having seen someone who met Christensen's description near Sherry's vehicle is by the time law enforcement got there on the 5th, that car is gone.
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Christensen immediately became a person that law enforcement wanted to talk to. Eric Christensen was Sherry's boyfriend.
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They had to find him, but it wouldn't be hard. Let's just say that the guy didn't exactly blend in in Everett.
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Eric Christensen was a big guy. He had to go about 6'2", 6'3". He was probably about 220.
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He was balding and kept his hair cut very short, almost to the scalp. he had a long chin beard that he would typically braid would often wear
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kilts he claimed some scottish heritage when you saw him you knew who you were looking at
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detectives soon got a call that eric christensen had been spotted at a hospital in munro
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Monroe was about 20 miles from Sherry's apartment, but close to the guest house that Eric rented on a rural property in Goldbar.
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Detective Betts headed to the scene and found Eric outside the hospital, his hand freshly stitched up, wearing his signature mid-calf Doc Martens and braided goatee.
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What a look. You know, they were building their case, so they weren't there to arrest Christensen.
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but what they wanted to do is get him, you know, tie him to some sort of statement.
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Maybe he would admit to the crime. Maybe he would give them information to lead them in a different direction.
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Betts had the presence of mind to essentially do a man-on-the-street type of interview.
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Got his recorder out, asked Christensen if he was willing to, you know, talk to law enforcement,
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you know, that they're out looking for Sherry Harlan. and Christensen agreed. Eric, I understand that you had a relationship
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with a woman within the last month. Can you give me her name, please? Sherry Ann Harlan.
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Okay, and how long have you known Sherry? Since April of 2009. 41-year-old Eric had met Sherry
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on a site called Tagged, which is similar to just about every other dating website out there.
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We formed a relationship first, then we started living together. About when was that?
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That was in March of the same year. Both of us were actually living in our vehicles.
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Eric and Sherry stayed with some friends in Everett for a while, but it didn't work out.
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They had two couples under one roof in a small apartment, and we know where that goes.
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Nowhere good, very fast. So, they found themselves back in Eric's car. We stayed in my Mazda 323.
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and we just parked from various places to places. And did the two of you ever get another place together?
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We finally did, and that was, I think, in August. Okay, and where was that? That was in Goldbar.
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Sherry and Eric started renting a small guest house in Goldbar on their friend's property.
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It was cramped, but they made the best of it. Plus, anything was better than living in a car.
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Tell me about your relationship with Sherry during this period of time. Well we been dating We were boyfriend girlfriend Pretty serious Things did go astray What is pretty serious to you Well we were together roughly I say 22 hours of the day
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Really? Okay. Until she got her job working at JCPenney's. For a few months, Eric and Sherry spent every waking moment together,
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getting by on his disability checks. But that was no longer sustainable. Unlike Eric, Sherry actually wanted to work and was thrilled to get a full-time job at JCPenney.
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That's when things changed. We kind of like grew apart, but we were still together.
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When? Around October, I think it was, of 09. Okay. and tell me you said there was no event
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you guys just grew apart but did you continue to live together well we continued
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to be a couple and until I went to jail for my warrants that I had when was that?
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in November I think it was November 14th 2009 he was sentenced to do 30 days in jail for an unlawful possession of weapons charge in Snohomish
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County. So from November 14th till December 11th of 2009, he had been in jail on that weapons charge.
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And did the two of you communicate during the time that you were in jail? Nope. She didn't come visit you or anything like that?
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She claims she tried to, but I didn't put a, the way that Snohomish County Jail is, you have to put in a visiting request form in, which King County don't have to do that.
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Of course, I had a strange of that, I had no idea. Did you ever try to call her?
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Couldn't, didn't know her number. Okay. So you got out of jail the first or second week of December, and then what happened?
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I went back to Goldbar and found out that she had her own apartment in Everett because I called her.
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Eric admitted that Sherry moved out after he went to jail to serve time for unlawful possession of a firearm.
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He told the detective that Sherry had been kicked out for not helping out at the property or paying rent.
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But it was during this time that Sherry's new friend, Dan Young, agreed to help her move.
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Sherry had met Dan Young on a dating platform several months prior to her moving out of her habitation with Christensen.
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Sherry had been transparent with Dan about her relationship with Eric. And when he went to jail, they saw it as a way for her to get away and get her own place.
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Dan Young was an older guy. He was employed. He had money. He helped when Sherry had told him that she wanted to move out of the home that she was sharing with Christensen.
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He agreed to pay both the first and the last month's rent at the apartment complex that she moved into and was the co-signer on the lease.
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He also purchased her a flat screen TV, a block of knives, and some cookie dimplements to kind of set Sherry up in the apartment.
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There was actually like a brief week. A brief what? Week where we'd actually broken up, but I tried to salvage it, and she said fine.
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Now, is this before or after Christmas? Before. Before Christmas. All right, so for a week, you tried to salvage the relationship?
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yeah i was mad i was really mad at her why were you mad because of her sugar daddy
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okay now tell me about that we haven't talked about that yet yeah her sugar daddy
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now the way i believe if you're with somebody you're with somebody if you have a sugar daddy even though it's not sexual
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i still cheating on a person that's the way i've been for all my life that i can remember
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now what made you think that she had a sugar daddy Um, because when we were in the apartment in Everett, for that brief time, he had sent her 450 bucks.
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How do you know that? Because she told me. Okay. And she spent most of the money on my car.
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Dan was a friend of Sherry's. He helped her out by moving and setting her up in a new apartment, but he also lent her money.
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As much as Eric disapproved of this man and Sherry's life, he had no problem using the funds Dan gifted Sherry for himself or his car.
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Then Dan bought Sherry a laptop, and one day, after an afternoon of lovemaking, Eric just couldn't let the laptop go.
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Maybe it was the fact that Dan could buy her something nice like a computer that Eric simply couldn't afford.
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Anyway, it made him angry. Because she was messing with it, and this was after we had intercourse.
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After you had intercourse? Yeah, and I was sitting there stewing about it. It's not me.
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Right. I'm not a Christian, I'm a Wiccan, and that'd be like asking me to become one.
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I'm 100% totally into the Chevys, and they'd be asking me to love Fords. Right Not happening Right So I got up I said this is the last time we having sex Got dressed She says where are you going I said home Christensen claimed to be a member of the Wiccan church for want of a better term
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And they went by the name of the Aquarian Tabernacle Temple, commonly referred to in the area as the tab.
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Eric had been a, quote unquote serious, Wiccan for many years. In fact, it was his whole identity.
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usually people that are really really stupid assume new identities from new things they discover
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and find kind of weird and cool and different you know they want to be different
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because they're boring and dull so they adopt things like you know witchcraft and nonsense
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maybe they start reading satanic verses or something something edgy you know and then that becomes their whole
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personality, because what else is there? Anyway, Eric was one of these, and Sherry had also joined
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the church a few months prior, mostly because of Eric's influence. He was pretty serious about it,
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but in talking to friends of his that were also part of the Wicca church, it was also pretty
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apparent that in addition to the belief system of Wicca that Christensen was also going down a
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darker a darker side I did ask her what's going to happen I walked out that door
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she says yeah she knew I wouldn't come back at all and she did not want to lose me
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so we made a little deal Eric was a talker and when his pagan beliefs came up something shifted
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a fire blazed in his eyes sending a chill down the detective's spines they needed to know more about this deal
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that he made with Sherry but nothing could have prepared them for what came out of this Wiccan's mouth.
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Snohomish County detectives were trying to find out what happened to 35-year-old Sherry Harlan.
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She hadn't been seen in days, and her apartment was a wreck. Police found ripped-up carpet, bleached floors, blood spatter, pieces of human tissue on a glove.
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It was clear she'd been killed, but there was no trace of her remains whatsoever.
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The last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Eric Christensen. A kilt-wearing Wiccan with a bald head and a 10-inch braided goatee.
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Couldn't have been him, right? Anyway, when the detectives found Eric outside the hospital with a hand injury,
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they started asking him about Sherry. He was more than happy to talk about how their relationship had gone downhill
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after she started taking financial gifts from a friend called Dan Young. This bastard, this bastard that had all this money for stuff like laptops.
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Eric just wasn't happy about it. And he told police that he had Sherry make a deal with him
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using some of his coveted Wiccan rituals. Tell me about the ceremony. I'm not a Wiccan, so I don't understand, so enlighten me.
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Okay. What it is, you cast a circle, and in that circle is pure purity, okay, to where you can do your ritual work to where it's no negative energies coming in.
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It's all positive energies, right? So we put up a barrier. Okay. And so that's where we do all our good stuff.
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Where you do all your good stuff. Yes. Okay. So I went with her and went to across the street to the Walmart.
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She started grabbing because she didn't have none of the ritual tools. None. So what are the ritual tools?
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Ritual tools are an athami, which is a ceremonial dagger, which is only used for ceremony.
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Athami? Athami. Okay. I'll bite. Well, this is new to me, so you're educating me.
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She didn't have a wand, which we used. We used wands to cast a circle. Okay. She didn't have no incense, no chalice, no incense burner, no sea salt, no bowl of any kind.
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Where do you get this stuff? There's actually a store in every mall that sells all of it.
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Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. And right now I can't think of the name. Down by Sears on the right-hand side, across the borders.
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Magical Gardens, that's it. It's hard to take a ritual seriously when it involves buying wands at a store next to Sears.
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Magical Gardens, we went there, then we went over to the dollar store to grab a few more items.
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This is cheaper. We had a male and female figure, which represents a god and a goddess.
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Okay. Okay, and grab five candles of different colors. We have green, which represents birth,
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on earth, yellow is air, red is fire, and then blue is water, and then we had one more,
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which is white, which is spirit. Okay. So, I set up the whole, the altar and all.
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Where did all this take place? In her apartment. Okay, and do you remember what day this was?
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No. For some reason, I think it was the 18th, I don't know. Okay, so is this the same day that you found the computer and all that stuff?
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Mm-hmm. So basically, you find a computer. We talked and talked. Was it a conversation where she was trying to convince you to not leave?
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And that's why you guys made this pact? They returned to the apartment and Eric set up his ritual space.
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But there was one problem. They needed a church witness to bind the ceremony and make it real.
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That damn fine print. I called up my friend Ryan and now in a ritual you do not have any electronic devices whatsoever.
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Right. None. So because of it was just being her eye, I called him up to be a witness for it.
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And then who is this you called again? His name is Ryan. Ryan. What's Ryan's last name?
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I don't know. It starts with a G. It starts with a G? Yes. Okay. And so I asked him to participate, and he said, sure.
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Okay, so Ryan participated via the telephone. Via the telephone. And what he did was he casted his own circle.
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Okay. At where he was. All right. And I cast the one here. And then I conjured up the watchtowers to watch over it
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so that no negative forces come into it. Right. Basically the watchdogs. Okay. and the elements were the ones to witness it.
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All right. And I called upon the Lord and Lady. I called the names I actually used
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was the Danu and the Dagda. Holding his wand in one hand and a dagger in the other,
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Eric stood outside the invisible circle he had just cast in their living room. Or at least he pretended to.
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Because it was not a real circle. He just invented it. Anyway, Sherry waited quietly beside him
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and closed her eyes. Eric's friend was on speakerphone as Eric looked up to the ceiling
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and began summoning his gods. Ooh, we're going to have some company today. Put out the good china, I guess.
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As this was happening, the incense burned, clouding the apartment with a musky, thick smoke,
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potentially masking some of the body odor, I would imagine. Eric was in a trance as he worked his magic ritual.
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Then he turned to Sherry and pointed the wand at her. And then what happened? I asked her, why are you here?
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She told me that she was there because she wanted to be there. She wanted to say no to Sugar Daddy.
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I also asked her, who does she want? She said she wanted me. And then I took, I had a Pacific.
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A Pacific. Oil made for this. And I grabbed what her Zodiac element is, which is air.
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Incense, which is powder. I put it in there and mixed it with the oil. And what she had to do was she had to confess what she was doing three times.
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Okay. And she had to prick her own blood, her finger. but she couldn't actually do it
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so I had to do it she couldn't do it for her? yeah and so she put three drops of her own blood
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in this in this mixture? yes and mix it up and it got burnt so what does that signify when you do that?
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that signifies that you're totally willing to do this you're giving your own life essence
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to do this I love the cops very banal, very ordinary Oh, okay. The way it offsets the absurdity of what this guy's saying.
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Anyway, after the blood oath ritual was complete, Eric was satisfied. Sherry had admitted her transgression and committed her own life essence to him.
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So what was the sin that she confessed? That there would be no more sugar daddy whatsoever.
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Eric explained that things went well for a while, even though he found it strange that they were no longer living together.
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Christmas came and went, and then Eric found a message from Dan and Sherry's phone.
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Talking about my religion and my beliefs, I get into, I guess, an oracle mode. And so I told her, what does it mean by no sugar daddy?
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She explained, okay, no singing and no money. I said, it also means no communication.
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Eric said they talked it out. He let that one slide. Maybe she didn't get it. They reconciled but spent New Year's Eve apart because Sherry had to work.
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The next day, Eric picked her up from JCPenney. They had a nice evening together.
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Then the next morning, when Sherry went to have a shower, Eric took her phone and started snooping.
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That's when he saw that Sherry had still been talking to Dan. Oh, man, what are the other guys on the subreddit going to think?
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I said, you broke your oath. She says, what do you mean? What do you mean? Grab the phone.
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You broke your oath So you holding your hand up like you holding the phone in front of her face I had the phone in my hand Oh okay You broke your oath showing it to her right in her face You broke the oath
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Smash! So you threw the phone? I threw the phone. I was pissed. Where did the phone land?
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On the floor, afterwards. Okay. Did it hit a wall or anything? Yes, it did. It broke.
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Eric threw a tantrum. He threw Sherry's phone across the room and started berating her.
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And I told her, you broke your blood oath. Because that's what it was, because she used her own blood.
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Pretty much called her every name in the book. You broke your oath. You broke it.
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We are done. Okay, so you're, basically you're furious at this point. Oh, I'm mad.
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I could have been biting nails mad. So you're beyond mad. But I can, I know how to control my anger.
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Right. If it goes a little too far, I know exactly what my potentials are. And now she's broken her oath.
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So what does that mean? That means that she is no good. Her blood is garbage. All right.
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Her blood might as well be sewage water. Okay. And in the ancient text ways, she'd become a warlock.
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She had become a warlock. Her blood was garbage. But Eric said that he had not seen her since he left that day.
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They had a loud fight, she slammed the door, and he left. As for the cuts on his hand, Eric said that on his way back to Gold Bar, he was jumped by, quote, three Mexican guys, unquote.
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How did you fight three of them off with my fists? After Eric's interview, the police thanked him for his time, and he returned home, seemingly unbothered by the conversation.
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Then detectives immediately called the prosecutor's office to expedite a search warrant for Eric's house.
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Then I became involved at that point. We came to the determination that we had probable cause both for a search warrant of Christensen's home and for an arrest warrant for Christensen.
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While police searched Eric's guest house for evidence, the interview, as bizarre as it was, remained purely circumstantial.
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They needed more. Then came a breakthrough that set everything in motion. They found Sherry's car.
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Sherry's car was located at approximately 2 p.m. later on the same day that the search warrant was served on Christensen's home.
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So the afternoon of January 7, it was found off of a place called Reader Road. and Reeder Road is a two-lane road that leads off of Highway 2
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in the east part of Snohomish County. It relatively quickly gets out into the woods
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and you're out in the middle of nowhere before you know it. Down Reeder Road, the detectives descended upon Sherry's Nissan in a desolate pit.
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And it's an old gravel pit that young kids will go to party at or people will do target shooting at.
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things of that nature. It was apparent from the smell and the act of smoke that was still
00:33:17
coming out of it that it hadn't been there long. Sherry's Nissan was a husk of a car.
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It had been burned to a crisp. Just the bare metal bones of the car remained as smoke swirled
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all around. Then they saw something unforgettable. There appeared to be a human skull on the front
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seat. There it was. The first piece of Sherry. Her skull just sitting there like a message from
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whoever had done this. What was interesting when law enforcement ultimately went into the vehicle
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in the trunk of that vehicle they found a stack of cut up linoleum that appeared to be of the
00:34:05
same type of linoleum that was cut out of the kitchen floor in Sherry's apartment. They also
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found a block of knives that was consistent with the type of block of knives that had been in
00:34:18
Sherry's apartment. And they found a big butcher knife in the passenger compartment of the vehicle
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where the tip had been broken off it. The brutality of Sherry's death was becoming apparent.
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This had been a violent, savage murder. The human skull that was located on the front seat was ultimately taken by this county medical examiner,
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and he x-rayed that, and when x-raying the skull, I discovered a knife tip in the skull.
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So it all kind of matched up with the weapon that had been used at least to stab her in the head
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was a knife from the knife block that had been on her kitchen counter. It was clear that Sherry had been killed with the knives Dan had gifted her.
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All signs pointed to Eric, but there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.
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No confession. No proof. Detectives were left questioning, was Eric the killer or was someone else involved?
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Then, an unexpected phone call would blow the investigation wide open. A man named Ryan Gessme called the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office and said he needed to talk to someone.
00:35:38
Ryan was one of Eric's only friends and a member of the same Wiccan church that Sherry and Eric belonged to.
00:35:46
He was the one Eric had called on the phone to witness the blood oath. Ryan said that a few days
00:35:52
after the oath Eric called him asking for help So Gadsby showed up to help him get into the vehicle,
00:36:29
and when he arrived, Christensen was standing outside of Sherry's car, and he'd lock the keys inside.
00:36:37
On the way home, he called me on my cell phone and said he'd got it open with his leather.
00:36:42
Oh, okay. I don't know why he didn't do that in the first place. Yeah, I don't know. Okay.
00:36:50
What happened after that? Um, then as soon as we were, he told me he got it open with the leather and he said I need your help.
00:37:01
Okay. And what did you... And I said with what? And he said get rid of the body. I'm like, what body?
00:37:14
At that point, I was like in shock. Right. Because I didn't register. Right. Did you ask him what body, what was his robotic to that?
00:37:27
Hers. Did he say hers or did he say a name? He said hers. Hers. He killed him. When he asked me for my help, I was so distraught, I wasn't thinking clearly, so I said yes.
00:37:40
And as they started talking with him initially, though, it became pretty apparent that Ryan had some criminal liability based upon his actions after the murder in helping Christensen.
00:37:56
We needed to get Ryan legal counsel to make sure that we were doing this correctly.
00:38:03
Craig, the detectives, Ryan, and his lawyer sat down as Ryan gave his proffer statement,
00:38:11
his account of what happened to Sherry. As the only witness to the aftermath, his story would be crucial at trial.
00:38:18
He picked me up and we went to the parking right in Monroe. Okay. And what was there?
00:38:23
Her car. Her car. And then from there, where'd you go? From there, we took off and went up to Reedus.
00:38:32
In what car? Hers. And who drove? Me. And where was Eric seated? In the passenger seat in the front.
00:38:40
Ryan drove while Eric directed him. Inside the trunk was Sherry. Eric had cut her body up into pieces and stuffed her bloody limbs into garbage bags.
00:38:52
He took the parts out of the trunk, took them into the woods with a shovel, and buried the parts.
00:39:02
and brought the banks back to the car. Did you go with him into the boat? No, I didn't.
00:39:07
Do you know where you stopped? Roughly. Roughly? Ryan acted as a chauffeur around wooded parts of the county.
00:39:17
Eric would make him stop, then get out with another body part and his shovel. Does he get back in the car at that point?
00:39:25
And what does he say to you? Next spot. Okay. When did he tell you about the torso?
00:39:29
So after he took it out of the trunk, what did he say? He said, here's part of the torso.
00:39:40
OK, what were you? How did you respond to that? I didn't know what to think, honestly.
00:39:47
OK. So did you see what he did with the plastic bag? He just put it in the trunk.
00:39:53
Put it back in the trunk. OK, what was the next spot then? Ryan detailed every spot they went to that afternoon, repeating the same awful process of hiding Sherry's remains as Eric showed them off, like trophies.
00:40:08
He took out another bag. Okay. And this time, I was standing at the driver's door.
00:40:21
Okay. And he pulled the body part out of the bag. Okay, could you recognize it? It was a thigh.
00:40:31
Thigh, okay. He chucked it over the guardrail. It was the upper leg without the knee.
00:40:38
Without the knee. As the process went on, Eric became less secretive and started showing Ryan the parts in the bags.
00:40:47
After Eric threw Sherry's thigh over the guardrail, a car drove by. he's going to the bathroom and I was just enjoying the view.
00:41:20
What made you not say, hey, mom, take me home, or hey, mom, get me out of here? I don't know.
00:41:29
Did you have any concerns at all or any reasons why you felt that you shouldn't do that?
00:41:37
Not really. I was just, again, not thinking quickly. So your mom, how long did your mom stay?
00:41:46
About five minutes. Small town problems huh Ryan own mother drove by as the two scattered around Sherry body and Ryan mom stayed for five whole minutes Ryan stood there swallowing his terror as he made up excuses for his mom and prayed she would leave before Eric came back with another bloody trash bag
00:42:10
When she was gone, they continued driving around for the next few hours, digging small graves for Sherry's bloody parts.
00:42:19
What was his demeanor like? Did he act like he was sad about this? Or did he act like he was bothered by it or anything?
00:42:24
He, what he was acting like, it was, I just don't know what to think. I don't know how to explain it.
00:42:33
Was he acting angry? Was he acting happy? Was he acting, you know, different people?
00:42:37
In between happy and angry. Really? Okay. So he wasn't acting sad about it or respondent?
00:42:44
No. According to Ryan, Eric did not seem upset. He toggled between elated and frustrated.
00:42:51
probably from having to dig the wet, hard dirt. He clearly wasn't saddened to have lost Sherry.
00:43:01
After Eric had had enough for that day, he took Ryan back home and said he'd pick him up again tomorrow.
00:43:09
The next day, they got back in the car with the remainder of the body and continued their sick task.
00:43:17
By this time, Eric started talking more and more about what happened to Sherry. and how she died.
00:43:24
Is there anything else that he told you, Ryan, about what happened in that apartment
00:43:28
or what he did that you can help us with? I really don't know much about it, about the apartment.
00:43:35
Okay, but I mean, did he share any other information with you? He told you why he did it, the blood oath.
00:43:40
Yeah. He didn't tell me, really, how he killed her. All he just said was, part of her was in the car.
00:43:53
We talked a little bit yesterday, and you mentioned to me that he was using a knife, that he had used a knife.
00:44:01
Yeah, but I'm not sure what kind of knife. Okay. How did you know this, then, about the knife? I'm sorry. I'm jumbled.
00:44:09
It's okay. He actually did tell me he used a knife, but he didn't specify what, he didn't
00:44:16
Tell me what kind of knife. After every single piece of Sherry had been dispersed, except for her head,
00:44:27
Ryan told Eric he was done. He'd had enough. You didn't go to where he put the car, correct?
00:44:34
So you told him you're on your own? I told him you're on your own. I'm done. Okay, what was his reaction to that?
00:44:42
He's like, okay. All right. And do you know what happened with the car? Um, he goes, I'll have to find a spot to torture.
00:44:52
Okay. Do you know what body parts were left, if any? Probably an arm and a head.
00:45:00
Okay, and why do you, how do you know that? Because we only got rid of one arm. Okay.
00:45:07
That one, R1 Killock. Okay. And those were the only two left. Okay, so there was two, two left?
00:45:14
Two body parts left. The head and an arm. Did you see them? No. Do you know how he got the car there?
00:45:21
He drove it. And do you know how he got it out of there? He walked home. And how do you know this?
00:45:29
Because he called me afterwards, after it was torched. Okay. And said he's on his way home. He's walking.
00:45:35
Okay. Did he tell you what he did? He told me he doused the car in lighter fluid.
00:45:41
Okay. And set it on fire. Did he indicate why he put the head in the front seat?
00:45:50
No. Can you think of why he would do that? Is there any significance to that particular action by him?
00:45:58
I don't know. Because we have all these other body parts that are buried or thrown off in vacuums or whatever.
00:46:05
Not easily found, maybe by animals, but certainly not people. Yeah. And then we find a torched car.
00:46:14
Mm-hmm. With a head. If you had to speculate, why did Eric do that? I don't know why.
00:46:24
There's no religious reason? No. Nothing like that? No. Ryan then took the police to every place where he'd watched Eric dig a grave for Sherry.
00:46:36
They collected every piece of her until they finally had a whole woman again. But Ryan's edgy demeanor cast a shadow of doubt.
00:46:48
Had he really just been an observer in all of this? The police still had to tie the physical evidence back to Eric.
00:46:58
The last place to investigate was his own property, and they hoped he'd leave something bloody behind.
00:47:12
The End Detectives were suspicious of her boyfriend Eric Christensen, who had admitted to getting into a fight with Sherry after she broke a blood oath during a Wiccan ritual. Now his friend and fellow Wiccan, Ryan Gessmey, had admitted to getting into a fight with Sherry after she broke a blood oath during a Wiccan ritual.
00:48:00
He helped Eric scatter Sherry's severed body parts around the county. Gasme didn't have any real criminal history.
00:48:07
He wasn't somebody that we dealt with, either law enforcement or the prosecutor's office.
00:48:13
We knew he was telling the truth because he was actually able, ultimately, to lead law enforcement to the various body parts.
00:48:19
But this is not a guy with history. But he certainly had criminal exposure for rendering criminal assistance after the fact.
00:48:30
by helping dispose of the body. So to make sure that we got his testimony for trial,
00:48:37
we ultimately offered him immunity for truthful testimony at trial. The police now had Eric in custody,
00:48:45
and at his home, their search warrant turned up even more pieces of incriminating evidence.
00:48:51
Inside of Christensen's home, they found a pair of blue jeans that had fairly extensive blood spatter on it.
00:49:03
They found a pair of tennis shoes that had apparent blood spatter on it. What was mostly interesting to law enforcement about these shoes
00:49:13
is that the tread on the bottom of the shoes matched the bloody footprint that was found at Sherry's apartment.
00:49:21
On top of all the blood-soaked items in Eric's dingy guest house, they also searched his car.
00:49:30
And what they found inside the vehicle was a number of blood transfer stains on various parts of the car.
00:49:39
Then a couple of rings that had been put in the ashtray. And on the interior of the rings, there appeared to be blood inside of those also.
00:49:48
They also located what appeared to be essentially a shopping list for cleaning items.
00:49:55
Garbage bags, bleach, mop, gloves, things of that nature. And then they also found a number of receipts from various stores.
00:50:05
Eric left evidence everywhere. A shocking amount for someone so calculating. He cut linoleum out of the floor, yet left his cleanup list in his car.
00:50:17
Maybe Eric thought he had more time. Maybe he was just a little clumsy. I don't think he ever anticipated that Ryan would turn on him the way that he did.
00:50:28
But I've found late in life that all those sayings we learn as a kid have a lot of truth and a lot of learnings to be derived from.
00:50:37
You know, sayings like, there is no honor amongst thieves or murderers. it's difficult to get inside of eric christensen's brain but my i have to believe that a lot of it was
00:50:52
that even for a guy like that doing what he ultimately did to the body had to be pretty
00:50:59
shocking that what had occurred was so disturbing to even him that it kept him from being meticulous
00:51:06
in his cleanup or he just didn't care or he thought he had talked his way out of it the
00:51:11
previous day. I don't know, but I was just glad that it was there when the police showed up.
00:51:17
Like all criminals facing trial in Washington, Eric was granted the right to a speedy trial.
00:51:26
In Washington, speedy means 60 days. Not sure why they've adopted that definition, but
00:51:32
it is what it is. Craig and his team had a solid theory of exactly what had happened to Sherry,
00:51:39
and enough physical evidence to nail Eric So our theory of the case that was you know borne out I think pretty pretty well by the you know the hard evidence that we were able to
00:51:51
demonstrate at trial was that Christensen was already very sensitive about the subject of Dan
00:51:59
Young, the sugar daddy. This was a guy that worked, that had money, and wasn't shy about
00:52:06
spending it on Sherry Harlan. Christensen claimed a shoulder injury and had been on disability for
00:52:12
months. He didn't work. Eric was clearly a fucking loser, in case you haven't figured that out yet.
00:52:19
He had no income and barely a home. He was also a convicted felon. He was a Wiccan.
00:52:27
Do I have to say more? Anyway, in 1990, he was convicted of statutory rape and forgery in Oregon.
00:52:34
he served his prison time and he moved up to Seattle. He was supposed to be a registered sex offender in Washington, which he was not.
00:52:45
Probably because a lot of those states over on the West Coast, they just don't give a shit about crime.
00:52:52
And especially crimes involving sex offenders for some reason. Not sure why that is.
00:52:59
Anyway, in 1994, he tried to kill his ex-girlfriend by shooting her and her boyfriend with a rifle.
00:53:06
This is a guy that should have never been out on the streets after that. But hey, you don't want me to talk about politics, so I guess I won't.
00:53:15
He missed, but the police, who just happened to be around the corner when he was opening fire on the two,
00:53:23
caught him relatively shortly after he took the shots. and he said something to the effect of
00:53:31
where I come from when a woman cheats on you, you shoot them and the only reason they're alive is because my front sights are off.
00:53:41
He ended up doing 12 years on two counts of assault one. It was in the Washington prison that Eric discovered the Wiccan religion
00:53:50
and the Aquarian Tabernacle Church. Why is it Aquarian? I don't know. Go down that rabbit hole yourself if you want to.
00:54:00
Leave me out of it. Anyway, behind bars, he immersed himself in pagan beliefs, becoming obsessed as easily obsessed people do.
00:54:10
After his release, he met Sherry on that app called Tagged, which nobody's ever heard about.
00:54:17
And just 11 months later, he would kill her. The morning of January 1st, 2010, Sherry had been complaining about a stomach ache and Christensen left and went to the Walmart,
00:54:32
which is just up the road from the apartment, to buy her some stuff for her stomach.
00:54:39
While Christensen had been gone, Sherry and Dan Young had been texting back and forth.
00:54:47
One of the last text messages from Sherry had been her complaining about her stomach ache.
00:54:55
And the very last text that Dan Young had sent back to Sherry, and the last text that she'd ever received,
00:55:03
was a text that said substantially words to the effect that that's what being with two guys will do to you.
00:55:11
It'll give you a bad tummy, LOL. So Christensen gets back from Walmart. Sherry's in the shower and being a jealous possessive guy like he is he goes
00:55:22
through her phone and he sees that text string particularly this last one where it appears that you know Sherry and Dan are kind of laughing at him being a cuckold and he decided to kill her
00:55:37
Craig believed that Eric attacked Sherry as soon as she got out of the bathroom.
00:55:42
He grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and went into a white-hot rage. The cause of death was difficult for the medical examiner to determine
00:55:51
because of the state of the body. However, he was able to find on the torso three stab wounds in her back,
00:56:02
two of which would have been fatal in and of themselves if they had occurred while she was alive.
00:56:07
And there was also the stab wound to her head that left the knife tip embedded in her skull.
00:56:15
When Eric showed up at trial, he had finally shaved his signature 10-inch goatee and put on a nice suit.
00:56:23
You know? Put on a nice suit every now and then. It's nice. It's good for you. It's good for your health.
00:56:28
Eric was unrecognizable. He was still evil, of course. All that evil bubbling below the surface,
00:56:35
but at least he had the proper attire. For the most part, Christensen was pretty stoic,
00:56:41
but there were a couple of times, particularly when we were talking about the text string
00:56:49
from Sherry's phone, when Dan Young was testifying about his relationship with Sherry,
00:56:57
where he was obviously angered by what he was hearing. Sherry's friends and family were all there.
00:57:05
She had a lot of mourners. Vigils had been held in her honor, and the whole community mourned for this kind-hearted girl
00:57:14
with a funny laugh and curly hair. Because of that, Craig was very careful when selecting pictures of the crime scene.
00:57:23
There were over 1,000 graphic images of Sherry's body parts, her skull, and the murder scene.
00:57:31
Craig managed to narrow it down to an essential 100 images to spare her family and the jurors.
00:57:39
I felt bad for the jurors. The law enforcement and myself deal with ugly, gnarly stuff all the time,
00:57:46
and and and this was you know bad for us i can't imagine what your your typical normal citizen
00:57:55
was feeling like when when they came in you know to to the courthouse got selected for this jury
00:58:01
and then sat for 16 days watching just just this parade of horrible you know that we spun out for
00:58:09
them and then you know thanks for your service you know we'll see you later you know as they head
00:58:14
out the door. Like I said, there are images from this thing that I'll never get out of my head. I
00:58:19
can only imagine some of the jurors might have similar issues. It was a tense 16 days in that
00:58:28
courtroom, but in the end, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Eric would spend almost 50 years
00:58:36
behind bars, which is probably where he should have been for his entire useless life.
00:58:44
One day we'll have an AI that will tell us if you're predisposed to become an Eric and
00:58:48
we can just throw you in there from birth. Won't that be great? The verdict had been announced when the jail staff were leading him back to the holding cell.
00:58:58
He kind of cackled in a very loud fashion. It was kind of spooky. I'm not sure whether it was
00:59:05
something that he really felt or he was just trying to be macho and kind of play the part But yeah he was laughing as he was walked out of the courtroom Anyway Eric this hateable character that we spent an hour telling you about he was a deadbeat
00:59:23
If you haven't figured that out by now. A deadbeat cloaking himself in Wiccan beliefs to project a false sense of power.
00:59:30
A sense of power that he probably felt he didn't have. Really. Because he's just a powerless dork.
00:59:40
You know? Kind of like most of us. Some people can't handle the reality that we're mostly just powerless dorks.
00:59:48
So they come up with these stupid ideas. Eric's pagan identity and spirituality weren't expressions of faith whatsoever.
00:59:56
They were just ways for him to peacock. To pretend to be something he isn't. As Sherry started to pull away, he used their shared religion,
01:00:07
twisting its teachings to tighten his grip on her. Beneath his facade, there was nothing real to begin with.
01:00:16
Just a sad, pathetic, useless bag of blood and guts that's just continuously performing to build up their own ego
01:00:27
because they know, they know deep down inside how useless they actually are. when Sherry finally found
01:00:34
her independence Eric snapped his ego couldn't handle it he butchered her and then he attempted to get rid of her
01:00:44
in the most vile way possible as for Ryan the one who ratted out Eric well Ryan wasn't so innocent
01:00:52
after all though he traded immunity for his testimony he was later convicted of child molestation in 2019
01:01:00
Are you surprised? In 2024, he petitioned the Snohomish County courts to change his last name to Creed
01:01:09
so that no one will know that Ryan Creed from Washington is a child molester. Ryan Creed, by the way, is spelled R-Y-A-N.
01:01:22
C-R-E-E-D. In case you're doing a search. Sherry Harlan led a simple life. She had her own troubles, but kept to herself and tried her best to make ends meet.
01:01:36
She was a lost woman who got mixed up with a very, very deranged man. Sherry was Eric's final victim, but her death is a stark and very real reminder.
01:01:50
In this world, there is such a thing as monsters, and they look exactly like Eric Christensen.
01:02:20
you can do so at swordandscale.com. Highly recommend it if you're a true Crown fan.
01:02:50
Thank you.