The two people accused of the Dec. 24, 2007, murders of four adults and two children in Carnation will face the death penalty when they come to trial in 2013.

Joseph McEnroe, 34, the former boyfriend of Michele Anderson, will be tried first, on Monday, Feb. 25. Anderson, 34 and daughter of two of the victims, will be tried in June, according to the King County Prosecutor's office.

Anderson and McEnroe are each charged with six counts of aggravated murder, for the deaths of Anderson's parents, Wayne and Judy Anderson of Carnation, her brother and sister-in-law, Scott and Erica, and their 5 year-old daughter and 3 year-old son. They have been held without bail in the King County Jail since their arrests for the murders, on Dec. 27, 2007.

While in jail, Anderson has undergone two mental evaluations, in 2008 and 2011, to determine her competence to stand trial.

Her defense, led by several state-appointed attorneys, has been turbulent; two public defenders withdrew from her defense in 2008, and in 2009 she requested her new attorneys be dismissed, according to court records.

The defense has unsuccessfully petitioned the court to rule the death penalty unconstitutional, but was successful in arranging for McEnroe to be tried first.

The Carnation murders, with six victims dead, are one of the worst mass-killings in Washington in the past 30 years. Only two incidents took more lives: Kyle Huff's March 25, 2006, shooting up a house party on Capitol Hill before killing himself, leaving seven people dead; and the Feb. 18, 1983, robbery of the Wah Mee gambling parlor in Seattle's Chinatown, which left 13 dead.

 

Contact Snoqualmie Valley Record Staff Reporter Carol Ladwig at cladwig@valleyrecord.com.

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