Friday, March 05 2010
Yakima Herald-Republic staff, wire reports
Yakima Herald-Republic
The state will pay $3.25 million to settle a lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections by the families of two women, including one from Yakima, who were attacked by convicted killer Michael Braae.
The state filed the settlement agreement last Friday in Thurston County Superior Court.
The settlement resolves two of four lawsuits that were filed in 2008 by the Tamaki Law firm in Yakima on behalf of the family members of four women who were killed, thought to be killed or were otherwise victimized by the drifter and aspiring country singer known as "Cowboy Mike."
Most of the settlement, $3 million, goes to the family of Lori Jones, 44, who was raped and murdered in her apartment in the Olympia suburb of Lacey in 2001. Braae, 50, is now serving 48 years in prison for the slaying.
The rest of the settlement, $250,000, goes to a Yakima woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Braae days after Jones was slain.
Braae has been linked to the death or disappearance of at least four women in the Pacific Northwest, including Jones. He also was caught in at least five escape attempts from jail, including one in which he picked a lock in the Yakima County jail with a toothbrush.
Days after Jones' murder, but before her body was discovered, Braae showed up in Yakima. After he left the area, his traveling companion, Marchelle Morgan, was found near death on a road south of Union Gap with a gunshot wound to the head.
Spotted later near the Oregon/Idaho border, Braae led police on a wild chase capped by a spectacular 40-foot leap from an interstate bridge into the Snake River. Authorities fished him out two miles downstream.
The lawsuits alleged that Braae wouldn't have been able to victimize the women had the Department of Corrections correctly placed him on community supervision as ordered by a judge in 2000.
Instead of placing him on community supervision, the state agency made Braae pay fines and did not require home visits by probation officers.
Lawsuits brought by Morgan and the estate of another presumed homicide victim, Susan Ault, remain unresolved.
Braae remains a "person of interest" in Susan Ault's homicide, as well in another case involving Deb VanLuven, a former Lacey resident who lived with Braae in Oregon and Montana and went missing in 1997.
Ault, 39, disappeared from a friend's trailer in Wahkiakum County on May 21, 2001. The friend saw Braae and Ault arguing shortly before her disappearance.
Ault's purse, with identification, was found at a rest stop, but she has never been found. In July 2008, the Wahkiakum County coroner issued a death certificate for Ault, stating she was a homicide victim.
Braae was tried in the Morgan case, but it ended in a mistrial in 2006 after a jury deadlocked 11-1 for conviction. The prosecution's case was hampered when a judge ruled that Morgan was unfit to testify because of brain injuries.