VANCOUVER, Wash. – A man who police say confessed to the brutal murder of his own grandmother in Washougal appeared in court Tuesday morning, KPTV reported.
A Clark County judge set bail for the 27-year-old man at $1 million. According to a probable cause affidavit, he brutally killed his grandmother, 78 first choking her in bed as she was sleeping then, when he wasn’t sure if she was dead, coming back with a kitchen knife and cutting her throat.
Police said he even described part of the attack by making a cutting motion on his own throat as part of a confession he gave them Monday.
Q13 isn’t naming the man because he hasn’t been formally charged.
The man wore a suicide smock in court Tuesday, and his court-appointed attorney said his client was remorseful over the death of his grandmother.
“Well, he’s remorseful, he’s sad,” attorney Jeff Sowder said. “If you take the probable cause statement at face value, he turned himself in.”
According to court documents, the man killed his grandmother Monday morning before apparently walking to the Washougal Police Department to make his confession.
When police officers went to the house where he lived with his parents and his grandmother, they found the body.
According to a probable cause affidavit, the suspect told officers he was mad at his grandmother over requests for him to turn off the lights in her home and her complaints that he used too much water when he showered.
Prosecutors called the killing premeditated, while the man’s attorney said he may ask for his client’s confession to be suppressed. He also asked a judge to order that the grandmother’s body not be buried or cremated until he could have his own pathologist look at the body.
The judge agreed with that request, until at least 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, when both sides will be back in court to argue that motion.