Last year’s attacks that ended the lives of seven Clark County residents and two others didn’t make their ugly appearances in robberies, rape attempts or gang clashes.
For reasons including money problems, deteriorating relationships, depression, a disabling injury and a terminal illness, they were sad killings involving four couples, and each ended in suicide.
In additional to last year’s homicides, there were also a number of attempted ones, by would-be killers who committed stabbings, shootings and more, and whose victims happened to survive.
One tragedy, the fatal shootings of Vancouver residents Monty and Susan Multanen in Gig Harbor, was highly publicized in the Puget Sound and Tacoma areas because the killer was the couple’s son-in-law and also a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy, officials said.
The gunman, who shot himself to death afterward, had been a church member and, at times, a missionary with his wife, Sara Myron.
Deputy Allen Myron was a respected citizen of Gig Harbor — as were the Multanens in Vancouver and elsewhere.
Monty Multanen, 70, and Susan Multanen, 68 — he an accomplished former educator, she a family-oriented retired nurse — were highly regarded by those who knew them in Vancouver, for such things as raising several foster children along with their son, Eric, and daughter, Sara. And also for little things such as bringing flowers to a neighbor when they left town, and leaving emergency contact numbers.
When snow fell on his long driveway, their neighbor Kenneth Creek said later, “I’d go out and start working on the snow and here comes Monty with his snow shovel.”
“You couldn’t imagine a nicer, calmer, almost pastoral person being involved in such a violent situation,” said Jim McLaughlin, president of Lower Columbia College in Longview, where Monty Multanen worked from 1996 to 2002.
In May, the Multanens headed for Gig Harbor to visit their daughter and her husband.
The Myrons, who both worked and lived in a half-million dollar home in the scenic area, had been having emotional problems in their marriage, as news reports said later.
The Multanens had been helping their daughter and husband with money woes.
Myron, 49, a well-regarded police officer, had suffered a serious on-the-job back injury, disabling and painful, and was working full patrol after 18 months of light medical leave.
“From what I knew of Allen, he was a stand-up citizen,” Debra Lane, a friend of Sara Myron, told the Seattle Times.
She said Allen Myron was depressed about his own health problems, and also the killing of four Lakewood Police Department officers and Pierce County Deputy Kent Mundell Jr.
Still, “there was no indication that anything like this would happen,” Lane added. “I think it was a case of depression that got out of hand.”
Officials said Monty Multanen and Allen Myron argued on the evening of May 14. Allen Myron shot his stepfather twice, killing him, and shot his stepmother once, in the chest.
She crawled through some woods to a neighbor’s home and calmly told a 911 dispatcher what had happened, and later died in a hospital.
After barricading himself in his home for hours, Allen Myron shot and killed himself, according to the Associated Press.
During negotiations with police in the standoff, the deputy’s main focus had been that his marriage was falling apart, and he felt his in-laws had influenced his wife against him, said the Seattle Times.
But many who knew Allen Myron said later that those problems didn’t seem enough to explain what happened.
“He stepped over the line and he became a criminal,” said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor, according to Fox News Seattle online. “He worked with us and then he stepped over a line and worked against us.”
“The rest of us will carry his actions by the fact we all wear the badge,” said Lt. Cyndie Fajardo, president of the Pierce County Deputy Sheriff’s Independent Guild. “How do you explain that to the community? We’re expected to be the ultimate protectors of the law, and he turns himself into a murderer.”
Other 2010 homicides
• La Center residents Leron and Evelyn Carroll had been married more than 50 years when their lives ended on Dec. 15 near Port Townsend.
Evelyn Carroll, 70, had called 911 that night to say she’d killed her husband and planned to shoot herself, Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez said later, according to the Peninsula Daily News.
Eight minutes later, deputies knocked, then kicked in the door of a time-share condo the couple had been staying in. They found Leron Carroll, 74, lying on a bed with a gunshot wound. Evelyn Carroll had shot herself too and was on the floor, and a .38-caliber revolver was found in the room.
Both were alive and speaking, Hernandez said, but they died while being rushed to hospitals. Their deaths were considered a murder-suicide, officials said.
Leron Carroll had been diagnosed as terminally ill before he was shot, according to a sheriff’s bulletin.
• On Oct. 18, Brent M. Niedermark, 47, and his girlfriend, 50-year-old Bonnie L. Eakins, were found dead in Niedermark’s rented duplex in Hazel Dell.
He shot her in the head and shot himself in the head, in a murder-suicide, officials said.
Neighbors and court records said the couple had a history of domestic violence, and she had an active no-contact order to protect herself from him.
• The bodies of Francis “Frank” Masure, 60, of Vancouver and his girlfriend, Stefanie Curtis, 42, were found in her North Portland apartment on Sept. 10.
Portland police said she’d recently reported domestic violence involving him, and she appeared to be ending the relationship.
Police said he shot and killed her, then himself.
About 10 attempted homicides involving Clark County residents were reported in 2010, including shootings, stabbings, at least one hatchet attack — and a man who allegedly doused his ex-girlfriend with gasoline, set her home on fire and was severely burned himself. He has entered a not-guilty plea.
