LONGVIEW — When his girlfriend asked that Brent Luyster, the man accused of murdering three people Friday in Woodland, be released from the Cowlitz County Jail on bail in early June, she described him as a “very responsible and reliable man.”
“I am confident that if bailed out he will make it to every court date and follow all conditions of his release,” she wrote in her letter to the court. Luyster was arrested May 16, accused of pistol-whipping his ex-girlfriend at a residence on Solo View Drive in Longview.
The girlfriend’s plea may have worked. He was released.
Luyster, 35, of Woodland, was in jail three weeks before bailing out.
At his first appearance the day he was arrested in May, lawyer Michael Schueler requested Luyster be released on his own recognizance. Superior Court Judge Marilyn Haan denied the request and set Luyster’s bail at $150,000 secured, meaning the bond would have to be backed by collateral.
His May 16 bail study rated him as “high violent,” a rating produced by a computer system that uses a defendant’s criminal history to do a risk assessment. On the bail study, 22 different charges are listed including assaults, riot with a deadly weapon, burglary and several firearm thefts.
On May 24, Luyster appeared in custody in front of Judge Stephen Warning. His lawyer, Thad Scudder, requested his bail be lowered but Warning denied the request.
On June 7, Superior Court Judge Michael Evans set bail at $90,000 secured, and Luyster got a bail bond the same day, according to court records.
A month later, on July 7, Luyster appeared out of custody in front of Evans to discuss potential violations of his no-contact order with his ex-girlfriend, who’d accused him of sending his brother and mother to find their 5-year-old son.
Deputy Prosecutor Sean Brittain requested that bail be increased and Luyster be taken back into custody. The request was denied.
Eight days after his last court appearance, prosecutors say, Luyster killed three people and attempted to kill a fourth at a rural Woodland home. He is currently being held in the Clark County Jail without bail after he was arrested Saturday afternoon on suspicion of first-degree murder, first-degree assault and a weapons charge.
Because the case is pending (Luyster’s Cowlitz County trial was set for October), Evans declined during a phone interview Tuesday to go into detail about why he lowered Luyster’s bail to $90,000, but he said that usually any bail set around $100,000 is considered very high.
Evans couldn’t recall whether he reviewed the bail study when he lowered Luyster’s bail. He noted that there’s no state or national standard for setting bail.
“What was in front of me, I thought it was a high and substantial bail. As a general rule, we have pretty good crystal balls, but it’s really difficult to predict human behavior,” he said. “What’s happened is a terrible tragedy, no one will argue with that. It’s a difficult process, and all the information is not always clear. You get information later.”
He did not say what information he was referring to.
