Suspect was held before bodies found

BREMERTON — A man being sought in connection with the slayings of his estranged wife and her 13-year-old son had been arrested aboard a state ferry in Edmonds on Friday, the same day police believe the killings took place.

Kitsap County sheriff's investigators are working under the assumption that Bryan Matsen's arrest at 5:05 p.m. Friday came after Evelyn Matsen, 34, and her son, Wahren Agonoy, were killed in their East Bremerton home.

Bryan Matsen, arrested after ferry workers said they found him intoxicated and uncooperative, was released Saturday. The bodies were discovered at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Sheriff's spokesman Scott Wilson said the coroner has not determined when the killings occurred, but police said the boy was last seen when he arrived home from school about 2:30 p.m. Friday.

"Did police have custody of [Bryan Matsen] following these murders?" Wilson said Monday. "That's a very good question and one that we're trying to sort out."

On Monday, police issued an arrest warrant for Matsen, 35, a Navy veteran who had been married to Evelyn Matsen since June 2004, on two counts of first-degree murder.

Evelyn Matsen and Wahren, her son from an earlier relationship, died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to Kitsap County Medical Examiner Greg Sandstrom.

Fearing for her and her son's safety, Evelyn Matsen had recently obtained a restraining order against her husband that forbade him from contacting her or her son, and banned him from the family's home.

Intoxicated

While police search for Matsen, they're also trying to piece together the events that occurred after he was arrested aboard the ferry Walla Walla shortly after it docked in Edmonds on Friday evening.

According to Wilson and court records, Matsen drove his car onto the 4:30 p.m. ferry from Kingston, Kitsap County, to Edmonds. When the ferry arrived in Edmonds, crewmen found Matsen asleep in the driver's seat of the car with the engine running, said Edmonds police Sgt. Jeff Jones. Ferry crewmen said Matsen was heavily intoxicated and uncooperative when they tried to rouse him.

Ferry employees called Edmonds police, who arrested Matsen at 5:05 p.m., Wilson and Jones said. Police also impounded his car.

Matsen, who had been convicted of drunken driving in December 2004, was arrested on suspicion of being in physical control of a vehicle while intoxicated, driving with a suspended license and driving without the alcohol interlock device he was required to have installed as a result of the drunken-driving conviction.

Matsen apparently made comments to Edmonds officers that led them to believe he was suicidal, Jones said. He then was taken to Stevens Hospital for a mental-health evaluation.

The officers who took Matsen to the hospital assumed he would be admitted on a 72-hour involuntary hold, said Jones, who noted that a person may be held in a hospital for three days if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

At the time, Edmonds police "didn't know anything about the homicide case in Kitsap County," he said.

Released Saturday

Beth Engel, a spokeswoman for Stevens Hospital, said Matsen was released Saturday morning.

Hospital officials are not required to notify police when someone brought in by police is released, Jones said.

"We're checking everywhere we can think of to see if we can locate him," Jones said.

Engel couldn't provide details about Matsen's condition or the circumstances of his release because of federal patient-privacy laws. Someone admitted for mental-health reasons would be evaluated by an emergency-room doctor and social workers, she said.

On Monday, police searched Matsen's impounded 1981 Mercedes and found a shotgun. The weapon will be sent to the state crime lab for ballistic comparisons with the weapon used in the slayings, Wilson said.

Met in Hawaii

Friends and neighbors of the Matsens said they met several years ago in Hawaii. Bryan Matsen, who had lived in the home on the quiet cul-de-sac in East Bremerton for several years before his marriage, had been eager to have a family, a neighbor said.

At his wedding, neighbors and friends said, he introduced his new wife's son as his own.

Matsen bought a dog for Wahren, an eighth-grader at Fairview Middle School. He often took the boy and his pet to parks and ballfields, said one neighbor who did not want to be named.

The dog has been turned over to the Kitsap County Humane Society, Wilson said.

"We thought they were a nice and happy family," said Naty O'Brien, who works at Belmont Terrace nursing home in Bremerton, where Evelyn Matsen was a certified nursing assistant. "She was a really nice lady, and her husband was a really nice man. She never said anything was wrong. We were shocked by this tragedy."

Kitsap County court documents show, however, that Matsen was charged with malicious mischief for a domestic incident Oct. 25, and two days later Evelyn Matsen filed a restraining order against Bryan Matsen that forbade any contact with her or her son and banned him from his former home.

In her petition for the protection order, which was granted Oct. 27, Evelyn Matsen alleged that her husband had picked her up and thrown her across the room one day when he was drinking. She also said that she feared for her son's safety because Matsen had tried to force his way into the boy's room and that Matsen had threatened to injure or kill himself.

Seattle Times staff reporter Sara Jean Green and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.