Testimony starts in retrial of murder case

Testimony began Tuesday in the second trial of a 19-year-old Des Moines man accused of killing another man in an alleged murder-for-hire plot prosecutors say was hatched by the victim's wife.

Wilson Sayachack was 16, prosecutors said, when he fatally shot Ronald Whitehead, 61, on March 18, 2005, in a slaying police said was made to look like a carjacking. He is being tried as an adult.

Sayachack's first trial ended in a mistrial on Feb. 7 after a jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of acquittal.

During Sayachack's first trial, jurors were not allowed to hear about a statement Sayachack made to police in which he said he had accepted $1,000 to shoot Whitehead. The confession was suppressed when the trial judge found that detectives had violated the teen's right to remain silent by interrogating him after he told them he did not wish to speak.

The second jury picked to hear the first-degree-murder case was not told about the mistrial during Tuesday morning's opening remarks by prosecution and defense attorneys.

King County Deputy Prosecutor Craig Peterson told jurors that Sayachack shot Whitehead four times and left him in a South King County roadway. Peterson didn't provide a motive for the slaying, but he said bullets found in the murder weapon appeared to match bullets found at Sayachack's home.

Defense attorney Veronica Freitas, in her opening statement, blamed the slaying on Whitehead's wife and stepson, a classmate of Sayachack's at Mount Rainier High School. Velma Ogden-Whitehead and her son, Jon Ogden, are both charged in Whitehead's slaying and are scheduled for trial later this year.

"You will not hear one shred of evidence that will put the murder weapon at Wilson Sayachack's hand on March 18, 2005," Freitas said. "Wilson Sayachack is truly a victim of circumstance."

Whitehead was driving to work when he was shot four times at South 188th Street and Eighth Avenue South near SeaTac, according to police. His body was pushed from the car.

His Ford Mustang was found two days later a few miles away.

According to charging papers, Sayachack hid in the trunk of Whitehead's car the morning of the shooting as Whitehead headed to work. Ogden, who was Whitehead's stepson, was in the passenger seat.

Sayachack allegedly climbed through the folding back seat and shot Whitehead in the back of the head, charging papers say. Police say that Ogden-Whitehead paid Sayachack $1,000 for the killing.

Investigators say Ogden-Whitehead and her husband had a rocky marriage and that she had an affair with a fellow employee at the auto-parts store where she worked.

Detectives eventually linked Ogden-Whitehead, her son and Sayachack to the crime based on phone records detailing more than a dozen cellphone calls and text messages in the days leading up to the slaying, according to the court documents.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.