Stepson's trial begins in murder-for-hire plot

When Kimberley Whitehead rushed to her father's home after his slaying, she found an inconsolable stepmother and a somber stepbrother who had retreated to his bedroom, she told a jury Wednesday. She didn't know at the time that she was in the company of those who would be suspected of killing her father — or that what she would find at their home could become key evidence in their prosecution.

Taking the stand Wednesday as the state's first witness in the murder trial of her stepbrother, Jon Ogden, Kimberley Whitehead told the jury about the hours after she learned that Ronald Whitehead, 61, a longtime Boeing employee, was found shot to death in an intersection near his Des Moines home on March 18, 2005.

Ogden, 20, is charged with first-degree murder. His mother, Velma Ogden-Whitehead, 50, was sentenced earlier this month to 22 years in prison for masterminding an elaborate murder-for-hire plot that prosecutors say enlisted her son and his friend Wilson Sayachack to kill her husband.

Sayachack, 19, is charged with first-degree murder and scheduled to go to trial Sept. 22. His first two trials on the murder charges ended in a mistrial.

Whitehead was driving to work when he was shot four times at South 188th Street and Eighth Avenue South near SeaTac, according to police. Two witnesses saw his body pushed from his Ford Mustang, which was found two days later a few miles away.

According to police, Sayachack hid in the trunk of Whitehead's car the morning of the shooting as Whitehead headed to work. Ogden was allegedly in the passenger seat.

As grief-stricken family members congregated at the Whitehead home during the early hours of the investigation, police asked them to search for Ronald Whitehead's registered guns — two rare Makarov pistols, Kimberley Whitehead testified Wednesday.

Her stepmother, Ogden-Whitehead, took her down to her father's study, where Kimberley Whitehead testified she crawled under her dad's desk and found the empty gun box that police later determined went with one of his Makarovs.

Ogden's fingerprints were on the box, said Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Craig Peterson during his opening statement Wednesday. Those prints, along with a handgun recovered earlier this year by King County sheriff's deputies during an unrelated raid, will be key evidence in the coming days as the state presents its case against Ogden.

The gun, which had been missing for three years before it was found in April, has tested positively as the murder weapon, Peterson told jurors.

A cellphone Kimberley Whitehead spotted on the Whiteheads' coffee table hours after her father's slaying is also key evidence against Ogden, Peterson told the jury. The phone, which Ogden first told police he had lost at school, had dozens of text messages from alleged accomplice Sayachack the night before the slaying, Peterson said.

Sayachack has been tried twice for his alleged role in the slaying. The first trial ended in a mistrial when jurors couldn't agree on a verdict. The second trial ended in a mistrial when a key witness came forward, and the weapon used in the slaying was discovered during the trial.

In his brief opening statement, defense attorney Joe Chalverus laid out a bare-bones countertheory. He told the jury that Ogden, who was 16 at the time of Whitehead's slaying, might have known about the murder plot but did not help kill his stepfather.

"He may be guilty of hiding the fact that he knew his mother was killing his stepdad," he said.

"This is not a trial against Velma Ogden-Whitehead. This is not a trial against Wilson Sayachack. You may be inflamed by the way they conducted themselves," but do not let that cloud your judgment of Ogden, he said.

Testimony is expected to continue today.

Arla Shephard: 206-515-5632 or ashephard@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporter Natalie Singer contributed to this report.

Information in this article, originally published July 24, was corrected July 24. A photo caption on a previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Velma Ogden-Whitehead was sentenced to 22 months in prison. She was sentenced to 22 years.