Fourth suspect tied to alleged Apple Tree Inn murder has been charged
May 6-A fourth person has been arrested in connection to a fatal stabbing this winter at the Apple Tree Inn in north Spokane.
Tommy L. Elands, 45, was booked Monday into the Spokane County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of 41-year-old Adam Stallings. Elands made his first appearance Tuesday in Spokane County Superior Court, where Court Commissioner Tami Chavez set Elands' bond at $1 million.
Johnathan J. Woodcock, 28, has been jailed since late February on a $1 million bond for a second-degree murder charge in Stallings' killing.
Woodcock's girlfriend, Elizabeth A. Wahlund, 24, pleaded guilty April 20 to first-degree rendering criminal assistance for helping Woodcock avoid arrest, according to court records. She was given credit for 54 days served in jail and released. She was also ordered to serve two years of probation.
The fourth suspect, 47-year-old Richard Sheppard, was shot and killed by police after a standoff on West Carlisle Avenue near Audubon Elementary School, three days after the stabbing.
Prosecutors allege the four suspects pulled up to the Apple Tree Inn on Feb. 22 to buy drugs from someone in one of the rooms, according to court records. Wahlund and Woodcock waited in the truck.
A friend of Stallings who was staying with him at the motel told police she was in the shower when she heard a commotion outside the bathroom. She looked outside the bathroom door and saw two males, one armed with a shotgun, attacking Stallings, who was bleeding.
Video surveillance from the Apple Tree Inn, 9508 N. Division St., and nearby Rosauers shows Sheppard and Elands getting out of Woodcock's truck and walking toward the motel minutes before the homicide, police wrote in court documents.
Sheppard was carrying a guitar case with what investigators believe was a shotgun inside, and Elands was wearing gloves and concealing a baseball bat in his jacket. Both wore masks. The two suspects were in the motel for eight minutes before surveillance captured them leaving. Sheppard was carrying a shotgun and Elands a red baseball bat when leaving the motel.
They got into the truck, which Woodcock was driving, and drove away, according to court documents.
Police searched Woodcock's truck and found a rubber glove with blood belonging to Stallings on it. The glove matched the gloves Elands wore that day, and Elands' DNA was found inside the glove.
Surveillance footage from the night and early morning before the homicide showed Sheppard, Elands and a woman, who has not been charged with a crime in this case, casing the building Stallings was in at the motel, court records say. The woman with Sheppard and Elands contacted Stallings at his room, walked out the building with him and spoke with him in the Apple Tree Inn parking lot for a few minutes. Stallings then returned to his room and Sheppard, Elands and the third person got into Woodcock's truck.
The father of the woman seen casing the Apple Tree Inn told police last month that his daughter told him she was present at the time of the killing. The father said he was told that two men, Sheppard and Elands, went to the motel to buy drugs while the woman stayed in the truck with a couple giving them a ride. She said the two men returned to the truck, and that Sheppard was "covered in blood," the father reported. The woman said Sheppard stated he stabbed a man "two times in the lungs," the father told police.
Prior to the homicide, friends of Elands and Sheppard told police the two suspects told them they were going to rob someone at the Apple Tree Inn. After the killing, one of the friends told police Elands and Sheppard showed back up to a Spokane home where Sheppard accused Elands of "slipping" and not doing his job. The friend also said Sheppard was upset and talked about not going back to jail and "suicide by cop."
Sheppard was shot and killed by Spokane police three days after Stallings' death. Investigators recovered a loaded 12-gauge shotgun on the ground near Sheppard when he died, according to investigators.
Wahlund and Woodcock were apprehended in King County after a brief car chase two days after Stallings was killed.
Wahlund told detectives that two men riding in Woodcock's truck went into the Apple Tree Inn to get drugs from a man and returned saying, "We accidentally hurt the dude." One of the two men had blood on his knuckles and blood on his face when they got into the back of the truck, Wahlund reported.
Elands is set for an arraignment Thursday and Woodcock is scheduled for trial later this month. Both remained in jail Wednesday.
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