Charles Rodman Campbell Executed For 3 Murders

Charles Rodman Campbell was executed by the State of Washington for three murders

According to court documents Charles Rodman Campbell would be arrested and charged with the sexual assault of Renae Wicklund. Campbell would be sentenced to thirty years in prison however would be released after serving three years

Charles Rodman Campbell would track down Renae Wicklund and would murder her, her eight-year old daughter Shannah, and her neighbor Barbara Hendrickson.

Charles Rodman Campbell would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Charles Rodman Campbell would be executed by hanging on May 27 1994

Charles Rodman Campbell Photos

Charles Rodman Campbell

Charles Rodman Campbell Case

On April 14, 1982, Renae Wicklund, her 8-year-old daughter Shannah Wicklund, and a neighbor friend, Barbara Hendrickson, were found dead in the Wicklund home in Clearview, Washington, by Hendrickson’s husband, Donald. Renae was home sick in bed on April 14, 1982. Normally, she was self-employed as a school financial aid consultant. Barbara had gone over to the Wicklund residence at 4:20 p.m. to take Renae’s temperature, blood pressure, and help Shannah make Jello. Donald went over at 6:30 p.m., concerned he had not heard from his wife for over 2 hours. Evidence produced at trial indicated Renae had been the first victim. She was found nude on her bedroom floor. Shannah, the second victim, had been attacked in the dining room, then dragged into her mother’s bedroom and killed. Barbara, the third victim, had also been attacked in the dining room and killed in the hallway.

*6 All three had been beaten and assaulted prior to death. The right earlobes of Renae and Barbara had been torn, indicating trauma to the perforations where pierced earrings had been in place. The autopsy revealed Renae had received extensive blunt trauma beating on her head, back, and upper chest area. Her jaw and nose were broken and she had been strangled. Her neck had a 7-inch incision across the front, which severed both carotid arteries. She had bled to death from the neck cut. After her death, a blunt object was used to tear a 1-inch cut into the upper end of the vaginal wall. Shannah had also been strangled and had a 7 1/2-inch cut across her upper neck, inflicted by extending her backward and elevating the chin. She had suffered a massive hemorrhage such that a blood sample was difficult to obtain. Barbara had a 7-inch upper neck cut and also had died by a massive hemorrhage.

Campbell had prior contacts with the victims. In 1974, he assaulted and sodomized Renae in the same residence in which she was killed in 1982. Her daughter Shannah was restrained by the defendant who held a knife to her throat and threatened to harm her if Renae did not submit. Afterward, Renae ran to her neighbor’s home (Barbara Hendrickson’s) for help. In 1976, Campbell was convicted of the 1974 first degree assault and crime of sodomy on Renae. Both Renae and Barbara had testified at trial against Campbell. At the time of the murders, defendant was an inmate at Everett Work Release Facility.

A few days after the homicides, Campbell was charged by information with three counts of aggravated first degree murder. He was appointed counsel, and at arraignment the trial judge entered a not guilty plea. In May 1982, the State filed notice for a special sentencing proceeding to determine whether the death penalty should be imposed. Trial was set for June 29, 1982.

https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1984/49244-1-1.html

Charles Rodman Campbell Execution

For 12 years, Charles Rodman Campbell was his most vocal defender as he tried to evade the gallows.

He went to his death today without a word — but not without a struggle.

Charles Rodman Campbell , 39, was hanged at 12:08 a.m. at the Washington State Penitentiary for the 1982 revenge killings of two women and an 8-year-old girl in Snohomish County. He was pronounced dead six minutes later.

He died strapped to a board to hold his body rigid so he would not collapse on his walk to the gallows and while waiting for the trap door to spring, said prison spokesman Veltry Johnson. He said Campbell was weak and was having trouble staying on his feet.

Earlier, prison officials used pepper spray to subdue Campbell in his cell in order to handcuff him and move him to the holding room near the execution chamber. His final meal, a fish dinner, went uneaten.

Outside the prison, those in favor of the execution outnumbered those opposed by about 4-1. At times, the mood among the larger group was almost giddy, with people whooping and cheering before television cameras as the execution neared.

Snohomish County Prosecutor Seth Dawson, while relieved that his long legal fight to see Campbell executed was finally over, took a somber view.

“There clearly is nothing here to celebrate,” he said.

Charles Rodman Campbell was executed for killing Renae Wicklund; her 8-year-old daughter, Shannah, and neighbor Barbara Hendrickson at Wicklund’s home. He slashed the throats of all three, nearly beheading the child.

Campbell was on work-release at the time; he had been in prison for raping Wicklund in 1974. Prosecutors said Campbell was avenging himself against Wicklund and Hendrickson, who testified against him at the rape trial.

After the slayings, Washington enacted laws granting violent-crime victims the right to be notified when their attackers are released and requiring that victims and witnesses be told the outcome of cases.

But for prosecutors and a public weary of crime, the years of delays leading to Campbell’s execution had come to symbolize much that was wrong with the criminal justice system.

“Justice was long in coming, but at last the sentence ordered by the people of Washington for Charles Campbell has been carried out,” said Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

“The death penalty is not something to be taken lightly and should be reserved for only the most heinous crimes. If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Charles Campbell.”

Moments before the execution, prison Superintendent Tana Wood told the 17 witnesses to the execution: “Mr. Campbell has declined to give any last words.”

Witnesses protested they were unable to see Campbell’s face. A curtain between the witnesses and the death chamber allowed only glimpses of silhouettes in the gallows, although Campbell’s hooded body was visible after the trap door opened.

There were no clear signs of struggle, although witnesses said Campbell’s head moved as a hood was being placed over it just prior to his hanging. A guard appeared to tug to get the hood over Campbell’s head.

After he was dropped through the trap door, “he swung slowly clockwise and back a little bit the other way” but did not appear to move a muscle, said witness Patrick Heald of KPBX Radio in Spokane.

“It was so fast and so clinical that some of us were saying, “Is that it?’ ” said witness Thom Spencer of KVEW TV in Kennewick.

Hours before the execution, a defiant Charles Rodman Campbell was subdued with pepper spray by prison guards when he refused to be handcuffed for the move from his normal cell to a holding cell near the execution chamber.

Johnson said contraband was recovered from Campbell’s cell, but declined to be specific.

Earlier in the day, Campbell visited with a longtime girlfriend and his son, Jacob. Prison officials said Campbell instructed them to turn his body over to her after a mandatory autopsy by the Walla Walla coroner.

Charles Rodman Campbell had mounted a barrage of last-minute legal maneuvers this week trying to block the execution. He lost last-ditch appeals Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court. Gov. Mike Lowry, who met with Campbell early in the week, refused to commute the death sentence to life in prison.

Over the years, Campbell had argued that hanging was cruel and unusual punishment, that his punishment did not fit the crime and that even the delay in carrying out the death sentence was cruel.

Charles Rodman Campbell escaped the hangman’s noose five years ago, just 33 hours before his scheduled execution, when he was granted a stay by a federal appeals court.

This time, he refused to choose his method of death, as allowed by law, saying to do so would violate his religious principles. Condemned inmates in Washington can choose hanging or lethal injection, but those who fail to choose are hanged.

The last hanging in the United States was Jan. 5, 1993, when Washington executed Westley Allan Dodd for the murders of three boys.

Dodd’s was the first hanging in this country since Kansas hanged four men in 1965 for the slayings that prompted the book “In Cold Blood.” Besides Washington, only Montana, New Hampshire and Delaware allow hanging as a means of capital punishment.

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