SEATTLE -- June 28, 2007

I am a 30 year Seattle Realtor with The Landmark Group and I sold this house (as agent) to the owner in the early 1990's as a rental and have managed it for her since then.

I met Michael when he moved into the house with his then partner, Steve Ligino. This was in July of 1992. Back then Mike worked for KIXI. I had been a gay activist in Seattle in the mid 70's and I am pretty left wing so we had a certain comfort talking with each other though we didn't talk much hardcore politics. My main relationship had mostly had to do with his tenancy although, after he lost his partner to Aids (several years after they had moved into the house), he would sometimes talk about wanting to meet a new partner. We had a few heart to heart discussions about that in the past three years especially more recently, after his longtime dog died. He asked what I was doing (newly single myself after a 20 year relationship) to meet potential long term partners and what advice I had for him in finding someone. He often seemed lonely in the last couple of years but otherwise energized.

Over the years, his housekeeping became worse and worse so I had given him several written notices about the condition of the interior. This also had discouraged the owner from doing much work on the house as Mike didn't want the rent to go up and was frantic at any suggestion that he might have to move.

In mid-May while I was out of town I got a call from the police department that they had broken into the back kitchen door window to gain access to the house because his sister reported him missing. I told them I couldn't fix the window as I was in California and they said the fire department would secure it, which they apparently did with an old ¾” plywood road sign screwed on four corners to the top half of the door. It was upon returning to Seattle that I found out he had been reported missing and that there had been a lot of speculation about it. His sister I believe was paying his rent for many months - it always came through my mail slot at odd times of the day in the form of a cashiers check, but always on time, which wasn’t necessarily true if Mike was paying it.

On June 12th, not having received any rent I went to the house to post a 3-day notice to vacate. Upon arriving I found the front door unlocked (but closed) and entered the house. Although dirty and disheveled I did not notice anything to unusual. It was my first trip over there since the police 'break-in' in May so I went around back to see if the kitchen door was secured. I noticed the sign screwed tightly into place and the deadbolt was locked. I locked the front door, posted the notice and left.

Upon going back today to begin clearing out the residence which I determined to be 'abandoned' (the mail is delivered through a slot and drops into a basket in the basement … it hadn't been touched in 2 or 3 weeks, layers of mail in a timeline). I hired a worker from the Millionaires Club and informed him of the tenant being missing but that I had been through the house and there was no body, although there was an odor in the half basement and lots of flies. I didn’t think much of the odor because Mike had let his dog defecate and urinate in the basement in her final months and we had given him a firm warning about the permanent odor problem it had caused. Also, the odor wasn’t that strong and was only in a corner of the basement. I left the worker to do his job and told him to pack and carry the basement contents out onto the rear patio for future removal to the dump. I left to conduct other business and returned 3 hours later to the house.

When I returned he was nearly done and the owner of the house stopped by briefly to get the key for the new locks I had installed. She came into the 1/2 basement. The worker had nearly emptied the basement and was removing 2 shelving units with books. At the end of the shelves was a 4X4 piece of plywood covering the opening to the 3 foot high 'crawl space' under the other half of the house. The plywood was unsecured but one end was wedged between the bookshelf and the wall and upon removing it we all noted piles of boxes along the wall just inside the space. When the owner bought the house 15 years ago, we required the crawl space be covered with black vapor barrier plastic. This was missing and it was all dirt floor. I think this is a little odd because even though I can't say how long it has been gone, it is no easy or desirable thing to remove a plastic vapor barrier from an entire crawl space and given Michaels lack of cleanliness as a tenant I cannot fathom him having it removed. Maybe nothing at all but certainly odd.

While I was upstairs saying goodbye to the owner, the Millionaires Club worker removed the boxes from the crawl space (I didn't expect him to go in there and do that but he was a hard worker and did it on his own). When I came back downstairs he had the boxes all out and underneath where they were was a blue tarp, neatly squared to the wall and what to me looking into the space was the absolutely clear outline of a body under the tarp...I told him to leave the house with me and once outside I immediately phoned the police.

I earlier mentioned the wood sign screwed to secure the back door because today, in changing the locks and before the body was found, I noticed that it had obviously been used for access to the house since my visit on June 12th when I noted it was totally secured. Today, the bottom two screws and upper left screw were only partially screwed back in. The upper right corner was crunched and the screw in the upper right corner was severely bent so obviously someone had removed the 3 screws and bent the board up to go into the house and then upon leaving had only partially put it back.

When I entered the house back on June 12th I noticed that all 3 computer stations Mike had were still intact - screen, mouse, printer, keyboards...but the 3 computers themselves were gone. The house didn't look like it had been ransacked, folded clothes were still in drawers in the bedrooms, the dresser drawers were nearly all closed, kitchen cabinets closed, etc.

There were 2 other unusual items in the crawl space where the body was that seemed very strange to me but I do not want to talk about them at this point. I'll let the police do their thing and see what direction this goes from here. I am pretty certain that the body will be determined to be Mike's. And although only one officer talked about ‘suicide’ I find suicide to be a pretty hard sell unless it was an ‘assisted suicide’ and he had a person 'helping him' who didn't really like him. One does not cover oneself in a neatly squared out tarp and pile boxes on oneself, all after covering over the opening to the crawl space with a loose piece of plywood.

David Neth