As posted by Tilman Hausherr


DAUGHTER, GRANDDAUGHTER GUILTY OF WOMAN'S MURDER
The Seattle Times
August  23, 1991, Friday, Final Edition

BY JULIE EMERY

   They loved 79-year-old Suzine Van Sickle and brought her back
home to live out her days, they said.

   But Van Sickle's caretakers - her daughter and granddaughter
- yesterday were convicted of poisoning, then smothering her.

   A King County jury found Jimmie Jean Shumway, 59, the
daughter, and Alexis Shumway, 29, guilty of premeditated
first-degree murder in the bizarre killing last November that
they kept secret for three months.

   The two showed no emotion as the verdict was read yesterday.

   Deputy Prosecutor Lisa Marchese said that after the two
depleted the $ 100,000 estate of the widowed Van Sickle, she no
longer was useful to them.

   "They got rid of the burden," the prosecutor said
in closing arguments. "They murdered her."

   The daughter and granddaughter gave separate statements to
police telling how they had chopped up 50 capsules of Dilantin,
an anti-seizure medicine, then mixed it in clam chowder and fed
it to Van Sickle Nov. 17 in the family home in Rainier Valley.

   But when she was still alive the next day, they put a pillow
over her face and suffocated her. After a 20-minute struggle,
Van Sickle died.

   A medical examiner concluded she died of congestive heart
failure, and her body was donated to the University of
Washington.

   "This was the perfect murder - with the one exception -
a guilty conscience," John "Jay" Mooney, a
Seattle homicide detective, said after the verdict.

   Alexis Shumway, who was chief caretaker for her grandmother,
lived with the secret until Feb. 12, when she called police.

   Marchese and Deputy Prosecutor Kerry Keefe brought evidence
showing that the daughter, after getting power of attorney for
her mother in late 1987, wrote 30 checks to herself totaling $
45,000.

   More than $ 13,000 was donated to the Church of  Scientology,
the prosecutors said. Payments to the nursing home where Van
Sickle previously lived were overdue.

   Police found a paper in Jimmie Jean Shumway's Federal Way
home where she had written the fatal dosage for Dilantin - two
to five grams - after consulting the Physician's Desk Reference.

   The daughter said in her statement, "I did it. It was a
mercy killing." She said Van Sickle several times had
talked about taking her own life.

   The granddaughter's statement said she held the pillow
"for a while, then I just held my grandmother's hand."

   When Van Sickle was killed, the fees to the nursing home
where she earlier resided were $ 33,000 in arrears and the
establishment was attempting to put a lien on her home on South
Brandon Street.

   Juror Carla Anderson said after the verdict:

  "I think we all were concerned about Alexis. We felt that
her mother obviously dominated and that she was passive."

   But the jury had no choice but to follow the law, she said.

   Superior Court Judge Frank Sullivan will sentence the two in
about six weeks. The standard sentencing range is 20 to 26 years
in prison.

   Neither has a criminal record.