Standoff ends with double murder suspect in custody

The three day search for double-murder suspect Michael Chadd Boysen ended in a small motel room on the Central Oregon Coast after a ten hour standoff with police.

An alert motel clerk clued police into where the 26-year-old suspect was hiding early Tuesday. The clerk recognized Boysen from news reports after he checked into the Westshore Oceanfront Suites in Lincoln City using his real name.

Local police, county sheriff’s deputies and the Oregon State Police surrounded the motel and tried to talk the man suspected of killing his elderly grandparents out of his room. They fired a water cannon to break a window. They fired tear gas into the room, eventually using a robot to get a camera on Boysen.

That’s when Lincoln City Police Chief Keith Killian said officers decided to go in.

“We were done fooling around,” Chief Killian said. “It was time to step things up and try to end this as peacefully as we could.”

The police found Boyson on his back and bleeding from self-inflicted cuts or slash wounds, possibly made by broken glass.

Becky Kari told KATU TV in Portland she watched as the police moved in. “Mostly just the SWAT going back and forth,” she said. “The snipers up on the hill, and the robot going up the stairs.”

Boysen was flown to a Portland hospital where he’s listed in critical condition. King County Sheriff John Urquhart said he’s happy to have this manhunt over.

“That’s the good news for us,” the sheriff said. “We wanted to make sure he was taken into custody alive.”

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office has declined to say how 82-year-old Robert Taylor and his 80-year-old wife Norma were killed in their Renton home over the weekend. We only know that a gun was not used.

The one question Sheriff Urquhart is hoping to have answered now that Boysen is under arrest is why. “That’s the one unknown in this whole case,” he said. “We don’t have a motive. What possible motive could there be for murdering your grandparents? We just don’t get it. I don’t get it.”

Boysen made threats against members of his family and law enforcement while locked up, Washington state Corrections Department spokesman Chad Lewis said Tuesday. But police didn’t learn of the threats until after the bodies of the grandparents were found and authorities had started looking for Boysen.

“Sources went to our staff at the Monroe Correctional Center and told us he had been threatening to do all this,” Lewis said.

King County sent two detectives to Oregon in hopes of talking with Boysen, Urquhart said. Depending on his medical condition, he’ll have to go through extradition, then King County hopes to “get him back here for trial,” the sheriff said Tuesday evening.

The couple was killed after hosting a “welcome home” party for Boysen after he was released from a 16-month prison sentence for an attempted burglary. He had spent five years in prison previously for several pharmacy robberies to feed his prescription drug habit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.