State pays $3 million to families of three murder victims

The state of Washington will pay a settlement of $3 million for its failure to supervise an ex-con who killed three people in Lewis County in 2010.

The state Department of Corrections launched an internal investigation and eventually fired the corrections officer who was supposed to supervise John Booth and another man convicted in the murders.

“Our investigation uncovered memos from this correction officer’s file from about a year prior to the killings saying that he wasn’t doing his job and that it was only a matter of time before someone got killed,” said Nathan Roberts, attorney for the families of the murder victims.

The two ex-cons, Booth and Ryan McCarthy were convicted for the murders of 16-year-old Salkum resident D.J. West and his father David West, along with Tony Williams, 50, of Mineral.

Roberts says the ex-cons were considered violent, higher risk and likely to re-offend. He says this settlement is about the failure of one corrections officer, not the entire Department of Corrections.

“I don’t know that this was a systemic failure so much as a corrections officer who wasn’t doing his job and then his supervisors allowing him to continue to supervise violent felons, knowing that he wasn’t really doing the work,” said Roberts.

In a statement, the state called the crimes heinous adding, “We hope these settlements help his victims’ families with their loss.”