EDITOR’S NOTE: This report has been corrected to reflect that Debbie Willis is a spokeswoman for the Monroe Police Department.
MONROE — Robert Gene Covarrubias, the Port Angeles strangler who confessed to raping and murdering 15-year-old Melissa Leigh Carter in 2004, has died of asphyxia by hanging himself at the Monroe Correctional Complex.
Covarrubias, 35, died Sept. 2, Heather Oie, a spokeswoman with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office, said Friday.
“The manner is suicide; the cause is asphyxiation,” she said of the Sept. 3 autopsy.
A Lancaster, Calif., native, Covarrubias was serving 34½ years to life in prison for murdering Carter.
The sentence was handed down by then-Clallam County Superior Court Judge George L. Wood on Aug. 5, 2009.
Debbie Willis, a spokeswoman for the Monroe Police Department, said Friday that Covarrubias, who used a sheet as a rope and tied it to the back of his shower to kill himself, was discovered unresponsive in his one-person cell during a regular 30-minute check of inmates.
“It was pretty straightforward,” Willis said.
“There’s nothing more than a single-cell suicide.”
Covarrubias “had some mental issues,” Willis added.
He had turned 35 four days earlier, on Aug. 29, Jeremy Barclay, state Department of Corrections spokesman, said Friday.
During his incarceration for Carter’s murder, Covarrubias had been housed at correctional facilities in Clallam Bay, Shelton and Walla Walla.
At Monroe, he was in the special-offender unit, entering as a maximum-custody inmate and graduating to minimum custody at the time of his death.
“There was progress that he was making,” Barclay said.
Carter’s nude body was found Dec. 26, 2004, in a hollow just off a well-traveled stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail in Port Angeles, about 600 feet east of City Pier, according to court records.
Boxer shorts that Covarrubias later identified as his were found nearby.
Known as Messa Mae to her friends, Carter was a former honor roll student at Stevens Middle School in Port Angeles, was active in a Sequim Bible youth group and attended Choice Community High School.
According to testimony, she was at a Christmas Eve methamphetamine party in the then-Chinook Motel east of downtown Port Angeles.
Witnesses said Covarrubias followed the teenager from the party after she quarreled with her boyfriend.
Covarrubias, who pleaded not guilty and said the sex was consensual, was found guilty in 2006 of first-degree murder.
He wrote “Innocent” in capital letters with a jail laundry marker on the back of a striped inmate jumpsuit in April 2006 when he was sentenced to up to 34½ years for first-degree murder.
The state Court of Appeals remanded the case back to the Superior Court for a new trial in 2009, saying that although the trial showed sufficient evidence for conviction, errors by Wood in admitting evidence presented by Prosecutor Deb Kelly had tainted the trial.
But as he awaited his retrial, Covarrubias — who had impassively denied killing Carter during his testimony trial — made a stark about-face, and there never was a second trial.
He taped a lengthy confession — when transcribed, it ran 93 pages — to Port Angeles police.
He also insisted that rape be added to the murder charge and that he be sentenced to life in prison.
“I don’t care no more,” he told Detective Sgt. Steve Coyle and Sgt. Eric Kovatch, who headed the investigation of Carter’s murder.
“I don’t ever want to get out, just want to do my life in there [in prison].”
Coyle and Kovatch have since retired.
Defense attorney Ralph Anderson of Port Angeles, who defended Covarrubias through his first trial and most of his second trial, said Friday that Covarrubias had been in and out of the corrections system since his early teens.
“He was a person I don’t think could ever have adapted to the life you and I live,” Anderson said.
“I think he has probably found the peace that he never found in life.”
Anderson said he staunchly believed in Covarrubias’ innocence until the confession.
In Anderson’s closing arguments at the trial, he said, “I would walk through hell with this man.”
At his first trial, Covarrubias testified in his own defense, repeatedly answering “Certainly not” when asked if he had raped or killed Carter.
Coverage of the trial apparently introduced Peninsula Daily News readers to the subculture of meth use.
One witness testified that the city was “a meth town.”
Members of Carter’s and Covarrubias’ family could not be reached for comment Friday.
Covarrubias’ family “had basically disowned him,” Anderson said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter Jim Casey contributed to this report.
