EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series which began Sunday and can be found at the bottom of the peninsuladailynews.com home page on Monday.
In the eight months before Shawn M. Roe left Everett for the isolation of the North Olympic Peninsula’s wilderness, his mother could see depression overtake him.
“Roe’s mother stressed that she assumed that Roe would go into the woods to commit suicide some day, and she had no idea that he was going to do what he did,” said a 31-page FBI report on the shooting death of Forest Service Officer Kristine Fairbanks.
Roe, 36, was shot to death by Clallam County sheriff’s deputies that night at the Longhouse Market & Deli in Blyn.
Fairbanks, a 21-year veteran of the Forest Service, was killed with one shot to the head on Sept. 20, 2008, when she investigated a van without license plates at Olympic National Forest’s Dungeness Forks Campground off Palo Alto Road southeast of Sequim.
She was describing Roe as the owner of the van just before she died.
Fairbanks was 51, a wife and mother living in Forks.
Authorities found that in addition to killing Fairbanks and adding her gun to his small arsenal, Roe also killed that day a Sequim retiree, 59-year-old Robert Ziegler, and stolen his truck.
The FBI report was released by the Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to the Peninsula Daily News on Sept. 14 in response to a Public Records Act request filed Aug. 12.
The report is dated April 19 and is stamped as having been received by the county prosecuting attorney on July 9.
Report details
Details from the report about Roe’s actions and state of mind are as follows:
Roe lived with both his mother, Joanne Roe, and his unidentified brother after his divorce from his wife, Mary C. White of Shelton, in 2006. The two had a young daughter, with whom Roe had lost contact in about 2007.
The divorce, after about 10 years of marriage, came after he was convicted of abusing White. He was on parole for an unlawful imprisonment and malicious mischief conviction when he fled for the Olympic National Forest.
He also had been unemployed since November 2007, when he was fired from a job as a cement truck driver.
Clinically depressed
His ex-wife told the FBI that Roe had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and had been prescribed antidepressants that he didn’t take.
His former mother-in-law, Patti White of Shelton — saying she was not aware of his mental health problems — described him as “a very angry, egotistical sociopath who she considered to be a racist or a bigot.”
Heavy drinker
Roe was described to the FBI as a heavy drinker who began abusing prescription medications about 2005 after a back injury in a logging accident.
“He was known to drink about a gallon of Crown Royal every three days,” the report said.
Roe thought he had stomach cancer, his mother said. He had told her he was diagnosed with stomach cancer about a month before the killings.
An autopsy found no sign of cancer, the FBI report said, and there was no evidence to corroborate the report of a diagnosis.
After years of suicidal comments — and even threatening to escape into the woods, likely in Snohomish County — to kill himself in March 2007, Roe left one day in August 2008 unannounced.
His destination: the Dungeness Forks Campground.
Roe’s campsite, located about 100 yards west of Palo Alto Road shortly before the county road ends, can still be seen, according to Justin Rivet of Port Angeles, who saw Fairbanks minutes before her death.
Rivet said the FBI had shown him the site.
Makeshift grill
A makeshift grill still stands, and packages of Ramen noodles and packs of Pepsi — which Roe liked to mix with Crown Royal Whiskey — can be found barely hidden by grass and other vegetation.
From his home in Everett, Roe took $3,500 in cash, a .22 caliber revolver, camping gear and his brother’s chocolate Labrador retriever, Jake.
Three days before he left on Aug. 22, 2008, his violent end might have been foreshadowed in comments he made to his mother:
“Maybe I should be bad, I have been trying to be good my whole life and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere,” the report said he told his mother.
About a month later, Roe would kill Fairbanks and Ziegler before dying in the Bonnie-and-Clyde style that he fantasized about in his 89-page diary, found in the van.
On Aug. 25, 2008, he purchased a red 1978 Chevrolet van from Tyson Motors in Sequim in exchange for his 1978 F-350 truck and $1,000.
Stole weapon
Two days later, he visited a friend, Jack E. Simmons in Shelton, and stole Simmons’ 9mm Glock. The next day, he returned to Sequim and purchase 9mm ammunition from Swain’s Outdoor Store, the FBI said.
He was observed by hikers over the next few weeks walking in the woods with his 30-30 rifle under his arm in search of game.
His van also was seen occasionally by Forest Service employees.
Fairbanks had taken notice herself and logged the van’s license plate number on Sept. 5.
Roe avoided being seen by authorities until Fairbanks approached him a few minutes before he shot her in the head with a .22 caliber revolver.
While he was able to live in isolation with Jake, as he had wished, for about a month, he could not keep his angry, dark thoughts away.
In one diary entry, Roe wrote of his disdain for the society he was trying to escape.
“Stupid! No sense, just keeping people lousy.
“I felt like a brainless ant in a big colony. No [wonder] I preferred to be wild and free.”
Hunted small game
Throughout his time in the woods, he would hunt small game, mostly squirrels, and supplement the wild diet with Meals Ready to Eat, tuna and ramen noodles.
At times, though, Roe would reflect on the natural beauty around him and write apologetically to his family and friends.
“I love you! All my good friends and family. You’re all good people and did so much to help, but I just don’t seem to have anything left.
All the problems, expenses and low work. I felt like a bum (now I am one).”
The idea of going back to jail for violating his parole, which he did several times, fueled his suicidal thoughts, the report said.
Through interviews with his family, the FBI said in its report that those close to him knew he was suicidal, but they didn’t think he had it in him to end his own life:
“Roe’s mother added that she believed that Roe was too ‘chicken’ to kill himself and, therefore, he took the actions that he did to cause the police to shoot him because he wanted to die,” the report said.
Or become homicidal:
“Although Roe was known to say to friends that he planned to go out with a bang, no one believed he would end up killing anyone.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.