Kirsten Alice O’Hara, a 31-year-old Hoquiam woman, has pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of her neighbor, 95-year-old Robert Harmon, July 9 of last year.
According to Grays Harbor County Prosecutor Katie Svoboda, O’Hara entered her guilty plea before Superior Court Judge David Edwards the day after Christmas.
“She is looking at the standard range of 240 to 320 months, and an additional 24 months because she was armed with a deadly weapon,” said Svoboda. “So the range is 264-344 months, and she has agreed to the top end of the range.” Considering she serves it all, she will spend more than 28½ years behind bars and will be about 60 years old when released.
Police were called July 9 for a welfare check on Harmon and found a bloody scene. They found Harmon dead of stab wounds to the head and neck and blunt force injuries to his head. Investigators found evidence of forced entry into the home and initially suspected a burglary gone bad.
“The victim was a robust 95-year-old who still cleaned his own gutters and was active every day,” said Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers. “He survived World War II as a Merchant Marine in service of our country. That tragedy doesn’t end with the victim however, as the suspect’s family was also devastated by the act. A young child will now have to grow up without her mother.”
In O’Hara’s initial court appearance July 11, she said little as Svoboda explained O’Hara’s young child may have witnessed a portion of the crime. At that hearing, O’Hara’s mother and grandmother wept in the courtroom.
“This was one of the worst murder investigations I have seen in my time as the chief of police in Hoquiam,” said Myers. “From the first responding officer who found the victim in the grisly scene we knew this was going to be a tough case.”
Investigators with the state crime lab processed the scene for several days.
“Given the extensive evidence all across the interior of the house we requested the State Patrol Crime Lab,” added Myers. “The crime lab ended up committing four evidence technicians over two and a half days just to process the scene.”
O’Hara was interviewed in the following hours and eventually told investigators she and Harmon had argued about the theft of several checks from Harmon’s residence. After the argument, O’Hara left only to return later to stab and bludgeon Harmon to death with a large flashlight and small knife she found on a countertop in his home.
“I want to commend the work of the officers, sergeants and detectives in this case,” said Myers. “I especially want to recognize Sgt. Joe Strong from Hoquiam and Det. Sgt. Darrin Wallace from the Sheriff’s Office who worked together to conduct the suspect interviews and recover the murder weapons she tried to dispose of in the river out Bear Gulch. The tenacity of the sergeants in continuing to interview the suspect and then follow up on the evidence is what ended up giving us a clear picture of what happened that night. Unfortunately there’s no way to explain why there is such cruelty.”
According to court documents, O’Hara went on to say that after the murder, she took the murder weapons and her clothing and dumped them in the Wishkah River just north of Aberdeen. She eventually led investigators to the Beach Gulch area and they were able to collect the evidence.
O’Hara has been in jail since her arrest on $1 million bond. She is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 23.
