SEATTLE — Authorities on Tuesday dropped murder charges against one of two brothers who had been accused of killing a couple in rural Washington state and burying their remains in a remote forest clearing.
The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said further investigation into the April deaths of Monique Patenaude and her husband, Patrick Shunn, established that Tony Clyde Reed was not present when they were killed. Instead, the prosecutor’s office charged him with rendering criminal assistance in the first degree.
Reed is the brother of John Blaine Reed, a former neighbor who had feuded with the couple and who remains at large on murder charges in Mexico, authorities believe.
Tony Reed fled with his brother to Mexico, but returned last month and helped detectives locate the couple’s remains, in the root well of a wind-toppled fir tree 10 miles up a logging road from Oso.
News of the reduced charges for Tony Reed came as detectives arrested parents, Clyde Reed, 81, and Faye Reed, 77, at their home in Ellensburg — also for first-degree rendering criminal assistance.
Investigators said the parents admitted providing the vehicle in which their sons fled the state to make their way toward Mexico; giving them financial assistance; and transferring the title of John Reed’s truck, which is believed to have been used in the slayings, to Faye Reed.
James Kirkham, Tony Reed’s lawyer, said he would represent the parents at a hearing Wednesday in an effort to get them out of jail, citing their age.
Authorities said they plan to arrest others who aided the brothers. They’ve previously indicated that two friends gave them another car and $500, knowing the siblings were on the run.
The couple were reported missing April 12, and suspicion fell on the Reeds in part because a neighbor saw them at the gated driveway they formerly shared with the couple the next day, court documents said. Authorities said surveillance video captured the couple’s vehicles being simultaneously driven up a gravel logging road leading to where the bodies were found, indicating that at least two people were involved in the killings.
In interviews with detectives, Clyde Reed “indicated that he did not know where his two sons were, but if he did, he would not tell law enforcement,” a deputy prosecutor wrote.
Sheriffs said John Reed is believed to be in Tijuana, Rosarita or Ensenada.Mexico, where investigators recently distributed wanted posters for him.
