GUILTY MT - Dawn Thompson, 36, shot to death, Ferndale, 27 Aug 2005

mysteriew said:

Ferndale residents who knew 36-year-old Dawn Reenee Thompson thought the mother of five children was a nice, caring person. They didn't have the same opinion of her 66-year-old husband, Lawrence Fredrick Roedel, who they described Monday as overbearing, unpopular, mean and even "psycho."

Early Sunday, Flathead County sheriff's deputies arrested Roedel for criminal negligent homicide after finding Thompson's body sprawled at the bottom of a stairway at the couple's 126 Shady Lane home. Thompson died Saturday night from a single gunshot to her back from a .357 magnum deputies said Roedel fired during a violent domestic disturbance.

Roedel made a 911 call to the Lake County Sheriff's Office that a dispatcher then transferred to the Flathead County Sheriff's Office as the home is across the county line, according to sheriff's records of the incident that began unfolding late Saturday.

Roedel told a Flathead County detective that he thought he had just shot his wife and when deputies arrived at the couple's two-story home behind the Ferndale Market they found Roedel, Thompson's body, and three children who apparently slept through the ordeal.
http://bigforkeagle.com/articles/2005/09/01/news/news01.txt

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To the end, Lawrence Roedel maintained that when he and shot and killed his common-law wife, it was accidental. But at Roedel's sentencing Thursday, County Attorney Ed Corrigan said that given Roedel's long and violent history, "I think Dawn's death was an historical inevitability."

District Judge Kitty Curtis sentenced Roedel to 80 years in prison, plus 10 for the use of a .357-caliber gun...

Corrigan... was satisfied with Curtis' judgment, he said later. It accomplishes the goal of protecting the community from someone who, "in the four or five marriages we know of, has demeaned women, physically abused them, and ultimately killed one," he said.

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