GUILTY WA - Sherry Harlan, 35, Everett, 2 January 2010

A neighbor of the woman told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Chris Francis that he went inside the apartment after the manager of the complex opened the unit Tuesday night. The man said there was a strong smell of bleach and portions of a bedroom carpet were cut out.

Larry Lloyd, who lives behind Harlan, said Harlan was concerned for her safety after a boyfriend or ex-husband was recently released from jail.

Lloyd said that man had come around the apartment a few times.

"She mentioned something to the landlady and her friend at work, to keep an eye on her (and) she didn't know what the hell was going to happen to her. She didn't say boyfriend or husband or whatever but she was afraid of something. You could see it in her eyes," said Lloyd.

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Her co-workers at the Lynnwood JCPenney store went to her apartment to check on her before calling police. She wasn't home, but a neighbor said they made a frightening discovery inside.

"Torn up carpet. Torn up linoleum. Bleach everywhere," said Schuyler Thorpe. "It's like the whole place was turned into a war zone. Like it was done in a real hurry."

Thorpe said he and his wife saw a strange man hanging around the apartment about the time investigators think Harlan disappeared.

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Thorpe said he and his wife saw a strange man hanging around the apartment about the time investigators think Harlan disappeared.....
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Harlan had been living at the apartment complex for several months, and her father said she moved there after her boyfriend was hauled off to jail.

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The burned car of Sherry Harlan, an Everett-area woman reported missing this week, has been found at a gravel pit in eastern Snohomish County with the partial remains of a human body inside, police and prosecutors said.

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summer_breeze said:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010747926_missingwoman09m.html

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Tests to determine whether the remains are Sherry Harlan’s may take up to a week, a prosecutor says.

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A Gold Bar man with a violent criminal history is accused of killing his girlfriend then burning the woman's remains in her car, according to Snohomish County prosecutors.

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While the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office has not formally identified the remains found inside Sherry Harlan's car as belonging to the missing woman, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Craig Matheson believes that the remains are those of the Everett-area woman.

"Circumstantially, I'm comfortable that it is Ms. Harlan's body," Matheson said this afternoon. "It will take a couple of days to get an positive ID."

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EVERETT, Wash. - A Gold Bar man charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend after her burned-out car was found is now accused of dismembering her body and disposing of it in a drive around Snohomish County.

Prosecutors say the suspect, Eric Christensen, 40, of Gold Bar asked a friend to drive him around Snohomish County to help dispose of the woman's remains.

The friend eventually contacted investigators and led them to spots were body parts were recovered, prosecutors say.

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On Friday Eric Christensen was sentenced to 37.5 years in prison in the January death of Sherry Harlan.

Christensen, 40 was convicted of first-degree murder earlier this month after jurors rejected his lawyer's argument that the killing was a crime of passion, and not premeditated.

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