COQUILLE The Coos County District Attorney may seek the death penalty or life imprisonment for Patrick Lee Horath, if the Fairview man is convicted in the murder of his sister-in-law, Jayme Austin.
By trial, I will have made up my mind, said District Attorney R. Paul Frasier.
For now, its too early in the case to tell, the DA said. First, he wants to see the results of a planned background investigation analyzing the 45-year-olds character.
On Monday afternoon, Judge Michael Gillespie arraigned Horath in Coos County Court on a grand jury indictment, charging him with five counts of murder and one count first-degree sexual abuse, stemming from the Nov. 9 death of 31-year-old Austin.
Although the courtroom was filled with Austins friends and family, including Horaths wife and Austins sister, Alyssa, he made no attempt to steal glances at them as he stood in shackles and a baggy black and white-striped jail uniform.
The DA said the family has had a double loss in this case, as Austins two young daughters lost a mother, and Horath and Alyssa Horaths children may lose a father.
Theyve been hit with a double whammy, he said.
Investigators believe Horath strangled Austin in the bathroom of her mothers home on the ninth and then hid her body under a mound of rocks and dirt up Middle Creek Road. Coos County Sheriffs deputies arrested Horath at the Oregon State Police Empire Office on Thursday following a more than six-hour long interview. Frasier said Horath led investigators to the gravesite at the bottom of a steep embankment about 50 feet from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management road. It is unclear whether he took investigators to the site or gave directions.
Horath, Austins mother and other relatives live in houses on the family ranch in Fairview. Austin lived there, too.
The charges against Horath include two counts of aggravated murder and three counts of murder. Frasier explained that the five murder charges represent different legal theories of how murder could have been committed. He said he asked Mondays grand jury to charge Horath on each.
The aggravated murder charges allege the defendant intended to kill Austin while sexually abusing or attempting to abuse her. The remaining three murder charges allege he accidentally caused her death while sexually abusing or attempting to abuse her.
Frasier refused to say which charge he found most likely.
I cant talk about that, he said.
He did note that there were indications that someone tried to clean the bathroom where Austin likely died.
The DA said he chose to pursue the sex abuse charge, because an autopsy on Saturday showed physical signs that Austin had been molested in some way.
If convicted of aggravated murder, Horath could face the death penalty, life without parole or life with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years. For murder, sentencing would likely be life imprisonment with 25 years mandatory minimum. First-degree sexual abuse is a Measure 11 crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a minimum of six years and three months. If the case goes to trial and Horath is found guilty of two or more, those murder charges would merge and the court would impose only one sentence, the DA added.
The last time a Coos County district attorney pursued the death penalty, Frasier said, was in the Girly Crumb case in 1997. The jury couldnt agree on executing him, and the court sentenced Crumb to life without parole in the quintuple murder case.
The judge assigned Dan Koenig, a public defense attorney based in Eugene who participated in the arraignment via teleconference, to represent Horath from this point forward. In cases that could involve the death penalty, Frasier said courts draw from a pool of death penalty qualified defense attorneys
