by Ann Rule
Stan Tappan was a confirmed womanizer, and, despite his marriage, the investigation turned up a few dozen women who were close to him in one way or another. Some of them had posed for him for nude shots, some worked with him, and some had dated him before his most recent marriage. But Dick Reed and Don Strunk never located the mysterious woman who had lured Nick Kyreacos to his death. They realized that even the woman herself might not have known why she was calling him; she might only have been doing Stan a favor.
More likely, she had read about Stan’s arrest, and didn’t want to become involved in the case.
Stan Tappan’s trial began four months after Kyreacos’s death. He had lost close to thirty pounds in jail, and he strode past a circus of reporters, microphones, and television cameras with his eyes straight ahead and his jaw clenched tightly. Interest on the press bench was so intense that the sought-after location next to the prosecutor’s table—designed to hold seven—often had a dozen reporters packed so closely together that we could barely take notes.
Spectators lined the marble hallways and overflowed the available seats. Court deputies allowed new onlookers in one at a time, only as others left.
Bill Lanning was the lead defense attorney. A deceptively folksy, garrulous man who had many friends in law enforcement, he could be as clever as a fox in cross-examination. Lanning was assisted by Bob Bryan. Senior Deputy King County Prosecutor Michael Ruark spoke for the State, assisted by Deputy Prosecutor Marco Magnano.
Everyone in the courtroom was there to hear “the tape,” which had been held in a locked safe-deposit box in a Seattle bank. King County’s Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor David Boerner and Seattle Police Homicide Lieutenant Patrick Murphy had taken it there together, and both of them had to be present for it to be removed. The defense wanted it excluded from the trial, arguing that it would be inflammatory if the jurors should hear it. They likened it to a “television set with the picture blacked out,” hinting that Nick Kyreacos could have “pre-recorded” the tape, or edited it at the scene.
“There is a tremendous danger of convicting a man on a tape that can’t tell us what it hears,” Lanning and Bryan submitted.
Mike Ruark said the tape should be allowed to speak for itself. All the voices had been identified by credible witnesses and the chain of custody was impeccable. “This is not a vacuum situation,” Ruark said. “We have presented witnesses who verify every step of that tape and what it is purported to have recorded.”
The prosecution’s theory about what happened on November 20 was that Stan Tappan had arranged for an unknown woman to lure Kyreacos to the dark alley where Tappan had waited with two fully-loaded guns: his police issue .38 and the untraceable “drop gun,” the .45. Tappan had, they submitted, then accosted Kyreacos, chased him, and forced him back up the alley away from the street, where he had shot him quite deliberately as Kyreacos pleaded for his life.
That would account for the first spate of gunshots on the tape. The single shot might have been the coup de grâce, causing either the wound in Kyreacos’s forehead or that in his chest, more likely the former. And then, after the pause, there had been two more shots—some distance away from the microphone. Stan Tappan had suffered two wounds that turned out to be essentially flesh wounds. The .45 wound to his left hand had sliced only through the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, taking with it some tissue and muscle. The prosecutors felt that the injury in the area of his waist looked as if he had intentionally tugged the fatty layer there away from his ribs and muscles to be sure a self-administered bullet wouldn’t damage any vital organs.
Painful? Certainly—probably far more painful than he had expected. Life threatening? No.
Stan Tappan maintained the same stoic mien throughout his trial, glancing occasionally at witnesses who had been close friends, and at reporters who knew him. Even as Judge David Hunter began to rule on whether the mystery tape would be admitted, Tappan betrayed no emotion.
Hunter said he did not believe that the Kyreacos tape contained a “private conversation,” as stipulated by statutes governing tape recording without the permission of both parties.
“I suspect the victim was going to have a conversation about bribing someone—something that he intended to record. He didn’t plan to tape his own death. The interpretation of the tape is open for both the defense and the prosecution. I find, therefore, that the state has laid a proper foundation for the admission of this tape.”
The press bench was on alert. Hunter specifically warned members of the media that the tape was not to be recorded. Just as Nick Kyreacos had carried a book-sized recorder to the murder, anyone in the media would have needed a very hard-to-hide device to capture the words about to fill the courtroom. One radio reporter had, of all things, a rubber chicken in his coat pocket, a running gag he perpetuated during courtroom breaks. Some of us wondered if he had somehow managed to hide a recorder inside the chicken. A local TV anchorman sat bolt upright, his attaché case balanced on his knees. He guarded his briefcase so carefully that he seemed the most likely suspect. The rest of us had only yellow legal pads and pens clutched in our hands, ready to write.
It was 11:40 A.M. on a gusty Wednesday morning.
We realized suddenly that Nick Kyreacos’s widow and his stepchildren were in the room, and it was too late for them to leave. They sobbed quietly as the tape began. Stan Tappan scribbled on his own legal pad, expressionless.
Nicholas Kyreacos had his day in court, and this was the only time I have ever heard a deceased victim actually speak as he realized he was going to die—and speak at the moment of his death. Perhaps it was akin to a blacked-out television, but there was no mistaking what was happening on the tape. It was an awful thing to hear. As the tape rolled ahead to silence, the courtroom was absolutely quiet, as if everyone had ceased to breathe. When it was over, Judge Hunter dismissed the jurors for a lunch break, instructing them to return at 1:30 P.M.
Bill Lanning had only one witness to present for the defense: Stan Tappan himself. Tall and handsome despite his weight loss, he seemed at ease. He was familiar with the witness stand; he had testified as a police officer numerous times. Although his complexion was the familiar yellowish-white of prison pallor and his three-piece suit was now too big for him, he spoke firmly, respectfully, and with assurance. He often stood or used his hands to describe what had happened the night of the shootings.
In answer to Lanning’s questions, Tappan recalled arresting Nick Kyreacos earlier in the fall on suspicion of credit-card forgery. “I was driving an unmarked police vehicle when I took him to jail. As I got into the driver’s seat, he said, ‘You’re not busting me for this. Somebody’s gonna get killed over this matter.’”
“I said, ‘Is that a threat?’ and he said, ‘I don’t make threats—I make promises.’”
In the interrogation room at police headquarters, Tappan said he had informed his prisoner of his Miranda rights and asked him if he was ready to cooperate. “He said, ‘I don’t cooperate with anyone who’s gonna send me back to the joint.’ I said it would help him if he would cooperate, and he said he might get the ‘Big Bitch’ [life in prison], as he’d been arrested three times at that point. He had fifteen years hanging and he could get life.”
At that time, Kyreacos had allegedly told Tappan that anyone who tried to put him back in prison would be buried. That had worried the tall detective when he saw Kyreacos hanging around his off-duty job at the mortgage company. He had indeed discussed his fears of a possible gunfight with his ex-partner, Tappan testified, and asked to borrow the .45.
“I didn’t even know if it would shoot, and I planned to take it out to the range and try it out. It was in my glove compartment of my truck along with the extra clips because I was going to the range.”
On November 19, Kyreacos had come up behind him as he sat at his desk in the Burglary Unit, Tappan said. That had scared him more. “I asked him if he was looking for me, and he said ‘Not yet.’ I asked him a
gain if that was a threat, and again, he repeated that he made promises—not threats.”
At that point, Tappan said he had taken Kyreacos to the homicide offices, which were next to his, to talk with Don Strunk. When Tappan later asked Strunk what he’d talked to Kyreacos about, Tappan recalled that Strunk said it was about the shooting of Branko Ellich.
“I asked Don if Kyreacos had mentioned me, and he said, ‘Not directly.’ But he warned me to ‘Watch yourself. That guy is dangerous and he doesn’t like you at all.’”
(On rebuttal, Don Strunk said he could not remember warning Tappan about Kyreacos.)
Lanning led Stan Tappan into his theories on the mysterious shooting of Branko Ellich and why Nick Kyreacos had been so menacing to Tappan.
Tappan said that he thought it was because both he and Ellich had been named as witnesses against Nick in the credit-card case. “I believe that Nick killed Branko Ellich,” the defendant said, turning to the jurors. “The day before Ellich was murdered, I talked to him and I told him that Kyreacos might kill him.”
“Why didn’t you tell the detectives immediately that the .45 at the scene belonged to you?” Bill Lanning asked his client. It was a heavy question for the defense, and would not go away by being ignored.
“I was scared,” Tappan said, explaining that he was afraid he’d lose his job for carrying such a high-powered weapon.
There were some big gaps in the defense’s case, and Stan Tappan moved forward to sew up the ragged seams, reconstructing the crime scene as he remembered it.
“I got to work at four thirty. It was raining and the wind was blowing—gusting up to thirty or forty miles per hour. I parked my truck in the first or second stall in the upper parking lot—facing out. I was walking between the two entrances to the parking lot. Around six fifteen or six thirty, I was checking out the garage under the detox center to see if all the cars were gone. There was one car left, and I had just seen two girl employees still at work upstairs in the office. I decided to sit in my truck until they left.
“I observed several people in rooms at the hotel and I knew there would be people going in and coming out of the detox center at all hours. I noticed a man walking up the alley very slowly, looking at the alley very, very carefully. He looked at me, then quickened his pace. I thought he might be a car prowler. Then I thought about the situation with Kyreacos and I replaced new bullets for old in the clip of the .45.”
Tappan was talking to the jury, and Lanning allowed him to continue his almost stream-of-consciousness testimony.
“Three or four or five minutes later, a man entered the parking lot, and then walked out of my sight. A few seconds later, I saw him again. He was flattened against a wall and peering around the corner of a building. He walked sideways for about twenty feet with his back against the wall.
“I recognized him. He wasn’t looking at me. I opened the door of my truck and stepped out. Nick had a gun in his hand, pointed down at the ground. The .45 was sticking in my belt. I drew my .38 because I didn’t even know if the .45 would shoot. I pointed it at Nick, and I said, ‘Hold it right there, Nick!’”
Stan Tappan described how Kyreacos had run. Tappan himself jumped over a retaining wall and chased him, firing one warning shot as he shouted at him to stop. As Kyreacos rounded the corner of a building, Tappan said, he’d heard something metal hit the pavement. Kyreacos had stopped and asked what was going on.
“I said, ‘You know. You’re under arrest.’”
It was a difficult spot for a defendant to be in. The jurors had heard the actual conversation between the two men. If Tappan varied from the true words, the jurors would not believe him. He either had to tell the absolute truth or fit his description of the shooting into the scenario played out on the tape.
Now Stan Tappan told the jury that he had feared another person might be in the area, might at that moment be drawing a bead on him with a rifle. He had walked Kyreacos back through the alley to get out of firing range, intending to go into the mortgage company to call for police backup. But he suddenly remembered he didn’t have a key to the office. He testified that he started back to his truck, where he’d planned to handcuff Kyreacos to the steering wheel and take him to jail—just as soon as he’d gone back to get the waiter’s gun.
“I had my left hand on his right arm.” Tappan stood to demonstrate. “I was going to lean him over the hood to search him. I put my hand in the middle of his back to signal to him to bend over. I meant to say, ‘I’ll tell you about it when I get you to the station’—but I don’t know if I did or not. I started to put my gun in my holster so I could search him. Both my jacket and my raincoat were open and he looked down at the gun in my belt. I was slightly behind him. He leaned forward—then he dropped and spun around.”
Bill Lanning acted out Kyreacos’s part as Stan demonstrated. “He grabbed the .45 and pulled it out,” Tappan continued. “I brought my gun up. I don’t know whose gun went off first. I felt his bullet hit me in the side. I felt like I’d been knocked ten feet, but I was still up. I grabbed his gun with my left hand. I pushed it toward him. We were spinning. It was all so fast. I believe it fired twice more.
“It was over. And we were almost on the ground. There was no more struggle.”
Tappan testified that he somehow managed to call for help and then, sure that he was terribly injured, he sat on the retaining wall and tried to stop the blood from his hand and side.
Stan Tappan was one of the most confident witnesses I’ve ever watched. He had woven almost all of the questions into a tapestry that seemed to explain the recording of the scene. When he stepped down from the witness stand, I wondered what the jurors were thinking. They had heard the tape just before noon, and four hours later, they had heard Stan’s explanation.
The next day, all of western Washington heard that tape.
Someone on our press bench had indeed recorded it, and it was played over and over on the news. It was heard on the station where the anchorman with the attaché case worked. He had sat aloof from the rest of us for most of the trial until the tape was played, and then he had vanished. Stan Tappan’s defense attorneys were outraged and demanded that the anchor come back into court to explain how he had gotten the tape. Instead, the station sent a female reporter to cover the verdict deliberation.
The jurors retired to deliberate at 3:45 P.M. on a Friday afternoon. By late Saturday, they signaled that they had arrived at a verdict. Twenty-four hours after final arguments and Judge Hunter’s instructions, the four woman—eight man jury found Stan Tappan guilty of first-degree murder. Considering the sentence parameters at that time, he would serve at least thirteen years and four months in prison, with a mandatory five-year consecutive sentence for using a deadly weapon in the commission of the crime.
He was freed on $50,000 bond to await sentencing two months later.
It should have been over then, but there are questions that remain. Why would Stan Tappan, who had never evinced fear about anything, be so frightened of a small waiter who was much more afraid of him? Tappan had all the power, unless Nick Kyreacos knew something about Tappan that he could use to blackmail him. The connections between Branko Ellich, Nicholas Kyreacos, and Stan Tappan seemed inordinately intertwined. Why would a credit-card fraud case cause so much terror?
Over the years, various detectives have had theories—none proven—that the three men were tied together by a burglary ring, or fencing of stolen property, or a pornography setup, or sex, or payoffs, or bribery.
Was the mystery woman caller helping Tappan set Kyreacos up by summoning him to the alley? Perhaps he went because he had something to hide and was afraid that Tappan would blow the whistle on him.
Maybe none of these theories is true. Perhaps the testimony that Stan Tappan gave in his hours on the stand was the truth, and he paid dearly for something he didn’t do. Was it believable that he was forced to shoot Kyreacos during a struggle for his gun? He’d had two guns and the waiter had only had a starte
r pistol full of blanks. In addition, Tappan was eight inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Kyreacos. Even so.
Perhaps the damning tape itself can be explained away. But one small bit of physical evidence always bothers me when I think about this case. If Kyreacos was struggling so violently with Stan Tappan, who wanted to handcuff him, why was his cigarette still clenched in his hand when the paramedics arrived?
Despite Bill Lanning’s appeals, Stan Tappan went to prison. He was sent far out of Washington State to a federal prison and given a new name; ex-cops live extremely perilous lives in prison, trapped among a population they once hunted. The world moved on, and eventually Stan Tappan was released. Tappan is in his sixties now, and many of the men who arrested him are gone: among them, Ivan Beeson, Dick Reed, and Don Strunk have passed away. The other homicide detectives who worked on the case have long since retired.
Stan Tappan would like to write a book, and it would indeed be a fascinating read. He need no longer fear that he would be arrested. He has paid his debt to society, and double jeopardy would apply if any agency tried to arrest him again.
So it’s still possible that the whole truth about that stormy night thirty years ago will be told.
Fatal Obsession
Sometimes the solution to mindless murder is too close for even skilled detectives to see. When the obvious answers are too appalling for the rational mind to contemplate, the mind skitters away, unable to accept the horror.
As I chose cases from my thirty-year career as a crime writer, I considered the true story that follows many times—and then quickly moved on because it still troubles me…a lot. It is as close to a horror tale as anything I’ve ever encountered.
Still, this particular case contains answers that could help us understand similar cases that burst onto the headlines every year. I doubt that I could ever again write about such madness and pain, the insanity hidden behind the facade of a killer who seemed to be the perfect citizen.
