Michele Anderson did not speak before she was sentenced. On April 21, 2016, in a King County courtroom in downtown Seattle, Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell imposed six consecutive terms of life without the possibility of release, the only sentence the law allowed after a jury convicted her of aggravated first-degree murder, and he called it pretty much preordained. He spent his time instead on what he called the secondary victims, the relatives, friends, first responders, witnesses and jurors who had sat through two trials of horrific testimony. He read their names aloud. "You have all suffered tremendous losses," he said. "Fortunately, this lengthy chapter of your nightmare is almost over."
She was thirty-seven. Eight and a half years earlier, on Christmas Eve 2007, she and her boyfriend, Joseph McEnroe, had walked into her parents' house near Carnation, in the Snoqualmie Valley east of Seattle, carrying presents that were only props. They lived in a mobile home on the parents' five-acre lot. Wayne Anderson, sixty, was relaxing in the living room and Judy Anderson, sixty-one, was preparing dinner. At about four in the afternoon, prosecutors said, McEnroe drew Judy into a back room while Michele confronted her father, who was shot moments before his wife was killed in the kitchen. The two dragged the bodies to a shed in the backyard and spent the next hour mopping up blood with towels.
Her brother Scott, thirty-two, his wife Erica, thirty-two, and their children, Olivia, five, and Nathan, three, drove over from their home in Black Diamond for the holiday. Erica's mother, Pam Mantle, had spoken to her daughter just before they left. When they arrived, Erica took off her shoes and Scott sank into his usual seat, and all four were killed. The six victims were shot a combined fourteen times with two handguns, a .357 Magnum and a nine-millimeter pistol, which the couple later threw into the Stillaguamish River. They were arrested two days later, after returning to Carnation.
The prosecutor, Scott O'Toole, told jurors the motive was pure, unadulterated greed. Michele Anderson had quarreled with her parents over their request that the couple pay rent and believed her brother owed her money; the prosecution cast her as the mastermind and McEnroe as the man who carried out most of the shooting. She confessed to the killings, to the media and in open court, and was evaluated at Western State Hospital and found competent to stand trial.
The case took more than eight years. King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced in October 2008 that he would seek death against both defendants, and years of litigation followed over the death penalty and over their mental condition; at one stage the state Supreme Court reversed Ramsdell's order requiring prosecutors to amend the charging documents, while refusing the state's request to replace him. The defendants were tried separately. McEnroe was convicted of six counts of aggravated first-degree murder in March 2015, his jury could not agree on death, and he was sentenced to life without release that May. On July 29, 2015, Satterberg said he would no longer seek death against Anderson.
Her trial opened on January 25, 2016. The jury began deliberating on March 2 and on Friday, March 4, after a five-week trial, convicted her on all six counts. She showed no reaction and looked down at the table in front of her. "Michele Anderson will never ever leave prison," O'Toole said afterward. "She will live with what she did for the rest of her life, times six." Pam Mantle, who had wanted a death sentence, said Anderson had seemed very uninterested.
A week before her sentencing Anderson filed papers asking to hire a new lawyer and present new evidence, a sign that she intended to appeal. After sentencing she was sent to the Washington Corrections Center for Women at Gig Harbor. The Washington Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty in 2018, and the legislature abolished it in 2023.