ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A jury Thursday convicted a 22-year-old woman of criminally negligent homicide in a case that alleged she arranged to have two men kill her mother more than six years ago.
Rachelle Waterman was being tried for the second time in the death of her mother, Lauri Waterman. The 48-year-old was abducted from her home and killed by one of her daughter's former boyfriends hours after she attended a Chamber of Commerce function.
The woman was beaten and attempts were made to break her neck before she was suffocated. Her remains, burned beyond recognition, were found in her torched minivan.
Rachelle Waterman was 16 when her mother was killed in November 2004, and a 2006 trial ended in a hung jury.
This time, the jury acquitted her of conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder.
The negligent homicide verdict means that Waterman failed to perceive that there was a substantial and unjustifiable risk that her actions would result in her mother's death.
"One of my strongest emotions right now is anger that she has been put through this for six years when she should never have been charged with anything in the first place," said her father, Carl "Doc" Waterman.
Prosecutors portrayed Waterman as a rebellious teenager who manipulated Jason Arrant, her 24-year-old boyfriend, and a former boyfriend, Brian Radel, also 24, to kill her mother because she wanted to be free of the woman's control.
Radel kidnapped Lauri Waterman from her third-floor bedroom, tied her up, forced her to drink nearly a bottle of wine and left her Craig home with her in the minivan.
Waterman's lawyer, Steven Wells, said Arrant got his good friend Radel to kill Lauri Waterman because the mother was in the way of him having a relationship with his teenage girlfriend, and he felt Rachelle slipping away.
After the jury's finding, Wells described Waterman as a "good kid" with a quirky sense of humor who unfortunately got to know Arrant, who he said was a lying, murderous psychopath.
"She did not intend for her mom to die," Wells said. "She had some tension with her mother. What kid doesn't?"
Prosecutor Stephen West said the girl set up the situation for her mother to be killed and should receive more prison time.
"Her mother was murdered brutally," he said.
Waterman already spent a year and a few months in an Alaska correctional facility and could receive time served when she is sentenced June 1. The maximum would be 10 years.
Wells said the young woman has had no trouble whatsoever since her mother was killed.
"She hasn't even gotten a speeding ticket," said Wells, who plans on appealing the verdict.
Waterman remained free on bail. She likely will return to college in Florida and her job at a hotel.
The discovery of Lauri Waterman's torched van at the end of a logging road sent shockwaves through the southeast Alaska island community of Craig. Before arrests came a week after the slaying, some people took to walking the streets with firearms.
Arrant and Radel pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and are serving long prison sentences. Both men testified against Waterman at her 2006 trial but Arrant refused the second time. He said, however, that he stood by his previous testimony.
Under police interrogation, Waterman first denied having had relationships with either men or that there were problems with her relationship with her mother. Eventually, she conceded that she'd had sexual relations with both older men and that her mother didn't like her going out with Arrant. She also said her mother was the disciplinarian in the family and didn't like that she wore black nail polish and practiced Wicca, a modern form of witchcraft.
Waterman told police she had discussed the idea of killing her mother with Arrant but had never spoken directly to Radel. She told authorities that she had told Arrant she didn't want her mother killed the weekend she was away at a volleyball tournament in Anchorage and her father was in Juneau, because their relationship had improved.
Eventually, she conceded that she knew there was a plan in the works before she left town and didn't stop it because she "was on the fence about it."
Wells said a trooper and Craig police officer pressured the girl into making a false confession after not informing her father that she was a suspect and was to be interrogated.
"They took deliberate steps to make sure a parent was not there and squeezed it out of her," Wells said outside the courtroom Thursday.