What happens when protection orders fail? In November 2019, Tiffany Hill did everything by the book to protect herself from her abusive husband. She reported his violence, obtained no-contact orders, and worked closely with law enforcement. Yet she was still murdered in front of her children and mother while sitting in her car outside an elementary school.
Former Washington State Senator Lynda Wilson had already recognized this deadly gap in victim protection. Years before Tiffany's murder, Wilson had introduced legislation for GPS monitoring with real-time victim notification—a system that creates electronic "geofences" around domestic violence survivors. Had this technology been in place, Tiffany might have received a warning when her estranged husband approached, potentially saving her life.
This powerful episode brings together three key figures who transformed this tragedy into lifesaving change: Senator Wilson, whose own childhood experiences with domestic violence fueled her advocacy; Sergeant Tanya Wollstein of the Vancouver Police Department, who investigated Tiffany's case and now implements the monitoring program; and Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lauren Boyd, who fought for higher bail to keep Tiffany's killer behind bars.
Their conversation reveals both the frustrating limitations of our current legal system—including Washington's constitutional "right to bail" that allowed Tiffany's killer to be released—and the promising results of the technology that now bears her name. Today, approximately 240 domestic violence offenders in Clark County wear ankle monitors that alert victims when their abuser comes within 1,000 feet, with early data showing reduced recidivism rates.
Through heartbreaking details of Tiffany's story and illuminating insights into how the justice system works (and sometimes doesn't), this episode offers a masterclass in turning personal tragedy into community protection. Listen now to understand how this groundbreaking approach to victim safety might be implemented in your community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that thiscontent may be difficult and
have listed specific contentwarnings in each episode
description to help create apositive, safe experience for
all listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes
are reported every year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutesthere is a murder.
Every five minutes there is arape.
Every two to five minutes thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:43):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of
us it's none of our business andI am proud to stand here today
with each of you to call thatperpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullin.
In November of 2019, tiffanyHill was shot and killed by her
estranged husband in front ofher three children and her
mother in the parking lot of theChildren's Elementary School
Leading up to the shooting.
Investigators were aware thatTiffany was in extreme danger,
with prosecutors requesting bailas high as $2 million after
(01:14):
Hill's husband placed a GPStracker on her car.
Unfortunately, keelan Hill'sbail was lowered to just
$250,000, which he posted, andthen, five days later, he killed
Tiffany and himself.
Curiously, in the background,washington state lawmakers were
already working on legislationthat could have saved Tiffany's
(01:34):
life.
Today, we talk with retiredstate Senator Linda Wilson,
sergeant in the Vancouver PoliceDepartment, tonya Wallstein,
and Senior Deputy ProsecutingAttorney, lauren Boyd, who all
were integral to the case ofTiffany Hill and the ultimate
legislation in her name.
Born in Spokane, washington,into an Air Force family, linda
Wilson experienced life acrossthe country before settling in
(01:57):
Vancouver.
While she never imaginedherself in public office, she
was driven by a sense of civicduty and a deep commitment to
her community, and in 2013, shestepped into public service by
running for the Washington StateHouse of Representatives.
The following year, she ran for, and secured a state senate
seat representing Clark andSkamania counties, serving with
(02:18):
distinction for eight years.
Linda's advocacy for domesticviolence victims became a
hallmark for her legislativework and was rooted in personal
experience.
Having grown up in a householdaffected by abuse, she
understood intimately the fear,instability and trauma that
victims endure.
That understanding fueled herdetermination to make a
difference.
In 2018, linda introducedlegislation to allow electronic
(02:41):
monitoring with real-time victimnotification.
Legislation to allow electronicmonitoring with real-time
victim notification, aninnovative solution aimed at
giving domestic violence victimsa tool for safety and peace of
mind.
Although it faced setbacks inits early years due to funding
concerns, it was unanimouslyapproved in 2020 as the Tiffany
Hill Act.
Tragically, in late 2019, hercommunity was shaken by the
murder of Tiffany Hill, a youngmother, veteran and domestic
(03:05):
violence victim, who was killedby her estranged husband while
sitting in her car outside of aschool with her children in the
back seat.
Linda was devastated.
She believed and still believesthat had her proposed
technology been in place,tiffany's life might have been
spared.
Tanya Wallstein is a sergeantwith the Vancouver Police
Department Domestic ViolenceUnit During her tenure in the
DVU.
Sergeant Wallstein is asergeant with the Vancouver
(03:25):
Police Department DomesticViolence Unit During her tenure
in the DVU, sergeant Wallsteintestified in support of the
Tiffany Hill Act and continuesto advocate for legislation
promoting the safety of domesticviolence victims.
She is responsible forinstituting Vancouver Police
Department's lethalityassessment for victims of DV,
the development andimplementation of Vancouver
Police Department's sexualassault investigation policy and
(03:48):
the Vancouver PoliceDepartment's patrol-based sexual
assault investigator program.
Sergeant Wallstein served as aboard member of the Northwest
Coalition Against Violence andExploitation and provides
domestic violence and sexualassault investigation training
to law enforcement agencies andpartners throughout the
Northwest.
Lauren Boyd has served as theappellate attorney at the Clark
(04:09):
County Prosecuting Attorney'sOffice since 2015,.
Serving as a trial advisor andappellate counsel, ms Boyd
handled all manner of cases,from misdemeanors to major
crimes, and served as the leadattorney for the Domestic
Violence Unit during much of theCOVID-19 pandemic.
In that capacity, she became asenior deputy prosecuting
attorney responsible for a teamof attorneys, support staff and
(04:32):
victim advocates tasked withprosecuting all levels of
domestic violence crime andworked closely with the law
enforcement partners.
Ms Boyd also recently served onthe board for the Washington
State Bar Association and hasbeen involved in advocating for
laws and policies protectingdomestic violence victims at
both the community and statelevel.
Tanya, lauren, linda, welcome tothe show, thank you, thank you.
(04:55):
So we're here to talk about themurder of Tiffany Hill, which
happened several years ago inWashington State, and there is a
lot to unpack with this case,as there typically is with this
type of domestic violencehomicide.
So we're going to start at thebeginning, or as far back at the
beginning as we can, with you,tanya, talk about the history of
(05:17):
domestic violence againstTiffany, including the arrests
for assault, the violating ofthe no contact order and so on,
because we want to get anunderstanding of what was
happening to Tiffany Hillleading up to her murder.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So on 9-11 of 2019 was the first call that the
Clark County Sheriff's Officereceived from Tiffany's family
and in that incident Keeland hadattacked Tiffany, shoved her,
causing her to hit her headagainst the wall, and she
attempted to call 911 on herphone.
He took her phone from her, sheattempted to use the Alexa to
(05:51):
call 911 and he unplugged it.
So her children, who werehiding in their room, text their
grandma help, help, help andsaid that Keeland was hurting
Tiffany.
So the grandmother called inClark County Sheriff's Office
deputies responded.
They arrested Keelan forassault, for some misdemeanor,
and took him to jail.
A no contact order was put inplace at that time.
(06:14):
The no contact order prohibitedhim from having any contact
with Tiffany, from coming withina specified distance of their
home and from purchasing afirearm.
Keelan, over the next couple ofmonths, repeatedly violated
this order.
So the next call that we gotwas that she had received a
phone call from Keelan.
So Tiffany called in and saidhey, he called, tried to
(06:36):
FaceTime me, didn't answer.
When the deputy spoke withKeelan he claimed that he was
trying to just add the ice incase of emergency to her contact
and that it was accidental andthat he had not intended to
contact Tiffany.
So there was no arrest made atthat time.
No probable cause was found.
He began showing up at placeswhere Tiffany was, oftentimes
(06:59):
for PTA meetings.
She was very involved with herkids' school and a big part of
the PTO that was there at theSarah J Anderson, and the first
time he showed up they were at arestaurant having a meeting.
He showed up as if to get foodbriefly left came back in a
second time.
Then, when she left in theparking lot he approached her
(07:20):
and tried to talk to her and thekids.
She told the kids to run andget in the car and then, when
Keelan saw that she was therewith friends, broke off and ran
away and the deputies respondedagain they did find probable
cause for an order violation.
However, keelan was not foundat that time.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So police could not find him after that happened.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Right, the police could not find him immediately
after that incident.
So although now there isprobable cause for an arrest,
keelan's location was unknown.
But within a couple of daysthey did get Keelan on the phone
.
Keelan claimed that he had beenat the bowling alley next door,
that he just went in to getsome food, that he basically
wasn't making an intentionalcontact and that he just wanted
(08:00):
to say hi to his kids, which hetechnically would have been
allowed to because the kids werenot part of the no contact
order, because they were notnamed victims in the case and
I'll let Lauren talk about thata little more later.
But they still found probablecause but Keelan wouldn't say
where he was and he wasn't ableto be found at that time.
It continued and there weremultiple incidents that were
reported.
In one of the incidents, keelanattempted to purchase a firearm
(08:23):
out of Multnomah County.
So Vancouver Washington is aborder city right next to
Portland, so it literally goesPortland Bridge Vancouver.
So essentially we end up beinga suburb.
But it's challenging becausethey are a completely different
state and a completely differentjurisdiction with different
rules and laws and all thosethings.
So when he attempted topurchase a firearm.
The employee at the Walmart thathe attempted to purchase it
(08:43):
from in Multnomah County did theright thing, denied his
purchase and reported it to thepolice there.
The police there did findprobable cause for an attempted
purchase of a firearm unlawfully.
However, keelan was gone andthat's a misdemeanor and it's
not typically something thatthey would run a warrant across
state lines to go get him for.
So now we know that we've gotall this danger going on.
(09:07):
We've got him showing up atplaces.
We've got him attempting phonecontact.
We didn't know at that time,but he was constantly texting
Tiffany throughout this time aswell, and that was later
reported.
He's now attempting to purchasea firearm in violation of the
no contact order.
And then he showed up again atanother restaurant that Tiffany
was at with again the.
(09:27):
PTO.
And this time her friendsreally advocated for her and she
advocated for herself and saidhe has to be tracking me in some
way, right, and they did find atracker on her car.
At that point they were able tolocate Keelan.
They did arrest Keelan, theyseized his vehicle and they
later searched it with a searchwarrant and found packaging and
(09:49):
other things that showedownership of the tracking device
on the car.
At that point other chargeswere added that he hadn't been
found for before and he hadanother hearing.
Ultimately he was able to bailout.
And when he bailed outUltimately he was able to bail
out.
And when he bailed out, therewas another order violation that
was reported.
The officer from VPD at thattime did not find probable cause
(10:11):
for a third-party contact orfor a direct contact and he
wasn't arrested.
And then, just a few short dayslater all of this happened
within a couple of months shewas at her children's elementary
schools and celebrating heryoungest daughter's birthday.
There was a safety plan inplace and she had a security
guard that was dedicated to kindof watch over her.
(10:31):
But because she had stayedlater and the school was closed,
the security guard had gonehome.
So when they left the school.
Keelan had been waiting in theparking lot for about 20 minutes
.
She had her mother had flowndown and was with her trying to
work through the situation.
All of us had encouraged her togo back with her family that
lived on the East Coast and thatwas something that they were
kind of trying to work through.
(10:51):
Tiffany really didn't want totake the kids out of school and
her whole community was thisschool and this PTO and her
children and she was veryreluctant to leave all of that,
even though she knew that Keelanwould try to kill her.
When they got into the car,keelan pulled forward, got out
of the car, displayed a gun,shot several times through the
windows of the car, strikingboth Tiffany and her mother, who
(11:13):
had reached over in aprotective gesture, like you
would in a car, trying toinstinctively block the bullets.
So her mom was shot, she wasshot several times and the kids
were all in the car.
They were luckily not shot.
It appeared that his firearmmalfunctioned from the security
video and he left and led thepolice on a chase.
Eventually the pursuit endedwhen he got stuck in traffic and
(11:35):
he got out of his car andturned the gun on himself.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's an incredible story.
Thank you for giving us thatlevel of detail.
I have so many questions aboutthe story and about everything
that you said.
Do you have an idea of what thedomestic violence experiences
were prior to Tiffany and herfamily arriving in Vancouver?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
There was a history of domestic violence between
Tiffany and Keelan and there hadbeen serious charges filed in
another state.
But, as often happens indomestic violence cases, keelan
had convinced Tiffany to recanther statement and they had
dropped the charges, and Ibelieve that was in Michigan.
I know that she had.
There was more history that wedon't even know about because it
(12:16):
had never been reported, andshe spoke with Lauren and I
about this when she met with us.
It's just a dynamic of DV thatwe hear so often, that cases are
dropped that really shouldn'tbe dropped because they feel
like they can't be prosecutedcorrectly, because the victim is
no longer willing to prosecute.
But there had been a history ofabuse throughout their marriage
and even serious abuse,including strangulation,
(12:38):
throughout the time that theyhad been married.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, I think part of the story was that she suffered
a concussion in one of theseincidents and law enforcement
was not aware that she had theconcussion.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So in that very first incident he was initially
arrested for an assault forwhich is a misdemeanor assault.
This is in Vancouver.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
In.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Vancouver, and when she got medical treatment they
were able to provide medicalrecords showing that she had all
the signs of a concussion.
So that charge was laterupgraded which Lauren can speak
to a little bit more to anassault too, which is a felony
assault charge at that point dueto the concussion.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So, lauren, let's turn to you as the prosecutor at
these hearings for Keelan Hill.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe charges that were brought
against him, what the processwas, what was available to you
as a prosecutor, maybe whattools were at your disposal to
keep him in prison or away fromTiffany, and then we'll also
(13:33):
talk about how the system failed, your efforts as well as
Tiffany.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Sure.
So I think it's important tonote that Washington is what's
called a right to a bail state.
That's where I really put oneof the major fails in the system
, especially when we're talkingabout domestic violence.
Defendants who are charged withcrimes not yet convicted of
crimes, have the right to bailthe prosecutor in cases of Class
(13:56):
A felonies, which are superserious felonies.
Keelan hadn't, at any of thetime that he was in Washington,
committed a Class A felonyagainst Tiffany up until the
point when he murdered her.
Obviously, the prosecutor canask a judge to hold somebody
without bail if they'vecommitted a Class A felony, but
Keelan hadn't committed that.
Also, if somebody violatestheir supervised release, the
(14:19):
prosecutor could make a motionsaying this person is out of
custody pending trial.
They violated the conditions ofthat release pending trial and
now you can judge can you pleasehold this person?
But short of that, inWashington state offenders have
a right to bail and so whenwe're in cases this super
dynamic and dangerous domesticviolence cases because of the
(14:41):
system, we have no ability toactually hold someone in custody
pending trial.
In my opinion, that's the onlyway we can 100% be sure that the
offender isn't going to go andkill their victim.
So the other tools that we haveare no contact orders.
We have the ability, through nocontact orders, to limit the
offender's ability to purchaseown touch firearms, but of
(15:05):
course, we need to rely on thatbeing reported to us.
We can't actually stop that onthe front end, right, it's just
back-end investigation oncethey've tried to purchase a
firearm.
At the time we didn't have thetechnology to have the GPS
tracking which we do have now.
So I think that in Washington,victims are safer because of
(15:26):
that technology.
2018, 2019, we didn't have thattechnology though.
So when Keelan was firstarrested on the misdemeanor
assault charge, he was alsocharged with interference with
reporting of domestic violence.
We couldn't ask to hold him incustody because he had that
right to bail.
It's pretty common that wedon't have medical records at
(15:47):
the time because the victimhasn't seen a doctor yet or the
records haven't made it to myoffice.
I can't charge, even if Isuspect that the victim might
have a concussion.
I can't charge that ethicallyunless I have the evidence that
I think will prove beyond areasonable doubt to a jury that
fact.
So that's why the assault crimetook a little while to be
(16:11):
elevated to a felony assault,because I didn't yet have the
evidence of her concussion thatI needed to be able to elevate
it.
So originally he was justcharged with a misdemeanor.
After the report started comingout and the stalking report
came in, he did get charged withfelony stalking.
That was a new crime.
That was charged in ourSuperior Court in Washington.
(16:32):
In Washington the SuperiorCourt handles felonies, district
Court handles misdemeanors.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
The stalking was, as a result of putting the tracker
on her car, correct.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
The tracker on her car and at that point we had the
information of all the otheractivities a lot of the other
activities, I should say not allof the other activities leading
up.
So stalking is kind of a courseof conduct Right Crime, the
tracker being, I guess, theultimate evidence that he's
intending to stalk her.
So we charged him with a felony.
(17:02):
Tiffany came into my office andmet with me and our victim
advocate.
She was very proactive.
She'd hired her own attorney.
She was really advocating.
I asked Tanya, who works downthe hallway from me or did at
the time, to come interviewTiffany and take the reports of
all these additional crimes thatKeelan had committed.
(17:34):
When he was charged with thestalking that's when we elevated
the misdemeanor assault to afelony assault He'd originally
been given about $75,000 bail.
Again, he hadn't yet violatedhis supervised release on this
new felony crime and so he stillhas the right to bail under
(17:55):
Washington law.
There's about a two-week periodbetween when he makes the first
appearance in superior court onthe now felony charges and when
when he's arraigned, that'swhen someone pleads guilty or
not guilty.
During that time is when we hadmet with Tiffany, gathered this
additional evidence.
I filed a motion before hisarraignment to raise his bail.
(18:16):
Because, with all of this newinformation that we're gathering
from Tiffany, $75,000 justdoesn't cover the very, very
serious and dangerous nature ofKeelan and his crimes.
So I filed a motion to raisebail.
The judge at his arraignmenttripled the bail to $250,000,
which is a high amount of bailthat we'd get in Vancouver for,
(18:41):
again, crimes that aren't classA felonies that someone still
has the right to bail in thestate he, in my opinion.
I didn't think that he would beable to bail out with that high
amount, but he was able to bailout and that's how he had
access to Tiffany when hemurdered her.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
How did he get access to the firearm?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
The firearm was stolen.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
I'm not sure the exact facts of how he got his
hands on it so we weren't ableto pin down exactly where it was
.
But the firearm had beenreported stolen two years before
out of Oregon, so it had likelybounced around quite a bit
Prior to the murder.
He had been asking friends andfamily like hey, can I borrow
your gun?
I want to take my wife shooting.
(19:23):
We're going to.
We're trying to like reconcileand you know we used trying to
like reconcile and you know weused to be in the military, so
we just want to go to theshooting range.
No one loaned him a gun, but hewas able to get his hands on
the stolen gun that had been outthere a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Wow.
He had all sorts of stories onwhy he needed a gun at Walmart.
When he'd been denied again, hetold the clerk there that he'd
had some vermin on his propertythat he needed to get rid of.
So I think he had all theseefforts trying to manipulate
others.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, and it sounds very much like this was a plan
that he set in motion kind ofrapidly for one reason or
another.
Lauren, a lot of what you justexplained to us was very
dependent upon conditions in theno contact order, as well as
bail and what you know, theright to bail state.
How does what happened inVancouver with this particular
(20:11):
case?
Are there other states that seta better example of what to do
with this particular type ofperpetrator under these types of
circumstances?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Yeah, that's a really good question and I don't know
the answer to that.
I will say I mean, my biggesttakeaway about the failure of
the system is Washington's rightto bail in dangerous
circumstances Like, for example,DV circumstances.
That is in the Washington stateconstitution.
The right to bail is actuallyin the constitution.
I'm not aware if there's otherstates that have it in their
(20:42):
constitution.
I'm just, I'm an expert inWashington law, not other states
laws.
That is.
The biggest hurdle is to changethis in Washington state.
We actually have to make aconstitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah, well good luck with that.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
For us Article 1, section 20 is where that lies,
and actually Senator Wilson didrun a bill trying to put that on
the ballot for like areferendum.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Senator.
Yeah, I just I did because Iheard from these two that that
was a impediment right to tryingto figure out what's happening
with these domestic violencelaws and how to make them better
.
And so I did run theconstitutional amendment and I
ran the bill that coincides withthat.
So you have to run the bill andamendment, because the
amendment goes to the people andthen the people are allowed to
(21:27):
determine whether they want thatin the Constitution or not.
But neither the constitutionalamendment or the bill ever got a
hearing.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Wow.
My takeaway from this is thatright to bail, being a right to
bail state, can be very harmfulin specific cases, this being a
prime example of when that mightlead to some the murder of an
intimate partner.
Now I want to also ask you,lauren, a little bit about the
no contact orders that wereinvolved in this situation,
(21:58):
because apparently I guess Idon't understand how it works.
So the no contact or protectiveorder is Halen cannot have any
contact with Tiffany and yet hecan see his children.
How does that work, or how isthat possible?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, I think that they can be difficult to enforce
, which is another problem withthe system.
But the no contact orderessentially will enumerate a
bunch of activities that he isnot allowed to participate in.
So that's direct contact withTiffany, third party contact
with Tiffany.
So he can't ask someone to tellTiffany something or to get
information from her.
That would include a distancefrom her home or her that he
(22:36):
wouldn't have been able to gointo.
Tiffany was the name victim inthis case, so the order
protected her, but it didn'tlist any of her children.
So he could still have hadcontact with his children.
So Tiffany's children wererather young when this happened.
But, for example, if thechildren were teenagers and they
had cell phones, a no contactorder like this wouldn't prevent
(22:57):
the offender from texting theirchild on their cell phone, as
long as he wasn't then askinghis child to go convey
information to the victim or toask the victim any questions or
to try to contact the victimthrough the child.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Is there a better way that that order could have been
constructed that could havebetter protected her?
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
The reason I asked it is because people listening may
have ideas about how to do it,and so I wasn't sure if we could
give them an example or an ideaof like a different way to put
this protective order together,because the three main audience
is law enforcement, prosecutorsand advocates.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Right.
Well, I think one of the thingsthat we can do is try to get
children as protected parties inorders too.
Sometimes it's difficult in thecriminal realm, at least in
Washington, to protect familymembers if they're not the named
victim.
It's not impossible, but it canbe more difficult.
We can always be encouragingvictims to go seek their own
(24:03):
civil protection order, beencouraging victims to go seek
their own civil protection order.
Obviously, the childrenwitnessed at least the original
assault, and so they wereimpacted by this violence too,
and so getting a civilprotection order which my office
can't do for someone, but wecould explain to them how to go
get that done could include thechildren as protected parties.
I think we need more educationtoo, for just everyone involved,
(24:25):
including the public, that whenan offender shows up to a place
where the protected party isand says, oh, I'm not here to
see the protected party, I'mjust here to see my children,
that's a violation, and so Ithink, it's both the way the
order's structured and the waythe order's interpreted.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, because abusers will do that.
They will use any aspect thatthey can to leverage things on
their you know, so that they win, so that they get access, so
that they get what they want,and you see it every day, I'm
sure Now it also seems thatTiffany had been doing
everything she could to protectherself and her children.
She reported to police, shefiled a protective order, and
(25:05):
yet it wasn't enough to save herlife.
What happened here?
Can anybody answer?
Like, what really went wrong?
I mean, she did everything bythe book, so I guess it was the
legislation that failed her insome way, right, senator?
The one that could have been inplace, that you had worked on
years before, could have been inplace, that you had worked on
(25:29):
years before.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
So let's talk about the legislation that you worked
on.
Can I just interrupt?
Yes, I think there's failuresin the system that absolutely we
can fix to protect victims.
Also, I think that offendersare going to show us where holes
in the system are.
So try as we might to createthe perfect system to protect
everyone.
I think it's important that weremember just how dangerous
(25:50):
these domestic violenceoffenders are, especially in
cases like this, where, in mymind, he's singularly focused on
hurting his family, that I'mnot sure that there's a system
that we can put in place that'sgoing to protect everybody.
I'm not sure there's a systemwe could have put in place that
would 100% have protectedTiffany.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying and I know that's
unfortunate.
It's just.
It just seems like in a perfectworld where, if you follow the
rules according to what's inplace to protect you as a woman
who is a victim of domesticviolence, you would think that
you would be safe.
It's unfortunate.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Criminals don't follow the rules.
Of course, right and whatkilled her was the gun that he
stole.
He knew he wasn't supposed toget a gun, but he stole one
anyway and that's what killedher.
So we have laws that say youcan't murder your spouse.
We do, but it doesn't matter,right?
It doesn't matter when you Imean to someone who's hell-bent
on doing this.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yes, Absolutely Excellent point.
So tell us about the bill youworked on and ultimately passed,
so in 2017,.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
I was at coffee with my middle daughter and she
watches a lot of these shows andshe said hey, mom, there's a
bill in Maryland that was passedin 2013.
And she explained the bill tome and it was very similar to
what I had.
And she brought this to mebecause she knew of the history,
my history, which was I grew upin a family where I was witness
(27:18):
to domestic violence, as farback as I can remember, pretty
much on a daily basis.
So she knew where I was comingfrom and brought the bill and I
said you know, that's a reallygood idea.
So I started doing the researchand decided that this was
something I wanted to do.
This is not why I came to thelegislature, but here it was, so
(27:38):
I had to.
The laws in Maryland aredifferent than the laws in
Washington, so I had to makesure that what we were doing
would work.
So I started off with thisparticular technology and found
that this is electronicmonitoring with real-time victim
notification.
So, to explain what it is, it'san ankle bracelet that's put on
(28:00):
the abuser, perpetrator and thevictim then would have either a
smartwatch or an iPhone or somesuch, and when there would be a
geofence around the person, thevictim, wherever she went,
right.
So it's not just like aprotective order or a piece of
paper that says don't come totheir work, don't come to their
(28:20):
home, don't go to their schools,it's wherever they are.
So it gives them a sense of atleast a little bit of peace to
know that, wherever they are,this person is at least a
thousand feet away from them atany time.
This particular bracelet isvery difficult to remove, if at
all.
It has a two-way communicationso that if there was ever a
(28:41):
hostage situation and theperpetrator would not answer the
phone for negotiation, theycould speak to them through the
ankle monitor, and it also hasan alarm on it that if, in any
case, law enforcement wanted touse it, it's about as loud as a
fire truck is what I've beentold.
I may be wrong, but that's whatI was told.
So, anyway, at that point,Illinois had about 500 people on
(29:06):
this particular technology andNew Zealand was also, so I
worked through the law.
That was in 2017.
I ran the bill in 2018 and itfailed, and I did have some
pushback on that.
We have what's called WASPIC,which is the Washington
Association of Sheriffs andPolice Chiefs, and they had
concerns, liability, right, andwhat if the technology failed?
(29:27):
Then what would happen?
And they just were not on board.
I really had to work on them toget on board with this because
of that type of thing.
He didn't want the victim tonot ever be vigilant, it's like,
but they're always going to bevigilant regardless, right?
But this gave them an option ifto have a little piece, even if
it failed and failing right now.
(29:47):
With the GPS, I understood thatit really rarely failed and
since 2013, GPS has gotten farbetter than you know than it was
that many years ago.
Either way, it failed in 2018.
So I ran it again in 2019.
And it failed again.
And so there was always someobstacle, or they just weren't
(30:07):
interested in passing the bill.
And then in November of 2019,that's when I was watching the
news and I saw how Tiffany Hillhad been murdered by her husband
.
It was a textbook case for thisbill the fact that he sat in
wait for her 20 minutes beforehe pulled in front of her, got
(30:31):
out of the car, shot her back tothe car.
I mean all of this right.
If she had this technology, webelieve that she would be alive
today, because he eitherwouldn't have been there because
he would know that he was beingtracked, or Tiffany would have
time to go back into the school.
The school got into lockdown.
She could have called thepolice.
(30:52):
So many options for her.
Because so many times in thesecases it is the element of
surprise right for the victim.
This takes away at least evenif minutes it takes away the
element of surprise for thatvictim.
They have time to think thealarm's gone off.
He's close to me or she.
I always have to qualify that.
It isn't always the man and thewoman.
(31:14):
It typically is, but they wouldhave time to gather their
thoughts.
What do I do with my children?
Can I call the police?
Should I just leave?
I mean, even in that instance,as he was driving toward her, if
she had driven off it probablywould have a different outcome.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
She would have had time to react.
But, to your point, the elementof surprise does make all the
difference and I think it's anamazing and genius idea to be
able to monitor and geofence aperson for their own personal
safety.
It's unfortunate that then youknow people have to be still be
tracked because they're unsafeand so they have to have this
(31:53):
bubble around them and, you know, just be protected that way.
But it does offer, to yourpoint, some measure, some
additional layer of protection.
Now, since it was passed it waspassed in 2020, correct.
How effective has this been?
Has it been utilized in thestate of Washington?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
It has in Clark County for the most part, which
is these gals.
I mean, the reason why it isthe gold standard, I believe, in
our state is because they putso much time, energy and
research for months into thisbefore they actually started
using it to make sure that itwas doing what it was supposed
to be doing and had less errors,if any.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
So they wanted to perfect it to the point it could
be perfected before we evenstarted using it, and it is my
understanding that there's beenover 600 people since then and
currently a couple of hundred.
It was just in Clark County.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yes, people since then and currently a couple of
hundred.
It was just in Clark County.
Yes, last year we had about intotal of approximately 680
offenders on the program duringthe year.
Right now, any given day, wehave approximately 240 offenders
on average.
So on any given day, 240domestic violence offenders in
Clark County, washington, are onoffender monitoring with victim
notification.
What we've seen we have a studybeing commissioned right now
(33:08):
but it's still in progress, butwe have seen reduced rates of
recidivism, at least in-personrecidivism, which is the most
dangerous kind.
We also have some anecdotalthings that really help us know
like this is working.
So we had an instance where theoffender is given a map and it
has a big red circle and it saysyou can't go here.
And that's important forprosecution because otherwise
(33:29):
they'll say I didn't know thatthe street was within a thousand
feet of a residence, whateverelse.
And we say did you sign thispaper with a pretty picture?
Right?
I go yeah, we did.
Yeah, you knew you weren'tsupposed to be there.
So he sat in what we call abuffer zone, which is just an
extra zone to give the victimextra time and warning.
It's not a violation of theorder to be there, but it's an
extra thousand feet on top ofwhatever's in the order To give
(33:50):
the victim a little bit morenotification.
This offender is coming closer.
So this particular gentlemansat in the buffer zone tampering
with his bracelet, texting herthat he was going to come to get
her.
But because he tampered withthe bracelet, we were called and
we picked him up.
We had a less fortunatesituation where we had an
offender who wore the braceletfor about six months while he
was on pretrial release.
(34:10):
He was given credit time servedas far as his sentence and the
bracelet was taken off and thenhe went home and he murdered his
wife, murdered himself in frontof their two children.
We have a third instance wherewe had a double homicide that
was involved child.
It was very upsetting.
It's a domestic violencesituation.
But that offender on his jailcall said I wish they would have
(34:31):
given me that ankle braceletthing because then I never would
have gone over there.
Now take that for what it'sworth.
This is from someone who'scommitted multiple homicides,
but it is.
It does show us that this issomething that offenders think
about and it's sort of thepoliceman at your shoulder
argument.
Would you do it with apoliceman at your shoulder, and
it's the same thing.
So this calls police.
If the offender enters a zonearound the schoolhouse, anything
(34:54):
that's in the order, then thepolice are called.
It's not just the victimgetting notified, the police are
notified and they respond tothis as well.
So there's an additional layerof protection there for victims.
If it's a static zone what wecall a static zone, where it's a
place that never moves we'recalled and we're dispatched out
to this order.
We have the ability to seewhere the offender is.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
With over 200 at any given time on this monitor in
just one county, which isremarkable in itself.
Just the number is so high.
What type of resources would apolice department need to
respond to that potential levelof violation?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing
because that's an objectionthat's come up sometimes.
Right, we're in WashingtonState and we're in Clark County.
So out of the states in theUnited States, we're 50th in
number of police officers percapita and Clark County is the
least in Washington State, sowe're dead last in staffing.
Wow, this has not been an issue.
We had approximately 200 callslast year with 600 and some odd
(35:52):
offenders that were on theprogram total last year.
And keep in mind that 240 is adaily number, so that's just
average per day.
So we'll probably have closerto 800 or 1000.
But it's a deterrent.
So what's great is that we seemuch less in-person recidivism.
But also it's not like a cellphone.
So I think a lot of for copsout there.
A lot of times we think of likewhen we write a warrant for
somebody's cell phone and itgives us a ping for 3000 meters
(36:14):
and we're like, awesome, they'resomewhere in the city.
That's really helpful findingthem.
That is not how this works.
So when it is working with ahigh fix, which is the vast
majority of the time, it'saccurate to within 15 feet.
So I've literally followedacross the city and to the
parking space he was in.
That's how good it is.
So instead of wasting timetrying to check addresses and
running around the city doingall these things that we
(36:35):
normally do trying to find anoffender, we just go to where he
is.
We log into the system.
Every officer just has a login.
They log in, they put it inwhat we call pursuit mode.
So pursuit mode takes thelocation pings from every one
minute apart to every 15 to 20seconds apart.
Every 15 to 20 seconds we get anew ping.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, so it's like turn-by-turn directions to get
to this person.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, the app actually has turn-by-turn
directions just to follow to theoffender.
It's something that I thinkactually saves resources.
It's been popular withdefendants because it's a least
restrictive alternative.
It's not EHM in a typical sense, so they're not on house arrest
, they can go to their job, theycan do things that they need to
do Stay away from the personthey're supposed to stay.
(37:17):
They just have to stay out of athousand feet, which is
apparently harder than it is forsome of our offenders.
However, it's a program thatthey have asked for.
We had some concerns aboutdefense and whether or not
they're gonna try to fight thisprogram.
What we actually see is thatoffenders prefer to have
monitoring and be out of custodythan they would to like an EHM
house arrest program or beingactually physically in custody.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So if someone creates a violation by going within a
thousand feet of the personthey're supposed to stay away
from, what's the response to theviolation?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The protocol for a static zone, which would be
homeschool work, somethingthat's listed as a static
location in the order.
If that happens, the firstthing that happens is dispatch
is called by our monitoringcenter and they're the people
that work the bracelets.
They call dispatch, they reportthrough a script, essentially a
restraining order in progress.
Dispatch dispatches officersout.
The officer logs in.
(38:09):
They start looking for theoffender.
Secondarily, after that call isdone, they activate the alarm
on the offender's bracelet,which is a 95 decibel siren.
After that they call into thebracelet, the monitoring center,
saying you need to not be inthe zone, you're in.
That's a recorded call.
It can be used in court andthey'll record whatever he says,
pound sand, whatever he happensto say, and that's recorded.
(38:31):
So all of those things kind ofhappen in succession on a static
order.
Now, on a mobile zone, whichwould be the app on the victim's
phone that goes with the victimwherever the victim is, the
protocol is a little bitdifferent and there were a
couple of reasons for that.
We leave it to the victim andthe victim is educated on this
in Clark County to call.
Two reasons One, I don't wantthe offender to go to drive by
mom's house, drive by sister'shouse, drive by sister's house,
(38:52):
drive by friend's house and tryto find when his bracelet goes
off.
And now he knows where she is.
But it's not an order violation, because he didn't make contact
with her, he didn't know shewas there, all those kinds of
things.
So I don't want him to use thissort of as a geolocation device
in reverse.
And then, secondarily is sortof unintended contact I'm
driving up I-5, she's drivingdown I-5.
(39:13):
There was no actual contact, nointended contact.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
No, they were there, yeah, those kinds of things and
those do happen.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
You know, vancouver is not an extremely large place.
So just that incidental contactwhere, like, there actually
wasn't any contact or anyintention of contact.
So in those cases for themobile zone, it is up to the
victim to call the police.
So those are the two sort ofsystems that we have, that that
works through.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
When there is a violation that's found, what's
the response to it?
As far as?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
charges being filed.
The charge would be violationof a domestic violence no
contact order In Washingtonstate.
If they have two priorconvictions it's a felony, if
not, it's a misdemeanor.
There's additional stalking inviolation of an order which we
might have if we have severalviolations, kind of thing.
So they could end up with afelony stalking charge as well.
But it's either a misdemeanorno contact order violation, or
(40:02):
if they have the two priorconvictions, it would be a
felony no contact orderviolation.
And if there's PC for stalking,stalking in violation of a no
contact order would then be afelony stalking case as well.
So it kind of depends on yourcircumstances, but you're always
going to have a violation ofthe domestic violence no contact
order as part of your charges.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Have you found, lauren, that this process having
this ankle monitor and you knowall of the things that Tanya
just mentioned that go alongwith it helpful to prosecuting
some of these cases?
Yeah, I found it extremelyhelpful.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I think one of the important things when
prosecuting these cases is to beable to educate the jury about
the cycle of violence and thedynamics that happen in these
domestic violence cases.
You know violence that happensfor the crime that's charged,
say the underlying assault.
That's not the first time orthe only violence that the
(40:51):
victims experienced at the handsof the perpetrator, and if
that's the only information thatwe're putting in front of the
jury, I think we are gettingbetter as a society at
understanding domestic violencedynamics.
I don't think everyoneunderstands domestic violence
dynamics and so if the jurydoesn't understand that this
assault happened in the contextof this whole dynamic
(41:13):
relationship, I don't think thejury is armed with the
information or the education tomake the most correct decision
on that case.
So when we have, in the eventthat the offender does violate
the no contact order and we haveno contact orders in addition
to the underlying assault onthese cases, that's one way that
we can show the jury exactlywhat this domestic violence
(41:35):
relationship looks like forthese two people.
So I think it ends up with thejury making better decisions on
each individual case.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, that's definitely makes sense.
And then finally, what's nextfor this legislation?
Kind of, are you doing anyresearch to measure how
effective it is using the anklemonitor and so on?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
We've partnered with Washington State Alice hi, alice
, if you're listening, she is aPhD who's taking all of the data
from our program.
We've now been up and runningthree and a half years, so we
have a decent enough sample sizeto make a good study.
There is other research that'sout there that shows overall
reduced recidivism in these kindof programs, but this will be a
Clark County specific study.
We're in the beginning phasesand still getting all the
(42:17):
permissions and things like that.
But we hope to have a researchpaper out on our program and the
effectiveness and the reducedrecidivism and also if there's
reduced recidivism for othercrimes.
You know, one of the thingsthat's nice about this as well
is that if the suspect hascommitted another kind of crime,
this can also be used to placethem at the location of the
crime.
So, for example, there was acarjacking in Portland.
(42:39):
They came across the bridge at120 miles an hour in the
carjacked car, which we knowbecause he had an ankle bracelet
.
Those kinds of things.
It's helpful in many differentways.
A lot of times when you haveEHM sort of situations, no one's
monitoring EHM they're on housearrest.
There's not really this highlevel of monitoring.
So it's very helpful and I didjust want to touch on.
So, as far as monitoring thevictim's location, I know there
(43:02):
are privacy concerns about that,so law enforcement is only able
to see victim location whenthey are within one half mile of
the offender.
Okay, so other than that, weare not able, I'm not even able
to see where the victim is therest of the time, and I wouldn't
want to be tracked by lawenforcement either as a victim.
Sure, but the only time we cansee is when they get that close,
and the reason that it's thatand not the actual order is we
(43:24):
need to be able to prove whowent to who and how people got
there.
Right, Because the offender isalways going to give us
something that's probably nottrue and we can show.
I think you know, to talk alittle bit to Lauren's point,
juries like to have maps anddata and geofence points.
They like that kind ofinformation as well, and so I
think it's very helpful to gohere's a paper he signed saying
he couldn't go there with apicture of this.
(43:46):
Here's where he was, here'swhere they were and go through
all of that information.
It's very factual and verydata-based.
It's not somebody's, you know,what the jury might view as an
opinion.
It's all very hard evidencedata and we have a great company
that comes in and they're happyto testify in court on our
behalf to the validity of thedata as well.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Wow, that's amazing.
I look forward to reading thefindings of this study.
Any other legislation that youcan point to in the state of
Washington that supports victimsof domestic violence well, that
others should be aware of Wellthere are bills that are trying
to run.
Speaker 5 (44:20):
There's training for judges, right so that the judges
are a little bit more aware ofdomestic violence, how it works,
how it plays out.
Apparently, there's very littletraining for judges in this
scenario.
I actually had a bill thatwould establish a judicial
sentencing database for judges.
So in this case Lauren'sexample she asked for a $2
(44:43):
million bail.
They started out at $75,000.
It got to $250,000, but hedidn't accept it.
The judge did not accept the $2million, right.
So I thought that a database soaccountability and transparency
for the public to know how manytimes do judges not do what the
prosecutor recommends?
Right?
And again, that bill didn't geta hearing.
(45:05):
It didn't go anywhere.
So I did get a bill passed in2022, allowing victims and or
survivors of victims to be ableto speak at the sentencing
hearings.
Up until that point, it wasonly felony cases, but now
domestic violence cases, theycan speak on behalf of either
the victim or the survivingvictim.
(45:26):
So we actually had to run abill so that they could actually
be allowed to speak, so thatthat did pass.
And I mean, some of these seemvery trivial, but when you get
down to it, the ability forsomeone to speak, so that did
pass, and I mean, some of theseseem very trivial, but when you
get down to it, the ability forsomeone to speak on their behalf
is kind of cathartic, right?
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Absolutely Allowing survivors to use their voices or
, if the survivor cannot, familymembers and loved ones of those
victims of domestic violence touse their voices, is critical
to making people aware of theseverity of domestic violence
and what actually leads up tothings like Tiffany Hill's
(46:00):
murder.
It wasn't just the fact that heacquired a gun and decided to
kill her one day.
There were years and years of apattern of abuse that went on
before this happened.
I appreciate your advocacy forwomen who are victims of
domestic violence and I thankall of you for talking with me
today, thank you, thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
(46:21):
The Conference on Crimes AgainstWomen's Summit Beyond the
Bounds, designed to addressgender-based crimes specific to
coastal, resort and ruralcommunities, will be held
September 22nd and 23rd in SouthPadre Island, texas.
For more information and toregister, visit our website
conferencecaworg and save thedate for the 2026 Conference on
(46:41):
Crimes Against Women, conveningMay 18th through the 21st 2026
in Dallas, texas, and follow uson social media at NationalCCAW
to get the latest news andinformation about all upcoming
events and trainings, includingvirtual and in-person
educational opportunities,updates on the Institute for
Coordinated Community Responseand more.
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that thiscontent may be difficult and
have listed specific contentwarnings in each episode
description to help create apositive, safe experience for
all listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes
are reported every year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutesthere is a murder.
Every five minutes there is arape.
Every two to five minutes thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:43):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of
us it's none of our business andI am proud to stand here today
with each of you to call thatperpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullin.
In November of 2019, tiffanyHill was shot and killed by her
estranged husband in front ofher three children and her
mother in the parking lot of theChildren's Elementary School
Leading up to the shooting.
Investigators were aware thatTiffany was in extreme danger,
with prosecutors requesting bailas high as $2 million after
(01:14):
Hill's husband placed a GPStracker on her car.
Unfortunately, keelan Hill'sbail was lowered to just
$250,000, which he posted, andthen, five days later, he killed
Tiffany and himself.
Curiously, in the background,washington state lawmakers were
already working on legislationthat could have saved Tiffany's
(01:34):
life.
Today, we talk with retiredstate Senator Linda Wilson,
sergeant in the Vancouver PoliceDepartment, tonya Wallstein,
and Senior Deputy ProsecutingAttorney, lauren Boyd, who all
were integral to the case ofTiffany Hill and the ultimate
legislation in her name.
Born in Spokane, washington,into an Air Force family, linda
Wilson experienced life acrossthe country before settling in
(01:57):
Vancouver.
While she never imaginedherself in public office, she
was driven by a sense of civicduty and a deep commitment to
her community, and in 2013, shestepped into public service by
running for the Washington StateHouse of Representatives.
The following year, she ran for, and secured a state senate
seat representing Clark andSkamania counties, serving with
(02:18):
distinction for eight years.
Linda's advocacy for domesticviolence victims became a
hallmark for her legislativework and was rooted in personal
experience.
Having grown up in a householdaffected by abuse, she
understood intimately the fear,instability and trauma that
victims endure.
That understanding fueled herdetermination to make a
difference.
In 2018, linda introducedlegislation to allow electronic
(02:41):
monitoring with real-time victimnotification.
Legislation to allow electronicmonitoring with real-time
victim notification, aninnovative solution aimed at
giving domestic violence victimsa tool for safety and peace of
mind.
Although it faced setbacks inits early years due to funding
concerns, it was unanimouslyapproved in 2020 as the Tiffany
Hill Act.
Tragically, in late 2019, hercommunity was shaken by the
murder of Tiffany Hill, a youngmother, veteran and domestic
(03:05):
violence victim, who was killedby her estranged husband while
sitting in her car outside of aschool with her children in the
back seat.
Linda was devastated.
She believed and still believesthat had her proposed
technology been in place,tiffany's life might have been
spared.
Tanya Wallstein is a sergeantwith the Vancouver Police
Department Domestic ViolenceUnit During her tenure in the
DVU.
Sergeant Wallstein is asergeant with the Vancouver
(03:25):
Police Department DomesticViolence Unit During her tenure
in the DVU, sergeant Wallsteintestified in support of the
Tiffany Hill Act and continuesto advocate for legislation
promoting the safety of domesticviolence victims.
She is responsible forinstituting Vancouver Police
Department's lethalityassessment for victims of DV,
the development andimplementation of Vancouver
Police Department's sexualassault investigation policy and
(03:48):
the Vancouver PoliceDepartment's patrol-based sexual
assault investigator program.
Sergeant Wallstein served as aboard member of the Northwest
Coalition Against Violence andExploitation and provides
domestic violence and sexualassault investigation training
to law enforcement agencies andpartners throughout the
Northwest.
Lauren Boyd has served as theappellate attorney at the Clark
(04:09):
County Prosecuting Attorney'sOffice since 2015,.
Serving as a trial advisor andappellate counsel, ms Boyd
handled all manner of cases,from misdemeanors to major
crimes, and served as the leadattorney for the Domestic
Violence Unit during much of theCOVID-19 pandemic.
In that capacity, she became asenior deputy prosecuting
attorney responsible for a teamof attorneys, support staff and
(04:32):
victim advocates tasked withprosecuting all levels of
domestic violence crime andworked closely with the law
enforcement partners.
Ms Boyd also recently served onthe board for the Washington
State Bar Association and hasbeen involved in advocating for
laws and policies protectingdomestic violence victims at
both the community and statelevel.
Tanya, lauren, linda, welcome tothe show, thank you, thank you.
(04:55):
So we're here to talk about themurder of Tiffany Hill, which
happened several years ago inWashington State, and there is a
lot to unpack with this case,as there typically is with this
type of domestic violencehomicide.
So we're going to start at thebeginning, or as far back at the
beginning as we can, with you,tanya, talk about the history of
(05:17):
domestic violence againstTiffany, including the arrests
for assault, the violating ofthe no contact order and so on,
because we want to get anunderstanding of what was
happening to Tiffany Hillleading up to her murder.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So on 9-11 of 2019 was the first call that the
Clark County Sheriff's Officereceived from Tiffany's family
and in that incident Keeland hadattacked Tiffany, shoved her,
causing her to hit her headagainst the wall, and she
attempted to call 911 on herphone.
He took her phone from her, sheattempted to use the Alexa to
(05:51):
call 911 and he unplugged it.
So her children, who werehiding in their room, text their
grandma help, help, help andsaid that Keeland was hurting
Tiffany.
So the grandmother called inClark County Sheriff's Office
deputies responded.
They arrested Keelan forassault, for some misdemeanor,
and took him to jail.
A no contact order was put inplace at that time.
(06:14):
The no contact order prohibitedhim from having any contact
with Tiffany, from coming withina specified distance of their
home and from purchasing afirearm.
Keelan, over the next couple ofmonths, repeatedly violated
this order.
So the next call that we gotwas that she had received a
phone call from Keelan.
So Tiffany called in and saidhey, he called, tried to
(06:36):
FaceTime me, didn't answer.
When the deputy spoke withKeelan he claimed that he was
trying to just add the ice incase of emergency to her contact
and that it was accidental andthat he had not intended to
contact Tiffany.
So there was no arrest made atthat time.
No probable cause was found.
He began showing up at placeswhere Tiffany was, oftentimes
(06:59):
for PTA meetings.
She was very involved with herkids' school and a big part of
the PTO that was there at theSarah J Anderson, and the first
time he showed up they were at arestaurant having a meeting.
He showed up as if to get foodbriefly left came back in a
second time.
Then, when she left in theparking lot he approached her
(07:20):
and tried to talk to her and thekids.
She told the kids to run andget in the car and then, when
Keelan saw that she was therewith friends, broke off and ran
away and the deputies respondedagain they did find probable
cause for an order violation.
However, keelan was not foundat that time.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So police could not find him after that happened.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Right, the police could not find him immediately
after that incident.
So although now there isprobable cause for an arrest,
keelan's location was unknown.
But within a couple of daysthey did get Keelan on the phone
.
Keelan claimed that he had beenat the bowling alley next door,
that he just went in to getsome food, that he basically
wasn't making an intentionalcontact and that he just wanted
(08:00):
to say hi to his kids, which hetechnically would have been
allowed to because the kids werenot part of the no contact
order, because they were notnamed victims in the case and
I'll let Lauren talk about thata little more later.
But they still found probablecause but Keelan wouldn't say
where he was and he wasn't ableto be found at that time.
It continued and there weremultiple incidents that were
reported.
In one of the incidents, keelanattempted to purchase a firearm
(08:23):
out of Multnomah County.
So Vancouver Washington is aborder city right next to
Portland, so it literally goesPortland Bridge Vancouver.
So essentially we end up beinga suburb.
But it's challenging becausethey are a completely different
state and a completely differentjurisdiction with different
rules and laws and all thosethings.
So when he attempted topurchase a firearm.
The employee at the Walmart thathe attempted to purchase it
(08:43):
from in Multnomah County did theright thing, denied his
purchase and reported it to thepolice there.
The police there did findprobable cause for an attempted
purchase of a firearm unlawfully.
However, keelan was gone andthat's a misdemeanor and it's
not typically something thatthey would run a warrant across
state lines to go get him for.
So now we know that we've gotall this danger going on.
(09:07):
We've got him showing up atplaces.
We've got him attempting phonecontact.
We didn't know at that time,but he was constantly texting
Tiffany throughout this time aswell, and that was later
reported.
He's now attempting to purchasea firearm in violation of the
no contact order.
And then he showed up again atanother restaurant that Tiffany
was at with again the.
(09:27):
PTO.
And this time her friendsreally advocated for her and she
advocated for herself and saidhe has to be tracking me in some
way, right, and they did find atracker on her car.
At that point they were able tolocate Keelan.
They did arrest Keelan, theyseized his vehicle and they
later searched it with a searchwarrant and found packaging and
(09:49):
other things that showedownership of the tracking device
on the car.
At that point other chargeswere added that he hadn't been
found for before and he hadanother hearing.
Ultimately he was able to bailout.
And when he bailed outUltimately he was able to bail
out.
And when he bailed out, therewas another order violation that
was reported.
The officer from VPD at thattime did not find probable cause
(10:11):
for a third-party contact orfor a direct contact and he
wasn't arrested.
And then, just a few short dayslater all of this happened
within a couple of months shewas at her children's elementary
schools and celebrating heryoungest daughter's birthday.
There was a safety plan inplace and she had a security
guard that was dedicated to kindof watch over her.
(10:31):
But because she had stayedlater and the school was closed,
the security guard had gonehome.
So when they left the school.
Keelan had been waiting in theparking lot for about 20 minutes
.
She had her mother had flowndown and was with her trying to
work through the situation.
All of us had encouraged her togo back with her family that
lived on the East Coast and thatwas something that they were
kind of trying to work through.
(10:51):
Tiffany really didn't want totake the kids out of school and
her whole community was thisschool and this PTO and her
children and she was veryreluctant to leave all of that,
even though she knew that Keelanwould try to kill her.
When they got into the car,keelan pulled forward, got out
of the car, displayed a gun,shot several times through the
windows of the car, strikingboth Tiffany and her mother, who
(11:13):
had reached over in aprotective gesture, like you
would in a car, trying toinstinctively block the bullets.
So her mom was shot, she wasshot several times and the kids
were all in the car.
They were luckily not shot.
It appeared that his firearmmalfunctioned from the security
video and he left and led thepolice on a chase.
Eventually the pursuit endedwhen he got stuck in traffic and
(11:35):
he got out of his car andturned the gun on himself.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's an incredible story.
Thank you for giving us thatlevel of detail.
I have so many questions aboutthe story and about everything
that you said.
Do you have an idea of what thedomestic violence experiences
were prior to Tiffany and herfamily arriving in Vancouver?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
There was a history of domestic violence between
Tiffany and Keelan and there hadbeen serious charges filed in
another state.
But, as often happens indomestic violence cases, keelan
had convinced Tiffany to recanther statement and they had
dropped the charges, and Ibelieve that was in Michigan.
I know that she had.
There was more history that wedon't even know about because it
(12:16):
had never been reported, andshe spoke with Lauren and I
about this when she met with us.
It's just a dynamic of DV thatwe hear so often, that cases are
dropped that really shouldn'tbe dropped because they feel
like they can't be prosecutedcorrectly, because the victim is
no longer willing to prosecute.
But there had been a history ofabuse throughout their marriage
and even serious abuse,including strangulation,
(12:38):
throughout the time that theyhad been married.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, I think part of the story was that she suffered
a concussion in one of theseincidents and law enforcement
was not aware that she had theconcussion.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So in that very first incident he was initially
arrested for an assault forwhich is a misdemeanor assault.
This is in Vancouver.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
In.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Vancouver, and when she got medical treatment they
were able to provide medicalrecords showing that she had all
the signs of a concussion.
So that charge was laterupgraded which Lauren can speak
to a little bit more to anassault too, which is a felony
assault charge at that point dueto the concussion.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So, lauren, let's turn to you as the prosecutor at
these hearings for Keelan Hill.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe charges that were brought
against him, what the processwas, what was available to you
as a prosecutor, maybe whattools were at your disposal to
keep him in prison or away fromTiffany, and then we'll also
(13:33):
talk about how the system failed, your efforts as well as
Tiffany.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Sure.
So I think it's important tonote that Washington is what's
called a right to a bail state.
That's where I really put oneof the major fails in the system
, especially when we're talkingabout domestic violence.
Defendants who are charged withcrimes not yet convicted of
crimes, have the right to bailthe prosecutor in cases of Class
(13:56):
A felonies, which are superserious felonies.
Keelan hadn't, at any of thetime that he was in Washington,
committed a Class A felonyagainst Tiffany up until the
point when he murdered her.
Obviously, the prosecutor canask a judge to hold somebody
without bail if they'vecommitted a Class A felony, but
Keelan hadn't committed that.
Also, if somebody violatestheir supervised release, the
(14:19):
prosecutor could make a motionsaying this person is out of
custody pending trial.
They violated the conditions ofthat release pending trial and
now you can judge can you pleasehold this person?
But short of that, inWashington state offenders have
a right to bail and so whenwe're in cases this super
dynamic and dangerous domesticviolence cases because of the
(14:41):
system, we have no ability toactually hold someone in custody
pending trial.
In my opinion, that's the onlyway we can 100% be sure that the
offender isn't going to go andkill their victim.
So the other tools that we haveare no contact orders.
We have the ability, through nocontact orders, to limit the
offender's ability to purchaseown touch firearms, but of
(15:05):
course, we need to rely on thatbeing reported to us.
We can't actually stop that onthe front end, right, it's just
back-end investigation oncethey've tried to purchase a
firearm.
At the time we didn't have thetechnology to have the GPS
tracking which we do have now.
So I think that in Washington,victims are safer because of
(15:26):
that technology.
2018, 2019, we didn't have thattechnology though.
So when Keelan was firstarrested on the misdemeanor
assault charge, he was alsocharged with interference with
reporting of domestic violence.
We couldn't ask to hold him incustody because he had that
right to bail.
It's pretty common that wedon't have medical records at
(15:47):
the time because the victimhasn't seen a doctor yet or the
records haven't made it to myoffice.
I can't charge, even if Isuspect that the victim might
have a concussion.
I can't charge that ethicallyunless I have the evidence that
I think will prove beyond areasonable doubt to a jury that
fact.
So that's why the assault crimetook a little while to be
(16:11):
elevated to a felony assault,because I didn't yet have the
evidence of her concussion thatI needed to be able to elevate
it.
So originally he was justcharged with a misdemeanor.
After the report started comingout and the stalking report
came in, he did get charged withfelony stalking.
That was a new crime.
That was charged in ourSuperior Court in Washington.
(16:32):
In Washington the SuperiorCourt handles felonies, district
Court handles misdemeanors.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
The stalking was, as a result of putting the tracker
on her car, correct.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
The tracker on her car and at that point we had the
information of all the otheractivities a lot of the other
activities, I should say not allof the other activities leading
up.
So stalking is kind of a courseof conduct Right Crime, the
tracker being, I guess, theultimate evidence that he's
intending to stalk her.
So we charged him with a felony.
(17:02):
Tiffany came into my office andmet with me and our victim
advocate.
She was very proactive.
She'd hired her own attorney.
She was really advocating.
I asked Tanya, who works downthe hallway from me or did at
the time, to come interviewTiffany and take the reports of
all these additional crimes thatKeelan had committed.
(17:34):
When he was charged with thestalking that's when we elevated
the misdemeanor assault to afelony assault He'd originally
been given about $75,000 bail.
Again, he hadn't yet violatedhis supervised release on this
new felony crime and so he stillhas the right to bail under
(17:55):
Washington law.
There's about a two-week periodbetween when he makes the first
appearance in superior court onthe now felony charges and when
when he's arraigned, that'swhen someone pleads guilty or
not guilty.
During that time is when we hadmet with Tiffany, gathered this
additional evidence.
I filed a motion before hisarraignment to raise his bail.
(18:16):
Because, with all of this newinformation that we're gathering
from Tiffany, $75,000 justdoesn't cover the very, very
serious and dangerous nature ofKeelan and his crimes.
So I filed a motion to raisebail.
The judge at his arraignmenttripled the bail to $250,000,
which is a high amount of bailthat we'd get in Vancouver for,
(18:41):
again, crimes that aren't classA felonies that someone still
has the right to bail in thestate he, in my opinion.
I didn't think that he would beable to bail out with that high
amount, but he was able to bailout and that's how he had
access to Tiffany when hemurdered her.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
How did he get access to the firearm?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
The firearm was stolen.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
I'm not sure the exact facts of how he got his
hands on it so we weren't ableto pin down exactly where it was
.
But the firearm had beenreported stolen two years before
out of Oregon, so it had likelybounced around quite a bit
Prior to the murder.
He had been asking friends andfamily like hey, can I borrow
your gun?
I want to take my wife shooting.
(19:23):
We're going to.
We're trying to like reconcileand you know we used trying to
like reconcile and you know weused to be in the military, so
we just want to go to theshooting range.
No one loaned him a gun, but hewas able to get his hands on
the stolen gun that had been outthere a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Wow.
He had all sorts of stories onwhy he needed a gun at Walmart.
When he'd been denied again, hetold the clerk there that he'd
had some vermin on his propertythat he needed to get rid of.
So I think he had all theseefforts trying to manipulate
others.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, and it sounds very much like this was a plan
that he set in motion kind ofrapidly for one reason or
another.
Lauren, a lot of what you justexplained to us was very
dependent upon conditions in theno contact order, as well as
bail and what you know, theright to bail state.
How does what happened inVancouver with this particular
(20:11):
case?
Are there other states that seta better example of what to do
with this particular type ofperpetrator under these types of
circumstances?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Yeah, that's a really good question and I don't know
the answer to that.
I will say I mean, my biggesttakeaway about the failure of
the system is Washington's rightto bail in dangerous
circumstances Like, for example,DV circumstances.
That is in the Washington stateconstitution.
The right to bail is actuallyin the constitution.
I'm not aware if there's otherstates that have it in their
(20:42):
constitution.
I'm just, I'm an expert inWashington law, not other states
laws.
That is.
The biggest hurdle is to changethis in Washington state.
We actually have to make aconstitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah, well good luck with that.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
For us Article 1, section 20 is where that lies,
and actually Senator Wilson didrun a bill trying to put that on
the ballot for like areferendum.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Senator.
Yeah, I just I did because Iheard from these two that that
was a impediment right to tryingto figure out what's happening
with these domestic violencelaws and how to make them better
.
And so I did run theconstitutional amendment and I
ran the bill that coincides withthat.
So you have to run the bill andamendment, because the
amendment goes to the people andthen the people are allowed to
(21:27):
determine whether they want thatin the Constitution or not.
But neither the constitutionalamendment or the bill ever got a
hearing.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Wow.
My takeaway from this is thatright to bail, being a right to
bail state, can be very harmfulin specific cases, this being a
prime example of when that mightlead to some the murder of an
intimate partner.
Now I want to also ask you,lauren, a little bit about the
no contact orders that wereinvolved in this situation,
(21:58):
because apparently I guess Idon't understand how it works.
So the no contact or protectiveorder is Halen cannot have any
contact with Tiffany and yet hecan see his children.
How does that work, or how isthat possible?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, I think that they can be difficult to enforce
, which is another problem withthe system.
But the no contact orderessentially will enumerate a
bunch of activities that he isnot allowed to participate in.
So that's direct contact withTiffany, third party contact
with Tiffany.
So he can't ask someone to tellTiffany something or to get
information from her.
That would include a distancefrom her home or her that he
(22:36):
wouldn't have been able to gointo.
Tiffany was the name victim inthis case, so the order
protected her, but it didn'tlist any of her children.
So he could still have hadcontact with his children.
So Tiffany's children wererather young when this happened.
But, for example, if thechildren were teenagers and they
had cell phones, a no contactorder like this wouldn't prevent
(22:57):
the offender from texting theirchild on their cell phone, as
long as he wasn't then askinghis child to go convey
information to the victim or toask the victim any questions or
to try to contact the victimthrough the child.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Is there a better way that that order could have been
constructed that could havebetter protected her?
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
The reason I asked it is because people listening may
have ideas about how to do it,and so I wasn't sure if we could
give them an example or an ideaof like a different way to put
this protective order together,because the three main audience
is law enforcement, prosecutorsand advocates.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Right.
Well, I think one of the thingsthat we can do is try to get
children as protected parties inorders too.
Sometimes it's difficult in thecriminal realm, at least in
Washington, to protect familymembers if they're not the named
victim.
It's not impossible, but it canbe more difficult.
We can always be encouragingvictims to go seek their own
(24:03):
civil protection order, beencouraging victims to go seek
their own civil protection order.
Obviously, the childrenwitnessed at least the original
assault, and so they wereimpacted by this violence too,
and so getting a civilprotection order which my office
can't do for someone, but wecould explain to them how to go
get that done could include thechildren as protected parties.
I think we need more educationtoo, for just everyone involved,
(24:25):
including the public, that whenan offender shows up to a place
where the protected party isand says, oh, I'm not here to
see the protected party, I'mjust here to see my children,
that's a violation, and so Ithink, it's both the way the
order's structured and the waythe order's interpreted.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, because abusers will do that.
They will use any aspect thatthey can to leverage things on
their you know, so that they win, so that they get access, so
that they get what they want,and you see it every day, I'm
sure Now it also seems thatTiffany had been doing
everything she could to protectherself and her children.
She reported to police, shefiled a protective order, and
(25:05):
yet it wasn't enough to save herlife.
What happened here?
Can anybody answer?
Like, what really went wrong?
I mean, she did everything bythe book, so I guess it was the
legislation that failed her insome way, right, senator?
The one that could have been inplace, that you had worked on
years before, could have been inplace, that you had worked on
(25:29):
years before.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
So let's talk about the legislation that you worked
on.
Can I just interrupt?
Yes, I think there's failuresin the system that absolutely we
can fix to protect victims.
Also, I think that offendersare going to show us where holes
in the system are.
So try as we might to createthe perfect system to protect
everyone.
I think it's important that weremember just how dangerous
(25:50):
these domestic violenceoffenders are, especially in
cases like this, where, in mymind, he's singularly focused on
hurting his family, that I'mnot sure that there's a system
that we can put in place that'sgoing to protect everybody.
I'm not sure there's a systemwe could have put in place that
would 100% have protectedTiffany.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying and I know that's
unfortunate.
It's just.
It just seems like in a perfectworld where, if you follow the
rules according to what's inplace to protect you as a woman
who is a victim of domesticviolence, you would think that
you would be safe.
It's unfortunate.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Criminals don't follow the rules.
Of course, right and whatkilled her was the gun that he
stole.
He knew he wasn't supposed toget a gun, but he stole one
anyway and that's what killedher.
So we have laws that say youcan't murder your spouse.
We do, but it doesn't matter,right?
It doesn't matter when you Imean to someone who's hell-bent
on doing this.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yes, Absolutely Excellent point.
So tell us about the bill youworked on and ultimately passed,
so in 2017,.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
I was at coffee with my middle daughter and she
watches a lot of these shows andshe said hey, mom, there's a
bill in Maryland that was passedin 2013.
And she explained the bill tome and it was very similar to
what I had.
And she brought this to mebecause she knew of the history,
my history, which was I grew upin a family where I was witness
(27:18):
to domestic violence, as farback as I can remember, pretty
much on a daily basis.
So she knew where I was comingfrom and brought the bill and I
said you know, that's a reallygood idea.
So I started doing the researchand decided that this was
something I wanted to do.
This is not why I came to thelegislature, but here it was, so
(27:38):
I had to.
The laws in Maryland aredifferent than the laws in
Washington, so I had to makesure that what we were doing
would work.
So I started off with thisparticular technology and found
that this is electronicmonitoring with real-time victim
notification.
So, to explain what it is, it'san ankle bracelet that's put on
(28:00):
the abuser, perpetrator and thevictim then would have either a
smartwatch or an iPhone or somesuch, and when there would be a
geofence around the person, thevictim, wherever she went,
right.
So it's not just like aprotective order or a piece of
paper that says don't come totheir work, don't come to their
(28:20):
home, don't go to their schools,it's wherever they are.
So it gives them a sense of atleast a little bit of peace to
know that, wherever they are,this person is at least a
thousand feet away from them atany time.
This particular bracelet isvery difficult to remove, if at
all.
It has a two-way communicationso that if there was ever a
(28:41):
hostage situation and theperpetrator would not answer the
phone for negotiation, theycould speak to them through the
ankle monitor, and it also hasan alarm on it that if, in any
case, law enforcement wanted touse it, it's about as loud as a
fire truck is what I've beentold.
I may be wrong, but that's whatI was told.
So, anyway, at that point,Illinois had about 500 people on
(29:06):
this particular technology andNew Zealand was also, so I
worked through the law.
That was in 2017.
I ran the bill in 2018 and itfailed, and I did have some
pushback on that.
We have what's called WASPIC,which is the Washington
Association of Sheriffs andPolice Chiefs, and they had
concerns, liability, right, andwhat if the technology failed?
(29:27):
Then what would happen?
And they just were not on board.
I really had to work on them toget on board with this because
of that type of thing.
He didn't want the victim tonot ever be vigilant, it's like,
but they're always going to bevigilant regardless, right?
But this gave them an option ifto have a little piece, even if
it failed and failing right now.
(29:47):
With the GPS, I understood thatit really rarely failed and
since 2013, GPS has gotten farbetter than you know than it was
that many years ago.
Either way, it failed in 2018.
So I ran it again in 2019.
And it failed again.
And so there was always someobstacle, or they just weren't
(30:07):
interested in passing the bill.
And then in November of 2019,that's when I was watching the
news and I saw how Tiffany Hillhad been murdered by her husband
.
It was a textbook case for thisbill the fact that he sat in
wait for her 20 minutes beforehe pulled in front of her, got
(30:31):
out of the car, shot her back tothe car.
I mean all of this right.
If she had this technology, webelieve that she would be alive
today, because he eitherwouldn't have been there because
he would know that he was beingtracked, or Tiffany would have
time to go back into the school.
The school got into lockdown.
She could have called thepolice.
(30:52):
So many options for her.
Because so many times in thesecases it is the element of
surprise right for the victim.
This takes away at least evenif minutes it takes away the
element of surprise for thatvictim.
They have time to think thealarm's gone off.
He's close to me or she.
I always have to qualify that.
It isn't always the man and thewoman.
(31:14):
It typically is, but they wouldhave time to gather their
thoughts.
What do I do with my children?
Can I call the police?
Should I just leave?
I mean, even in that instance,as he was driving toward her, if
she had driven off it probablywould have a different outcome.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
She would have had time to react.
But, to your point, the elementof surprise does make all the
difference and I think it's anamazing and genius idea to be
able to monitor and geofence aperson for their own personal
safety.
It's unfortunate that then youknow people have to be still be
tracked because they're unsafeand so they have to have this
(31:53):
bubble around them and, you know, just be protected that way.
But it does offer, to yourpoint, some measure, some
additional layer of protection.
Now, since it was passed it waspassed in 2020, correct.
How effective has this been?
Has it been utilized in thestate of Washington?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
It has in Clark County for the most part, which
is these gals.
I mean, the reason why it isthe gold standard, I believe, in
our state is because they putso much time, energy and
research for months into thisbefore they actually started
using it to make sure that itwas doing what it was supposed
to be doing and had less errors,if any.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
So they wanted to perfect it to the point it could
be perfected before we evenstarted using it, and it is my
understanding that there's beenover 600 people since then and
currently a couple of hundred.
It was just in Clark County.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yes, people since then and currently a couple of
hundred.
It was just in Clark County.
Yes, last year we had about intotal of approximately 680
offenders on the program duringthe year.
Right now, any given day, wehave approximately 240 offenders
on average.
So on any given day, 240domestic violence offenders in
Clark County, washington, are onoffender monitoring with victim
notification.
What we've seen we have a studybeing commissioned right now
(33:08):
but it's still in progress, butwe have seen reduced rates of
recidivism, at least in-personrecidivism, which is the most
dangerous kind.
We also have some anecdotalthings that really help us know
like this is working.
So we had an instance where theoffender is given a map and it
has a big red circle and it saysyou can't go here.
And that's important forprosecution because otherwise
(33:29):
they'll say I didn't know thatthe street was within a thousand
feet of a residence, whateverelse.
And we say did you sign thispaper with a pretty picture?
Right?
I go yeah, we did.
Yeah, you knew you weren'tsupposed to be there.
So he sat in what we call abuffer zone, which is just an
extra zone to give the victimextra time and warning.
It's not a violation of theorder to be there, but it's an
extra thousand feet on top ofwhatever's in the order To give
(33:50):
the victim a little bit morenotification.
This offender is coming closer.
So this particular gentlemansat in the buffer zone tampering
with his bracelet, texting herthat he was going to come to get
her.
But because he tampered withthe bracelet, we were called and
we picked him up.
We had a less fortunatesituation where we had an
offender who wore the braceletfor about six months while he
was on pretrial release.
(34:10):
He was given credit time servedas far as his sentence and the
bracelet was taken off and thenhe went home and he murdered his
wife, murdered himself in frontof their two children.
We have a third instance wherewe had a double homicide that
was involved child.
It was very upsetting.
It's a domestic violencesituation.
But that offender on his jailcall said I wish they would have
(34:31):
given me that ankle braceletthing because then I never would
have gone over there.
Now take that for what it'sworth.
This is from someone who'scommitted multiple homicides,
but it is.
It does show us that this issomething that offenders think
about and it's sort of thepoliceman at your shoulder
argument.
Would you do it with apoliceman at your shoulder, and
it's the same thing.
So this calls police.
If the offender enters a zonearound the schoolhouse, anything
(34:54):
that's in the order, then thepolice are called.
It's not just the victimgetting notified, the police are
notified and they respond tothis as well.
So there's an additional layerof protection there for victims.
If it's a static zone what wecall a static zone, where it's a
place that never moves we'recalled and we're dispatched out
to this order.
We have the ability to seewhere the offender is.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
With over 200 at any given time on this monitor in
just one county, which isremarkable in itself.
Just the number is so high.
What type of resources would apolice department need to
respond to that potential levelof violation?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing
because that's an objectionthat's come up sometimes.
Right, we're in WashingtonState and we're in Clark County.
So out of the states in theUnited States, we're 50th in
number of police officers percapita and Clark County is the
least in Washington State, sowe're dead last in staffing.
Wow, this has not been an issue.
We had approximately 200 callslast year with 600 and some odd
(35:52):
offenders that were on theprogram total last year.
And keep in mind that 240 is adaily number, so that's just
average per day.
So we'll probably have closerto 800 or 1000.
But it's a deterrent.
So what's great is that we seemuch less in-person recidivism.
But also it's not like a cellphone.
So I think a lot of for copsout there.
A lot of times we think of likewhen we write a warrant for
somebody's cell phone and itgives us a ping for 3000 meters
(36:14):
and we're like, awesome, they'resomewhere in the city.
That's really helpful findingthem.
That is not how this works.
So when it is working with ahigh fix, which is the vast
majority of the time, it'saccurate to within 15 feet.
So I've literally followedacross the city and to the
parking space he was in.
That's how good it is.
So instead of wasting timetrying to check addresses and
running around the city doingall these things that we
(36:35):
normally do trying to find anoffender, we just go to where he
is.
We log into the system.
Every officer just has a login.
They log in, they put it inwhat we call pursuit mode.
So pursuit mode takes thelocation pings from every one
minute apart to every 15 to 20seconds apart.
Every 15 to 20 seconds we get anew ping.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, so it's like turn-by-turn directions to get
to this person.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, the app actually has turn-by-turn
directions just to follow to theoffender.
It's something that I thinkactually saves resources.
It's been popular withdefendants because it's a least
restrictive alternative.
It's not EHM in a typical sense, so they're not on house arrest
, they can go to their job, theycan do things that they need to
do Stay away from the personthey're supposed to stay.
(37:17):
They just have to stay out of athousand feet, which is
apparently harder than it is forsome of our offenders.
However, it's a program thatthey have asked for.
We had some concerns aboutdefense and whether or not
they're gonna try to fight thisprogram.
What we actually see is thatoffenders prefer to have
monitoring and be out of custodythan they would to like an EHM
house arrest program or beingactually physically in custody.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So if someone creates a violation by going within a
thousand feet of the personthey're supposed to stay away
from, what's the response to theviolation?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The protocol for a static zone, which would be
homeschool work, somethingthat's listed as a static
location in the order.
If that happens, the firstthing that happens is dispatch
is called by our monitoringcenter and they're the people
that work the bracelets.
They call dispatch, they reportthrough a script, essentially a
restraining order in progress.
Dispatch dispatches officersout.
The officer logs in.
(38:09):
They start looking for theoffender.
Secondarily, after that call isdone, they activate the alarm
on the offender's bracelet,which is a 95 decibel siren.
After that they call into thebracelet, the monitoring center,
saying you need to not be inthe zone, you're in.
That's a recorded call.
It can be used in court andthey'll record whatever he says,
pound sand, whatever he happensto say, and that's recorded.
(38:31):
So all of those things kind ofhappen in succession on a static
order.
Now, on a mobile zone, whichwould be the app on the victim's
phone that goes with the victimwherever the victim is, the
protocol is a little bitdifferent and there were a
couple of reasons for that.
We leave it to the victim andthe victim is educated on this
in Clark County to call.
Two reasons One, I don't wantthe offender to go to drive by
mom's house, drive by sister'shouse, drive by sister's house,
(38:52):
drive by friend's house and tryto find when his bracelet goes
off.
And now he knows where she is.
But it's not an order violation, because he didn't make contact
with her, he didn't know shewas there, all those kinds of
things.
So I don't want him to use thissort of as a geolocation device
in reverse.
And then, secondarily is sortof unintended contact I'm
driving up I-5, she's drivingdown I-5.
(39:13):
There was no actual contact, nointended contact.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
No, they were there, yeah, those kinds of things and
those do happen.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
You know, vancouver is not an extremely large place.
So just that incidental contactwhere, like, there actually
wasn't any contact or anyintention of contact.
So in those cases for themobile zone, it is up to the
victim to call the police.
So those are the two sort ofsystems that we have, that that
works through.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
When there is a violation that's found, what's
the response to it?
As far as?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
charges being filed.
The charge would be violationof a domestic violence no
contact order In Washingtonstate.
If they have two priorconvictions it's a felony, if
not, it's a misdemeanor.
There's additional stalking inviolation of an order which we
might have if we have severalviolations, kind of thing.
So they could end up with afelony stalking charge as well.
But it's either a misdemeanorno contact order violation, or
(40:02):
if they have the two priorconvictions, it would be a
felony no contact orderviolation.
And if there's PC for stalking,stalking in violation of a no
contact order would then be afelony stalking case as well.
So it kind of depends on yourcircumstances, but you're always
going to have a violation ofthe domestic violence no contact
order as part of your charges.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Have you found, lauren, that this process having
this ankle monitor and you knowall of the things that Tanya
just mentioned that go alongwith it helpful to prosecuting
some of these cases?
Yeah, I found it extremelyhelpful.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I think one of the important things when
prosecuting these cases is to beable to educate the jury about
the cycle of violence and thedynamics that happen in these
domestic violence cases.
You know violence that happensfor the crime that's charged,
say the underlying assault.
That's not the first time orthe only violence that the
(40:51):
victims experienced at the handsof the perpetrator, and if
that's the only information thatwe're putting in front of the
jury, I think we are gettingbetter as a society at
understanding domestic violencedynamics.
I don't think everyoneunderstands domestic violence
dynamics and so if the jurydoesn't understand that this
assault happened in the contextof this whole dynamic
(41:13):
relationship, I don't think thejury is armed with the
information or the education tomake the most correct decision
on that case.
So when we have, in the eventthat the offender does violate
the no contact order and we haveno contact orders in addition
to the underlying assault onthese cases, that's one way that
we can show the jury exactlywhat this domestic violence
(41:35):
relationship looks like forthese two people.
So I think it ends up with thejury making better decisions on
each individual case.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, that's definitely makes sense.
And then finally, what's nextfor this legislation?
Kind of, are you doing anyresearch to measure how
effective it is using the anklemonitor and so on?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
We've partnered with Washington State Alice hi, alice
, if you're listening, she is aPhD who's taking all of the data
from our program.
We've now been up and runningthree and a half years, so we
have a decent enough sample sizeto make a good study.
There is other research that'sout there that shows overall
reduced recidivism in these kindof programs, but this will be a
Clark County specific study.
We're in the beginning phasesand still getting all the
(42:17):
permissions and things like that.
But we hope to have a researchpaper out on our program and the
effectiveness and the reducedrecidivism and also if there's
reduced recidivism for othercrimes.
You know, one of the thingsthat's nice about this as well
is that if the suspect hascommitted another kind of crime,
this can also be used to placethem at the location of the
crime.
So, for example, there was acarjacking in Portland.
(42:39):
They came across the bridge at120 miles an hour in the
carjacked car, which we knowbecause he had an ankle bracelet
.
Those kinds of things.
It's helpful in many differentways.
A lot of times when you haveEHM sort of situations, no one's
monitoring EHM they're on housearrest.
There's not really this highlevel of monitoring.
So it's very helpful and I didjust want to touch on.
So, as far as monitoring thevictim's location, I know there
(43:02):
are privacy concerns about that,so law enforcement is only able
to see victim location whenthey are within one half mile of
the offender.
Okay, so other than that, weare not able, I'm not even able
to see where the victim is therest of the time, and I wouldn't
want to be tracked by lawenforcement either as a victim.
Sure, but the only time we cansee is when they get that close,
and the reason that it's thatand not the actual order is we
(43:24):
need to be able to prove whowent to who and how people got
there.
Right, Because the offender isalways going to give us
something that's probably nottrue and we can show.
I think you know, to talk alittle bit to Lauren's point,
juries like to have maps anddata and geofence points.
They like that kind ofinformation as well, and so I
think it's very helpful to gohere's a paper he signed saying
he couldn't go there with apicture of this.
(43:46):
Here's where he was, here'swhere they were and go through
all of that information.
It's very factual and verydata-based.
It's not somebody's, you know,what the jury might view as an
opinion.
It's all very hard evidencedata and we have a great company
that comes in and they're happyto testify in court on our
behalf to the validity of thedata as well.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Wow, that's amazing.
I look forward to reading thefindings of this study.
Any other legislation that youcan point to in the state of
Washington that supports victimsof domestic violence well, that
others should be aware of Wellthere are bills that are trying
to run.
Speaker 5 (44:20):
There's training for judges, right so that the judges
are a little bit more aware ofdomestic violence, how it works,
how it plays out.
Apparently, there's very littletraining for judges in this
scenario.
I actually had a bill thatwould establish a judicial
sentencing database for judges.
So in this case Lauren'sexample she asked for a $2
(44:43):
million bail.
They started out at $75,000.
It got to $250,000, but hedidn't accept it.
The judge did not accept the $2million, right.
So I thought that a database soaccountability and transparency
for the public to know how manytimes do judges not do what the
prosecutor recommends?
Right?
And again, that bill didn't geta hearing.
(45:05):
It didn't go anywhere.
So I did get a bill passed in2022, allowing victims and or
survivors of victims to be ableto speak at the sentencing
hearings.
Up until that point, it wasonly felony cases, but now
domestic violence cases, theycan speak on behalf of either
the victim or the survivingvictim.
(45:26):
So we actually had to run abill so that they could actually
be allowed to speak, so thatthat did pass.
And I mean, some of these seemvery trivial, but when you get
down to it, the ability forsomeone to speak, so that did
pass, and I mean, some of theseseem very trivial, but when you
get down to it, the ability forsomeone to speak on their behalf
is kind of cathartic, right?
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Absolutely Allowing survivors to use their voices or
, if the survivor cannot, familymembers and loved ones of those
victims of domestic violence touse their voices, is critical
to making people aware of theseverity of domestic violence
and what actually leads up tothings like Tiffany Hill's
(46:00):
murder.
It wasn't just the fact that heacquired a gun and decided to
kill her one day.
There were years and years of apattern of abuse that went on
before this happened.
I appreciate your advocacy forwomen who are victims of
domestic violence and I thankall of you for talking with me
today, thank you, thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe.
(46:21):
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For more information and toregister, visit our website
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(46:41):
Crimes Against Women, conveningMay 18th through the 21st 2026
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