Carnation Massacre On Christmas Eve
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A family that seemed so close was torn apart over money and jealousy. In the end, six would die, two have been removed from society, and it seems none of this ever had to happen at all.
December 24, 2007
Around 4 pm that afternoon Michele Anderson and her boyfriend Joseph McEnroe drove to her parent’s home in Carnation, Washington.
Michele’s parents were Wayne and Judy Anderson, and they had invited over their children for a Christmas Eve gathering. They had been busy cooking a roast and were looking forward to spending the evening with their family.
Once inside, Joseph distracted Judy, who was wrapping gifts, while Michele looked for her father, Wayne. She confronted him before raising her pistol and shooting him.
The sound of Michele shooting her pistol made Judy and Joseph run into the kitchen.
Michele’s gun had jammed after the first shot, so Joseph had to kill Wayne. Then he turned towards Judy, who was screaming, Joseph apologized to her before he shot her in the face in the kitchen.
After they drug the bodies outside to a shed, then went about cleaning up the blood using towels and blankets. Then they burned these in a fire pit outside. The murderers spent an hour mopping up the floors and hiding all evidence that a crime had occurred.
The cleaning frenzy was so when Michele’s brother and family arrived; they wouldn’t know what happened until it was too late.
Scott and his wife Erica arrived with their two small children Olivia 5, and Nathan 3. They made it into the living room before Michele shot her brother.
Erica grabbed the phone and called 911. All she got out was, “Not the kids! No!” Before she was shot and the call was disconnected.
Both Michele and Joseph shot Erica. Then Joseph killed the two children. Later they would say it was because they believed the children would be scarred for life from witnessing their parents being killed, so they thought it better to kill them also.
All of the family members had been shot in the head and face. A total of 14 rounds had been fired.
After killing the last of the family, Michele walked to the end of the driveway and closed the gate. When a patrolman arrived later to check up on the hung up 911 call, he found the gate locked and left.
December 26, Two Days After the Murders
Judy was scheduled to work the day after Christmas at the Post Office, but never showed or called. So her friend Linda Thiele, left work to make sure everything was alright around 8 am.
When she pulled in the drive, she was stopped by the locked gate. She got out of her car and walked around it and up to the front door of the house. She knocked, but when no one answered, she tried the handle, and the door was unlocked.
When Linda called the police, she only had seen three bodies, those of Scott, Erica, and Nathan. She didn’t realize that Olivia was under her mother’s body. She also didn’t know that her friend and her friend’s husband were in the backyard.
“The gate is locked, which makes me wonder if her daughter did it because I might be up here with a murderer,” Linda Thiele told the 911 dispatcher.
While the police were on the scene, Michele and Joseph arrived. They said that they were planning to drive to Las Vegas to get married, but had gotten lost and decided to head back home.
Investigators who spoke with them found it suspicious that the couple never asked why police were there, or if their family was alright.
Finally, a detective asked Michele why she thought the police were at her family’s home. She broke down, “It’s not Joe’s fault. It’s all my fault.”
Was There a Motive?
Michele and Joseph were taken to the police station and interrogated. Michele admitted that she killed her family, she said she had been planning it for a couple of weeks.
The reason she gave investigators was she had grown “tired of everybody stepping on her.”
Michele said her brother refused to pay back $40,000 he had borrowed from her, and her parents had taken his side in the dispute. Around the same time, her parents had started to make her pay rent.
The Only Family Member Spared
Michele and her younger brother Scott had an older sister, Mary Victoria Anderson. She had not been feeling well and told her family that she was going to have to skip the Christmas Eve gathering. That is the only reason she believes she still alive.
After she spoke to her sister Michele, “It kills me. I loved you so much.”
Trial Of Joseph McEnroe
Joseph took the stand at his trial and told the courtroom what happened on Christmas Eve 2007.
“It’s smoky, it smelled of blood and death,” Joseph said in a whisper. He suffers from a speech impediment and talks in whispers.
“She (Michele) starts firing on Scott. Scott, at the same time, goes and gets up and starts charging around the table to where she is at.” Joseph testified. Saying Scott died fighting for his life, by wrestling Michele for the gun.
Joseph said when he saw Erica grab the phone and call 911, he ran over and grabbed the phone from her. He pulled out the batteries and threw them on the floor.
Then Michele started shooting at Erica and Olivia, who were both hit but not dead.
Erica begged Joseph, “We love you, you don’t have to do this.”
“I shot her first, so she didn’t have to watch her children die.” Joseph said.
Next, he shot Nathan because he was closest to him. Joseph said that Nathan, after being shot, “He held up the phone batteries and showed it to me.” Joseph took this to mean that Nathan was accepting what was about to happen. Then he finished off Olivia.
Joseph blamed his partner Michele, saying she tricked him into killing her family, that she was a bully to him. “She treated me like an attack dog, a guard dog.”
He said the reason Michele wanted them dead was, “Because she was jealous, because she felt entitled.”
A neighbor to the Anderson family testified that they had overheard Michele yelling at Joseph, “You’re a loser! You have no job, no money, no life!”
Throughout most of his trial, Joseph sat at the defense table emotionless, but on the stand, it was another story. Due to being medicated, he was hardly able to piece sentences together at times; at other times, he would break out into laughing fits. When he was describing the look on Judy’s face when he shot her, he put his arms over his head and started rocking uncontrollably.
Then he lashed out at the prosecutor on cross-examination, “You know what, fuck it. If you want to kill me, go ahead. Kill me. I don’t care.”
Trial of Michele Anderson
During the trial, prosecutors played Anderson’s taped confession she had made days after the murders. She called herself a ‘monster’ and ‘bad person’ for killing her family, then would turn and blame her actions on her family. She said that her mother, father, and brother had all abused her for years.
“I wasted my life because of these assholes. It’s not fair.” Michele said.
By the end of her trial, Michele had an outburst. She yelled at the judge that she was going to file charges against her court-appointed attorneys, she was convinced they had been lying to her. She asked the judge to leave jail and find her own counsel, but the judge denied this request. Which caused her to lash out, claiming the judge was ‘violating her rights.’
One thing that most would find odd by the defenses legal counsel was, they didn’t call any witnesses to the stand. Michele has filed an appeal for a new trial because of this.
Convictions
Both Joseph and Michele are found guilty of six counts of aggravated first-degree murder and were sentenced to life without parole.
