Bruce Hummel

This is a case of justice NOT served. This is not a case in which an innocent person was sent to prison or a murder went unsolved. This is a case in which it was proven, not once, but twice that the defendant had murdered his wife. The first conviction was overturned on a technicality that had nothing to do with the evidence. The second conviction was overturned because the courts did not agree with the prosecutors, or the jury apparently, that “premeditation” existed and in essence said that the prosecutors “over charged” in the case. The result was that Bruce Hummel was not only released from prison but prosecutors were barred from trying him again.

This was not just a simple case of murder, not that there really is such a thing I suppose. This was a case in which not only does it seem clear that Bruce Hummel murdered his wife, Alice, in 1990, but he spent many of the eighteen years before his arrest sending gifts and cards and letters to the children that he and Alice shared, claiming they were from her. On top of all of this Bruce Hummel continued to collect disability checks in his wife's name.

Bruce and Alice Hummel had lived in Alaska in the 1970's where they were both school teachers. In April of 1979 Alice stopped teaching due to a diagnosis of Lupus. She began receiving disability checks and would continue to be entitled to them until she turned sixty years old in 2004, at which time she would then receive her retirement from teaching.

At some point after this Bruce and Alice bought a home in Bellingham Washington. Alice and their three children moved to Washington while Bruce continued to teach in Alaska, coming home on breaks and summers. In June of 1986 he too stopped teaching in Alaska and make the move to live with his family full time. In October of 1990 shortly before her fourteenth birthday their youngest daughter went to Alice and told her that Bruce had been sexually molesting her. According to the daughter her mother told her she would “take care” of it. The last time Alice's children saw her was on the morning of October 18^th before they went to school.

Bruce Hummel later told the children that Alice had moved out of state for a job. The children did not really seem to buy it, especially since she had plans to spend time with her daughter for her birthday, going to a ballet but they, nor anyone else, reported Alice missing. Over the next several years the three children would receive Christmas cards, letters and presents that seemingly came from Alice. One letter stated that she had moved on with her life, met a man and did not want to be involved with the children any longer. Many of the things, including a divorce filing that Bruce made in 1995 had a Texas address listed for Alice.

My research indicated that it took until 2001 for the two Hummel daughters to confide in each other that Bruce had molested them both. It seems as if this, along with the disappearance of their mother had been a taboo subject for more than a decade. It was after this at some point that they apparently went to authorities with their story and an investigation into what may have happened to Alice began.

By 2004 Bruce was living in Billings Montana with his new wife when investigators went to talk to him. Initially he reported to the investigators that he had taken Alice to the local airport. Whether it was then or in another interview Bruce was made aware that investigators were not buying that story. They would inform him that they had discovered that one of the checks sent to their children had been signed by Bruce and that the Fort Worth Texas return address listed was not a valid address. The same was found for the Dallas address that was used in his 1995 filing of divorce. It appears that the addresses were not just proven to not be addresses for Alice, they did not exist what so ever, and never had.

It was after these discoveries that Bruce came up with a new story to authorities. He would then claim that Alice had been dead for years, but not by his hand, by her own. He told investigators that Alice had slit her wrists and left a note asking him to hide the suicide from their children. This was the excuse he used when confronted with the fact that he had sent their children things over the years indicating they were from Alice. He would tell the authorities that he had taken her body and put it on a raft with him on Bellingham Bay. He claimed that a storm had come, the raft overturned and the body had sunk.

Authorities did not have a lot of evidence to prove that Bruce's new story was a lie, but they could use that story and bring in federal authorities. Whether Bruce murdered Alice, or she had committed suicide was one thing, the fact that he admitted knowing she was dead opened him up to a new set of problems. Presumably Bruce's number one concern at the time was doing what he had to in order to avoid a murder charge. What he did not think about was the fact that he had kept a bank account open in which Alice's disability checks had been going into. In 2007 federal authorities arrested him and charged him with twelve counts of wire fraud. They had determined that he had collected over $270,000 from disability checks due to Alice.

While he was serving his time in federal custody authorities in Washington were working on building a case against him for murder. In August of 2008 they charged him with the murder of his wife. He would go to trial in August of 2009. He would be convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to forty-five years. In 2012 an appeals court overturned the conviction. They had stated that there was more than sufficient evidence to prove his guilt but that during jury selection a portion of it was held behind closed doors and not in a public court room. They ruled this as a civil rights violation.

In 2014 Bruce Hummel would once again be convicted in the murder of his wife. This time he was given a twenty-six year sentence. This was significantly less than the previous sentence, but there was a reason for it. In his first sentencing the authorities had used his federal wire fraud conviction as a previous crime and counted that against him as far as a previous crime. It appears that when the first conviction was overturned that the courts had also ruled that due to the fact that Washington did not have a law on the books that was related to this type of crime that it could not be used against him. I know it sounds odd, but I can only assume that only previous state crimes could be used against him. Since Washington did not have a comparable crime on the books, then while he had obviously committed a crime, it was not a state crime.

As is the case in nearly all cases, an appeal was once again filed. On October 17, 2016 the appeal court made a ruling that surprised everyone. They once again overturned the conviction and sentence, but even more than that they had ruled that the state could not try him again. Despite the previous appeals court ruling that there was significant evidence of guilt, this appeals court stated that in order to obtain a first degree murder charge there had to be significant evidence of premeditation. If there was not premeditation then only a second degree murder charge could be obtained. Despite the jury apparently finding evidence of premeditation, the court decided there was not enough to prove this point. At the time of the trial the prosecutors had not given the jury an option for second degree murder. They would later say that they did not feel they needed to considering that the previous court had ruled there was significant evidence proving his guilt. The new courts ruled that this was not a case in which they could simply lower the charge and re-try him for a third time. In an odd turn though the courts all but said they were sure he had murdered his wife but that the prosecutor had simply not proven premeditation. And yet they stated “Reversal for insufficent evidence is equivalent to an acquittal.”

To explain it a little better, if the prosecutor had allowed the option of second degree murder in the trial then they could have retried him. However, since they had only asked for first degree murder the courts ruled they could not simply now charge him with second degree and move forward. They ruled that a simple reduction in charges would not be Constitutional. The prosecutor obviously was not happy and appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court, however they declined to hear the case.

Prosecutors had argued that he had to have lured her from inside the home because of her size comparable to his own. From their standpoint this was evidence of premeditation. The appeals court argued that in his statement that Alice had committed suicide he had stated that he had wrapped her body in a blanket and drug her to his van and that the state could not prove that is not how he got her body outside the home. In his first trial the prosecutors had presented a cellmate of Hummel's who claimed that Hummel told him that he had “helped Alice get to a better place” by grounding up pills and mixing it in apple cider. The jury had pretty much dismissed this witness and so the prosecutor had not presented him in the second trial. In my opinion, even though the first jury did not necessarily find him credible, this witness should have been presented to the second trial since the prosecutors were solely going for first degree. They have argued that they did not ask for second degree because the first appeals court said the evidence was there, but then they turned around and made changes to the case they presented in the next trial.

It should also be pointed out that in the second trial even the defense gave a “theory” or “hypothetical” to the crime and even they claimed that had it occurred in that manner that the charge would have been 2^nd degree murder. And yet still the prosecutors did not allow the jury to convict on a lesser charge. That being said, the jury still ultimately convicted Hummel on the 1^st degree charge. While I take issue with the fact that the prosecutor basically fumbled this case and should have given the jury more options, I also take issue with the fact that the appeals court in essence simply over ruled the jury in this case. They did not find an error that was made in the trial as they had found in the first trial, they simply overruled the jury on this. The twelve jurors obviously felt that there was enough evidence for a 1^st degree conviction. I have to admit that rulings such as this from the courts are a bit scary to me.

Bruce Hummel was released from prison in March of 2017. He remained on probation for three years for the federal crimes he had served time for. He was seventy-five years old at the time of his release. There was never any evidence that there were ever charges filed against him for the molestation of either of his daughters. Although I suspect that if the prosecutor could make that case now they would attempt to do so as everyone, even the court it seems, believes a killer was set free.