Waterman gets 3 years in mother's killing

Rachelle Waterman was just 16 years old when she was accused of conspiring to kill her mother. She was acquitted in February of the more serious charges of conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder, charges that could have put her behind bars for life.

But the Anchorage jury, hearing the case on a change of venue, did find her guilty of criminally negligent homicide, and she was sentenced in Craig, her hometown and where her mother, 48-year-old Lauri Waterman, was kidnapped and murdered in 2004. The now 23-year-old woman could have been sentenced to a maximum 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors said the verdict meant the teen should have known that Jason Arrant and Brian Radel, both 24 at the time, posed a substantial risk to her mother. Radel was her boyfriend then.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Waterman as a rebellious teenager who manipulated her boyfriends into killing her mother because she wanted to be free of her control.

In November 2004, Radel sneaked into Lori Waterman's home while Rachelle and her father were away for the weekend. He kidnapped the mother from her third-floor bedroom, tied her up and forced her to drink a bottle of wine. Then he left the home in Lauri Waterman's minivan with her tied up in the back.

The idea was to make her death appear to be a drunken driving accident. But when Radel and Arrant realized that her death didn't look like an accident because she had been beaten and then suffocated, they burned the van with her body inside.

Waterman's lawyer, Steven Wells, told the jury that the teen might have resisted her mother's disciplinarian ways but loved her and didn't want her dead. He said the girl did not plan her mother's murder. Wells said it was Arrant, her boyfriend at the time, who felt his girlfriend slipping away and blamed the mother.

Wells said he got Radel, a loyal friend, to do the killing.

Waterman at first denied being intimate with either man. But eventually she admitted to having had sexual relationships with both and telling them about her problems with her mother. She told police she had discussed the idea of killing her mother with Arrant but had never spoke directly to Radel about it.

The teen acknowledged that she knew a plan was in the works to kill her mother but didn't think Radel and Arrant would go through with it.

Lauri Waterman's charred skeleton was found inside her burned-out van at the end of an old logging road.

Waterman's first trial ended in a hung jury. The indictment against her later was thrown out, as was some of the state's evidence. The Alaska Court of Appeals restored some of that evidence and the state decided to retry her.

Waterman returned to Alaska for the trial. She had been attending college in Florida and working at a hotel.

Arrant and Radel pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and are serving lengthy prison sentences.