An Anchorage jury on Thursday convicted Rachelle Waterman of criminally negligent homicide but found her not guilty of the more serious charges stemming from the death of her mother in 2004, including murder and kidnapping.
"We are satisfied," said Ketchikan District Attorney Stephen West, one of the Waterman's prosecutors. "I'm glad they agree that Rachelle Waterman was responsible in some way for her mother's death."
Waterman's attorney, Steven Wells, said he was pleased that the jury acquitted Waterman on six of the seven counts in the indictment, but planned to appeal the conviction. He said prosecutors wanted their "pound of flesh" in the killing of Lauri Waterman.
Her father, Carl "Doc" Waterman, said he remains angry that his daughter was forced to answer to charges.
"One of my strongest emotions right now is anger that she has been put through this for six years when she should never have been charged with anything in the first place," Carl Waterman told The Associated Press.
Sentencing guidelines indicate Rachelle Waterman could get up to four years in prison, but the prosecutor introduced an aggravating factor -- Waterman and her mother lived in the same house -- that would make it possible for a judge to sentence her to up to 10 years. She remains free on bond and attends college in Florida.
To convict Waterman on the charge of criminally negligent homicide, the jury would have had to conclude that she set in motion the chain of events that led to her mother's murder, and that she failed to stop it, according to closing arguments in the case.
Waterman, now 22, was a 16-year-old high school student in the Southeast town of Craig when two of her friends killed her 48-year-old mother. The two friends pleaded guilty and pointed their fingers at Rachelle Waterman as the person who wanted Lauri Waterman dead.
A jury in Juneau was unable to reach a verdict in her first trial, splitting 10-2 for acquittal, and the judge moved the retrial to Anchorage because of extensive publicity in Southeast Alaska.
Waterman was charged with murder in the first and second degree, conspiracy to commit murder, criminally negligent homicide, kidnapping and burglary.
Waterman's retrial began Jan. 24 in Anchorage after taking 3 1/2 days to seat a jury. The case went to the jury a week ago.
Both of the admitted killers, Brian Radel and Jason Arrant, testified in Waterman's first trial, but only Radel testified in the most recent. Arrant's earlier testimony was played to the Anchorage jury. Both men are serving long prison terms.
In a brief interview after the verdict, Wells described Waterman as "a real good kid" who met up with the wrong crowd. He described Arrant as a "manipulative psychopathic murderer."
The acquittals on the other charges show "she didn't want her mom dead all along," Wells said.
Jurors in Anchorage Superior Court heard gripping and sometimes ghastly testimony about the killing, what led up to it, and the aftermath. They heard that Lauri Waterman opposed her teenage daughter's relationship with Arrant, who was 24, worked as a school janitor and lived with his parents. They heard how Waterman complained of physical and emotional abuse by her mother to friends and boyfriends, including Arrant and his blood brother, Radel, another 24-year-old with whom Waterman had also had a brief dalliance.
They watched a video interview in which Waterman acknowledged to law enforcement investigators that she wanted her mother dead and for Arrant to take care of it. Waterman admitted she knew the killing was planned on a weekend that both she and her father were out of town. But she also said repeatedly that she had called Arrant and told him "don't do it."
Prosecutors say there was no record of that call and even if she made it, that doesn't negate her responsibility. She didn't stop the killing and didn't alert police. They say she used stories of mistreatment by her mother to cultivate the lovelorn, emotionally immature Arrant and his buddy Radel and encouraged them to get rid of her mother, with whom she had been fighting since she was 14.
The defense said it was Arrant who wanted Lauri Waterman out of the picture so that he could pursue Rachelle, and that it was Arrant who embellished stories of abuse to bring Radel on board to carry out the killing. Waterman never talked directly with Radel about the killing, both she and Radel told investigators.
The men planned several different scenarios, including one almost completed in which Radel went to a vantage point near Craig High School intending to shoot Lauri Waterman after she dropped her daughter off for volleyball practice. That one failed only because Radel forgot the bolt for his rifle. Prosecutors called it attempted murder.
Ultimately the men tried to stage a drunken driving crash but botched it. Radel kidnapped Lauri Waterman from her home in Craig, made her drink wine and drove her in the family minivan to a spot north of town, he told jurors. But he couldn't break her neck so he beat and suffocated her. Then the men burned her body in the family minivan on an isolated logging road on Prince of Wales Island.
Daily News reporter Lisa Demer contributed to this report.
By CASEY GROVE
casey.grove@adn.com