PORT ANGELES — Accused killer Tommy Ross Jr. is seeking a mental competency evaluation after DNA tests on a strand of hair indicated he was in the apartment of the Port Angeles woman he is charged with murdering 40 years ago.
An agreed order for the evaluation will likely be presented to Clallam County Superior Court Judge Brian Coughenour at a 9 a.m. hearing this coming Tuesday.
Coughenour considered a motion Tuesday by Ross’ court-appointed attorney, Lane Wolfley of Port Angeles, to have Ross, 59, undergo the mental review.
Deborah Kelly, conducting the case for the Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said she will argue against the need for the evaluation but will prepare a proposed order with Wolfley if Coughenour says the evaluation should take place in Clallam County as opposed to Western State Hospital in Lakewood.
Coughenour said having Western State Hospital staff evaluate Ross at the Clallam County jail is “our best case scenario.”
Kelly and Wolfley said in separate interviews Tuesday that they expect the evaluation will not delay Ross’ scheduled Oct. 1 trial.
Ross, whose probable cause affidavit listed no current address, is charged with first- and second-degree murder in the April 24, 1978, strangulation death of 20-year-old Janet Bowcutt.
Bowcutt’s body was discovered bound, gagged and fully clothed in her West Eighth Street apartment located between the Eighth Street bridges.
Her 6-month-old son was found crying and unharmed on her bed.
Ross has been incarcerated in the Clallam County jail since Nov. 15, 2016, on $1.5 million bail.
DNA test results released in January indicated a hair found on Bowcutt’s blouse belonged to Ross, Wolfley said.
Ross spent 38 years in prison in Canada under a life sentence for the murder about a month earlier, in May 1978, of Janice Forbes, 26, of Victoria, before his release on parole Nov. 10, 2016.
Five days after Ross’ release, upon his entry into the United States at Blaine, he was arrested for investigation of Bowcutt’s murder.
Ross sees himself “in need of understanding whether or not he is competent to proceed,” Wolfley told Coughenour.
“Over the course of Tommy Ross’ 39 years in prison, he has had over 300 incidents involving violence and assaultive behavior,” Wolfley said in his motion filed Tuesday.
“His numerous psychiatric reports at times describe him as delusional and borderline schizophrenic with little to no insight into his circumstances,” Wolfley said.
“Certainly with the return of DNA testing indicating his having been in the victim’s apartment, his hopes of an acquittal from a jury have begun to dissipate.
“Furthermore, the medication which have sustained him over the decades are absent in his life, inducing a very disruptive element into his thinking.”
Wolfley said the Canadian parole board released Ross on condition that he seek and obtain psychiatric services. He said that Ross had been on psychotropic drugs his entire adult life and that Ross was in a psychiatric hospital when he was arrested in 1979 in Los Angeles.
“We know that Mr. Ross has had psychiatric issues since at least the time he was 9 years of age,” Wolfley said at the hearing.
While in jail in Port Angeles, Ross has not received any medical treatment “dealing with this aspect of his personality,” Wolfley said.
“I have witnessed a grave deterioration of his mental facilities over the last five weeks,” Wolfley added.
A Jan. 26 report from Bode Cellmark Forensics of Lorton, Va., concluded that the DNA from a hair found on Bowcutt’s blouse “is consistent” with Ross’ DNA, according to the report.
The analysis concluded that “99.934 percent of the population can be excluded as being a source of the evidence.”
Wolfley submitted a Feb. 6 motion to suppress the DNA testing results on the hair also is scheduled for Tuesday but will not likely be heard, Wolfley said.
Wolfley said the Nov. 19, 2016 search warrant for a buccal swab, or smear, from inside Ross’ cheek was based on an arrest warrant that was quashed in 2014 and was wrongly executed to arrest Ross Nov. 16, 2016, for Bowcutt’s murder.
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office responded that a Clallam County Superior Court judge had determined that enough probable cause existed “multiple times” for Ross’ arrest for murder before 2014.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
