The longtime partner of a woman found dead in their shared Agnew home last week has been cleared of a murder investigation after autopsy results showed her death likely was not a homicide.
An autopsy on the body of Josephine Lejeune, 55, showed that her underlying medical conditions made her injuries appear “far more severe than they actually were,” Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly said Friday.
“At this stage, there’s nothing that would suggest homicide,” Kelly said.
Lejeune’s partner, 47-year-old Stephen O. Skrzynski, on Friday was exonerated from Clallam County Superior Court conditions of release imposed on him after his arrest, though he remains in the county jail in lieu of $50,000 bail for a District Court case.
Never charged in death
Skrzynski never was charged in Lejeune’s death.
He was arrested by sheriff’s investigators after they responded to the couple’s Osborn Road home Tuesday night, and he was booked into jail for investigation of domestic violence-related second-degree murder.
During his first court appearance Wednesday, Skrzynski said he was innocent and that he had never touched Lejeune, of whom he described as his soul mate of 13 years.
“She was just sitting there,” he told a judge.
Skrzynski was silent during his brief court hearing Friday afternoon.
“I’m just glad he was exonerated,” his court-appointed attorney, Terry Mulligan of Clallam-Jefferson Public Defenders, said after the hearing.
