PORT TOWNSEND — Police barricaded city streets around the Jefferson County Courthouse in preparation for a scheduled arraignment last week of Michael J. Pierce, who is accused of the murders of Patrick and Janice Yarr of Quilcene.
The arraignment was delayed during a brief hearing on Friday. The 34-year-old Quilcene man now is scheduled to be arraigned on 11 felonies, including double homicide, next Friday.
Twenty people watched as Superior Court Judge Craddock Verser granted a continuance of the arraignment of Pierce — who attended the court hearing via video camera from the Jefferson County jail in Port Hadlock — to give Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Scott Rosekrans and Public Defender Richard Davies more time to prepare for the case.
Port Townsend police expected a much larger number of people at the hearing.
Anticipated traffic
Prior to the scheduled arraignment, police barricaded Jefferson, Franklin and Clay streets at their intersections with Walker street near the courthouse to reroute an anticipated surge of traffic.
“We got a call from the sheriff that several individuals planned to show up,” Port Townsend Police Sgt. Ed Green said.
“The traffic issues are not for the sheriff to worry about in the city streets, so that is why we did it.”
Green said police set up overflow parking and an area for oversized vehicles — such as logging trucks — to safely park.
Some 700 people attended the April 4 memorial service for Patrick Yarr, 60, and Janice Kay Yarr, 57.
Among those who mourned the couple known throughout the North Olympic Peninsula were loggers and truckers who formed convoy of 100 trucks from Chimacum to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds for the service.
Larry Allen, a trucker who organized the memorial procession, said that the Yarrs — who owned Pat Yarr Logging and Yarr Cattle Co., and who had lived in Forks as well as Quilcene — were icons in the timber industry.
Found dead
The Yarrs were found dead in their home at 780 Boulton Farm Road in Quilcene on March 19, the day after a fire ravaged the house.
Investigators said that the Yarrs had not died from the fire — and that the flames were intentionally set.
Pierce is charged with two homicides, arson, and two counts of robbery, one count of burglary, two counts of theft of a firearm, two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and one count of identity theft.
He was arrested on March 23 after he was identified by investigators from an image taken from a surveillance camera at an automated teller machine at a Quilcene bank. The camera allegedly recorded him using the Yarrs’ debit card minutes after the blaze at their home began.
Pierce remains in Jefferson County jail on $250,000 bail.
He was transported by ambulance from the jail to an unidentified hospital for medical treatment on April 2.
Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez declined to say why Pierce was hospitalized, citing privacy requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.
“A staff member witnessed the medical emergency, and aid was summoned,” Hernandez said then.
Pierce has told investigators that he did not shoot the Yarrs or start the fire March 18.
According to charging documents, Pierce claims another person — who he has refused to name without a plea deal — entered the Yarrs’ home that night, shot them and started the fire.
Hernandez said no one else has been arrested in the case.
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Jefferson County reporter Erik Hidle can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at erik.hidle@peninsuladailynews.com.
