PORT ANGELES — The death penalty may be sought against accused double-murderer Patrick B. Drum of Sequim, Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly said Wednesday.
The 34-year-old was charged Wednesday in the murders of Jerry W. Ray, 56, of 31 Heuslein Road in Port Angeles and Gary L. Blanton Jr. of 5011 Sequim-Dungeness Way in Sequim.
Blanton and Drum lived at the same residence.
Drum, smiling in court as he did Monday in his first county Superior Court appearance, was formally charged as he sat before Judge George L. Wood.
He was charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and, as a convicted felon, one count of first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in connection with the shooting deaths of Ray and Blanton.
Wood ordered that Drum continue to be held without bail in the Clallam County jail and set his arraignment for 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The bodies of Blanton and Ray — both shot multiple times — were found Sunday at their homes. Authorities said Drum told them he was targeting convicted sex offenders.
Drum was arrested in a rugged area near Blue Mountain Road at about 2:30 p.m. Sunday after a manhunt that included 65 officers from city, state, county and federal law enforcement agencies.
Kelly has 30 days after the arraignment to file the intention to seek the death penalty.
The alternative would be to seek life imprisonment.
A request by Kelly for a sentence of death for Drum upon conviction would suit Blanton’s wife, she said in an interview Wednesday.
“I beg her to do it,” Leslie Blanton said after the court hearing she attended with the Blantons’ two boys, ages 1 1/2 and 2 1/2.
“He sentenced me and my family to life without my husband and kids without their dad,” she said.
Her husband and Drum, who was raised in Port Angeles, had been friends, she said, adding that Drum had shared dinner at the couple’s house and sold them furniture for their babies’ nursery.
“A father, a husband, was taken from his family,” she said.
“My kids are screaming to this day,” she said. “My baby pounds on the window and says, ‘Dad die, Dad die.’”
As two Clallam County sheriff’s deputies led Drum out of the courtroom, Lesley Blanton sobbed, “Look at his face.”
Later, she said, “He’s not sorry for what he’s done.
“He was laughing, snickering, looking at me and my children.”
People have said rude things to her about her husband’s sex-offender record, Leslie Blanton said.
She said her husband had accepted a plea bargain after being convicted of third-degree rape in 2001 while in high school.
“She was his girlfriend,” she said.
Gary Blanton’s sister-in-law, Tiffany Austin, 29, of Port Angeles, had said Tuesday that the rape charge against Blanton grew out of a relationship Blanton had with a teenager when he and the teenager were both in high school.
Ray was convicted in 2002 of first-degree rape of a child.
Authorities have not established a connection between Drum and Ray, Clallam County Detective Sgt. Lyman Moores said Wednesday, adding that autopsies on Blanton and Ray had just been completed.
Authorities said Drum, who was attending Peninsula College for addiction studies, admitted to the murders and had intended to kill at least one other convicted sex offender in Jefferson County.
They said they linked a 9 mm handgun in his possession at the time of his arrest to the two killings.
Drum was in and out of jail and prison between July 1998 to March 2009 for charges generated in Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties that included residential burglary, second-degree burglary, tampering with a witness, drug possession, possession of stolen property and unlawful issuance of checks, according to the state Department of Corrections.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
