PORT ANGELES — Patrick Drum was unrepentant as he was sentenced Tuesday to two life terms in prison without parole for admittedly plotting and carrying out the murders of two convicted sex offenders, including a personal friend.
“It was never my intent to hurt the families involved,” he said Tuesday at his sentencing hearing in Clallam County Superior Court.
“That’s like collateral damage,” said Drum, 34, of Sequim.
“As far as the men themselves, actions speak louder than words,” he added.
Drum pleaded guilty Aug. 30 to the June killings.
Judge S. Brooke Taylor imposed the mandatory life terms without parole for two counts of aggravated first-degree murder along with 116 months for first-degree burglary and 89 months for first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly said in an interview that she is considering filing a gun-related charge against the man — an ex-felon — who allegedly sold Drum the $500 handgun Drum used in the early June slayings of his housemate, Gary L. Blanton Jr., 28, and Jerry W. Ray, 56, of Port Angeles.
The burglary and firearm sentences “for all practical purposes, mean nothing, but they are required,” Kelly told Taylor at the hearing.
Kelly said some people “admire” Drum for killing Blanton and Ray.
But the county will not tolerate the vigilantism that led Drum to hunt down and shoot Blanton and Ray multiple times the weekend of June 2, she said.
Drum responded to Kelly by defending those who take the law into their own hands.
“This country is based on vigilantism,” said Drum, dressed in black-and-white jail garb that identifies him as an inmate who is segregated from the general population because of his behavior.
When Drum was captured June 3 east of Blue Mountain Road following a helicopter-aided manhunt, he told authorities he was going to Quilcene to kill a third convicted sex offender.
Drum’s backpack contained a case for his holstered 9 mm handgun, camping gear and the addresses and names of two Jefferson County men whose names were contained in Clallam County Sheriff’s Office reports that were obtained by Peninsula Daily News.
Both men are Level 2 sex offenders with a moderate risk to reoffend, Jefferson County Chief Criminal Deputy Joe Nole said Tuesday.
Drum will be taken from Clallam County jail to the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton for processing as soon as his paperwork is finalized, jail Superintendent Ron Sukert said.
A restitution hearing was set for 9 a.m. Dec. 12.
Before his sentencing Tuesday, Drum, who was represented by court-appointed lawyer Karen Unger of Port Angeles, sat passively through statements by family members who were alternately tearful, angry, somber or bewildered over Drum’s deadly actions.
Leslie Blanton, Gary’s Blanton’s wife, kissed Jerry Ray’s wheelchair-bound father, Paul Ray, 84, softly on the cheek before walking to the front of the courtroom to confront Drum.
Not 10 feet away, she propped up a large portrait of the Blantons’ two small children with the former Peninsula College student, an Astoria, Ore., native who also wrote poetry and had done farm labor.
The children “are never going to have a dad again,” Leslie Blanton said.
“They think they see him everywhere, they wait for his visit, they wait for him every morning to call,” Blanton said.
“How do you explain to a 2-year-old that dead is forever?”
This year, her children delivered their Father’s Day cards to Gary Blanton’s casket, she said, addin that this week, one of his sons learned to walk.
Leslie Blanton said it was unbearable that Drum’s supporters park in front of her house and yell at her, pointing at spectators in the packed courtroom.
“You need to tell your little supporters to stop,” she beseeched Drum.
She and Drum had known each other for 10 years, and Drum had seen “the worst of me,” Blanton said, adding they had gone through addiction counseling together.
“You watched all my dreams come true,” she said, sobbing.
Her husband “made me everything I am today, and you took that from me,” Blanton said.
“I don’t know who you are or what’s happening inside your heart, but I despise it,” she said.
“You’ve lost your soul to the core.”
Gary Blanton’s mother, Barbara Davis of Tacoma, said via speaker phone that she was bewildered that Drum had known Blanton for nine years before he killed him.
Blanton and Drum shared a house Drum rented.
According to Sheriff’s Office investigative reports, Drum’s landlord told authorities that Drum has “Game Over” tattooed on his eyelids.
Authorities said Drum shot Blanton 17 times.
“I wanted to come and find him and hunt him down,” Davis said.
“What God has told me is I need to let go of my bitterness and my anger and my unforgiveness for this man because I am not his judge,” she said.
“God will judge him,” she said.
Jerry Ray lived with his father, Paul Ray, and drove his father on errands, “the whole works,” Paul Ray said after he was wheeled before Taylor.
Ray’s bullet-riddled body was found at their home.
“Right now, I’m looking to get a caregiver,” Ray said.
“The only thing I can say is, I don’t have no sympathy for the man when he shot and killed my son.”
Judge Taylor said it was ironic that extra security was protecting Drum against vigilante actions during his sentencing hearing — at least four deputies were in the courtroom — when no such protection was afforded Drum’s victims.
Taylor also noted a second irony: Kelly did not seek the death penalty.
“The lives of the victims are lost forever,” Taylor said.
“Yours is going to be protected . . . for the rest of your life.”
Taylor repeatedly emphasized that vigilantes will not be tolerated in Clallam County.
He added that some in prison find a way to “give back” in terms of good works.
“I hope you will find a way in your heart to do that in some way,” Taylor said.
“I will,” Drum said.
As two deputies led Drum from the courtroom, a spectator yelled “Bye, Patrick.”
Yelled another: “See you in hell, [expletive].”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
