This case asks the question, what could drive a 16-year-old to murder their entire family? The teenager in this case, William Lembcke, had been previously described as a good kid, friendly, nice. Yes, he had a juvenile record & there had been some angry arguments within the family over a period of time, but no one could have ever predicted the violence that the teen was capable of which occurred over the Christmas holiday in 2000.
The word familicide is defined as one family member who murders other members of their family, commonly taking the lives of all members. In these horrifying cases, surviving family members are left stunned & confused, wondering if they missed something, if they could have done something to stop it. But, in many cases, there are no outward signs to suggest that anyone was in danger or there was a risk that the person was capable.
In 95% of cases of familicide, perpetrators are male & in many instances involve a father killing his wife & children & then himself. Within these cases, the man tends to be someone who was previously seen as a good provider, a wonderful father & dedicated husband. Divorce or separation can be a catalyst as well as financial issues, substance abuse issues and/or untreated or undiagnosed mental illness.
In cases involving adolescents who kill family members, 84% of offenders were found to be male & 50% of the time, they voiced their desire to kill their family which is in contrast to cases involving adult males. In cases carried out by young offenders, 75% were planned shooting attacks vs. spontaneous acts of violence & 81% of these offenders confess to the homicides when questioned.
In many cases involving teen killers, prior to their murders, they were oftentimes not viewed as violent or aggressive towards others & the catalyst tends to be a long-standing disagreement or friction with their parents or primary caregivers.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, December 30, 2000, Deputies Paul Murray & Duane Johnson responded to the Lembcke home on Marble Valley Basin Road in Addy, Washington, a small community about 60 miles northwest of Spokane, after a welfare check was requested. The Lembcke family consisted of parents, 49-year-old Robert & 43-year-old Diana. The couple had four children, 24-year-old Clinton, 18-year-old Jolene, 16-year-old William, & Wesley who had only just turned 12, three weeks earlier on December 9. The eldest, Clinton, however, didn’t live in the family home as he had since moved out.
Diana Lembcke’s brother, Andy Davenport had contacted the sheriff’s office shortly before midnight on December 29 with concerns that he hadn’t seen the family in five days despite the fact that he shared a driveway with them. The only family member Andy had seen during that time was William.
As the officers arrived, William was attempting to leave in a pickup truck, but the officers parked in a way that blocked him in & prevented him from leaving the premises. They noted that he had three other passengers in his truck as they explained to William their concern about his family & their whereabouts. William said he didn’t know where they were, but gave the officers permission to go into the house & look around.
When Deputy Murray asked if he could go into William’s parent’s room, he said yes. Here, they found Robert’s wallet & Diana’s purse, both which contained their IDs. In the meantime, Deputy Johnson noticed what appeared to be blood on both the hot water tank & the washing machine.
Because of these suspicious findings, paired with the fact that the remaining members of the Lembcke family were missing, William was asked to sign a consent form & his Miranda rights were read. He didn’t ask for a lawyer & allowed the officers to continue to search the family home.
Soon, Deputy Johnson noticed blood on a light fixture & what appeared to be fresh paint on the ceiling with dark stains showing through. Even more alarming, bits of flesh were found on a kitchen item. As the officers confronted William with this evidence, he began sobbing & shaking as he covered his face with his hands.
At this point, the deputies went outside to speak with the passengers sitting inside William’s truck & as they did, they noticed blood in the bed of the vehicle. At this point, the search was paused & 16-year-old William Lembcke was arrested at 4 am & transported to the Stevens County Jail.
During his time in custody, William confessed to shooting four members of his family, his father, his mother, his older sister & his younger brother. Within a written statement, he indicated that after they were dead he transferred their bodies in the pickup truck & dumped their remains northwest of Addy off of Naff Road.
Because William’s older brother Clinton lived outside the home at a nearby location, he was not injured. When Clint spoke with his brother on December 29 prior to the welfare check, William told him they’d gone to see a sick family member in California. However, when Clint spoke to other family members about this, they were unaware of anyone within the family who was ill.
Clint & their Uncle Andy went to the Lembcke home where, like investigators, they found Robert’s wallet & Diana’s purse, among other items. With this puzzling picture, they made the decision to contact the police.
16-year-old William was previously registered as a student at Colville Senior High School, but had been home schooled during the previous year. His principal during elementary school recalled that William did sometimes get into trouble, but he never showed the type of anger that would lead to something so horrible. Other staff within the school described him as quiet & non-disruptive. His sister, 18-year-old Jolene, was a senior at the high school & was said to be a terrific kid who was very well-liked by her classmates.
William’s dad, Robert, was an independent logger who owned his own truck & loader & those that knew the Lembcke family said that they were always considered very nice. Diana suffered from multiple sclerosis & rarely left the house because of her condition. Jolene often stepped up to help her family, doing the majority of the housework.
On December 30, the same day as the welfare check, investigators discovered the bodies of Robert, Diana, Jolene & Wesley. They were covered in snow in a ditch on the side of a Naff Road where William indicated they could be found. Robert was found wearing only a towel while Jolene was nude from the waist down. The autopsies discovered that William had utilized two different guns during the murders.
Diana Lembcke had been shot with both a .308-caliber rifle & a .22-caliber weapon, while the others had been shot with the .22-caliber weapon, the majority of the shots focused to the victim’s heads. The autopsies determined that the shots were fired at close range sometime between December 23 & Christmas Day. In Robert & Wesley’s cases, they suffered from contact wounds, meaning the gun had been placed directly against their heads. Robert had been shot three times in the head & Wesley once. Diana was shot three times in the head with the use of both rifles & four times in the right arm, shoulder & hands, likely as she tried to hold up her arms to stop the attack. Jolene was shot twice in the back of the head & once in the back, likely as she attempted to flee from her brother’s attack.
Investigators noticed a large pile of firewood outside the door of the family’s rural home. William, who stood at 6’1” & weighed 230#, indicated that it was an argument that began over that very wood that led him to kill his family. He said that his dad was upset with him for not helping him with the firewood & threatened to kick him out of the house & send him back to Martin Hall, a juvenile detention center near Spokane.
William said that when his dad went to take a shower, he loaded the guns. He told investigators that he was sick of his dad being mean, being forced to work with his dad all the time & not being able to go anywhere. He complained that his sister was never home which left him to frequently help his mom.
Shortly after he armed himself, William said that he sat on his dad’s bed while he showered & thought about what he should do. When his dad came out of the bathroom, he shot him in the hallway & moved on to shoot his mom in the kitchen. He said that his mother didn’t say a word, likely too scared to speak. From there he went to the living room where he shot his sister next, followed by his younger brother as he was lying on the floor. Both Jolene & Wesley had unsuccessfully attempted to hide from their brother. When he was asked why he shot his mom, sister & brother when it was his dad he was mad at, he first said that he didn’t know & later indicated that he shot them because they were witnesses.
He admitted what the deputies were already aware of as a result of searching the home, that after he disposed of their bodies two miles away from their home, he made an extensive effort to cover up the crimes. He painted the walls that had been spattered with blood & flesh. The cleanup would have been an arduous task as blood saturated the inside of the home as well as the snow outside that led to the pickup truck he used to dispose of their bodies.
The Lembcke home sat on a rural, wooded property in the tiny, unincorporated community of Addy, still within view & shouting distance of several neighbors among the rolling hills of northern Washington.
When his extended family members tried to contact Robert & Diana, William said that they went to California to visit a sick uncle. However, in addition to the fact that they were unaware of who this family member was, each of the family’s vehicles, as well as their IDs, remained at the house.
As Clint Lembcke was given the unimaginable news of the murders of four members of his immediate family at the hands of his brother, he indicated that the feelings & trauma had yet to sink in. He said that he made it through the initial days following the murders by preparing for the funerals. Clint had worked for his dad’s business in the previous five years & said that his father was his best friend. The support of his extended family provided him comfort as he tried to cope through his grief, reality not yet sinking in.
Despite the fact that William had no history of violence, he did have a police record & two months earlier, he pleaded guilty to first-degree theft for stealing $25 in rolled coins & a silver bar that was valued at $166 from a neighbor’s home. At the time of the thefts, he ran away from home & ended up being sentenced to 12 months of community supervision & 40 hours of community service at a local animal shelter that his neighbor, Joyce Tasker, operated. Joyce later described William as a pleasant, somewhat quiet boy who confided feeling unwanted at home. She recalled an incident that happened a couple of years earlier when William got extremely angry about something she no longer recalls & began beating the bark off of a tree with a hammer.
After William’s arrest, he was charged as an adult & held without bail pending trial. In January 2001, William pleaded not guilty to four counts of aggravated first-degree murder & his lawyer indicated that he would be using the insanity defense. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Because he was under 18 at the time of the murders, the death penalty was not an option.
Later that same year in June 2001, six months after the murders, it was revealed that it was not actually an argument over firewood & chores that led William to murder his family as he originally confessed. The true motive was far darker; he had been secretly recording his 18-year-old sister in the shower. On top of this disturbing revelation, William also admitted to having sex with his sister’s body after he murdered her.
On Thursday, December 21, 2000, Jolene told her boyfriend, Dylan Simpkins, & her parents about a recording she found in the family’s new video camera. According to Dylan, Jolene showed her parents a video that depicted her in the shower & a second video that showed William masterbating while watching a duplicate of the first video. According to Dylan, Jolene was rightly sickened & disturbed by the contents & decided to stay that night at his house to avoid being in her brother’s presence. She went to work then next day, December 22, & returned home that evening & William would have had the opportunity to murder his family at that time after his father confronted him about the video.
Dylan said that Jolene erased the video after she showed it to her parents & he was unaware if a duplicate existed. Officers did find the camera as well as some videotapes, but court rules prohibited them from disclosing their contents. Detective Loren Erdman said that William likely had no idea that anyone outside the family knew about his sexually deviant recordings when he murdered his family & was unaware that Jolene had confided in Dylan.
It was on January 2, 2001 when Dylan approached detectives about the video after they’d already searched the Lembcke home.
Detectives indicated that Wesley Lembcke, William’s younger brother, was the only member of the family that he would have had no reason to be upset with. Wesley had died of a single gunshot wound to the head while the other three victims had been shot multiple times.
On August 26, 2001, jurors deliberated for less than two hours & William was convicted of four counts of aggravated first-degree murder. As the verdict was read, William’s older brother, Clint, broke down in tears. During the trial, William showed little emotion, but during his sentencing, he openly sobbed as his aunt spoke about what a loving mother & hard-working father he’d had & the fact that he’d given it all up.
As Stevens County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson handed down the sentence, he called William a monster when he said, Deep inside, son, you’re a monster & you deserve the punishment that a monster should receive. The only penalties for aggravated murder are life in prison without parole. Had William been eighteen or older at the time of the murders, he would have likely been sentenced to death.
Deputy Stevens County Prosecutor David Bruneau felt gratified by the verdict & criticized the defense’s attempts to portray William as mentally ill. He felt satisfied that the jury was able to see through this while the defense team felt it a tragedy to send a juvenile into an adult prison system.
During the trial, the defense team tried to seek a reduced charge of second-degree murder, arguing that at the time of the murders, William suffered diminished mental capacity & was a troubled teen from a dysfunctional family. With this, they tried to have William’s confession thrown out as well as much of the additional evidence that officers found after the teen authorized them to search the family home. The prosecution felt that the defense was only grasping for straws with their attempts at the insanity defense, their backs against the wall.
The key defense witness was psychiatrist Dr. Alan Unis, who indicated that William did suffer from diminished mental capacity at the time of the killings & attributed this mental state to his traumatic childhood. However, Prosecutor Breneau pointed out the fact that William had loaded the rifle & laid in wait while his dad showered & grabbed a second weapon to finish off his mother who was confined to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis & these actions proved premeditation.
Prosecutor David Breneau characterized William as a selfish, cold-blooded killer who partied with his friends in the days after he annihilated his family, knowing their bodies lay on the side of the road, covered in snow. He felt that William only showed remorse because he was now facing the consequences of his actions.
Clint Lembcke passed away at age 46 on November 26, 2022. According to his obituary, he was born in Vancouver, Washington where he lived until his family moved to Northport & then Colville. He started working in the logging industry with his father, Robert when he was as young as fourteen. After his family’s murder, he went on to marry in 2009 & had a son. Clint carried on his dad’s legacy when he became the sole owner & operator of Lembcke Trucking in 2000 which he ran after his father’s murder, until 2021. The Lembcke family are all laid to rest together at Mountain View Cemetery.
In 2003, William made an appeal, claiming the court made an error by refusing to suppress the statements he made to police & the evidence found during the search of the home on December 30, 2000. The appeal was filed & nothing came of it.
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