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The sun had already set on Whidbey Island in Washington state on Saturday, December 27, 2003 when a couple was out walking their dog along a secluded dead-end road. They noticed that the bright yellow Chevy Tracker they had seen parked there the day before was still sitting in the exact same spot. The road where it was parked only led to a handful of cabins & they could see that the passenger-side door was standing wide open while the window was down about six inches.
Finding this odd, when they walked closer to the small SUV, they were stunned to see a man sitting in the driver’s seat, slumped over the steering wheel, still strapped into his seatbelt & covered in blood.
When Island County investigators responded to the scene, they saw a ragged bullet hole between the victim’s eyes. Since no weapon had been found at the scene, the idea of a suicide was quickly dismissed & investigators realized that they were dealing with a homicide.
32-year-old Russel Douglas’ murder left investigators to unravel a disturbing mystery over the course of the next 8 ½ years. Why had the married father of two driven down that road one day after Christmas? Had someone lured him to that isolated location? Who would have wanted him dead badly enough to shoot him at close range & leave his body behind?
For months, the investigation produced little answers, until an anonymous phone call changed everything.
What followed pulled investigators into a complicated web of relationships, alleged affairs, money, resentment & private conversations that eventually revealed that Russel Douglas’s murder was far more calculated than it once appeared.
Although several residents had noticed the out-of-place yellow SUV parked along Wahl Road the night before, since the passenger-side door was open with the dome light on, they just assumed the driver was there. The area is a mix of old cabins & upscale homes with views of the water, with many residents only occupying the homes for part of the year. Since it’s not a place where cars would be passing through, the SUV stools out since it hadn’t moved in at least 24 hours.
When Detective Mark Plumberg of the Island County Sheriff’s Department was called out to the scene, he couldn’t help but recognize that it was the perfect spot for a murder since it was such a dark & isolated area where there was no through traffic.
Based on the vehicle’s registration as well as the ID found in the glove compartment, the victim was quickly identified as Russel Douglas.
Despite the fact that the murder weapon was missing, a .380-caliber shell casing was found lying on the floor, just inside the driver’s side door. While the coroner determined that Russ had likely been killed at about 1 pm one day previously on Friday, December 26, 2003, investigators concluded that the shooter had likely been standing about one foot away as they shot through the open passenger-side door, killing him instantly.
Investigators were now tasked with notifying Russ’ wife & the mother of his two children, Brenna Douglas, about his murder.
When Brenna opened the door at about 10 pm that night, officers were highly taken aback. Not only did she show zero emotion at news of her husband’s murder, but she didn’t ask a single question about what happened. Instead, she began bad-mouthing him, mentioning affairs as well as emotional abuse, telling detectives that they had been living apart after Russ had gotten an apartment in Renton, an hour & a half south of Whidbey, while Brenna stayed in their home with their two girls.
Russ had come back to their family home for Christmas so they could both celebrate with their daughters. They were also having discussions about getting back together, but she told officers that she hadn’t seen Russ since mid-morning on Friday when he left to presumably run errands.
Since there were absolutely no other suspects at this point, investigators placed Brenna at the top of the list. Not only is the spouse the perpetrator in many murder cases, but investigators were now aware that Brenna & Russ were also having marital issues.
They felt that much more confident that she was a viable suspect when they realized that Brenna stood to gain financially upon her husband’s death. The couple had filed for bankruptcy a few years earlier & the salon that Brenna owned in an upscale shopping center was in debt. The six-figure insurance payout from her husband’s death would have completely cleared this debt.
Russ had worked for Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering & consulting firm, & about nine months earlier, he’d taken out a $200,000 life insurance policy. He also had another $300,000 policy from Farmer’s Insurance that he’d taken out one year earlier in 2002.
Russel Douglas was born on September 9, 1971 in Monterey, California as the oldest of three children to parents Jim & Gail, who eventually divorced. Shortly after he & Brenna began dating, they realized that she was pregnant, putting their relationship on the fast-track.
They had a tumultuous relationship, often arguing about how they were raising the children, finances as well as Russ’s affairs with other women. After their separation, he’d gotten his own apartment near Seattle, he had a new girlfriend & his extended family felt as if he’d been distancing himself from them.
They indicated that things began to turn around just after Thanksgiving; Russ had changed jobs, he was close to completing an online master’s degree program, he’d been reaching out to them more often, telling them that he hoped to reconcile with Brenna & become more involved in his daughter’s lives.
When investigators combed over Russ’s phone records, Detective Plumberg noticed that a Las Vegas number had called him several times in the days leading up to his death. The number belonged to a 37-year-old woman named Peggy Thomas.
He eventually tracked Peggy down & spoke with her over the phone nearly five months after Russ’s murder on May 12, 2004. She explained that she was friends with Brenna & Russ Douglas as she’d previously worked at Brenna’s salon, Just B. Since she was now living in Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas, Brenna & Russ had moved into her home in Langley on the island in February 2003 before they eventually separated.
Peggy had been born & raised on Whidbey Island before she moved to Bellingham, Washington in 1980 when she was 15-years-old. She was currently working as a luxury limo driver for high-rollers in Las Vegas who were tipping her thousands of dollars per night. Although she had been on the island during the holidays, she claimed to know nothing about the crime.
She told Detective Plumberg that she had been playing phone tag with Russ on December 23, 2003 because she was staying at a hotel near SeaTac, less than 15 minutes from his apartment in Renton & she wanted to give him a Christmas present for Brenna. She last saw him when she dropped it off with him at 9 pm, three days before he was murdered.
After she moved from the island & graduated from Bellingham High School, she attended beauty school before joining the Navy in 1988. While she served as an aircraft mechanic during Operation Desert Storm, she met & married her second husband in 1991, James Kelvin Thomas, & they had two daughters together.
During the late 1990s, while their marriage was falling apart, Peggy began working out & physically transforming herself. After competing in several beauty pageants, at 35-years-old, she won the title of Ms. Washington in 2000.
According to Peggy’s family members, they had all faced major tragedies in the past. Peggy came from a large, blended family as one of 12 siblings, many of which were half-siblings. Two years before she was born, her dad’s first wife, Mary Ellen, was brutally murdered in her home in 1963 by a 16-year-old boy who lived one block away. The mother of six children who ranged in age from 1 to 8-years-old, was beaten with a hammer & stabbed to death before she was raped.
The next morning when the children came downstairs, they found their mother’s lifeless body lying on the floor. Jim, who had been in Tennessee for Navy flight school at the time, never set foot back inside that house. He transferred to Whidbey where he was assigned in the Navy & remarried a woman named Doris, who gave birth to Peggy in 1965.
After their divorce, Jim married for the third time in 1984. Around this time, Peggy’s half-brother Rob was shot during a party in Fairbanks, Alaska by a man who had lost an arm wrestling contest against him. Moving forward to 2011, Peggy’s sister committed suicide.
As Detective Plumberg ended their conversation that day, he felt that nothing about the way Peggy spoke of her interaction with Russ before he was murdered had raised any red flags.
Now back at square one, outside of Brenna Douglas, Plumberg couldn’t find a single person who disliked Russ, let alone someone who would have wanted him dead. Brenna had a solid alibi as multiple people confirmed that they had been with her during the timeframe of the murder & there were no leads that suggested she’d hired a hitman. Plumberg had no idea why Russ had gone out to that isolated area on the island one day after Christmas.
It wasn’t until July 26, 2004, seven months to the day after Russ had been murdered, when Plumberg’s partner on the case, Mike Beach, got an anonymous phone call from a man who blew the whole case open. The man, who called using an untraceable calling card, asked if there were any unsolved homicides from December 2003. He seemed very nervous, saying that if he told him what he knew, the shooter would know it was him. Although the call lasted an hour, Detective Beach didn’t get the caller’s name nor the name of the killer.
He agreed to call back the next day & this time, he was far more forthcoming with information. He said he was a retired air force serviceman & he played in a band with the shooter, who was also his best friend. When he called back a couple of days later, he whispered the killer’s name, Jim Huden.
After a quick Google search, Detective Plumberg discovered that 50-year-old Jim Huden lived over 3,000 miles away in Punta Gorda along the Gulf coast of South Florida between Sarasota & Fort Meyers. He was the lead guitarist for the band, Buck Naked & the Xhibitionists, & the caller was Bill Hill, the band’s bass player.
According to Bill, Jim had confessed to him six months earlier in January 2004 when they were driving to a gig in Sarasota. He hadn’t contacted Island County detectives sooner out of fear as well as loyalty to his friend.
Jim told him that he did it because he wanted to kill another abuser as a way to get revenge against his stepfather, who had been abusive to him & his mom. Bill was able to tell Plumberg details that were never made public, saying that Jim had used a .380-caliber handgun & he hadn’t been able to find the casing after the murder.
According to Bill, Jim was having an extra-marital affair with a woman named Peggy who lived in Las Vegas. It was Peggy who had lured Russ to the location where he was murdered on December 26, 2003, under the guise of having a gift for his wife. Although Bill had gone to Vegas & met Peggy, he didn’t know her last name, but he did know that she once worked at a hair salon owned by Brenna Douglas.
When Russ pulled up, Jim had been lying in wait with a gun before shooting him.
He went on to say that when Brenna had met up with Jim & Peggy in Las Vegas in April 2003, eight months before her husband’s murder, she mentioned that she & Russ had separated. She’d filed a restraining order against him after he allegedly punched her & threatened her life, saying that Russ was worth more to her dead than alive since she would receive $500,000 in insurance payouts upon his death.
Jim had even told Bill how the money would be divided; Peggy would get a certain amount for luring Russ to the scene, Jim would receive $50,000 as the shooter & the rest would be Brenna’s.
In addition to the confession that Jim made in the car, he also made another damning comment when they’d been out to lunch together sometime that year. When Bill complained about his boss, Jim told him that he could be taken care of, that he’s done it once & he could do it again.
Bill warned Detective Plumberg that Jim was a flight risk since he’d been getting very nervous, saying that he needed to talk to Peggy so they could get their stories straight.
Despite the fact that investigators believed that three people had been involved in Russ’s murder, Brenna Douglas has adamantly denied playing any role in her husband’s death & she has never been charged in relation to his case.
When she attempted to collect the $200k in insurance money in January 2004, she was denied because Russ had died an unnatural death. In 2005, she was given the money, minus $1,200 in interest.
When she attempted to collect the $300k from his Farmer’s Insurance policy, she was denied after the insurer claimed that Russ had answered falsely to a health question, failing to disclose that he had been treated for a heart murmur.
Detective Plumberg came to learn that Jim Huden & Peggy Thomas had each grown up on Whidbey Island, the largest island in Washington state. By road, it’s 55 miles long & ranges from 1 ½ to 12 miles wide. They each moved away at some point, Peggy, ultimately to Nevada & Jim, to Punta Gorda.
As a young girl, Peggy had always had a crush on Jim, but it wasn’t until June 2002 when they reconnected at a friend’s funeral back on the island that their romantic relationship began. This is despite the fact that Jim was married to a woman named Jean Huden.
Jean later indicated that in the beginning, she had been so clouded by her love for her husband that she refused to see the glaring signs that something had changed after he came back to Florida from the funeral. Not only had his drinking ramped up considerably, but his moods were low, he was acting secretive & he was using drugs.
Punta Gorda locals had always adored Jim, finding him to be a charming, witty, fun & happy-go-lucky guy. He was brilliant with computers & he & Jean owned a company together, Computers Inc. He was a successful software developer who had sold a program to Microsoft for about $1 million.
Since Jean ran the business, Jim was given the freedom to focus on his band. Now involved in a full-blown affair with Peggy, he began traveling to Vegas frequently, telling his wife that he was there looking for gigs.
When Jean discovered the affair after reading her husband’s emails, she confronted him & he promised things were over with Peggy. Moving forward to April 2003, Jean found Peggy standing on her front porch, telling her that they needed to come together to confront Jim as he had been lying to both of them.
After Bill Hill’s phone call, Island County detectives traveled to Florida to speak with Jim. He said that he had been living with Peggy in Vegas for a few months before they went to stay at a friend’s vacation home in Freeland on Whidbey Island for the holidays.
They were on the island until December 22 or 23 when they went to stay at a SeaTac motel for the next three days before leaving Washington on December 26, the day that Russ was murdered. Jim denied ever owning a gun.
When asked if he knew Russel Douglas, Jim said that he only knew of him as Peggy had contacted him on December 23 on their way to their motel. She wanted to give him a Christmas gift intended for Brenna, so they stopped by his Renton apartment at 9 pm on December 23. This was the first & last time he had ever met the man.
As investigators were speaking with Jim in Florida, detectives were at Peggy’s home in Henderson, Nevada with a warrant to search her home & her car.
Peggy told the officers that while she had flown to Washington for their holiday visit, Jim had driven her Lexus from Vegas & had gotten to Seattle one day after her on December 19, 2003. They stayed at their friend’s vacation home in Freeland from the 19th-23rd & then they drove back down to Seattle to spend three nights at the SeaTac Marriott. She confirmed that she & Jim had stopped by Russ’s apartment on the 23rd so she could give him a gift for Brenna.
Peggy’s story began to differ from Jim’s when she said that they had driven back to Whidbey Island on December 26, the very day that Russ was murdered. They needed to drop the keys off for the vacation home they’d been staying in. Realizing that bedding had been left in the washer, while Peggy transferred the items to the dryer, Jim left to get cigarettes sometime between 10-11 am, which was 2-3 hours before the coroner believes Russ may have been shot.
When he came back about 30-40 minutes later, Peggy said he seemed completely normal & she had never seen him with a gun. They left the island that day on the noon ferry from Keystone.
Less than two weeks later, Island County investigators were contacted by an officer in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. A man named Keith Ogden had come into their station with a two-tone Bersa “Thunder” .380-caliber pistol that he believed may have been used in Russel Douglas’s murder.
After Island County investigators picked the weapon up in New Mexico, they went to Radium Springs to speak with Keith. He indicated that he’d met Jim Huden & Peggy Thomas through his cousin Scott before he relocated from Vegas to New Mexico.
Since Keith was a retired police officer, Jim began asking him about guns in the fall of 2003, expressing interest in buying one. Days later, Jim showed up with a Bersa handgun after finding it posted for sale in the newspaper. Keith showed him how to clean & use the Bersa as well as how to silence it with an empty plastic soda bottle or with a pillow.
Months after Jim & Peggy had come back from Whidbey Island after Christmas, Keith was at Peggy’s house when Jim handed him the pistol, asking if he could take it for safekeeping since he didn’t want to keep it in the house with Peggy’s daughters there.
Keith took both the gun as well as the manual, which both came with him when he relocated to New Mexico. Moving forward to the summer of 2004, his cousin called him, telling him about a newspaper article he read that named Jim & Peggy as suspects in Russ’s murder. The next day, Keith dropped the gun off at the police station.
The crime lab in Washington was able to determine that the pistol was an exact match to the bullet found in Russ’s body as well as the shell casing found in his car.
One week later, Peggy provided investigators with a written statement indicating that Jim had confessed to murdering Russ during their phone conversation one day earlier on August 31, 2004. According to Peggy, he told her that rather than going for cigarettes as he’d claimed he was doing on December 26, 2003, he’d actually met up with Russ & shot him dead. She insisted that she had no idea he was responsible until their conversation.
Although Peggy said that she had nothing to do with Russ’s murder & that she had no knowledge that Jim even owned a gun, a fingerprint from her right index finger was found on page 14 of the gun’s manual.
Detective Plumberg believed that because Jim had been a stranger to Russ, it had been Peggy who lured him out to the secluded area under the guise that she had a gift for Brenna. Jim was waiting with the gun & as he approached Russ’ car, he fired a single gunshot from a foot away, killing him instantly.
As Hurricane Charley made landfall near Punta Gorda as a category 4 storm on August 13, 2004, Jim had evacuated & he never came back. He ultimately headed 2,000 miles away to Veracruz, Mexico to teach the guitar under the name Maestro Jim.
According to Jorge Mabark, a man who was close friends with him in Veracruz as well as a famous jazz pianist who often played onstage with Jim, he knew Jim as Jim Martin rather than Jim Huden. He viewed him as a good person who got along with everyone, someone who was soft & tender without any sign of violence or aggression.
For nearly seven years, Jim laid low in Mexico while Jean Huden lied to police about his whereabouts, supporting him financially for years. Although authorities knew he was in Mexico, they were unable to find him despite repeatedly aired segments about him on America’s Most Wanted.
Meanwhile, Peggy continued to drive limos in Vegas until she met & married Mark Allen, a very wealthy man whose family had gotten rich from Alaska oil. Mark also owned the thoroughbred horse, Mine that Bird, that won the 2009 Kentucky Derby at 50-1 odds. He took home about $1.1 million in winnings for him & his co-owner to split.
Whenever Mark would visit Las Vegas from his horse ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, he would specifically request Peggy as his driver. After dating for four months, they were married in 2007 & she relocated to New Mexico to live with him on his ranch.
Within months, their marriage began to fall apart & after seven months, they separated after Mark accused Peggy of becoming extremely controlling. Despite having no ranch experience, she began telling him how to take care of his horses, wanting to replace his employees with people she knew. She also moved her mom onto the ranch.
It all came to a head when Mark filed a restraining order against Peggy after she became physical with him one night. She walked away from the marriage with $1 million as well as his houseboat that was valued at $500,000, later renaming it Off the Hook, in honor of her divorce.
According to a woman named Vicky Boyer, who worked with Mark & Peggy on the ranch, she had always believed that Peggy was innocent of Russ’ murder until a night out over drinks. When Peggy was intoxicated, she joked about taking care of a problem for a friend, saying that she would use her gun, but this time, she would know to throw it in the water.
Vicky said she instantly knew that Peggy was involved despite the fact that she denied ever having this conversation.
Moving forward to 2011, Jean Huden’s life was falling apart in Florida. She was a drug addict who had been arrested a number of times on charges ranging from forgery to possession, all the while trying to support her fugitive husband in Mexico. Facing serious time for multiple felonies, she made the decision to work with authorities by telling them where Jim was.
In the first week of July 2011, after she pleaded no contest to one drug charge, more than 20 other charges were dropped & she was released on probation.
Jean told investigators that in June 2003, six months before Russ’ murder, even though Jim had moved out, saying he needed a change of scenery, Jean knew that he was going back to Vegas to be with Peggy & her daughters.
Still holding out hope that he would come to his senses, Jean agreed to fly to Vegas with Jim to celebrate her 40th birthday in September 2003. While he wined & dined her, he also let her in on a dark secret that he planned to murder a man who was abusing his wife & children.
He told her that Peggy’s friend Brenna planned to share insurance money with him if he served as her husband’s hitman, but Jean never believed that he was serious. As far as she knew, he didn’t even know how to shoot a gun. When Jim contacted her four months later in January 2004, he told her that he killed a man in cold blood; it was done & he was coming back home to her.
When he did come back, he told her that Peggy had lured Russ out to a spot on the island. When he pulled up, Jim came out of the bushes where he’d been hiding & shot him in the head. Jean later came to learn that there wasn’t a single report to prove that Russ had ever been physically abusive toward his wife or children.
She told investigators that she kept quiet & helped Jim flee the country as she had been fully under his spell.
Jim was arrested nearly eight years after Russ’ murder in Guadalajara, Mexico on June 9, 2011. After he was extradited to Island County, he was charged with first-degree murder & held on a $10 million bail.
Peggy Thomas was arrested one month later on her houseboat in Navajo Dam, New Mexico on July 9, 2011. That summer, she was formally charged with first-degree murder & her bail was set at $5 million.
After she was extradited & the Island County court dropped her bail to $500,000, she was released & fitted with a GPS ankle monitor. While awaiting trial, she agreed to live with her mom in Langley on the south end of Whidbey.
Despite the fact that Jim Huden was offered a plea bargain that would have reduced his prison time in exchange for information & testimony against his co-conspirator, Peggy Thomas, he rejected the deal & pleaded not guilty. His trial began on July 10, 2012.
Prosecutor Greg Banks told jurors that Jim became aware of Russel through Peggy Thomas & Brenna Douglas. Believing that he was an abusive father & husband, Jim decided to kill him as an act of revenge for his own abusive childhood. When Jim stood only a foot from Russ & pulled the trigger on December 26, 2003, they had been complete strangers.
Investigators found no evidence that Russ had ever been abusive. While his family admitted that he & Brenna had a difficult relationship, they insist that he was a good father who was never abusive.
Bill Hill, Jim’s former best friend & band mate who had blown the whole case open, took the stand on Friday, July 13 to discuss Jim’s January 2004 confession.
Keith Ogden, who turned the murder weapon over to authorities, also testified.
Following eight days of testimony & closing arguments, the jury began their deliberations ten days later on July 20, 2012.
After four hours of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict after the weekend on Monday, July 23, 2012, finding Jim Huden guilty of first-degree murder. On August 21, 2012, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison. At 58-years-old, he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Since Russ had been found in his car, seat-belted & unsuspecting, this allowed the judge to impose a harsher sentence of 80 years which is 2 ½ times the top of the standard sentencing range. Prosecutor Greg Banks had asked the judge to impose this exceptional sentence based on the fact that Russ had two children & the assumption was made that he would have lived 40 years longer had it not been for Jim’s actions.
When Russ’s family members addressed him, pleading with him to understand why he would have killed a complete stranger, asking him who else had been involved, Jim sat completely stone-faced & silent.
Russ’s sister, Holly Frasco wept, telling Jim that he had stolen her brother from their family on her birthday while his mother spoke about the pain of never being able to hug her son again.
Russ’s wife, Brenna Douglas, was not at the sentencing hearing, saying she worried about media exposure.
One week before 47-year-old Peggy Thomas’ trial was set to begin, she accepted a plea bargain on January 24, 2013, pleading guilty to a significantly reduced charge of first-degree rendering criminal assistance with three additional years for the involvement of a gun. She was sentenced to four years in prison. Had she gone to trial & been convicted of first-degree murder, she could have faced up to life in prison.
She later indicated that she felt as if she had no choice but to accept the deal as it was too big of a risk had she been wrongfully convicted & sentenced to life. She didn’t want to risk never being able to see her children or grandchildren again. She went on to say that she grieves for Russ’ family & she has also been a victim in this, giving up years of her life for something she didn’t do.
After serving nearly 3 ½ years of her 4 year sentence at Washington Corrections Center for Women, Peggy was released in August 2016. Regardless if more evidence surfaces, she can never be charged for first-degree murder in Russ’ death due to double jeopardy laws.
Not only did Ann Rule write a book about Russ’ case in 2013, titled, Practice to Deceive, but his case was also made into a Lifetime move, Circle of Deception.
Since Peggy had told Russel Douglas that she had a gift for his wife, he would have had no reason to believe that he was driving toward his death one day after Christmas in 2003. He arrived down that quiet, isolated road unsuspectingly, sitting in his car, still with his seatbelt fastened when Jim Huden, a stranger to him, opened the passenger-side door of his little SUV, raised a gun & fired.
Russ wouldn’t have had even a moment to register what was happening before his life was over in an instant. After his death, secrets began to eventually surface while conversations that were once private, became evidence. It took nearly a decade, but the story of what happened on that lonely road on Whidbey Island finally came into focus & those responsible for his death faced justice.
Russel was a father, a son & a human being who was loved. Regardless of his complicated relationships, accusations & motives surrounding this case, none of these things change the fact that he deserved to keep living his life & to see his children grow. Instead, someone made the decision that his life was theirs to take.
References:
- Wikipedia: Whidbey Island
- Seattle PI: One woman, two stories: Thomas goes from devoted mom to accused murderer
- CBS News: 48 Hours: Tracing a fugitive killer’s footsteps in Mexico
- CBS News: Dangerous beauty
- CBS News: Photos: The Russel Douglas murder investigation
- ABC News: Former Ms. Washington sentenced in murder case
- ABC News: Former Ms. Washington takes plea bargain in murder case
- NBC News: Former Washington beauty queen pleads guilty to lesser charge in murder case
- Oxygen True Crime: What happened to the 3 real life figures at the center of ‘Circle of Deception?’
- Seattle Weekly: Peggy Sue Thomas: Drop-dead gorgeous
- Whidbey News-Times: After 9 years, justice served as Huden gets 80
- South Whidbey Record: Former friends share details in Huden trial
- South Whidbey Record: Huden trial enters jury deliberations
- Sun Port Charlotte: Local musician on trial for murder
- Ancestors Family Search: Russel Albert Douglas
- Herald Net: Renton visitor found slain on Whidbey Island
- Internet Archive: Dateline MSNBC March 3, 2019
