Crocodile tears and PR stunts in the media do not prove innocence. Shrien Dewani will never be free until he returns to South Africa and proves he played no part in his wifes death. Velma Ogden managed to do all this without the help of a PR Guru, she even had the brains to hide the car so it looked like a car jack.
Widow of carjacking victim is arrested
Woman, son, friend accused in his killing
Just three months ago, Velma Ogden-Whitehead issued a tearful challenge to her late husband's killer, inviting the murderer to return to the scene of the crime and surrender.
"He didn't show," she said at the time.
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King County sheriff's investigators believe the killer was there and had been all along -- Ogden-Whitehead, the grieving widow.
Just before 3 a.m. Friday, detectives booked Ogden-Whitehead into the King County Jail, accusing her in the death of 61-year-old Ronald Allen Whitehead, killed during what many thought was a random carjacking. Also arrested was her son from a previous marriage, Jonathon Jeffrey Ogden, 18, and a 17-year-old friend whom investigators did not identify.
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| Ogden | ||
The widow and 18-year-old stepson were ordered held without bail Saturday.
A 17-year-old in juvenile custody also is being investigated in the death of Ron Whitehead, but did not appear in court Saturday, the King County prosecutor's office said.
King County prosecutors are expected to file murder charges early next week.
"This was a real tough case," Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said.
No single piece of evidence or timely tip led to the arrest, he said, but the gathering weight of evidence implicated the three in Ron Whitehead's death.
But Friday, investigators were not willing to discuss that evidence, nor a motive, nor anything that points to those closest to Ron Whitehead as the killers.
Relatives reached by phone Friday did not wish to comment.
A former co-worker of Ron Whitehead, Barb Delaney, said she was stunned when she saw news reports and learned that Ogden-Whitehead was accused in his killing.
"He loved his wife. He was always talking about Velma," Delaney said. "It's unbelievable."
M. Noel Lerner, a Tacoma lawyer representing Ogden, planned to meet with her client late Friday.
"I ask the public not to rush to judgment," she said. "The hallmark of the criminal justice system is that an accused is innocent until proven guilty."
Lerner represented Ogden when he was arrested in May on drug and gun charges.
Court records did not reveal any history of domestic violence between Whitehead and his wife.
In an interview with the Seattle P-I last year, Ogden-Whitehead said she met her husband in 1989 when he was engaged in one of his favorite pastimes, shopping at yard sales.
Each had two children from previous relationships when they met. Ogden was the youngest of the four.
In that 2005 interview, shortly after Whitehead's killing, relatives said Ogden bonded with his stepfather over the hoods of the various cars Whitehead tinkered with in the garage. At the time of the slaying, the two were supposed to be working on a Corvette together.
Whitehead was killed March 18, 2005.
Investigators had believed that the longtime Boeing employee was en route to work when, somewhere in the first two miles of his morning commute, a killer got into his black 2000 Ford Mustang and somehow took the wheel of the car.
Detectives said evidence showed that the assailant was behind the wheel at the time of the slaying.
At the time, investigators said witnesses told them that about 5:45 a.m., the car slowed in the intersection of Eighth Avenue South and Des Moines Memorial Drive South in Burien, and that a man shoved Whitehead out of the car before speeding off. Whitehead had been shot twice and was left dying in the middle of the intersection.
Investigators speculated that a carjacker was responsible.
"It clearly appeared to be a carjacking," Urquhart said.
Two days later, Whitehead's Mustang was found a few miles away behind an assisted-living center at South 224th Street and 28th Avenue South in Des Moines. The car was closely examined for clues, but none led to any immediate arrests or suspects.
Friends and Whitehead's family became involved in the investigation by trying to generate more tips. Relatives developed an informational poster and offered a $6,000 reward. By May, the reward was up to $10,000.
By the one-year anniversary of the death, the reward fund had reached $16,000, fed by donations from friends, relatives and co-workers.
Ogden-Whitehead took the opportunity presented by the one-year anniversary of her husband's death to appear before news cameras, urging the killer to surrender.
She went to the spot where her husband lay dying and placed flowers there. She told the P-I that Jonathon walked by that spot every day on his way to school.
Publicly, she presented the image of a grief-stricken widow, telling the P-I that she spent the anniversary of her husband's death driving to some of their favorite locations.
"Justice will be served in the end," she said at the time. "Whether by the police department or God himself."
