Michael Winter
USA Today
Oregon police Tuesday had a beach motel surrounded and were trying to negotiate with a paroled convict who was suspected of killing his grandparents near Seattle after they hosted a welcome-home party for his release from prison Friday.
Police say Michael "Chadd" Boysen, 26, checked in to the WestShore OceanFront Suites in Lincoln City, Ore., on Monday night. The clerk tipped off police after recognizing his face on a Tuesday morning TV news show. Boysen registered using his real name.
Police evacuated the three-story motel and the surrounding neighborhood.
"It's been going on since about 11," Lincoln City Police Chief Keith Kilian told The Oregonian. "He wants us to go away and leave him alone."
Police are hoping "to use talk" to achieve "a peaceful resolution," Kilian added. "There is no need to go in there after him. He's by himself."
Late Tuesday morning, a state police robot was sent up stairs to a second-floor balcony. About 1:10 p.m. PT, police ordered Boysen to surrender. When there was no response, SWAT officers fired "flash bang" grenades, The News Guard reported.
About 30 officers, from the local police, Lincoln County sheriff's office and Oregon State police, had surrounded the area. There was also an armored vehicle.
Authorities say Boysen made threats against members of his family and law enforcement while serving nine months of a 16-month sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex for a 2012 conviction for attempted residential burglary. But prison sources did not report the threats until after the bodies of the elderly couple were found Saturday evening in their home near Renton, Wash., Corrections Department spokesman Chad Lewis said Tuesday.
Boysen also served time between 2006 and 2011 for four robberies related to an addiction to painkillers, Lewis added.
Washington officials have not yet identified Boysen's dead grandparents, but relatives and friends have told news outlets they were Robert Taylor, 82, and Norma Taylor, 80.
The King County Medical Examiner's Office has not said how the couple died, but authorities have said they were not shot.
At a Monday news conference, King County Sheriff John Urquhart called Boysen extremely dangerous.
Investigators discovered that Boysen had used his grandparents' computer to search for gun shows across the Pacific Northwest and Nevada just before or after they were killed, presumably to avoid background checks, Urquhart said.
The couple had readied a bedroom for their grandson and were hosting a party for him Friday evening after his release, the sheriff said. They picked him from the prison, took him to his probation officer and helped him get an identification card before the gathering.
Boysen's grandmother sent family members a text message about 10 p.m., thanking them for coming. Some time later Friday or early Saturday, the grandparents were slain. Their daughter - Boysen's mother - found the bodies about 7 p.m. Saturday after another relative reported they hadn't answered the door.
The motive for the killings is still unknown, King County sheriff's Sgt. Cindi West told the Associated Press.
"Between the family and detectives we have no idea," West said. "It's just bizarre. The family loved and supported him the whole time he was in prison."
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