Murder of Robert Wykel

Robert James Wykel (born May 18, 1930; disappeared February 23, 1996 ) was a retired sheet metal worker from Burien, Washington, United States, who restored classic cars. He has not been seen by anyone who could positively identify him since 1996, when he went to see a Ford Thunderbird he was interested in purchasing. Myron Wynn, who accompanied him at that time, was convicted 15 years later of murdering Wykel. Wynn maintains that he is innocent and that Wykel went to Argentina.

The case was treated as a missing person investigation for years, despite early suspicion centering on Wynn, whom police named as a person of interest shortly afterwards. Prosecutors charged him with the crime in 2009, although they had not found Wykel's body. They relied on his conflicting and evasive statements to police during the initial investigation, and a diamond Wynn gave to his then girlfriend shortly after Wykel's disappearance. Police believed the diamond belonged to Wykel, suggesting robbery as his motive for the murder. After Wynn's first trial in 2010 ended in a hung jury, he was retried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The verdict was sustained on appeal. The case has been featured in an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Disappeared. Wykel's body remains undiscovered.

Background Wykel, a native of Illinois who had owned restaurants there and in New Mexico, had gone west to work on the Alaska pipeline.

He often met with other retirees mornings to socialize over coffee at a White Center McDonald's . Wykel's closets were full, and his luggage was in the house. in Thurston County, south of Tacoma. Wynn's family owned and operated it. He made a drawing based on her description of her father's ring. It matched the stone the police got from Wynn's aunt, and thus from Wynn himself, almost exactly—even the stone's diameter was the same.

Appeal Wynn appealed his conviction to the Washington Court of Appeals, Division I. He did not challenge the murder conviction itself. Instead, he claimed there had been insufficient evidence to suggest the robbery was related to the murder, therefore negating the first-degree murder charge. He argued that the murder was not necessary for him to steal the money since that had happened well in advance, nor was it related to the theft of the ring since under the state's case he had not demonstrated any intent to steal the ring prior to the murder. At most, he argued, the state had proved that he had taken the ring as an "afterthought" to the murder. He also challenged a jury instruction—"The taking constitutes robbery, even if death precedes the taking, whenever the taking and a homicide are part of the same transaction"—that he said reflected this same misunderstanding.

In addition, he raised two procedural issues. First, Judge Craighead had ruled incorrectly at the post-trial hearing on the juror misconduct. Second, his lawyers at trial should have allowed him to take the stand in his own defense, which he claimed they argued about regularly.

In June 2013, a panel of three judges unanimously upheld Wynn's conviction. Judge Mary Kay Becker wrote for herself, Linda Lau and Anna Schindler that a jury could have reasonably concluded from the evidence presented, interpreted in the light most favorable to the state, that Wynn killed Wykel at least in part to keep the money he had already obtained fraudulently. As for the ring and any cash Wykel had, the jury had had the option to convict him merely of theft, since taking property from a deceased person is not by itself robbery.

But the jury had found Wynn committed robbery, by virtue of its conviction on the first-degree felony murder charge. If it did so on the basis of Wynn's actions after killing Wykel, Becker wrote, it could have taken note that he had no legitimate regular employment at that time. It would have been perfectly reasonable for the jury to have concluded that Wynn needed money and killed Wykel for the cash and the diamond ring, and that taking these items after Wykel's death constituted robbery.

Nothing in the record, Becker said, suggested to the panel that there was any abuse of discretion by Craighead in her handling of the juror misconduct issue. Nor did Wynn offer any new insight or evidence that would have afforded an opportunity for further review. As for Wynn's desire to testify on his own behalf, his briefs did not elaborate on what he might have said or how his testimony could have changed the outcome. Nor did he suggest that his attorneys' refusal to do so constituted either ineffective assistance of counsel or misconduct.