Young mom’s own brother chops her up before stuffing her in suitcase, setting her on fire: Police

A Washington man is facing murder charges in connection with the death of his half-sister, Jamie Haggard, who was found dismembered, burned and stuffed into a suitcase.

Seattle Times reports that 27-year-old Jamie vanished in 2016, just a few days after telling her boyfriend that her half brother, 45-year-old David Brent Haggard, wanted to kill her.

The incident sparked over a living situation, prompting a volatile altercation on June 9, 2016, inside a home in Kenmore, off of the 8200 block of Northeast 145th Street.

Witnesses told detectives that the half-siblings had been arguing over who should be able to live in the home. Jamie did not own the residence, but neither did Haggard, court documents state. When the homeowner allowed Haggard’s friend, Jason Nolte, to move in, Haggard moved in as well, along with his girlfriend.

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Jamie also lived in the residence, but Haggard and Nolte reportedly kicked her out, prompting her to send Haggard a text message, calling him a “worthless piece of sh**.”

David Haggard [Police Handout]
According to court documents filed at the King County Superior Court, Nolte allowed Jamie to return to the residence that evening without Haggard’s knowledge. When Haggard woke up the following morning on June 8, he was allegedly angry to see Jamie there.

Jamie then left the home for the night after arguing with Haggard but returned the next day. She told her boyfriend she planned to go back to the residence to demand that Haggard move out. She was never seen or heard from again.

Shortly before she disappeared, David Haggard allegedly sent a photo of Jamie tied up and forced into a bathtub. He sent the picture to one of her friends, who, in turn, contacted authorities, according to court documents.

“During the investigation, Major Crime’s detectives spoke with numerous witnesses who said Jamie had a volatile relationship with her brother David. On numerous occasions, Jamie told her boyfriend she feared David was going to kill her,” the King County Sheriff’s Office said.

Posted by King County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, October 29, 2019

 

King County Major Crimes detectives dug in the yard around the Kenmore residence on two different occasions, once in 2016 and again in 2017, but didn’t find Jamie. During the 2017 search, authorities found an area in the yard where something had been burned.

“We have received information that she may be buried in the back of this house,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West said in 2017. “We searched it a year ago and didn’t find anything, but the backyard is huge … A source contacted us and told us the body was buried in the yard and directed us to a different location.”

In May 2018, a crew picking up litter and trash along Downes Road in Snohomish County discovered a suitcase. Inside, they spotted burned human remains.  The remains were too burned and decomposed to make an immediate identification. Two months later, a medical examiner determined the remains were of Jamie Haggard. She died from homicidal violence.

Haggard Court Documents by Leigh Egan on Scribd

According to investigators, Haggard knocked Jamie out in the garage of the residence prior to killing her. Court documents allege both Jamie and David Haggard were meth and heroin users and fought frequently. Haggard is also accused of beating Jamie on numerous previous occasions.

Investigators found Jamie’s red bed sheets inside the suitcase, along with evidence that tied David Haggard to the crime, prosecutors said. The GPS from a stolen car Haggard allegedly drove after Jamie’s disappearance showed that on June 14, he drove around the same area where workers found the suitcase with Jamie’s remains.

“In this case, the defendant killed his own sister,” court documents read. “In order to conceal the crime, he dismembered her, burned her, stuffed her in a suitcase and discarded her by the side of the road, thus preventing her family (his own family) the opportunity to know what had become of her for almost two long years.

“In the meantime, he carried on with the charade of pretending to be worried about her and wondering where she was.”

David Haggard was already behind bars on an unrelated arson charge when prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder. He remains in jail on $2 million bail.

Jamie was the mother of twin girls, Dylan and Madison Rose. She was a “very smart, and very ambitious” woman, according to her father, Arthur “Lee” Haggard, who spoke to Dateline in 2018. Lee added that his daughter was upset about her living situation when she disappeared, and didn’t like the people who kept showing up at the house.

Lee added that Jamie was close to her family. He spoke to her over the phone almost daily until she disappeared.

“Everywhere you go, you think you see someone who looks like her, sounds like her, laughs like her. It’s really hard to miss somebody that you raised from day one, just have her yanked away from you.”

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[Feature Photo: Jamie Haggard/Handout]