Michael Maiava, the man charged with the murder of Seattle businessman Kevin Shaw, whom he met on a chat line, pleaded not guilty on Monday to the charges of murder in the first degree and use of a deadly weapon (specifically an ice pick or shank). Also, it's alleged there are aggravating circumstances that lead to Shaw's death.
As of the press date, Maiava's case has been assigned to the associated council of the accused, but no specific attorney has been put on the case.
Shaw's body was found in October 2004, curled up in the fetal position, wrapped in two sheets and a garbage bag, and lying in his red Porsche Boxster parked on Beacon Hill. Maiava had been living in the Beacon Hill neighborhood with his brother and sister-in-law at the time that Shaw's body was found just down the road from his house.
Maiava was arrested on Feb. 24 at the Regional Justice Center, where he was being held on unrelated charges. Detectives had obtained a search warrant for Maiava's house and found black cable identical to that used to bind Shaw, as well as blood on the couch and floor in Maiava's bedroom.
Forensics are still testing whether or not the blood was Shaw's, and the King County Prosecor's Office refuses to speculate about the detail.
Rolf Norton, the Seattle Police detective who filed the papers charging Maiava, wrote that Shaw's body bore the marks of a "severe beating and strangulation." His back had been broken, there were injuries to his face, head, and body, and he had suffered a fatal blow to the head with what was later determined to be an ice pick, or similar weapon.
The documents also state that the sheets that Shaw was wrapped in smelled of gasoline, indicating that Maiava tried, but failed, to set Shaw and the car on fire in order to eliminate the criminal evidence. After Shaw's body was found, DNA samples extracted from the Boxster were matched to Maiava, which lead detectives to the suspect's home and cell phone.
Detective Norton states that telephone records from Maiava's home and Shaw's cell phone show that Maiava and Shaw may have met on a voice-mail chat line on Oct. 18th of last year. The chat line allows users to create their own voice-mail profile of themselves while allowing them to also scroll through other users' profiles. A friend of Shaw's told detectives that Shaw had previously used the chat line to meet up with strangers. The King County Prosecutor's Office refused to speculate on the importance of the role of the chat line in prosecuting the suspect.
Maiava, a 22-year old Seattle resident, first denied any knowledge of the homicide when confronted by detectives. However, he later admitted to Shaw's murder and gave detectives a number of different accounts of the incident.
The King County Prosecutor's Office stated that a trial date for Maiava's case will be set on March 21.
"It's hard to speculate what the sentence could be," Dan Donohoe, media relations officer from the King County Prosecutor's Office said. "Right now the charge is murder in the first and that charge doesn't carry the death penalty. The maximum is life, but my guess is [he could get] about 20 to 26 years in prison."
Despite the brutality of the crime, Seattle Police Department officials state that Seattle is still one of the safest big cities in our nation.
"This case doesn't change the fact that 24 homicides (last year) is extraordinarily low and Seattle is still one of the safest big cities," said Deborah Brown, media relations officer for the Seattle Police Department.
With the violent crime rate decreasing and the rate of solving crimes increasing, Brown noted that there are few homicides currently left open in Seattle.
"Each homicide has its own story and of those homicides still open in Seattle, a vast majority are in some process of litigation. Homicide investigations are extraordinarily complicated," Brown said. "It's never as simple as people think and this was a combination of a good investigation of a homicide and a good C.S.I. [Crime Scene Investigation] unit that processed the scene. There was a lot of evidence taken in and processed, and it was just good old-fashioned detective work."
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