Anatomy of a murder: the hearing gives details of the shooting death of Jérôme

November 29—×

JEROME — “Hello. This is William Eakin.

The voice sounded deliberate, almost hesitant.

It was the start of a 911 call that murder suspect Kevin Kuintzle allegedly made in an attempt to persuade law enforcement that his victim, 84-year-old William Eakin, was actually alive.

When calling a SIRCOMM dispatcher, the individual requested that an officer be sent to Eakin’s home on Bob Barton Road and to remove people from his property. The caller, claiming to be Eakin, said he was in Twin Falls with his daughter and would be home in an hour.

The dispatcher knew the call, which came in shortly after 4 p.m. on September 17, 2023, was suspicious. On the one hand, the people on his property were law enforcement officers who were conducting a welfare check after Eakin was not seen that day, even to open the church that he attended every Sunday morning.

Second, the dispatcher had been informed shortly before that Eakin had been found dead in his bed with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head. The victim was still wearing his CPAP mask.

The call ended when the dispatcher attempted to connect the caller with a deputy, while the caller complained about questions the dispatcher was asking, including what phone number he was calling from and his daughter’s name.

This was another reason to suspect. Eakin had no children.

The caller hung up.

A case unravels

Kuintzle sat in court in mid-November for his preliminary hearing with a case presented by prosecutor Sam Beus. Witnesses recounted the suspect’s actions leading from Jerome to Twin Falls.

Many preliminary hearings in which a judge decides whether there is probable cause for a defendant’s case to proceed involve a handful of witnesses. This hearing surrounding a first-degree murder charge, however, was different.

Beus called 21 witnesses to the stand.

At the end of the hearing, Judge John ruled that Kuintzle would be arraigned in District Court on charges of murder, concealment of evidence and robbery. A jury trial has been set for May.

Among the witnesses was Erika Brock, a woman who said she accompanied the defendant to the several-acre property where Eakin was found dead. Kuintzle, according to his testimony, said the victim “wouldn’t be missing for a while” and suggested he may have killed himself.

The night before the murder, Brock said, Kuintzle called her to tell her that if things worked out, they would be “set for life.”

Brock said she was confused by the comment and wondered if he had gotten a good job that included benefits.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a job that paid benefits, but prosecutors say Kuintzle stole items from Eakin’s cluttered property. Brock said Kuintzle later told him the house was an “easy mark” — someone could easily steal it.

There was plenty of choice. A law enforcement officer said the interior of the house looked like something from the TV show “Hoarders.”

Although there was a lot of trash, Jerome County Sheriff’s Detective Jon Daubner said, there were also valuables.

Some 500 to 600 firearms were spread across the property, in almost every nook and cranny, Daubner said.

Brock, who said he met Kuintzle a month before the killing and communicated with him regularly, said the two men drove separate vehicles on a Sunday afternoon to the property.

A neighbor, who had been told earlier in the day that Eakin was missing and his vehicle missing, saw Eakin’s Toyota Rav4 around 3 p.m. near a machine shop on the property.

“I kind of wrote a welfare check,” the neighbor said. “I thought it was really strange.”

The neighbor said he observed two people – a man and a woman – in the shed, with the man rummaging through items. The woman said she was Eakin’s granddaughter and that Eakin was in a care facility in Twin Falls.

The neighbor, although armed, had forgotten his cell phone and the two men – allegedly Kuintzle and Brock – quickly left.

Law enforcement quickly rushed to the scene where they found Eakin’s body in his bed.

Brock testified that she was driving Eakin’s vehicle and ended up leaving it along Golf Course Road at Kuintzle’s insistence.

Kuintzle picked up Brock and they drove to the Twin Falls Water Treatment Plant in the Snake River Canyon, where Kuintzle apparently threw a gun and Brock’s laptop into the river, claiming that the police could find them, she said.

They parted ways for the day and he let her take his car, a Honda Civic.

Kuintzle called Brock back the following Monday morning and told him to check the news, and she learned of Jerome’s murder, Brock said.

That’s when the pieces of the puzzle came together.

“Everything started to come together in my head,” she said. The next day, she went to an appointment with a Twin Falls County prosecutor about a separate case, and during her visit she revealed that she knew information about Jerome’s murder.

Law enforcement began searching for Kuintzle. They spotted him in Heyburn and later apprehended him after a chase on Interstate 86 that ended near Pocatello after the Camaro he was driving ran into spike strips.

While Kuintzle was charged with first-degree murder, grand larceny, and destruction of evidence, Brock had her own legal issues in connection with the incident, being charged with grand larceny, destruction of evidence, and concealing a crime.

She reached a plea deal with prosecutors in June in which prosecutors would recommend a suspended sentence with probation.

But his time out to comply with the court has not gone smoothly and it could affect his sentence. She failed to show up for the drug test and failed the tests, records show. His sentencing is scheduled for December 9.

Defense attorneys noted that Brock did not see the killings and that Kuintzle did not admit to them.

But Brock said Kuintzle admitted to the murders, “put simply,” Brock said.

Defenders also said Brock’s memory was unreliable due to her drug use and that she could not actually remember the day’s events without referring to notes from police interviews.

In addition to Brock’s testimony, DNA evidence also helped connect Kuintzle to the scene, according to investigators. Beus showed analysis reports conducted by the Idaho State Police Forensic Services that showed strong confidence that he had touched a doorknob that had been detached from its hinges and thrown in a stairwell, and that he drank from a bottle of Mountain Dew. it was on the hood of a car.

Additionally, Kuintzle told Brock that he returned to the Eakin property and stole some items, including a checkbook, according to testimony.

The lead investigator said two firearms were also discovered on the property, believed to be by Kuintzle. One of the guns was later found in Kuintzle’s car after his arrest, and the pawn shop owner said Kuintzle had pawned the other, according to police.

The 9mm pistol used in Eakin’s murder was found — along with its cocked hammer — in January, stored in a box on Eakin’s back porch.

A troubled past

A former roommate at Kuintzle’s halfway house testified about his relationship with the defendant. The two men met a few months before the killing, he said, and Kuintzle’s behavior went from stable to erratic around the time of the killing.

Kuintzle had started using drugs, the former roommate said, and “his behavior changed very quickly.”

He said Kuintzle told stories about a property that had a building full of weapons and that he would enter outbuildings on the property where he would bring home valuables, including tools.

He said he received a call from Kuintzle on the morning of September 17, who asked him about his favorite gun, and later that day, when they met, he told a story that he was using drugs with the caretaker of a property and shot guns with him, then shared. guns in two piles.

In a Twin Falls County case, Kuintzle was charged with robbery and kidnapping after police said he confronted a woman near campus on the evening of Sept. 17 and asked her for a phone, money, money and a car. People playing disc golf nearby saw the woman was in distress and came to her aid and the suspect walked away, according to court records.

No court date has been set in this case, with the Jerome County case taking priority.

At the start of the hearing, Kuintzle, who was handcuffed, asked Judge Lothspeich to release one of his hands from the handcuffs so he could take notes. Beus objected, saying Kuintzle had regularly threatened deputies since his incarceration.

Lothspeich, noting that Kuintzle was still chained to his stomach, agreed to the defendant’s request while warning him not to cause a disturbance.

Kuintzle has been charged with several offenses since his arrest; he is being held at the Idaho Department of Corrections Center in Kuna and was charged with injury to prison property when he removed an electronic device while being transported to Jerome for the preliminary hearing, records show .

When he arrived at Jérôme’s house, he resisted and uttered threats against the police who were trying to put him through a body scanner capable of detecting contraband, according to police. A strip search revealed he had several pieces of plastic, possibly broken comb teeth, that police said could be used as lockpicks or to tamper with locks, records show.

About the victim

Eakin, 84, has had a colorful history.

Born in Jerome, he graduated from Jerome High School in 1957 and earned degrees in physics and engineering from the College of Idaho, according to his obituary.

He had a passion for airplanes and worked at Boeing before serving in the Air Force for eight years. He was a pilot for Delta Airlines and retired in 1999 as an international captain.

He made surgical instruments and spiral staircases and returned to Jerome to work on his ranch, Eakin Land & Livestock.

One reason he owned so many guns — as many as 600 — was because if he saw a squirrel or something that bothered him, “he had something handy,” a neighbor said during of the audience.

The neighbor said their friendship was “very close” and the two often shot skeet together. Eakin was very generous, he said, and cared more about others than himself.

Another neighbor said Eakin sometimes called himself “Wild Willy” and would come to his house to introduce himself when he moved in.

A court hearing was held in November to close the Eakin estate, a neighbor said. It was a huge undertaking. The cluttered condition of the house and property was mentioned several times during the preliminary hearing, and some of them related to his multitude of interests.

“Willy had more hobbies than more than ten could have,” said a neighbor.

Eric Goodell reports for the Times-News. Contact him at [email protected].