Episode 285

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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

It's almost like he would rather live in his car and spend his money on stupid things like games and stuff like that instead of reality.

This is season 12, episode 285 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.

Well, we got lots of goodies in the store.

Store.swordandscale.com.

Lots of them are on a deep discount because I need to get them out of my garage.

So, when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

Yikes.

There's nothing small about a small business.

You're working all of the time.

Thankfully, though, I have a partner partner with all the tools that I need to be successful.

You may have heard of them.

Their name is Shopify.

Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business.

It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

Endless aisle, ship to customer.

buy online, pick up in store.

All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want, and staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

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You will shopify.com slash sword and scale.

We have this saying we throw around here a lot.

The worst monsters are real.

It's not something we came up with in a focus group or that someone threw around in a water cooler discussion, something that would be great for a t-shirt.

No, it's something that developed a lot more organically than that.

When you get hit over the head with an idea over and over and over again,

even for the dumbest of us, something eventually sticks.

What happened on New Year's Day in Everett, Washington, is a great example of that.

The misty city of Everett was boasting its typical winter colors of gray and green.

Nestled in Puget Sound, it's your typical Pacific Northwest port town, where the drab rainy skies are offset by the endless green shrubbery and towering Douglas fir trees.

Beautiful, but super depressing.

Outside the Cedar Creek apartments, two officers arrived to do a welfare check on 35-year-old Sherry Harlan.

She had grown up until she was a teenager in Oregon, had moved to Washington with her mother.

She was working at JCPenney and had just moved to a new apartment.

This is former Deputy District Attorney Craig Matheson.

My name is Craig Matheson.

I was a deputy prosecuting attorney for Snohomish County.

I did that for 35 years and retired in June of 2024.

Shelly hadn't shown up for the last few shifts at JCPenney.

One of my first jobs.

Worked in the uh men's underwear department.

Wore a suit and everything.

It's crazy.

Can you imagine young Mike Boudet in a suit at JCPenney selling you underwear?

Neither can I.

Anyway, Sherry's co-workers grew more and more concerned every time they tried to call her, because they weren't getting an answer.

And as we've heard before, this just wasn't like Sherry.

Again, I'm not sure who the type is that just disappears and doesn't answer people.

Oh, right, that's me.

That's me.

Don't call me.

Anyway, she actually enjoyed working at JCPenney.

She had a lot of fun with her coworkers who teased her about the awkward laugh she had.

This awkward laugh happened so often they decided to catch it on video.

Don't make her laugh.

Laugh, Sherry.

She can't stop laughing.

They gotta do the second part of the laugh.

The

part.

No, we didn't get the trigger warnings on this episode incorrectly.

That was not a wounded animal.

That was Sherry's laugh.

Anyway, Sherry had left her shift at JCPenney on January 1st and hadn't been seen since.

Her coworkers called the police and asked for a welfare check on January 5th.

Several uniformed deputies showed up at the apartment complex, which was the Cedar Creek apartments.

and the maintenance man on duty at the apartment complex got his keys and allowed law enforcement entry into Sherry's apartment.

And once the deputies entered the apartment, it became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that they were not going to be dealing with a missing persons case, but a homicide case.

Sherry's small one-bedroom apartment was a complete disaster.

There was a heavy odor of bleach in the air inside the apartment.

There had been some linoleum that had been cut off the floor of the kitchen in the apartment.

There had been an amount of carpeting that had been cut off the floor in the bedroom of the apartment.

Inside the apartment bedroom where the carpeting had been cut off on all four walls there was a blood spatter.

So essentially kind of in a 360 degree radius.

Law enforcement also found a t-shirt that had what appeared to be a bloody footprint on it.

There was a futon mattress that appeared to have several cuts that you might expect from a knife being plunged into it.

And there was a pair of gloves, those nitrile gloves, and one of them had what looked like tissue.

And when I say tissue, I mean human tissue

on the glove.

But there was no sign of Sherry or her beloved dog, Roscoe.

She was gone.

The deputies could tell that something horrific had happened in her apartment.

They slowly backed up, closed the door to the crime scene, and called in the higher-ups.

Sherry's welfare check had quickly turned into something much more sinister.

When detectives descended on the Cedar Creek apartments, they got to work trying to figure out what happened.

Detectives started fanning out and doing a canvas of neighbors of Sherry's, seeing whether they either saw something or heard anything.

And several of Sherry's neighbors indicated that they either heard what sounded like a relatively loud, violent argument on Saturday morning, which would have been January 2,

at approximately 8 a.m.

Neighbors who shared the walls with Sherry all heard the commotion during the early morning hours of January 2nd.

They hadn't seen anything, but they confirmed that they all heard Sherry fighting with someone.

But it just sounded like a heated argument.

Sherry's blue Nissan should have been parked in its regular spot outside the complex, but it was gone.

As officers examined the spot where she usually parked, another neighbor piped up.

But there was also a neighbor that saw a man who met met the description of Eric Christensen kind of loitering around Sherry's vehicle.

What was important about this neighbor having seen someone who met Christensen's description near Sherry's vehicle is by the time law enforcement got there on the 5th, that car is gone.

Christensen immediately became a person that law enforcement wanted to talk to.

Eric Christensen was Sherry's boyfriend.

They had to find him, but it wouldn't be hard.

Let's just say that the guy didn't exactly blend in in Everett.

Eric Christensen was a big guy.

He had to go about 6'2 ⁇ , 6'3.

He was probably about 220.

He was balding and kept his hair cut very short,

almost to the scalp.

He had a long chin beard that he would typically braid,

would often wear

kilts.

He claimed some Scottish heritage.

When you saw him, you knew who you were looking at.

Detectives soon got a call that Eric Christensen had been spotted at a hospital in Monroe.

Monroe was about twenty miles from Sherry's apartment, but close to the guest house that Eric rented on a rural property in Gold Bar.

Detective Betts headed to the scene and found Eric outside the hospital, his hand freshly stitched up, wearing his signature mid-calf Doc Martins and braided goatee.

What a look.

You know, they were building their case.

So they weren't there to arrest Christensen,

but what they wanted to do is get him, you know, tie him to some sort of statement.

Maybe he would admit to the crime, maybe he would give them information to lead them in a different direction.

Betts had the presence of mind to essentially do a man on the street type of interview.

Got his recorder out, asked Christensen if he's willing to talk to law enforcement,

that they're out looking for Sherry Harlan,

and Christensen agreed.

Eric, I understand that you had a relationship with

a woman

within the last month.

Can you give me her name, please?

Sherry Ann Harlan.

Okay, and how long have you known Sherry?

Since April of

2009.

41-year-old Eric had met Sherry on a site called Tagged, which is similar to just about every other dating website out there.

Formed a relationship first, then we started living together.

About when was that?

That was in March of the same year.

Both of us were actually living in our vehicles.

Eric and Sherry stayed with some friends in Everett for a while, but It didn't work out.

They had two couples under one roof in a small apartment, and we know where that goes.

Nowhere good, very fast.

So, they found themselves back in Eric's car.

We stayed in my Mazda 323,

and we just parked from various places to places and did the two of you ever get another place together?

We finally did,

and that was, I think, in August.

Okay, and where was that?

That was in Gold Bar.

Sherry and Eric started renting a small guest house in Gold Bar on their friend's property.

It was cramped, but they made the best of it.

Plus, anything was better than living in a car.

Tell me about your relationship with Sherry

during this period of time.

Well, we've been dating your boyfriend, girlfriend, pretty serious.

Things did go astray.

What is pretty serious to you?

Well,

we were together

roughly,

I'd say, 22 hours of the day, really,

okay, until she got her job working at JCPenney's.

For a few months, Eric and Sherry spent every waking moment together, getting by on his disability checks.

But that was no longer sustainable.

Unlike Eric, Sherry actually wanted to work and was thrilled to get a full-time job at JCPenney.

That's when things changed.

We kind of like grew apart, but we were still together when

around October, I think it was.

Oh, nine.

Okay.

And tell me that you said there was no event and you guys just grew apart.

Okay, but did you continue to live together for the moon?

Well, we continued just

to be a couple.

And

so I went to

jail for my warrant that I had.

When was that?

In November,

I think it was November 14th of 2009.

He was sentenced to do 30 days in jail for an unlawful possession of weapons charge in Snohomish County.

So from November 14th till December 11th of 2009, he had been in jail on that weapons charge.

And did the two of you communicate during the time that you were in jail?

Nope.

She didn't come visit you or anything like that?

She claims she tried to,

but I didn't put a, the way the Snow Homes County Jail is, you have to put in a visiting request form in, which King County, you don't have to do that.

Of course, I was strange event.

I didn't have no idea.

Did you ever try to call her?

Couldn't, didn't know her number.

Ah, okay.

So you got out of jail the first or second week of December, and then what happened?

I went back to Goldborough

and

found out that

she had her own apartment in Everett, because I called her.

Eric admitted that Sherry moved out after he went to jail to serve time for unlawful possession of a firearm.

He told the detective that Sherry had been kicked out.

for not helping out at the property or paying rent.

But it was during this time that Sherry's new friend, Dan Young, agreed to help her move.

Sherry had met Dan Young on a dating platform several months prior to her moving out of her habitation with Christensen.

Sherry had been transparent with Dan about her relationship with Eric.

And when he went to jail, they saw it as a way for her to get away and get her own place.

Dan Young was an older guy.

He was employed.

He had money.

He helped when Sherry had told him that she wanted to move out of the home that she was sharing with Christensen.

He agreed to pay both the first and the last month's rent at the apartment complex that she moved into and was the co-signer on the lease.

He also, you know, purchased her a flat screen TV, a block of knives, and some cooking implements to kind of set Sherry up in the apartment.

There was actually like a brief week, I think it was.

A brief what?

A week where we'd actually broken up, but I tried to salvage it and she said fine.

Now is this before or after Christmas?

Before.

Before Christmas.

Alright, so for a week you tried to salvage the relationship?

Yeah, I was mad.

I was really mad at her.

Why were you mad?

Because of her sugar daddy.

Okay, now tell me about that.

We haven't talked about that yet.

Yeah, her sugar daddy.

Now, in the way I believe, if you're with somebody, you're with somebody, if you have a sugar daddy, even though it's not sexual, that's still cheating on a person.

All right.

That's the way I've been for all my life that I can remember.

Now, what made you think that she had a sugar daddy?

Um, because at

when we were in

the apartment in Everett

for that brief time, he had sent her $450.

How do you know that?

Because she told me.

Okay, and she spent most of the money on my car.

Dan was a friend of Sherry's.

He helped her out by moving and setting her up in a new apartment, but he also lent her money.

As much as Eric disapproved of this man in Sherry's life, he had no problem using the funds Dan gifted Sherry for himself.

or his car.

Then Dan bought Sherry a laptop.

And one day, after an afternoon of lovemaking, Eric just couldn't let the laptop go.

Maybe it was the fact that Dan could buy her something nice like a computer that Eric simply couldn't afford.

Anyway, it made him angry.

Because she was messing with it, and this was after

we had intercourse.

After you had intercourse?

Yeah, and I was sitting there streaming about it.

Because

it's not me.

I'm not a Christian, I'm a Wiccan, and that'd be like asking me to become one.

I'm 100% totally into

Chevys.

They'll be asking me to love Fords.

Not happening.

So I got up.

I said, this is the last time we're having sex.

Got dressed.

She says, where are you going?

I said, home.

Christensen claimed to be a member of the

Wiccan

church, for want of a better term, and they went by the name of the Aquarian Tabernacle Temple, commonly referred to in the area as the Tab.

Eric had been,

quote-unquote, serious, Wiccan, for many years.

In fact, it was his whole identity.

Usually, people that are really, really stupid assume new identities from

new things they discover and find kind of weird and cool and different.

You know?

They want to be different because they're boring and dull.

So they adopt things like, you know, witchcraft and nonsense.

Maybe they start reading satanic verses or something.

Something edgy, you know?

And then that becomes their whole personality.

Because what else is there?

Anyway, Eric was one of these.

And

Sherry had also joined the church a few months prior.

Mostly because of Eric's influence.

He was pretty serious about it, but in talking to friends of his that were also part of the Wicca church, it was also pretty apparent that in addition to the belief system of Wicca, that Christensen was also going down

a darker side.

I did ask her, what's going to happen?

I walked out that door.

She says, yeah.

She knew I wouldn't come back at all.

And she did not want to lose me.

So,

we made a little deal.

Eric was a talker, and

when his pagan beliefs came up, something

shifted.

A fire blazed in his eyes, sending a chill down the detectives' spines.

They needed to know more about this deal that he made with Sherry,

but nothing could have prepared them for what came out of this Wiccan's mouth.

So when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

Yikes.

There's nothing small about a small business.

You're working all of the time.

Thankfully though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful.

You may have heard of them.

Their name is Shopify.

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It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up and store.

All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want.

And staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

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that give marketing teams a competitive edge.

In fact, it's proven.

Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

So if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side.

Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify.

Sign up for your $1 a a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.

All one word.

Just go to shopify.com slash swordandscale and sign up.

You'll thank me later.

You will.

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Snohomish County detectives were trying to find out what happened to 35-year-old Sherry Harlan.

She hadn't been seen in days, and her apartment was a wreck.

Police found ripped-up carpet, bleached floors, blood spatter, pieces of human tissue, on a glove.

It was clear she'd been killed, but

there was no trace of her remains whatsoever.

The last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Eric Christensen,

a kilt-wearing Wiccan with a bald head and a 10-inch braided goatee.

Couldn't have been him, right?

Anyway, when the detectives found Eric outside the hospital with a hand injury, They started asking him about Sherry.

He was more than happy to talk about how their relationship had gone downhill after she started taking financial gifts from a friend called Dan Young.

This bastard, this bastard that had, you know, all this money for stuff like laptops.

You know, Eric just wasn't happy about it, and he told police that he had Sherry make a deal with him using some of his coveted Wiccan rituals.

Tell me about the ceremony.

I mean, I'm not a Wiccan, so I don't understand, so enlighten me.

Okay, what it is, you cast a circle, and in that circle is pure purity, okay, to where you can do your ritual work to where it's no

negative energies coming in, it's all positive energies, right?

So we put up a barrier, okay.

And

so that's where we do all our good stuff.

Where you get all your good stuff.

Yes.

Okay.

So I went with her.

We went to across the street to the Walmart.

Started grabbing stuff because she didn't have none of the ritual tools.

None.

So what are the ritual tools?

Ritual tools are an Athami, which is a ceremonial dagger, which is only used for ceremony.

Athami?

Athami.

Okay.

I'll bite.

Close is new to me, so you're educating me.

She didn't have a wand, which we use.

We use wands to cast the circle.

Okay.

She didn't have no incense, no

chalice, no incense burner, no sea salt,

no bowl of any kind.

Where do you get this stuff?

There's actually a store in every mall that sells all of it.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

And right now I can't think of the name.

It's down by Sears on the right-hand side.

across the borders.

Magical Gardens.

That's it.

It's hard to take rituals seriously when it involves involves buying wands at a store next to Sears.

Magical Gardens, we went there, then we went over to the dollar store to grab a few more items because it's cheaper.

We had a male and female figure, which represents the god and the goddess.

Okay.

And we grab

five candles of different colors.

We have green, which represents earth, the element of earth.

Yellow is air.

Red is fire.

And then blue is water.

And then we had one more, which is white, which is spirit.

Okay.

So

I set up the home, the altar, and all.

Where did all this take place?

In her apartment.

Okay, and do you remember what day this was?

For some reason, I think it's the 18th, I don't know.

Okay, so is this the same day that you found the computer and all that stuff?

So basically, you find a computer.

And we talked and talked

Was it a conversation where she was trying to convince you to not leave?

And that's why you guys made this pact?

They returned to the apartment, and Eric set up his ritual space.

But there was one problem:

they needed a church witness to bind the ceremony and make it real.

That damn fine print.

I called up my friend Ryan.

And now, in a ritual, you do not have any electronic devices whatsoever right

none

so

because of it was just being him her I

called him up to be a witness for it and then who is this you called again his name is Ryan Ryan what's Ryan's last name I don't know it starts with a G starts with a G yes okay

and so I asked him to

participate and he said sure Okay, so Ryan participated via the telephone.

Via the telephone.

But what he did was he cast casted his own circle.

Okay.

And where he was.

All right.

And I cast the one here.

And then I conjured up watchtowers to watch

over it so it wasn't, no negative forces come into it.

Right.

Basically the watchdogs.

Okay.

And the elements were the ones to witness it.

All right.

And I called upon

the Lord and Lady.

And I called, the names I actually used was the Danu and the Dagda.

Holding his wand in one hand and a dagger in the other, Eric stood outside the invisible circle he had just cast in their living room.

Or at least he pretended to.

Because it was not a real circle.

He just invented it.

Anyway, Sherry waited quietly beside him and closed her eyes.

Eric's friend was on speakerphone as Eric looked up.

to the ceiling and began summoning his gods.

Ooh, we're gonna have some company today.

Put out the good china, I guess.

As this was happening, the incense burned, clouding the apartment with a musky, thick smoke, potentially masking some of the body odor, I would imagine.

Eric was in a trance as he worked his magic ritual.

Then he turned to Sherry and pointed the wand at her.

And then what happened?

I asked her, why are you here?

she told me that she was there because of

she wanted to be there she wanted

to

say no to

sugar daddy okay

I also asked her who does she want she said she wanted me

and then

I took I had a Pacific a Pacific

oil made for this and I grabbed what her zodiac element is which is air right incense which was powdered I put it in there and mixed it with the oil and what she had to do was she had to confess what she was doing three times okay and she had to prick her own blood her finger

which she kidnap you to it so I had to do it

for her yeah and so she put three drops of her own blood in this in this mixture yes and mix it up and it got burnt okay now so what does that signify when you do that?

That signifies that you're totally willing to do this.

You're given your own life essence

to do this.

I love the cops very banal, very ordinary.

Oh, okay.

The way it offsets the absurdity of what this guy's saying.

Anyway, after the blood oath ritual was complete, Eric was satisfied.

Sherry had admitted her transgression and committed her own life essence to him.

So, what was the sin that she confessed?

That there would be no more Sugar Daddy whatsoever.

Eric explained that things went well for a while, even though he found it strange that they were no longer living together.

Christmas came and went, and then Eric found a message from Dan in Sherry's phone.

Talking about my religion and my beliefs, I get into like an I guess an oracle mode.

And

so I told her,

what does it mean by no sugar day?

She explained, okay, no singing and no

money.

I said, that also means no communication.

Eric said they talked it out.

He let that one slide.

Maybe she didn't get it.

They reconciled, but spent New Year's Eve apart because Sherry had to work.

The next day, Eric picked her up from JCPenney.

They had a nice evening together.

Then the next morning, when Sherry went to have a shower, Eric took her phone and started snooping.

That's when he saw that Sherry had still

been talking to Dan.

Oh man, what are the other guys on the subreddit going to think?

I said, you broke your oath.

She says, what do you mean?

What do you mean?

Grabbed the phone.

You broke your oath.

So you're holding your hand up like you're holding the phone in front of her face?

I had the phone in my hand.

Oh, okay.

You broke your oath, showing that you were right in her face you broke the oath

smash so you threw the phone i threw the phone i was pissed where did the phone land uh

on the floor afterwards okay did it hit a wall or anything it did and it broke eric threw a tantrum he threw sherry's phone across the room and started berating her and that's what you broke your blood oath Because that's what it was, because she used her own blood.

Pretty much called her every name in the book.

You broke your oath.

You broke it.

We are done.

Okay, so you're basically furious.

Oh, I'm mad.

I'm could have been biting nails mad.

So you're beyond now.

But I can, I know how to control my anger.

If it goes a little too far,

I know exactly what my potentials are.

And now she's broken her oath.

So, what does that mean?

That means that she is no good.

Her blood is garbage.

All right.

Her blood might as well be sewage water.

Okay.

And in the ancient text ways, she becomes a warlock.

She had become a warlock.

Her blood was garbage.

But Eric said that he had not seen her since he left that day.

They had a loud fight.

She slammed the door and he left.

As for the cuts on his hand, Eric said that on his way back to Gold Bar, he was jumped by, quote, three Mexican guys, unquote.

How did you fight the three of them off with my fists?

After Eric's interview, the police thanked him for his time and he returned home, seemingly unbothered by the conversation.

Then, detectives immediately called the prosecutor's office to expedite a search warrant for Eric's house.

Then I became involved at that point.

We came to the determination that we had probable cause both for a search warrant of Christensen's home and for an arrest warrant for Christensen.

While police searched Eric's guest house for evidence, the interview, as bizarre as it was, remained purely circumstantial.

They needed more.

Then came a breakthrough that set everything in motion.

They found Sherry's car.

Sherry's car was located at approximately 2 p.m.

later on the same day that the search warrant was served on Christensen's home, so the afternoon of January 7.

It was found off of a place called Reeder Road, and Reeder Road is a two-lane road that leads off of Highway 2 in the east part of Snohomish County.

It relatively quickly gets out into the woods and you're out in the middle of nowhere.

before you know it.

Down Reeder Road, the detectives descended upon Sherry's Nissan in a desolate pit.

And it's an old gravel pit that young kids will go to party at or people will do target shooting at, you know, things of that nature.

It was apparent from the, you know, the smell and the active smoke that was still coming out of it that it hadn't been there long.

Sherry's Nissan was a husk of a car.

It had been burned to a crisp.

Just the bare metal bones of the car remained as smoke swirled all around.

Then they saw something unforgettable.

There appeared to be a human skull on the front seat.

There it was.

The first piece of Sherry.

Her skull just sitting there like a message from whoever had done this.

What was interesting when law enforcement ultimately went into the vehicle In the trunk of that vehicle, they found a stack of cut-up linoleum that appeared to be of the same type, the linoleum that was cut out of the kitchen floor in Sherry's apartment.

They also found a block of knives

that was consistent with the type of block of knives that had been in Sherry's apartment.

And they found a a big butcher knife in the passenger compartment of the vehicle where the tip had been broken off it.

The brutality of Sherry's death was becoming apparent.

This had been a violent, savage murder.

The human skull that was located on the front seat was ultimately taken by this county medical examiner, and he x-rayed that.

And when x-raying the skull, I discovered a knife tip in the skull.

So it all kind of matched up with

the weapon that had been used, at least, to stab her in the head, was a knife from the knife block that had been on her kitchen counter.

It was clear that Sherry had been killed with the knives Dan had gifted her.

All signs pointed to Eric, but there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.

No confession.

No proof.

Detectives were left questioning, was Eric the killer or was someone else involved?

Then,

an unexpected phone call would blow the investigation wide open.

A man man named Ryan Gessme called the Snohamish County Sheriff's Office and said he needed to talk to someone.

Ryan was one of Eric's only friends and a member of the same Wiccan church that Sherry and Eric belonged to.

He was the one Eric had called on the phone to witness the blood oath.

Ryan said that a few days after the oath, Eric called him.

asking for help.

He told me that he locked his keys in the cart.

I said, okay,

And

he asked me, do you have anything to

get the lock open with?

Did he say what car?

No.

Okay, he just said, did he say where it was?

At the mineral parking right.

Okay.

So did you, were you able to help him with something?

I was actually able to go home and get a coat hanger.

So Gesme showed up to help him get into the vehicle.

And when he arrived, Christensen was standing outside of Sherry's car and he you know he'd he'd lock the keys inside.

On the way home he called me on my cell phone and said he got it open with his leatherman.

Oh, okay.

I don't know why he didn't do that in the first place.

Yeah, I don't know.

That's okay.

As soon as we were he told me he got it open with the leatherman, he said I need your help.

Okay.

And what did you

I said, with what?

And he said, get rid of the body.

I'm like,

what body?

At that point, I was like

in shock.

Right.

'Cause I didn't it didn't register.

Right.

Did you ask him what what body, what what what was his reply to that?

Hers.

Did he say hers or did he say name?

He said hers.

hers.

When he asked me for my help,

I was so distraught, I wasn't thinking clearly, so I said yes.

And as they started talking with him initially, though, it became pretty apparent that

Ryan

had some criminal liability based upon his actions after the murder and in helping Christensen.

We needed to get Ryan legal counsel to make sure that we were doing this correctly.

Craig, the detectives, Ryan, and his lawyer sat down as Ryan gave his proffer statement, his account of what happened to Sherry.

As the only witness to the aftermath, his story would be crucial at trial.

He picked me up and we went to the parking ride in Monroe.

Okay, and what was there?

Her car.

Her car.

And then from there, where'd you go?

From there, we took off and went up to Reeder.

In what car?

Hers.

And who drove?

Me.

And where was Eric seated?

In the passenger seat in the front.

Ryan drove while Eric directed him.

Inside the trunk was Sherry.

Eric had cut her body up into pieces and stuffed her bloody limbs into garbage bags.

He took the parts out of the trunk, took him

into the woods with a shovel

and buried the parts and brought the bags back to the car.

Did you go with him into

the woods?

Do you know where

you stopped, roughly?

Ryan acted as a chauffeur around wooded parts of the county.

Eric would make him stop, then get out with another body part and a shovel.

Does he get back in the car at that point?

And what does he say to you?

Next spot.

Okay, when did he tell you about the torso?

Um,

after he took it out of the trunk.

What did he say?

He said, here's part of the torso.

Okay, what were you...

How did you

respond to that?

I didn't know what to think.

Honestly.

Okay.

So, did you see what he did with the plastic bag?

He was put it in the trunk.

Put it back in the trunk.

Okay, what was the next spot then?

Ryan detailed every spot they went to that afternoon, repeating the same awful process of hiding Sherry's remains as Eric showed them off like trophies.

He, um, took out another bag.

Okay.

And this time,

I was standing

on the

driver's door.

Okay.

And he pulled that.

Pulled it out of the...

pulled body part out of the bag.

Okay, could you recognize it?

It was a thigh.

Thigh.

Okay.

They just chucked it over the guardrail.

It was the upper leg without the knee.

Without the knee.

As the process went on, Eric became less secretive and started showing Ryan the parts in the bags.

After Eric threw Sherry's thigh over the guardrail, a car drove by.

Now you mentioned yesterday that somebody drove by while you guys were there.

Yeah, my mom.

Okay.

Your mom?

Yes?

Wow.

Was that planned?

No.

How spooky is that?

I don't know.

So I had a cover-up.

I don't know why I did it.

All I said was he's going to the bathroom and I was just enjoying the view.

What made you not say, hey, mom, take me home, or hey, mom, get me out of here?

I don't know.

Did you have any concerns at all or any reasons why you felt that you shouldn't do that?

Not really.

I was just...

Again, not thinking about it.

So,

your mom, did you, how long did your mom stay?

About five minutes.

Small town problems, huh?

Ryan's own mother drove by as the two scattered around Sherry's body.

And Ryan's mom stayed for five whole minutes.

Ryan stood there, swallowing his terror as he made up excuses for his mom and prayed she would leave before Eric came back with another bloody trash bag.

When she was gone, they continued driving around for the next few hours, digging small graves for Sherry's bloody parts.

What was his demeanor like?

Did he act like he was sad about this or did he act like he was bothered by it or anything?

He what he was acting like it was

I really don't know what to think.

I don't know how to explain it.

Was he acting angry?

Was he acting happy?

Was he asking, you know, different people?

In between happy and angry.

Really?

Okay.

So he wasn't acting sad about it or despondent.

No.

According to Ryan, Eric did not seem upset.

He toggled between elated and frustrated.

Probably from having to dig the wet, hard dirt.

He clearly wasn't saddened to have lost Sherry.

After Eric had had enough for that day, he took Ryan back home and said he'd pick him up again tomorrow.

The next day, they got back in the car with the remainder of the body and continued their sick task.

By this time, Eric started talking more and more about what happened to Sherry and how she died.

Is there anything else that he told you, Ryan, about what happened in that apartment or what he did that you can help us with?

I I really don't know much about it, about the apartment.

Okay, but I mean did he share any other information with you?

He told you that why he did it, the blood oath.

Yeah.

He didn't tell me

really the um how he killed her.

All he just said was

part of it was

part of her was in the car.

We talked a little bit yesterday and you mentioned to me that he used that he was using a knife.

That he had used a knife.

Yeah, but I'm not sure what kind of knife.

Okay, how did you know this then about the knife?

Sorry.

I'm jumbled.

Um, it's okay.

He

actually did tell me he used a knife, but he didn't specify what he didn't tell me what kind of knife.

After every single piece of sherry had been dispersed, except for her head,

Ryan told Eric he was done.

He'd had enough.

You didn't go to where he put the car, correct?

So you told him you're on your own?

I told him you're on your own.

I'm done.

Okay, what was his reaction to that?

He's like, okay.

Alright, and do you know what happened with the car?

Um,

he goes, I'll have to find a spot to torch it.

Okay.

Do you know what body parts were left, if any?

Probably an arm and a head.

Okay, and why do you how do you know that?

Because

we only got rid of one arm.

Okay.

That one arm on kill off.

Okay.

And those were the only two left?

Okay, so there was two two left?

Two body parts left.

The head and an arm.

Did you see them?

No.

Do you know how he got the car there?

He drove it.

And do you know how he got

out of there?

He walked home.

And how do you know this?

Because he called me afterwards, after it it was torched.

Okay.

And said he's on his way home.

He's walking.

Okay, did he tell you what he did?

He told me he doused the car and later flew it.

Okay.

And set it on fire.

Did he indicate why he put the head in the front seat?

No.

Can you think of why he would do that?

Is there any significance to that particular action by him?

I don't know.

Because we have all these other body parts that are buried or thrown off of increments or whatever.

Not easily found.

Maybe by animals, but certainly not people.

Yeah.

And then we find a torched car

with a head.

If you had to speculate, why did Eric do that?

I don't know why.

There's no religious reason, nothing like that.

No.

Ryan then took the police to every place where he'd watched Eric dig a grave for Sherry.

They collected every piece of her until they finally had a whole woman again.

But Ryan's edgy demeanor cast a shadow of doubt.

Had he really just been an observer in all of this?

The police still had to tie the physical evidence back to Eric.

The last place to investigate was his own property, and they hoped he'd leave something bloody behind.

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What had started as a welfare check on Sherry Harlan had quickly become a murder investigation.

Detectives were suspicious of her boyfriend Eric Christensen, who had admitted to getting into a fight with Sherry after she broke a blood oath during a Wiccan ritual.

Now his friend and fellow Wiccan Ryan Gessme had admitted that he helped Eric scatter Sherry's severed body parts around the county.

Gessme didn't have any real criminal history.

He wasn't somebody that, you know, we dealt with, you know, either law enforcement or the prosecutor's office.

We knew he was telling the truth because he was actually able ultimately to lead law enforcement to the various body parts.

But this is not a guy with history, but he certainly had criminal exposure for rendering criminal assistance

after the fact by by helping dispose of the body.

So to make sure that we got his testimony for trial, we ultimately offered him immunity for truthful testimony at trial.

The police now had Eric in custody, and at his home, their search warrant turned up even more pieces of incriminating evidence.

Inside of

Christensen's home, they found a pair of blue jeans that had fairly extensive blood spatter on it.

They found a pair of tennis shoes that had apparent blood spatter on it.

But what was mostly interesting to law enforcement about these shoes is that the tread on the bottom of the shoes matched the bloody footprint that was found at Sherry's apartment.

On top of all the blood-soaked items in Eric's dingy guesthouse, they also searched his car.

And what they found inside the vehicle was a number of blood transfer stains on various parts of the car, and then a couple of rings that

had been put in like the ashtray, and on the interior of the rings there appeared to be blood inside of those, also.

They also located what appeared to be essentially a shopping list for cleaning items, garbage bags, bleach, mop, gloves, things of that nature.

And then they also found a number of receipts from various stores.

Eric left evidence everywhere.

A shocking amount for someone so calculating.

He cut linoleum out of the floor, yet left his cleanup list in his car.

Maybe Eric thought he had more time.

Maybe he was just

a little clumsy.

I don't think he ever anticipated that Ryan would turn on him the way that he did.

But I've found late in life that all those sayings we learn as a kid have a lot of truth and a lot of learnings to be derived from.

You know, sayings like,

there is no honor amongst thieves or murderers.

It's difficult to get inside of Eric Christensen's brain, but

I have to believe that a lot of it was that

even for a guy like that, doing what he ultimately did to the body had to be pretty shocking.

that what had occurred was so disturbing to even him that it kept him from being meticulous in his cleanup or he just didn't care or he thought he had talked his way out of it the previous day.

I don't know, but I was just glad that it was there when the police showed up.

Like all criminals facing trial in Washington, Eric was granted the right to a speedy trial.

In Washington, speedy means 60 days.

Not sure why they've adopted that definition, but it is what it is.

Craig and his team had a solid theory of exactly what had happened to Sherry and enough physical evidence to nail Eric.

So our theory of the case that was

borne out, I think,

pretty well by the

hard evidence that we were able to demonstrate at trial was that Christensen was already very sensitive about the subject of Dan Young, the sugar daddy.

This was a guy that worked, that had money, and wasn't shy about spending it on Sherry Harlan.

Christensen claimed a shoulder and injury and had been on disability for months.

He didn't work.

Eric was clearly a fucking loser, in case you haven't figured that out yet.

He had no income and barely a home.

He was also a convicted felon.

He was a Wiccan.

Do I have to say more?

Anyway, in 1990, he was convicted of statutory rape and forgery in Oregon.

He served his prison time and he moved up to Seattle.

He was supposed to be a registered sex offender in Washington, which

he was not, probably because a lot of those states over on the West Coast, they just don't give a shit about crime, and especially crimes involving sex offenders for some reason.

Not sure why that is.

Anyway, in 1994, he tried to kill his ex-girlfriend by shooting her and her boyfriend with a rifle.

This is a guy that should have never been out on the streets after that.

But hey, you don't want me to talk about politics, so I guess I won't.

He missed, but the police, who just happened to be around the corner when he was opening fire on the two, caught him relatively shortly after he took the shots.

And he said, you know, something to the effect of,

where I come from, when a woman cheats on you, you shoot them.

And the only only reason they're alive is because my front sights are off.

He ended up doing 12 years on two counts of assault one.

It was in the Washington prison that Eric discovered the Wiccan religion and the Aquarian Tabernacle Church.

Why is it Aquarian?

I don't know.

Go down that rabbit hole yourself if you want to.

Leave me out of it.

Anyway, behind bars, he immersed himself in pagan beliefs, becoming obsessed, as easily obsessed people do.

After his release, he met Sherry on that app called Tagged, which nobody's ever heard about.

And just 11 months later, he would kill her.

The morning or January 1st, 2010, Sherry had been complaining about a stomachache.

And Christensen left and went to the Walmart, which is just up the road from the apartment, to buy her

some stuff for her stomach.

While Christensen had been gone, Sherry and Dan Young had been texting back and forth.

One of the last text messages from Sherry had been her complaining about

her stomach ache, and the very last text that Dan Young had sent back to Sherry, and the last text that she'd ever received was a text that said substantially words to the effect that that's what being with two guys will do to you.

It'll give you a bad tummy.

LOL.

So Christensen gets back from Walmart.

Sherry's in the shower and being a jealous possessive guy like he is, he goes to her phone and he sees that text string, particularly this last one where it appears that you know, Sherry and Dan are kind of laughing at him being a cuckold

and he decided to kill her.

Craig believed that Eric attacked Sherry as soon as she got out of the bathroom.

He grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and went into a white-hot rage.

Cause of death was difficult for the medical examiner to determine because of the state of the body.

However, he was able to find on

the torso three stab wounds in her back, two of which would have been fatal in and of themselves if they had occurred while she was was alive.

And there was also the stab wound to her head that left the

knife tip embedded in her skull.

When Eric showed up at trial, he had finally shaved his signature 10-inch goatee and put on a nice suit.

You know?

Put on a nice suit every now and then.

It's nice.

It's good for you.

It's good for your health.

Eric was unrecognizable.

He was...

Still evil, of course.

All that evil bubbling below the surface, but at least he had the proper attire.

For the most part, Christensen was pretty stoic, but there were a couple of times, particularly when we were talking about the text string from Sherry's phone, when Dan Young was testifying about his relationship with Sherry,

where he was obviously angered by what he was hearing.

Sherry's friends and family were all there.

She had a lot of mourners.

Vigils had been held in her honor, and the whole community mourned for this kind-hearted girl with a funny laugh and curly hair.

Because of that, Craig was very careful when selecting pictures of the crime scene.

There were over 1,000 graphic images of Sherry's body parts, her skull, and the murder scene.

Craig managed to narrow it down to an essential 100 images to spare her family and the jurors.

I felt bad for the jurors.

The law enforcement and myself deal with ugly, gnarly stuff all the time.

And this was bad for us.

I can't imagine what

your typical normal citizen was feeling like when they came in.

you know, to the courthouse, got selected for this jury, and then sat for 16 days watching just this parade of horrible, you know, that we spun out for them.

And then, you know, thanks for your service.

You know, we'll see you later, you know, as they head out the door.

Like I said, there are images from this thing that I'll never get out of my head.

I can only imagine, you know, some of the jurors

might have

similar issues.

It was a tense 16 days in that courtroom, but in the end, the jury came back with a guilty verdict.

Eric would spend almost 50 years behind bars, which is probably where he should have been for his entire useless life.

One day we'll have an AI that will tell us if you're predisposed to become an Eric, and we can just throw you in there from birth.

Won't that be great?

The verdict had been announced when the jail staff were leading him back to the holding cell.

He kind of cackled in a very loud fashion.

It was kind of spooky.

I'm not sure whether it was something that he really really felt or it was just trying to be macho or and kind of play the part.

But yeah, he was laughing as he was walked out of the courtroom.

Anyway, Eric, this hateable character that we've spent an hour telling you about, he was a deadbeat, if you haven't figured that out by now.

A deadbeat cloaking himself in wiccan beliefs to project a false sense of power.

A sense of power that he probably felt he didn't have.

Really.

Because he's just a powerless dork, you know?

Kind of like most of us.

Some people can't handle the reality that we're mostly just powerless dorks.

So they come up with these stupid ideas.

Eric's pagan identity and spirituality weren't expressions of faith whatsoever.

They were just ways for him to peacock, to pretend.

to be something he isn't.

As Sherry started to pull away, he used their shared religion, twisting its teachings to tighten his grip on her.

Beneath his facade, there was nothing real to begin with.

Just a sad, pathetic, useless bag of blood and guts that's just continuously performing to build up their own ego because they know they know deep down inside how useless they actually are.

When Sherry finally found her independence, Eric snapped.

His ego couldn't handle it.

He butchered her, and then he attempted to get rid of her in the most vile way possible.

As for Ryan, the one who ratted out Eric, well, Ryan wasn't so innocent, after all.

Though he traded immunity for his testimony, he was later convicted of child molestation in 2019.

Are you surprised?

In 2024, he petitioned the Snohamish County Courts to change his last name to Creed so that no one will know that Ryan Creed from Washington is a child molester.

Ryan Creed, by the way, is spelled R-Y-A-N.

C-R-E-E-D.

In case you're doing a search.

Sherry Harlan led a simple life.

She had her own troubles, but kept to herself and tried her best to make ends meet.

She was a lost woman who got mixed up with a very, very deranged man.

Sherry was Eric's final victim, but her death is a stark and very real

reminder.

In this world, there is such a thing as monsters, and they look

exactly like Eric Christensen.

All right, that's going to do it for another one.

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