Sunrise Suicide Pact Goes Badly Awry

"The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true." — Hillary Mantel

AVA, January 3, 2018: “A BAD CHRISTMAS for this Joseph and Mary. Mrs. Mary Mantynen was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the bathroom of the Sunrise Motel, Ukiah, on the evening of Thursday, December 21st. Her husband, Joseph, was arrested uninjured. The couple is charged with a residential burglary the day before in the town of Sonoma. At least one Sonoma County detective trailed the Mantynens to the Ukiah motel where, about 8pm last Thursday, the couple refused to exit their motel room. Mantynen is alleged to have pointed a .22 rifle at Deputy Elmore during the ensuing, hour-long standoff at which point one or more officers commenced fire. How exactly Mrs. Mantynen died is not yet known. Joseph Charles Mantynen has been charged with murder in the death of his wife, Mary Elizabeth Mantynen, also known as Mary Elizabeth Windham and Mary Elizabeth Valentine. Mantynen is also charged with assault with a firearm on a peace officer, Deputy James Elmore. The back story of this particular tragedy implies money on her side of the family while his side suggests a steady life as a blue collar worker before he descended into drugs, then meeting her as she also took the chemical path to perdition. They leave three young children between them.”

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Last Wednesday, March 28th, Joseph Mantynen, 32, of Las Vegas, Nevada, was sentenced to 26 years and four months in prison for the death of his wife, Mary Mantynen, a 23-year-old mother of two, also of Las Vegas, who was shot dead by police officers last December 21st at the Sunrise Motel on South State Street in Ukiah.

In a letter to Judge John Behnke, Mr. Mantynen explained that the fatal incident was caused by drugs, an addiction that had ruined his life. Mr. Mantynen’s object in making such a pitiful admission, that he was an addict, was to get into rehab, rather than go to prison, a tactic used almost daily at the courthouse when the day of judgment comes. But District Attorney David Eyster refused to go along with this plan for rehab, and instead the DA and Public Defender Linda “Dumptruck” Thompson worked out the stipulated sentence of 26 years and four months in prison.

DA Eyster dismissed Mr. Mantynen’s statement as a “watered down” version of the shooting and the events that led up to it.

“He says he’s the victim — he is not!” declared Eyster, standing with a copy of the letter in his hand. Eyster rather mockingly paraphrased the defendant’s statement, “After getting fired from his job, Mantynen and his wife drive to his grandmother’s house in Sonoma County and, finding that she isn’t home, he decides to burglarize the home! Now, wouldn’t ya think, that coming from out of state, he could have called first? To make sure she was going to be home? Or not?”

The implication was clear: Mantynen made sure his grandmother wasn’t home then went to her house and took whatever he could find, including, most likely, the .22 Remington rifle used in the shoot-out at the motel in Ukiah. It was the Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies investigating this burglary who traced the Mantynens to Ukiah.

“Judge,” Eyster said, “The defendant says he and his wife had made a suicide pact, suicide by cop; they wanted to end their lives, but they wanted the police to do it for them, so they came up here to Mendocino County to carry it out.”

Ms. Thompson countered, “Your honor, we pled before the preliminary hearing. He knows he’s responsible for his wife’s death, and that it was wrong for him to risk the lives of law enforcement; he is not making law enforcement relive this.”

In California a person can be charged with murder if a “provocative act” – such as pointing a firearm at police officers — leads to another person’s death.

As the Sonoma County and Mendocino County deputies, along with Ukiah police officers, entered the parking lot of the Sunrise Motel at about 7:00pm, Mantynen started yelling that they were going to go down and would never surrender. After about an hour-long stand off, with the door to their motel room open, and the couple holed-up in the bathroom, Joe Mantynen pointed the rifle at an officer and the SWAT team fired. Mary Mantynen, crouched in the bathtub of the motel, died of a single gunshot wound, as the autopsy later showed.

At this point, having watched his wife die, Joe Mantynen appears to have lost his enthusiasm for suicide by cop, and backed out of the pact. Too late for poor Mary who had already called home and spoken briefly with her mother in Pahrump, Nevada, crying hysterically and asking her mother to say goodbye to her children. She had two small sons and was stepmother to Joe Mantynen’s young daughter. The children had all been left with Mary’s mother as the couple departed for their final methamphetamine binge.

As part of his sentence, Joe will also be required to pay for Mary’s funeral expenses at Eversole Mortuary.

Judge John Behnke said there were other ways for the defendant and his wife to end their lives – other than trapping law enforcement into doing it for them.

“This was truly a callous plan and the officers involved have to live with it even though they justifiably shot her [Mary] – a point he [Joe] misses.”

We suspect a great many others will miss the point by an even wider mark. Here in Mendocino County a large percentage of the demographic considers all cops trigger-happy to the point of insanity. I can only suggest that if Mr. Mantynen had put a Las Vegas cop in his sights he wouldn’t be here to blame it on his late wife who, by every indication, was hit unintentionally in the hail of bullets her husband initiated.

“It’s a rare circumstance where I find myself sentencing a man with no prior record to over 26 years in prison,” continued Judge Behnke, “but he is presumptively ineligible for probation. The defendant was in a drug-fueled state for a substantial time before these events, but no circumstance can override a prison commitment, and I think it will take a number of years before the full impact of what he’s done will finally be impressed upon him. In his letter he talks about his daughter, and again, I don’t think he realizes the impact his actions will have on her not to mention his wife’s children.”

The breakdown of the charges were difficult for a layman to follow (like doctors and priests, lawyers and judges always shroud their pronouncements in codes and dead languages), but basically it came to 25 years for the suicide by cop plan that resulted in his wife’s being shot — the usual term for a murder — and 16 months for burglarizing his grandmother’s house.

PS. In the judgement and sentencing for Joe Mantynen, restitution was reserved for Deputy James Elmore (10 years of the sentence had to do with a charge of assault on Deputy Elmore), and while Elmore has about as much chance of seeing any money as the Eversole morticians who prepared Mrs. Mantynen for eternal sleep, we offer our condolences to Elmore because it has long been a custom at the Sheriff's Office that whichever deputy gets his name in the AVA shall be obliged to stand the rest of the crew a brew. Sorry, Deputy Elmore, just doing my job…

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Accused murderer Jewel E. Dyer was up next. But in his case he will not be sentenced for murdering his father with a baseball bat – which he readily admits he did, because of the “stress” Dad was causing in his life. No-no, Mr. Dyer won’t be “sentenced” because he is facing “placement” in a state hospital, because he’s too looney to participate in his own defense, what the legal beagles call 1368 and, again, Public Defender Thompson is handling this one.

Ms. Thompson told Judge Behnke that she had found a place for Mr. Dyer in the state hospital system, but there was a problem with getting her client on medications. Again, it was unclear to the mind of a layman what was going on because of the jargon, the argot, the cant, the legalese mumbo-jumbo, blather, drivel, babble and twaddle. But it appears the doctors are causing the lawyers grief by not cooperating as the lawyers think they ought. Or maybe Mr. Dyer is just refusing to accept that he’s crazy and refusing any meds.

One phrase in plain English gave a hint as to the problem, though. Judge Behnke said, “I’m reluctant to hold the doctor in contempt because it will discourage the others, but if something doesn’t happen by the 16th [of April], I’ll have to do something.”

This subject came up again later in the day with another “involuntary medication” order awaiting a doctor’s signature which had to be put over until the April 16th deadline set by the judge. Apparently, there’s quite a few of ‘em and the docs are in a state of open revolt.

Linda Thompson said her client couldn't be transported to the placement she'd found in the State Hospital system, even though Judge Behnke was ready to sign the "placement order,” and this was because she wouldn't answer for the safety of the poor chaps in white scrubs who would have to transport her client to the state hospital. So, until the doctors sign onto feeding her client the “involuntary” meds he requires to cool him out, the jail would have to manage the homicidal nut — ooops, I mean, the defendant, Mr. Jewel Dyer.