Meth-Crazed Killer Gets Life Term Spokane Man Pleads Guilty To Murdering Man Over Small Debt

Alan Rochek’s wild free fall from grace ended Thursday with a guilty plea to murder, a life prison sentence and a primer on the dark power of crystal methamphetamine.

The cheap but highly addictive drug changed Rochek from a peaceful factory worker with a wife and family to a gun-crazy killer.

The ugly transformation took just 10 months.

Along the way, the 28-year-old Spokane man lost his marriage and his job.

He lost his freedom in a Pend Oreille County courtroom Thursday afternoon.

In a clear, polite voice, Rochek pleaded guilty to aggravated first-degree murder in the bloody kidnapping-slaying of a man who had failed to pay a small debt.

“It wasn’t a planned thing, and there’s nothing I can do to change this,” the ponytailed defendant said. “I’m just sorry it all happened.”

With prosecutors agreeing not to seek the death penalty, Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson had no choice but to impose a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Struggling to make sense of the bloodshed, Kristianson blamed the Jekyll-like effects of methamphetamine.

“If you hadn’t gotten involved in the drugs,” the judge said, “you wouldn’t be here today and that man wouldn’t be dead. But you did, and he is.”

In their detailed confessions to police, Rochek and co-defendant Jacqueline Bence, 20, said they kidnapped the man last April because he had sold Bence poor-quality drugs and had welshed on a debt - a “boombox” stereo, wheels and tires - owed to Rochek.

They handcuffed Richard Morley, 30, of Spokane, and forced him into Rochek’s Chevrolet Blazer.

While the hulking Rochek - 6 feet 5, 350 pounds - claimed he only intended to rough up Morley, Bence upped the ante by stabbing the victim in the leg and hitting him in the head with a claw hammer during the drive, authorities said.

Rochek then drove north to his parents’ remote wooded property near Eloika Lake in southern Pend Oreille County, where Bence is accused of hitting Morley with the hammer, stabbing him repeatedly, slitting his throat and choking him with a cord.

When Morley still did not appear to be dead, Rochek finished the job by punching and strangling him.

Rochek and Bence said they buried the victim in a shallow grave on the property.

Detectives received information from unidentified sources, leading to Bence’s arrest. She admitted her guilt and led authorities to the body.

Bence has a criminal record and a history of violence, authorities said. Until now, Rochek had no convictions.

Prosecutor Tom Metzger said Bence is being offered a similar life imprisonment option because of her cooperation.

If she turns down the plea bargain, Metzger said he will seek the death penalty.

Before Rochek was sentenced Thursday, relatives of the victim took turns spitting venom at the prisoner in the orange jumpsuit and leg irons.

“I hope that when you close your eyes, you hear my brother’s screams and you see the terror in his eyes… and that these things haunt you every day for the rest of your worthless life,” said Barb Reiger of Centralia, Wash., one of Morley’s sisters.

“You’ll never have my forgiveness or my sympathy. I hate your guts,” said older brother Gary Morley of Spokane.

“I hope Rick can now rest in peace because you made his last couple of hours pretty damn bad.”

Family members described the victim as a kind, caring man who got hooked on drugs and became a petty criminal, but who never resorted to violence.

Rochek’s transformation was more dramatic, according to his attorney, Carl Maxey.

Calling his client “a big rube from the backwoods,” Maxey said Rochek was born and raised in tiny Cloquet, Minn., where his father worked in a paper mill.

Rochek moved to Spokane at 21, got a job at a sheet-metal plant and stayed there until last February, when he was fired for using illicit drugs.

A month earlier, Rochek’s 3-1/2-year marriage ended in divorce.

Maxey said Rochek made new friends, entered Spokane’s drug underworld and became an addict.

Police making a routine traffic stop in February found him equipped with a commando-style arsenal - including two handguns and a hunting knife - strapped to his body. He wound up being arrested on a drug charge that was later dismissed.

“He got lost in the wiles of the big city,” Maxey said. “And methamphetamine.”

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