Prosecutor says teens admitted to plotting, carrying out murder and arson
Published 1:11 pm Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Auburn Police say the two teens lay in wait for hours in the home 19-year-old Jerry “Mike” Clayton shared with his father, Mickey, at 29659 142nd Ave. SE on the morning of July 6 and shot him dead.
And that they torched the house to cover the crime, and then with weapons they had taken from the home fled in a truck stolen from the City of Kent.
On July 13, the King County Prosecutor charged Dylan Scott Mullins, 19, and 17-year-old Sebastian Michael Gregg with one count each of first-degree murder, first-degree arson, and first-degree burglary.
According to police, Mullins and Gregg freely admitted to having killed Clayton in retaliation for Clayton’s having beaten up Mullins.
“The defendants together planned, executed and attempted to cover up their cold-blooded murder of Mike Clayton,” Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Adrienne McCoy wrote in her successful request for an increase in bail, noting that taking advantage of his friendship with Clayton, Mullins had learned about Clayton’s home and his family, their schedules and their possessions, and he used what he knew to carry out the crime.
“…These defendants have demonstrated through their actions that they are exceedingly dangerous,” McCoy said. “Bail in the amount of $2 million is necessary to protect the community from them.”
Here is what happened, according to court records and the statement of probable cause the Auburn Police Department last week forwarded to the King County Prosecutor.
Seeing smoke and flames at about 11:35 a.m. July 6, a neighbor called 911. The first fire crews on scene observed that the home was engulfed in flames and quickly determined it would be unsafe for anyone to enter.
According to the statement, when Clayton’s father arrived, fire raging and his son’s whereabouts as yet unknown, he told police that nothing in the house would have caused an explosion, but that he did own seven weapons that should have been inside the locked gun safe in his bedroom. One of the keys for the safe was on his person, Clayton Sr. told police, the other was in the safe.
When the house — its roof destroyed and only some of the shell and framing still visible — was safe to enter the next day, according to the statement, a fire investigator found, three feet from the sliding back door, three shell casings and the stock of a lever action rifle that had been destroyed by the fire.
Six feet inside, according to the statement, the investigator found protruding from the debris a human foot.
Police asked Clayton’s father if there was any way a weapon would have been sitting near the back door. No, he said, but he had a 30/30 lever action rifle his grandfather had given him, and it, too, he’d left in the locked gun safe.
When police found the gun safe, it was empty, and the door was off. Mr. Clayton told police he had last looked in the safe before he left for work at 5 a.m. on the day of the fire. At that time, he said, it had contained a .357 revolver, a .303 Brit rifle, a 30-06 rifle, a 30-30 rifle, a .22 long rifle pellet gun, a .44 black powder revolver and a .50 caliber black powder muzzle loader, and none of the weapons were loaded.
According to the statement, police searching the surrounding property, which backs up to Highway 18, found several man-made trails. Along one trail and near the fence line, according to the statement, police found a fully-loaded .357.handgun in a holster and a throwing star nearby. Mr. Clayton identified his handgun, and again told police that he had left the weapon in his locked gun safe.
On July 7 authorities executing a search warrant on the house recovered a body, the 30/30 rifle, some cylindrical cans consistent with accelerant and a spent 30/30 rifle casing inside of the rifle.
A King County Medical Examiner autopsy later conducted on the body that investigators had found in the burned house identified four bullet wounds, consistent with having been fired upon from both sides of the body with two different caliber firearms. The body was later positively identified as that of Mike Clayton.
According to the police statement, Clayton Sr. told police his son had admitted to him that he and a friend had burglarized a relative weeks earlier. Shortly after the burglary, Mr. Clayton said, his son, one of Mike’s cousins and Dylan Mullins took the guns and went shooting in Greenwater. During that outing, according to the statement, Clayton and Mullins got into a fistfight in which Mullins received injuries that required stitches.
On June 16, according to the statement, Mullins and Gregg had tried to break into a neighbor’s home but were interrupted by a watchful neighbor who called 911, When police arrived, they found fire damage to the back door and an aerosol can with a lighter near a door. Police later arrested Mullins for that burglary.
The morning of the July 6 fire, according to the statement, a friend of Clayton’s had picked him up from his sister’s place, and, because he was going to loan her batteries, she drove him to the home he shared with his father.
According to the statement, Clayton went in alone, and when he came back to the car told his friend he had forgotten something and returned to the house. As he entered, the friend later told police, she heard someone say, “Oh, s…,” followed by eight to 10 gun shots, or pops, which she later likened to a firework mortar shell being lit. She told police she could see the mobile home’s windows vibrate with the noises.
When the sounds stopped, according to the statement, the young woman saw someone close the front door. From her car, according to the statement, she texted Clayton, asking what he had just “set off in there?” but he did not answer. She told detectives she hadn’t gone into the house because she didn’t want to be shot. She said that seven minutes passed before she saw smoke coming from the closed front door and heard a beeping like a smoke alarm. At that point, she drove down the road to a neighbor’s house to ask for help. The neighbor called 911. Family members tried but could not reach Clayton.
After the fire, according to the statement, one of Clayton’s friends found Gregg’s wallet near the trails and turned it over to police. The next day the friend led police to the same area where they had earlier found the .357 handgun and throwing star.
After shooting the victim and setting fire to the home, according to the statement, Mullins and Gregg stole a truck from the Kent Parks Department and drove it to Grays Harbor County.
When a police officer stopped them in Aberdeen for speeding, according to the statement, the officer ran the plate and learned the truck had been stolen. According to the statement, Mullins and Gregg gave the officer consent to search the truck and their backpacks. In the truck, the officer found guns that had been stolen from the burned home. Police arrested the two and took them to the Grays Harbor County jail in Montesano.
During an interview at the jail there, according to the statement, Mullins allegedly told Auburn Police detectives that he and Gregg had planned the night before to enter the trailer, wait for Mike to come home, and “take him down.”
According to the statement, Mullins told police that Gregg was familiar with the gun safe and knew it would be a cinch to break into.
According to the statement, Mullins told police his intent had not been to kill Clayton but to scare him by grazing or shooting him in the knee, but that Gregg said they should just kill him.
According to the statement, the two entered through Mike’s bedroom window and waited several hours for him to arrive home. When he came inside, according to the statement, Mullins was sitting behind the doorway with the .357 handgun he had loaded. According to the statement, Mullins told police that Gregg shot first but missed, and that he, Mullins then fired the .357 at Clayton. Mullins told police that Gregg fired again, and he heard Mike gurgling, and that he, Mullins, believed it was “a lung shot.” According to the statement, Mullins said he knew they were going to burn down the house anyway, and Clayton was going to bleed to death or die of burning, so he fired four more bullets into him.
