King County Superior Court Judge Brian Gain last Friday sentenced Jason Gamache, 46, to spend slightly more than 23 years and four months in prison for slashing Wayne McCune’s throat in an Auburn duplex Aug. 2 2013 to steal his prescription medications.

A jury convicted Gamache of the crime in August of 2016.

According to court records, when McCune’s wife returned home to their C Street Southeast duplex that day, she found her husband half buried under a dog bed and filing cabinet, a plastic bag over his head, his throat cut from ear to ear.

According to what Mrs. McCune later told police, she at first thought her husband had killed himself because, she said, he had suffered from debilitating ailments and was looking for ways to take his own life.

But when the King County Medical Examiner’s autopsy revealed defensive wounds on McCune’s hand and wounds to his chest, neck and head, it became apparent he had not killed himself, but that he had instead bled to death from the wound in his neck.

According to court documents, Gamache had left Auburn suddenly on the day of the murder, without first informing the people with whom he had been staying across the street from the McCune home. Discovering the 43-year-old transient sleeping in his car on the parking lot of the Snoqualmie Casino during the late hours of Aug. 7, police arrested and charged him with stealing a .22-caliber rifle from the home where he had been staying.

According to court records, Gamache was found with prescription medication that matched what was known to be missing from McCune’s home, which is directly across the street from the home where McCune had been staying. Police also found a suicide note in Gamache’s own hand.

Police say after detectives found him, Gamache admitted he had been living in his car since Aug. 2 of that year.

Gamache had no criminal history at the time of the murder.