Convicted Rapist Pleads Not Guilty

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CONVICTED RAPIST PLEADS NOT GUILTY

P-I STAFF
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A convicted rapist pleaded not guilty Thursday to killing a Seattle woman in 2004, less than a year after he was released from prison.

Curtis Thompson initially refused to leave the King County Jail for his hearing but finally did so under the threat of having jail officers forcibly drag him into the courtroom. He declined to answer any questions or sign paperwork, though he made several demands that the Superior Court judge denied.

Thompson said he wanted to act as his own lawyer, as co-counsel with his current lawyer, John Hicks. He said he wanted all files the Seattle Police Department has kept on him for the past 25 years, and he suggested that he was put under some sort of surveillance when he was freed from prison in 2003.

Though two psychologists have found Thompson mentally fit to stand trial, Hicks said he still has concerns about the man's mental state.

Thompson is charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Deborah Byars, a mother of two, in her Ravenna-area apartment on Aug. 23, 2004.

He is also charged with attacking two other women hours later at a University District apartment complex, robbing one and forcing the other to partially undress, and a separate allegation that he broke into an Eastlake woman's apartment and raped her.

In 2003, King County prosecutors sought to have him locked away indefinitely at a treatment center for violent sex offenders, but his family and others said he had embraced the Jehovah's Witness faith and had turned his life around, and he was released.


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