In the summer of 2015, the life of a young Hispanic woman, Virginia Guadelupe Castaneda, was tragically cut short at the age of 20. On the morning of July 23rd, in a quiet home on Swansonville Road near Port Ludlow, Washington, a horrifying scene unfolded. Deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office responded to a distressing call from the mother of 33-year-old Evan Daniel Thompson. She reported that her son had shot himself and jumped from a second-story window.
Upon their arrival, law enforcement discovered Thompson in the backyard, suffering from self-inflicted cuts to his wrists and a gunshot wound to his head. In a state of agitation, he began yelling that he had killed his girlfriend. Inside the house, in an upstairs bedroom, deputies found the body of Virginia Castaneda. An autopsy would later confirm that she had died from asphyxiation due to strangulation. The scene was secured, and a. 22-caliber pistol was recovered.
Thompson, a graduate of Chimacum High School, was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for treatment of his injuries. While hospitalized and under guard, he was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder. During an interview with detectives the following day, he admitted to strangling Castaneda. He offered a delusional motive, claiming that she was a spy working for a government agency to build a case against him, and that many of his family and friends were plotting against him.
After being released from the hospital, Thompson was booked into the Jefferson County Jail. Despite initial concerns about his mental competency to stand trial, he was ultimately found fit to proceed. In January 2016, Evan Daniel Thompson pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Virginia Castaneda, with whom he had been in a romantic relationship for about a year. The following month, a packed courtroom listened as a remorseful Thompson was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his crime.
