On a Thursday morning in Olympia, Washington, September 17, 1981, the lives of two women were tragically cut short in a brutal act of violence. Twila Capron, a 30-year-old female bank teller, was working at the West Olympia branch of the Tumwater State Bank alongside her colleague, Candace Hemmig. Their day was horrifically interrupted when Mitchell Rupe entered the bank with the intent to rob it.
During the commission of the robbery, Rupe fatally shot both Twila Capron and Candace Hemmig at point-blank range, a crime that netted him approximately $4,000.
The grim discovery was made around 11 a.m. by Twila Capron's husband, Michael, who had arrived to take his wife to lunch. He found both women on the floor, with Candace Hemmig already deceased and his wife suffering from massive, unsurvivable brain injuries. The investigation into the double homicide quickly led to a suspect. Police found a significant piece of evidence at the scene: Mitchell Rupe's bloodstained checkbook lying open on the counter. In a surprising turn, Rupe himself approached an officer outside the bank shortly after the crime and mentioned he had been there earlier that morning.
Mitchell Rupe was arrested the same day. During subsequent interviews with law enforcement over the next five days, he confessed to the murders. In April 1982, a Thurston County Superior Court jury convicted him of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder. The legal proceedings that followed were lengthy and complex. Juries twice sentenced Rupe to death. However, these sentences were repeatedly overturned on appeal for various legal reasons, including the prejudicial effect of evidence related to his gun collection. In a particularly unusual development in 1994, a federal judge overturned his death sentence on the grounds that his significant weight, over 400 pounds at the time, made hanging a potentially cruel and unusual punishment due to the risk of decapitation. In 2000, during his third sentencing trial, the jury deadlocked, which resulted in an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mitchell Rupe died in prison from liver disease on February 8, 2006.
