Randall Edward Connor pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge at an arraignment Friday in King County Superior Court at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.<\/p>\n
King County prosecutors have charged Connor, 28, in connection with the death of Kent resident Merianne Lorentson, 24. Lorentson, a single mother of a then-5-year-old daughter, was found March 9, 2007 stabbed to death in the living room of her East Hill apartment in the 10400 block of Kent-Kangley Road.<\/p>\n
Connor, who once lived in SeaTac, had dated Lorentson, according to the charging papers.<\/p>\n
Connor is slated to return to court for a May 14 hearing when a trial date is planned to be set. Attorneys also could ask for the hearing to be delayed. He remains in King County Jail in lieu of $2 million bail.<\/p>\n
Over the past year, Kent detectives used DNA test results, cell-phone records and interviews with friends and relatives of Connor and Lorentson to build their case against Connor.<\/p>\n
Connor was extradited from California and booked April 8 into the King County Jail. Connor was in prison in California for a parole violation on an armed-robbery conviction.<\/p>\n
Connor, dressed in a jail jumpsuit, appeared briefly Friday before Judge Brian Gain. Defense attorney Lisa Mulligan entered the not guilty plea for Connor.<\/p>\n
Corrections officers removed the handcuffs on Connor for a moment so he could sign the papers with his not guilty plea.<\/p>\n
Before Connor entered the courtroom, Mulligan made a motion to the judge to disallow the media from showing Connor\u2019s face in any video or photos because the photos might help identify Connor.<\/p>\n
Judge Gain denied the motion and allowed photos of Connor\u2019s face to be taken by a television cameraman and newspaper photographer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no issue of identification of the defendant,\u201d Gain said. \u201cThe defendant and the deceased knew each other. There\u2019s no question about who he is, it\u2019s a matter of whether he committed the act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connor spoke only one word in the courtroom. When prosecutors asked if his name was Randall Edward Connor, he replied, \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulligan told the judge that she might have a future motion about whether the case should be held in King County Superior Court because Jerry Lorentson, the father of Merianne Lorentson, used to work as a King County prosecutor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Randall Edward Connor pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge at an arraignment Friday in King County Superior Court at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":1761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}