Eureka man sentenced to 65 years

By BRENT SHRUM Western News Reporter

A Eureka man convicted of murdering his neighbor nearly one year ago was sentenced Monday to 65 years in prison.

Wayne Hixon, 52, was sentenced to 60 years for deliberate homicide with an additional five-year consecutive sentence for evidence tampering. He was convicted by a jury on both counts last month following a weeklong trial.

The trial was Hixon's second; in November a jury deliberated for a day and a half but failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The second jury took about six hours to find Hixon guilty of shooting Bob Mast and tossing the spent shotgun shell into a woodstove to eliminate the evidence.

At Monday's sentencing hearing, county prosecutor Bob Slomski asked Judge Michael Prezeau to consider that Hixon would be eligible for parole after serving one-fourth of his sentence and to take that into account when deciding on the length of his prison term, "because Bob Mast isn't going to have the opportunity to go before the parole board in five or 10 years and ask to have his life back."

Defense attorney John Putikka said Hixon continues to maintain his innocence, but he added that Hixon has an alcohol problem and asked that the judge take that into account — along with Hixon's lack of any prior felony convictions — as a possible mitigating factor. Putikka also pointed out that Hixon suffers from colon cancer and suggested that he is unlikely to receive quality medical care while in prison.

Putikka asked Prezeau to consider a 40-year-sentence with 20 years suspended.

Before handing down the sentence, Prezeau told Hixon he had committed "the most serious, violent offense."

"You took the life of a human being, someone who was a son and a brother and a father," Prezeau said.

Prezeau did not suspend any of Hixon's sentence. Hixon will become eligible for parole after serving 17 1/2 years.

According to the case presented by Slomski during both trials, Hixon shot Mast out of anger and frustration and anger stemming from neighborly disagreements. A self-professed "neat freak," Hixon resented Mast — described by one witness as "a slob" — for buying a lot next to his and letting his horses and dogs roam loose, Slomski said.

Witnesses testified that Hixon often complained about Mast. On the day of Mast's death, Hixon had reported to a game warden that he suspected Mast of illegally shooting a bighorn sheep. The game warden investigated the complaint but found no evidence that Mast had killed a sheep.

Within a half-hour of the game warden leaving the property, officers at the border station not far from the subdivision where Hixon and Mast lived reported hearing a gunshot. A county deputy who responded to the scene found Mast's body about 20 minutes later — right about the same time Hixon was being arrested for speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol by a Eureka policeman about nine miles away.

An expert witness testified that prints found on the ground near Mast's body matched a pair of shoes found in Hixon's vehicle at the time of his arrest. A partially burned 12-gauge shotgun shell found among the ashes in a woodstove in Hixon's cabin was suspected of having held the buckshot load that killed Mast, and a 12-gauge shotgun believed to have been the murder weapon was found under a couch in the cabin.

When he was arrested, Hixon said he was on his way to a friend's home where he planned to stay the night before going fishing in the morning. The friend testified that Hixon had called him just a short time before — around the time of Mast's shooting — and suggested the fishing trip. Slomski argued that Hixon was trying to set up an alibi.

Slomski also stressed the importance of a surveillance video made while Hixon was handcuffed to a desk at the Eureka police station. For a time after his arrest, Hixon's hands were placed in paper bags to preserve potential gunshot residue. After a detective decided such residue was unlikely to be found, the bags were removed. On the video, Hixon can be seen pouring coffee from a cup onto his hands and wiping them on his pants when he was alone in the room. Slomski contended that Hixon was trying to wash any gunshot residue from his hands.

Putikka contested the prosecution's timeline and argued that Hixon would not have had time to get from the crime scene to the scene of his arrest if he had killed Mast. He also raised questions about potential leads that were not followed. Several witnesses remembered hearing one or two shots in the area at the time Hixon reported Mast to the game warden, but no one ever determined who had been shooting, Putikka said. In addition, one man testified that he had seen a number of $100 bills in Mast's wallet the previous day, but the wallet was never recovered.

Putikka pointed out that the lead detective on the case had never overseen a homicide investigation before. He said investigators didn't secure the crime scene and never searched Mast's cabin because they didn't expect to find anything there. They also failed to check the nearby First & Last Chance Bar for possible suspects, didn't talk to the bartender until after the first trial, and never interviewed Mast's family about whether he may have had enemies, he said. He argued that the investigators suffered from "tunnel vision" based on their early conclusion that Hixon shot Mast.