Joshua Wade has admitted the jury got it wrong when it acquitted him of brutally murdering Della Brown in Anchorage 10 years ago, a verdict that left him free to move next door to Mindy Schloss, the nurse he has admitted killing in an equally gruesome crime in 2007, according to a plea agreement between Wade and federal prosecutors released Tuesday.
Now Wade, 29, will spend the rest of his life in prison.
His plea agreement is expected to be formalized when he appears in state and federal courts today. The deal halts his pending federal trial on charges stemming from Schloss' murder in 2007.
In return for his confession, Wade will be spared the death penalty, which he would have faced had a federal jury convicted him.
Wade nearly got away with killing Brown in 2000 -- until he decided to kill again in 2007 and got caught. His admissions are a stunning turnabout for a man who's claimed innocence for a decade. And while it lays to rest the long-lingering Brown case, it also raises questions about how an Anchorage jury got it wrong in 2003 by acquitting him of all homicide charges.
"The fact that he chose to kill again, and kill quickly, demonstrates his indifference to human life, his inability to be rehabilitated, and his omnipresent danger to society," federal prosecutors Steve Skrocki and Stephen Cooper wrote in the government's sentencing memorandum.
The brutal kidnapping and murder of Schloss occurred just months after Wade was released from prison for an evidence-tampering conviction in the Brown case.
Schloss' sister-in-law, Mary Schloss, said the family is pleased with the life sentence largely because of Wade admitting to Brown's murder. "It wasn't one. It was two," she said from her home in New York.
"Make him not see the light of day again," she said.
A decade ago, police said Wade found Brown passed-out drunk, then murdered her in a rage after robbing and raping her.
Wade revealed he killed Brown, 33, by smashing her head with a rock, a theory that was presented during trial but never proved.
Investigators and prosecutors had told the jury in the Brown case that Wade brought people to look at Brown's half-naked body, left among garbage in a filthy Spenard shack. He bragged to his friends and acquaintances that he was responsible for her death.
But Wade recanted the confessions during trial, and his savvy defense attorneys - two of the best in the state at the time, Cindy Strout and Jim McComas - successfully argued Wade only found the body and was trying to earn street credit with local thugs. Their defense was bolstered by evidence found at the scene that didn't match the state's theory -- semen found in Brown did not belong to Wade, and a bloody fingerprint and a pubic hair from the scene also were not Wade's.
The defense lawyers suggested other potential killers, such as a serial rapist who had been terrifying the city or Brown's boyfriend, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship.
After he was acquitted, Wade told the court: "Even though 12 people said I'm not guilty, everyone believes I am guilty. ... I just want to say thank you to my jury for being fair."
"The only thing at all in this case that I'm sorry for is I did not call the police whenever I found that lady's body," he said at the time.
Some jurors from the trial who could be reached Tuesday said they felt uncomfortable with the acquittal but just didn't believe the prosecution had enough evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
"Wade is unpredictable, unrepentant (at least up to this point) and violent," federal prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. "Logic would dictate that after the Della Brown trial Wade might have elected to select a different path."
But he didn't, prosecutors say.
The Schloss murder occurred six months after Wade was released from prison and just a few weeks after he moved next door to the 52-year-old nurse in a quiet Sand Lake neighborhood.
Wade's bedroom window looked into Schloss' kitchen. In the days before the Aug. 4, 2007, slaying, he was broke, unhappy at work and not liking where he was living. He bought a gun.
On Friday, Aug. 3, his employers had sent him home for having an "attitude," according to the sentencing memorandum.
That night Schloss was planning the remodeling of her kitchen, working on the opening of her own business, and e-mailing friends until late into the night, the court documents say.
Sometime in the early hours of Aug. 4, Wade broke into her house. Wade said he had intended to just burglarize the home, according to the court filing. He restrained her with some clothing then went back to his house to get gloves, zip ties, tape and the .45-caliber Glock he had recently purchased -- the charges don't say from where. He returned to her house, gagged her, then bound her with the zip ties. She gave him her ATM personal identification number.
The plea agreement and sentencing memorandum filed Tuesday make no mention of Wade sexually assaulting Schloss, but pretrial court filings talked about Wade being a sexual predator, and prosecutors say a witness heard a woman calling out "rape" and screaming for help that night.
Wade tied his victim to the back seat of her Acura Integra. She was wearing just a bathrobe. He drove an hour to an undeveloped, wooded cul-de-sac in Wasilla, then made her get out of the car. She walked just a little way into the woods before he shot her in the back of the head, the sentencing memorandum says.
Wade then returned to Schloss' house, where he tried to cover his tracks by vacuuming, making Schloss' bed and sweeping his footprints off her porch. He drove her car and abandoned it several miles away.
Over the next several days, Wade withdrew $1,000 from Schloss' bank account, prosecutors say.
Friends and family members searched for the vanished woman for more than a month before her body was found. Wade has been in jail since he was caught during a massive manhunt in September 2007.
Today he is scheduled to enter his guilty plea in state court before being sentenced to 99 years in prison. While he cannot be formally charged with the Brown murder because it would be double jeopardy, his admission of it in the Schloss case ensures he will not be eligible for parole for 99 years.
In the afternoon, Wade will be taken to federal court to plead guilty to carjacking resulting in the death of Schloss. For that he will also get a life sentence, according to the court filings. The two guilty pleas will give him life in prison in both the state and federal systems -- ensuring he is never allowed out, according to the documents.
"Rehabilitation is not in the offering," the federal prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. "The government requests that the court accept this agreement which will end the decade long odyssey between Joshua Wade, the victims of his crimes, and the criminal justice system."\
Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.
By MEGAN HOLLAND
mholland@adn.com