Murder suspects waive hearings

SANDPOINT — Two accessories in the first-degree murder of Michael Wyatt Smith are waiving their rights to preliminary hearings.

The waivers by Jennifer Stephen Dunnagan Thrasher and Christopher Robin Garlin amount to tacit agreement that the state possesses enough evidence to justify trials in 1st District Court.

They are scheduled to be arraigned on March 5. Thrasher, a 22-year-old from Cocolalla, and Garlin, a 19-year-old from Clark Fork, are held at the Bonner County Jail with bail set at $50,000 each.

A preliminary hearing for Thrasher’s husband, Austin, was set for today, although it’s being postponed to allow for additional discovery and investigation by his defense counsel, court records indicate.

A new hearing date is pending.

Austin Thrasher, 19, of Cocolalla, is accused of shooting Smith twice with a revolver. He is charged with first-degree murder and is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Jennifer Thrasher and Garlin are charged as accessories because they withheld knowledge of the killing, although both later confessed to being involved, court documents state.

Smith, a 19-year-old from Hope, was reported missing last September. Garlin disclosed to detectives last month that he witnessed Austin Thrasher gun Smith down.

The disclosure came as he and the Thrashers were being held on burglary and theft charges stemming from a Ponderay pawn shop break-in that occurred last December, several months after Smith was slain.

Garlin told investigators he was threatened with death if he revealed the killing to anyone, court records indicate.

A motive for the killing, according to court documents, appears to be a romantic rivalry. Smith was allegedly seeing a 16-year-old girl that Austin Thrasher once had a relationship with.

It’s not clear in court documents when Austin Thrasher allegedly dated the teen. He and Jennifer Dunnagan were married last May, according a marriage license on file at the Bonner County Recorder’s Office.

Investigators believe Smith was killed immediately or shortly after the three suspects picked him up in Hope to go party in Cocolalla. Smith’s cell phone and social media website activity abruptly ended after he went missing.

New details are emerging through voluminous search warrant hearing testimony and documents.

Smith was living at Lakeshore Recovery in Hope, a sober-living facility, at the time of his disappearance.

Smith was shot in the woods on or adjacent to property owned by a relative of Austin Thrasher’s off Mount Smith Estates Road in Cocolalla.

Smith’s body was moved some 30 miles north to a makeshift grave off Wellington Road. Jennifer Thrasher’s family had a former connection to the property.

Detectives seized two all-terrain vehicles and two Jeep Grand Cherokees, vehicles that were apparently used to move the body. Two revolvers have been also been collected as evidence.