Lawyers for Delvonn Heckard say Mayor Ed Murray called Police Chief Kathleen OToole about a disturbance at home last summer and then covered it up.
Lawyers for Delvonn Heckard say Mayor Ed Murray called Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole about a disturbance at home last summer and then covered it up. City of Seattle

An attorney representing Delvonn Heckard, the man suing Mayor Ed Murray for child sex abuse, on Monday filed a court document in King County Superior Court alleging that Murray, a staffer, and the Seattle chief of police engaged in a cover up of an alleged disturbance that took place at the mayor’s home last summer.

A subpoena and notice of deposition, filed this morning by attorney Julie Kays, contains screenshots allegedly taken of Seattle Police Department (SPD) computer-aided dispatch logs. Kays, who formerly worked as a prosecutor in the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office for 11 years, says that she received these screenshots from an anonymous source. Those screenshots purport to show that police on June 24, 2016 fielded a call from Mayor Murray related to a disturbance at his home in Capitol Hill, where he lives with his husband, Michael Shiosaki.

A screenshot of one of the call logs says the mayor called Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole directly to report the incident, saying that he “NEEDS POLICE ASAP AS [UNKNOWN] PERSON WAS AT HIS FRONT DOOR.”

Another screenshot says that the mayor contacted O’Toole shortly after officers were dispatched to his home, saying that someone named Maggie was there too.

A note included in the subpoena from the anonymous source suggests that the mayor may have known the man allegedly disturbing him at his front door. It says the man was shirtless and also questions the mayor's sobriety at the time.

The note reads as follows:

According to sources close to the call, officers arrived on scene to find a shirtless man in the front yard of the Mayor's home. Officers asked the man to leave and was informed that he would, but needed to receive his items from within the Mayor's home. Officers knocked on door and recovered wallet and clothing items from inside the house and returned them to the man, who went on his way. Question of sobriety of Mayor.

Mayor Ed Murray, through a spokesperson, denied this version of events of the incident that took place at his home that evening. In a letter co-signed by five people, Jeff Reading claims that the mayor was having a gathering celebrating Pride Month, when a fully-clothed couple knocked on his home's door to request to use the bathroom. The guests allegedly directed the couple to nearby restaurants, the letter says, and the couple left without incident. The mayor allegedly called the police after the couple left. Scroll down to read the full letter.

The subpoena is addressed to Maggie Thompson, who works in the mayor’s office. Thompson was Murray’s campaign manager from 2013 to 2014, according to her LinkedIn profile. After he became mayor he hired her as an external affairs manager. Thompson, who makes $90,000 a year, did not immediately respond to requests by phone and email seeking comment.

Mary Perry, the SPD's director of Transparency and Privacy, sent The Stranger computer-aided dispatch detail of the alleged incident that corroborates the screenshots of the dispatching data included in the subpoena.

To Kays, the screenshots suggest that Murray, Thompson, and O’Toole may have together attempted to bury evidence of the alleged disturbance at the mayor’s home. She adds that Murray’s process for handling the unknown person at his home, as presented in the screenshots, raises red flags.

“I think if this were anybody else, they would have picked up the phone and called 911 and they wouldn't call their political campaign manager to a scene that requires police presence,” Kays tells The Stranger. “The only time you call a campaign manager is if it is a political problem.”

Using the incident number assigned to the call, The Stranger could not find any reports on the alleged disturbance on the Seattle Police Department’s online database for police reports or its portal for records of 911 incident responses. We have a pending public records request for reports related to this incident. City policy states that all police actions must be reported.

Elisa Hahn at KING 5 reports that the incident report is “locked”:


The screenshots show that eight officers allegedly responded to the call. They are listed as follows: Sgt. Ronald L. Murray, Kathryn L Hairston, Brian M. Hunt, Dung Quoc Do, Casey Alan Steiger, [Michele G. Letizia], Brian L. Sunderland Jr, [Joseph Clayton Renick].

In a civil lawsuit filed April 6, 46-year-old Heckard alleges that Murray raped and molested him over multiple years, paying him $10 to $20 for sex while Heckard was a teenager and Murray was in his 30s. Two other men who are not involved in that lawsuit—Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson—make similar allegations against Murray. Both Simpson and Anderson say they knew Murray from a group home in Portland where Murray worked and that he sexually abused them as teenagers.

Later, after Simpson and Murray each moved to Seattle, Simpson says the abuse continued here at an apartment Murray lived in on Capitol Hill. Heckard says Murray abused him at that same apartment. Murray has denied the abuse allegations. He admits he knew Simpson, but has denied ever meeting Heckard.

Update 5:18 p.m.: Jeff Reading, the mayor's personal spokesman, sent along a statement cosigned by five people, including Maggie Thompson, who claim to have been with the mayor the night of the incident in question.

It reads:

Lyle Canceko, Joe Loeffler, Adrian Matanza, Roger Nyhus and Maggie Thompson, guests of Mayor Edward Murray and his husband Michael Shiosaki on the night of June 24, 2016, provided the following statement today:

On the night of June 24, 2016, we were all present at Mayor Murray’s home celebrating Pride Month with the Mayor and Michael.

We had returned with Mayor Murray from a successful Human Rights Campaign event on Capitol Hill, and were enjoying the end of the evening with a glass of wine.

At one point, we were interrupted by a knock at the front door. Two people, a man and woman, both wearing shirts, requested to use the bathroom and the phone.

For safety and security purposes, the Mayor and Michael do not allow strangers into their home. After being refused, the couple grew slightly pushy, and then were referred to several restaurants down the street where they could find a phone and a bathroom.

The couple then left and we did not hear from them again.

Mayor Murray, out of an abundance of caution, reported the incident to the Seattle Police Department, as is standard practice.

We were at the Mayor’s home for a period of time both before and after the incident.

During the course of the evening, no one outside our small group of friends came into the Mayor’s home.

The night ended peacefully.

Reading also included his own statement:

The odd allegation hinted at in the latest subpoena is completely unrelated to the lawsuit against Mayor Murray, and is also verifiably false. The gossipy account provided is an example of unfounded rumor being peddled as fact. It is easily disproved by numerous eye-witnesses, and by the official police record.

Opposing counsel asserts a cover-up going all the way up to the chief of police, but this outlandish claim is just part of a pattern: attack the integrity of the respected professionals who vouch for the facts when the facts do not support the case. First a medical professional at the Polyclinic, then the honorable judge assigned to the lawsuit, and now Seattle’s highly esteemed police chief. Grasping at straws, opposing counsel seems prepared to impugn just about anyone.

This post has been updated.