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drinking with Raugust and Tash at the Naughty Pine on the night of July 23. They’d planned a barbecue earlier in the day, back at the Swamp Creek trailer site, and that afternoon headed to town for beer and chicken before stopping in at the bar owned then by Audie Hanley, which they ultimately closed down, inviting a lingering late-night clientele over for the party to continue drinking.
Only Randy Fisher acquiesced, and after sussing out a few details across the highway in the old Miller’s Market park- ing lot, Ross aimed his white 1985 AMC Eagle north toward Swamp Creek and peeled out with Tash riding shotgun, Raugust in the backseat and Fisher in tow in his own vehicle, which would ulti- mately break down, thus precluding a second witness to the murder.
Back at the trailer up Swamp Creek,
reaction was disbelief and bewilderment. In 2009 the Montana Innocence Project began investigating the case and three years later, after a lengthy private investigation, the nonprofit organization began its effort to exonerate the man in earnest, filing a petition for post-con- viction relief in Sanders County District
Court and demanding a new trial.
As the defense team looks to clear the necessary legal hurdles to open the flood- gates on the new evidence and retry the case, the effort has been opposed at every turn by the state, with Sanders County Attorney Robert Zimmerman calling the new evidence dubious and born of wit- nesses who lack credibility, even while those same witnesses were presented by the state as credible at trial, a point Rau- gust’s legal team says amounts to a dou-
ble standard.
a drug debt to Tash and steal the man’s marijuana, which was never recovered but which numerous witnesses report seeing at the Naughty Pine.
Rick allegedly told Tom that “Rory put a serious case of the hurt on this guy” with a shotgun loaded with buck- shot and that “we (Rick and Rory) made up the whole story,” according to the case materials.
Another critical piece of testimony that supported the prosecution’s the- ory was that of former Sanders County Sheriff’s Deputy Wayne Abbey, who per- formed a bar check at the Naughty Pine Saloon around closing time on the morn- ing of the murder and encountered Tash, Ross, Raugust, and Fisher.
Abbey said he was in the bar visiting with the owner and saw Ross’ AMC Eagle across the street parked alongside Fish-
after having second thoughts about the late-night party; knowing he had an early work commitment, Raugust says he opted to stay closer to town, and crashed at nearby Rick Scarborough’s, where he’d stayed occasionally in recent weeks.
Raugust says Scarborough was awake when he arrived and, when he awoke that morning at dawn, that Scarborough was in the shower. Raugust asked him for a ride to the job site and witnesses say he arrived to work at 6:17 a.m., 51 min- utes after Ross called 9-1-1 to report the shooting.
Randy Fisher has also provided a sworn affidavit saying Ross confessed on two separate occasions to killing Tash, including during an encounter in which Ross threatened him at knifepoint; in an effort to lend credibility to the threat, Ross alluded to killing Tash, pressing the blade against Fisher and accusing him of being a snitch.
Ross has since refused to answer ques- tions about the Tash murder, and at the evidentiary hearing invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Zimmerman, the county attorney opposing Raugust’s efforts for a new trial, says Fisher’s testimony carries no weight, and that even if it did shed light on new evidence Ross is an alcoholic and is not credible.
“Even if it were new evidence, the mumblings of a drunk town drunk has absolutely no reliability,” Zimmerman wrote in his brief of opposition.
But Brett Schandelson, an attorney working on the case for the Montana Innocence Project, says the state cannot characterize its own witnesses as lacking credibility now after previously present- ing them as credible at the time of Rau- gust’s murder trial.
In the case of Ross, Schandelson says, the state presented him as a star witness, and now wishes to discredit him.
He wrote in his petition for relief: “Simply put, the State is on one hand
“EVEN IF IT WERE NEW EVIDENCE, THE MUMBLINGS OF A
DRUNK TOWN DRUNK HAS ABSOLUTELY NO RELIABILITY.” - SANDERS COUNTY ATTORNEY ROBERT ZIMMERMAN
Ross says the men were drinking and smoking marijuana when, at some point, Raugust and Tash started argu- ing because Raugust wanted to smoke another joint; Tash told him no, that he was running low on bud.
Ross told jurors that Raugust went outside the trailer and that he, Ross, went to sleep on the couch. He was awake, how- ever, when he says Raugust re-entered the trailer, held a long gun over a sleep- ing Tash and fired once at the man’s head.
The details of what followed are wildly divergent, strung like a helix between Ross’ testimony and the alibi that Rau- gust swears by, and which his attorneys say is bolstered by a growing body of evidence.
What’s undisputed is that Raugust was arrested later that morning while painting and restoring Maret Brown’s trailer, at a work site along the highway at White Pine, southeast of Trout Creek. Witnesses said he appeared “dumb- founded” when a sheriff’s deputy arrived and told him he was under arrest for the murder of his best friend. Witness Tracy Anderson says she’d been visiting with Raugust for an hour-and-a-half that morning while he worked, and that he acted “totally normal.” She said he acted sober, friendly and did not smell of alco- hol or smoke – a statement relevant to the case because there had been a campfire at the Swamp Creek site the night prior, as well as a burning slash pile used to destroy the murder weapon and burn a portion of Raugust’s camper.
He painted until noon, when police arrived to arrest him for the murder; even the arresting officer confirmed that when he told Raugust that Tash was dead, his
Last December, attorneys with the Innocence Project presented newly dis- covered evidence in the case to Sanders County District Judge James Wheelis at an evidentiary hearing, and last month finished briefing the court in the com- plexly layered case.
In the coming weeks or months, Wheelis will make a decision on whether to grant or deny Raugust a new deliberate homicide trial. Regardless of his decision, it will almost certainly be appealed.
At the center of the Innocence Proj- ect’s case for a new trial is Raugust’s alibi, which the legal team says is supported by newly discovered evidence, and that the only testimony undermining it at trial was that of Ross and Rick Scarborough, at whose home Raugust says he slept.
Witnesses confirm and Scarborough admits that he drove Raugust to work at Maret Brown’s house on July 24, but Scarborough said at trial that he did so only after seeing Raugust walking down the highway toward his home at 5:30 a.m., about 30 minutes after Tash’s time of death. He says he loaded his children in his minivan and took Raugust to work, then drove to Thompson Falls to look for a new rental place.
Statements from Scarborough’s brother, Tom Scarborough, who died in prison while serving a sentence for a Lake County murder that occurred around the same time as Tash’s, and in which both Ross and Rick Scarborough were impli- cated, accuses Rick of lying about the veracity of Raugust’s alibi at the behest of Ross. He says that Ross confessed to murdering Tash on multiple occasions through the years, and that his brother told him that Ross’ motive was to nullify
er’s car. He wondered what the men were up to, and then returned to his coffee and conversation.
But in later interviews with investiga- tors and attorneys from the Innocence Project, Abbey said he glanced out the window again and saw Ross’ car stop briefly about 200 yards down the high- way. He watched as the brake lights came on and the dome light illuminated before Ross again sped off.
Abbey said that while he couldn’t make out whether or not someone got out of the car, it happened quickly, in about the time required to perform “a Chinese fire drill.”
Attorneys for Raugust says it’s a key piece of evidence supporting his alibi that he hopped out of Ross’ car near the inter- section of Highway 200 and Fir Street
Richard Raugust with his mother and sister. COURTESY PHOTO
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JULY 29, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM