News Update

POSTED: Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009

Man charged in shooting death of former Ferndale track coach

Police say suspect's wife was having an affair with Jeremy Scully

MOUNT VERNON — Almost a year after Jeremy Scully's body was found on Blanchard Mountain, police have arrested the man they believe killed him in a jealous rage because Scully was having an affair with the man's wife.

The Skagit County Prosecutor's Office charged Kenneth J. McBride, 34, a former Alger resident, with first-degree murder on Tuesday, March 10.

McBride had been living in Lebanon, Ore., with his wife, Venessa. He was arrested by local law enforcement agencies at his home there at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, said Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt of the Skagit County Sheriff's Office.

McBride is being held in the Linn County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail while he awaits extradition to Skagit County to face the murder charge.

Scully, 38, was a former track coach with Ferndale High School and Western Washington University.

He disappeared April 24, 2008, after he left his apartment in Bellingham to do work on the McBride home in Alger. Three days later, hikers found his body off of a road to Samish Overlook.

Scully had been shot in the head.

Detectives quickly suspected Kenneth McBride, and that suspicion grew stronger after Venessa McBride admitted to having an extramarital affair with Scully.

They reportedly met on the adult networking Web site AdultFriendFinder.com.

Detectives searched McBride's home, where he lived with Venessa McBride, several times in May and seized guns, ammunition, two computers and paperwork.

The detectives shipped this evidence for testing at a Washington State Patrol crime lab, and the case stalled until they received the results.

Still, they never took their eyes off McBride, Reichardt said.

"He was a person of interest right from the start," Reichardt said. "Every evidentiary step we took came back to Ken McBride."

According to charging documents filed in Skagit County Superior Court:

McBride arranged to have Scully come to his house on April 24 to do work on his roof but did not have supplies needed for the work and did not tell anybody about the arrangement.

Reichardt said Scully was likely killed near where his body was found. Scully's car, though, was left on East Lake Samish Road.

A little more than two miles away, Kenneth McBride called Venessa McBride at 2 p.m. April 24 to have her pick him up near the Squires Lake Trailhead. He was out of breath and complaining of shin splints.

On April 29, a police search dog tracked the scent of Kenneth McBride's shoes from Scully's car to a section of Lake Samish where divers found personal items belonging to Scully.

The dog then tracked McBride's scent to the area where Venessa McBride picked him up.

Inside the McBride home, detectives found ammunition that the State Patrol crime lab was able to match with bullet fragments taken from Scully's body.

The detectives found a photograph of Kenneth McBride holding the rifle they believe was used to kill Scully. When fired, that model of rifle alters bullets in the same way as the bullets that were used to kill Scully. They did not recover the weapon.

According to the documents, Kenneth McBride was aware that his wife and Scully were having sex and was OK with that at first, but later grew to resent the time they spent together.

About a month before Scully's death, McBride began to spy on Venessa's computer and reviewed archived online chats between Scully and her.

In an online chat between Scully and Venessa from about the same time, she said if Scully tried to influence her marriage that Kenneth McBride would become "unglued."

"That lifestyle is what brought them together," Reichardt said. "We believe that the defendant in this case had a fairly strong motive for this homicide."