Police: Man held, beat Whatcom County woman for 2 days

A Whatcom County man lured a woman to his home, locked her in a closet and beat her for two days with a baseball bat, according to the sheriff’s office.

Robert Dean McGlothern Jr., 30, asked a neighbor to come over to his apartment, a shop building at 2091 E. Smith Road, to help him to catch some loose chickens late Tuesday evening, Oct. 20, said Whatcom County Undersheriff Jeff Parks.

Once she arrived, the 30-year-old woman — who had known McGlothern for about two years — was kidnapped, repeatedly assaulted with a metal baseball bat and locked in a closet, according to a probable cause statement read in court Friday. McGlothern brandished a handgun at her, too, the sheriff’s office reported.

The woman’s grandmother knocked on McGlothern’s door the next day, Wednesday, to look for her because she hadn’t shown up to work. McGlothern told her she wasn’t there, asserting she’d gone off with another man from Everson, according to the sheriff’s office.

McGlothern then told the woman her grandmother had stopped by, according to the statement read in court.

On Thursday afternoon McGlothern “passed out” on the bed, and the woman took that chance to escape, according to the statement. She fled to a house next door that belongs to McGlothern’s father, Robert Sr., and asked him for a ride home. McGlothern’s father saw she’d been badly beaten, and he suspected that his son assaulted her, according to the county prosecutor’s office.

At her home down the street on Everson Goshen Road, an aid crew found her with serious injuries and bruises to her head, face, torso, arms and hands. She faded in and out of consciousness as she spoke with a detective, Parks said.

She’s expected to survive.

Police raced to McGlothern’s home around 5 p.m. Thursday. In the hours that followed, a major police response blocked off streets until the early morning hours of Friday. Deputies tried for hours to contact McGlothern, and a SWAT team was called in due to McGlothern’s violent history and the likelihood that he was armed.

Around 1:30 a.m. Friday the SWAT team forced their way into the apartment and found McGlothern hiding in a meat locker that had been converted into a bedroom, Parks said.

A loaded rifle and a loaded shotgun were recovered from the home. Parks said more weapons and evidence were still being recovered from the home Friday.

Detectives believe the woman was just a friend of McGlothern’s. She told them, in a brief interview at the hospital, that they were never in a romantic relationship.

“It is not known at this time the reason or motive for this heinous assault on the victim,” Parks said in a press release.

Superior Court records show McGlothern has a history of violence toward women that dates back to his teenage years.

— He kicked a girlfriend’s car hard enough to leave two dents in it on Aug. 23, 2004, in the aftermath of an argument. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor malicious mischief.

— His pregnant sister wrote in a protection order in 2007 that she confronted McGlothern about smoking near her and her 10-month-old child, and he threatened to hurt her. Before that she’d had another protection order dropped so he could spend time with their mother, who was dying from cancer. “He seemed to show change,” his sister wrote, “but since she has passed he has been smoking crystal meth again & has seemed to not care about mine or anybody’s life.”

— An ex-girlfriend reported that in October 2008 McGlothern yelled at her for not showing him “affection,” then pushed her into the side of a truck, bruising her, according to charging papers. The next day she got into the truck with him so they could argue outside the house. He drove her to a dead-end street, making suicidal and homicidal comments, e.g., “If I am going to die, you are going to die too.” Back at the house, she reported, he carried her over his shoulder to the bedroom, grabbed a semi-automatic handgun and fired one round into the couch. She delayed calling police because she feared he’d hurt her if she did. McGlothern pleaded guilty in September 2010 to misdemeanors: reckless endangerment and assault in the fourth degree.

— In a protection order filed in May 2015, another girlfriend of five years alleged a long history of physical abuse: slapping her glasses so her eye bled; choking her in front of their children; punching out one of her front teeth; pinning her down while she was pregnant; and making frequent threats to harm or kill her.

On Friday at his first appearance in court McGlothern looked downward as the deputy prosecutor, Christopher Quinn, read a five-minute statement recounting the charges.

Superior Court Commissioner Martha Gross informed McGlothern he faces charges of kidnapping in the first degree and assault in the second degree while armed with a deadly weapon.

Gross set bail at $500,000.

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 11:11 AM with the headline "Police: Man held, beat Whatcom County woman for 2 days."