Where is Charles Foster, the Ferndale man who attempted to murder his wife in 2015?
A Ferndale man who pleaded guilty to stabbing his wife in the chest at their apartment on Third Street is serving the 10-year sentence he received in 2015 in an Eastern Washington prison.
Charles Hendricks Foster, 64, pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the second degree July 16, 2015, in Whatcom County Superior Court and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Washington State Department of Corrections records show that as of Monday, June 13, 2022, the 71-year-old Foster is incarcerated at Airway Heights Corrections Center, just west of Spokane. Court documents show that once he is released from prison, Foster faces three years of probation, during which time he is prohibited from consuming alcohol and contacting the victim.
On the afternoon of March 6, 2015, police dispatch took a call from a belligerent man saying he’d punched his wife in the face, and that he wanted to kill her.
“I deserve to go to jail for murder,” the man said on the phone. “I want to kill her!”
Several times he yelled at the dispatcher to “shut up and listen.” He said he wanted to be arrested.
Police responded to the second-story apartment and could hear the man, Foster, yelling inside. Suddenly, he burst out the door smoking a cigarette. As he leaned on the railing of the second-story balcony, officers noticed blood on his nose and wrist. He told officers he was “tired of his wife’s (crap),” so he hit her. Foster smelled of alcohol. He said he just wanted to finish his cigarette before he went to jail.
Police found Foster’s wife, Gayle Corris, 58, on the couch. She was leaning back, staring up at the ceiling, taking short breaths. She held the right side of her chest, where she’d been stabbed. A knife and traces of blood were in the kitchen sink.
Corris survived the 3-inch stab wound that nearly pierced her lung. She could have died without emergency medical aid.
Meanwhile, Foster told a detective he’d beaten and stabbed his wife because, in his words, “she is a (expletive) drunk and a loser,” according to charging papers. At times he said he wanted her dead. Other times he said he didn’t actually want to kill her, but that “hopefully he did hurt her.”
“The fact is, ma’am, I did it and I’m not ashamed of it,” he told the detective.
Foster was mad at Corris, he said, because she’d brought alcohol into the home, and alcohol was ruining their marriage. He said he’d had two drinks of rum. That afternoon, a breath test at the county jail gauged Foster’s blood-alcohol content at 0.232, according to court records. In Washington state, the legal limit to drive is 0.08.
Corris and Foster had been married for a little over a year. They moved to Ferndale about two weeks before the stabbing. At first, the marriage had been good, Corris told police, but Foster would get mean when he drank. She filed for divorce in May 2015.
Foster had one other domestic violence conviction in Washington state, for assaulting a roommate in April 2013 in Pierce County. That woman said Foster pulled a gun on her as he illegally tried to evict her. He pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges and, for that crime, served about a week behind bars.
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
