First week of Whatcom County homicide trial wraps up with testimony about scene of death
The first week of the retrial of the 35-year-old Arlington man accused of murdering his friend at Baker Lake in 2019 has come to an end. Prosecutors allege Alexander Vanags murdered his friend Mark Stebakov, 28, with a machete while the two were camping together and on LSD. Defense attorneys claim Vanags’ actions were self-defense.
Vanags’ first scheduled trial was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic, and his second trial in Whatcom County Superior Court ended with a deadlocked jury in 2022. Current jurors have not been informed that the proceedings are a retrial.
After jury selection concluded Tuesday morning, jurors heard opening statements from both the defense and prosecution. Testimony began the following day.
Court records show Vanags called 911 a few hours after the altercation with Stebakov on April 13, 2019.
Recordings of the calls were played in the courtroom, and jurors heard Vanags tell dispatch that he “went camping with (his) friend and he tried to kill (him.)”
Vanags gave directions to their campsite, which was off an access road near Baker Lake, and complained that his head hurt.
“I’m not hiding or anything,” Vanags said in the call.
Peter Knowlton, a police officer with the Stillaguamish Tribe, responded to Vanags’ call, which was made from River Rock Tobacco and Fuel in Arlington. Knowlton was called to testify by the state and described speaking with Vanags while he sat in the back of an ambulance. He said Vanags had dried blood on his clothes and around his mouth.
Vanags told the officer that his friend assaulted him and he killed him with a machete, which he told Knowlton was on the floor of the truck he’d driven to the gas station. Knowlton said Vanags gritted his teeth and wrinkled his forehead while describing what happened with Stebakov, which Knowlton said he found “alarming.”
Vanags was then taken to Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington for an examination prior to his booking in jail. The emergency room physician who saw him, Dr. Everett De Leon, was the next witness called to testify.
De Leon cleared Vanags to be booked in jail, writing in his notes that Vanags likely had a concussion but did not seem confused or unaware. He and jurors were shown photos of Vanags taken when he was booked into jail. The images showed some injuries, though the prosecution raised the point that a possible injury near Vanags’ mouth could have also been herpes.
De Leon did not recognize Vanags in the courtroom, citing the limited amount of time he saw Vanags and the years that have since passed.
The crime scene
The state turned its attention to the crime scene itself following De Leon’s testimony. Prosecutors called both of the officers who first responded to the scene, with most of their attention focused on current Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Stanley Streubel.
Streubel said he and Det. Derek Jones — who was a deputy at the time — arrived at the scene at about 2:30 a.m. It was still dark out, but Streubel said they could see the light of glow sticks and tea candles at the campsite. Vanags and Stebakov had arranged the lights prior to taking LSD.
Streubel testified that he saw an object on the ground that he couldn’t make out, which he later realized was Stebakov’s body. He was lying on his back with a blanket over his face, shoulders and right arm. There were two large gashes on Stebakov’s uncovered left arm, Streubel said.
As Streubel spoke in court, images taken of the scene at that time were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom.
Streubel said he put on gloves and removed the blanket covering Stebakov. His eyes were “fixed and lifeless,” Streubel said, and he immediately knew Stebakov was “beyond help.” It then began to rain, so Jones retrieved an unopened, packaged blanket from his car and draped it over Stebakov’s body to preserve it.
Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Troy Slayton was the next person called to the scene. He was a crime scene investigator at the time, and he arrived at the campsite at about 7:20 a.m.
During testimony, Slayton also described seeing the glow sticks and tea lights, as well as a tarp hanging in the trees, a firepit, two camping chairs and other items like a hatchet and hammer “strewn about.” He started photographing the scene and finally removed the blanket covering Stebakov’s body when the sergeant arrived.
Projected photos — just some of the roughly 220 images Slayton said he believed he took — showed Stebakov’s blood-soaked body. His white T-shirt was completely red, and blood covered his arms, face and neck. There also was blood on the rocks beneath him and a nearby plank of wood.
The rain started to pick up, Slayton recalled, and he worried that it would wash away potential evidence. It was pouring by the time someone from the medical examiner’s office arrived, and photos showed most of the blood had rinsed off. The front of Stebakov’s shirt was almost completely white again.
Slayton said he was able to see the “true extent” of Stebakov’s injuries once the blood on his skin had washed away.
The defense pointed out that Slayton could have taken steps to ensure Stebakov’s body was better preserved rather than exposing it to the elements. Slayton did not cover the body again before someone with the medical examiner’s office arrived to collect Stebakov.
Former Whatcom County medical examiner Dr. Gary Goldfogel was the last of seven witnesses called in the first week of the trial. Goldfogel performed Stebakov’s autopsy, and he walked the jurors through his process and findings.
He said that after examining Stebakov and looking at crime scene photos and reports, he determined that his cause of death was bleeding out from at least 14 “sharp force” injuries. These were slashes made with the machete, Goldfogel explained, rather than stab wounds.
Jurors were shown numerous photos taken during the autopsy showing the cuts to Stebakov’s body. Some of them went all the way to the bone, and Goldfogel said some of the wounds — particularly the ones on his left arm and neck — would have been fatal by themselves. He said that based on prior testimony from Vanags and his own observations, it was likely that the cut on the crease of Stebakov’s left arm, which severed multiple major arteries, was the first injury sustained.
There were at least four different slices to the back of Stebakov’s neck, as well as cuts on his back, side and head.
Goldfogel said blood was “profoundly absent” in Stebakov’s body, and he had to take additional measures to collect enough for toxicology tests. Special procedures were also taken to determine the presence of LSD in Vanags’ and Stebakov’s blood. Goldfogel said that if Vanags had not disclosed their use of the drug, it would never have been detected.
According to the defense, Stebakov attacked Vanags while the two were on LSD. Vanags feared for his life, his attorneys said, and used the machete to prevent Stebakov from killing him. Goldfogel said it was “very plausible” that at least some of Stebakov’s injuries were sustained while the two were face to face, though he said that unless Vanags switched which hand was holding the knife, it was unlikely they were facing each other when Stebakov’s back was sliced.
Some of the injuries would have made it impossible for Stebakov to remain standing or moving for longer than five minutes, Goldfogel said, and others would have made him unable to use his arms.
In a cross-examination by the defense, Goldfogel was questioned as to why he didn’t personally go to examine the scene as he often did with other death investigations. Goldfogel said he remembered being told by detectives that he didn’t need to go, but defense attorney James Dixon pointed out that in previous testimony Goldfogel said he did not know why he didn’t go to the scene.
Goldfogel responded that he had the ability to choose in cases where law enforcement didn’t request his presence. He said the case was “far more complicated than it originally appeared,” and that if it happened today, he would go to the scene.
Goldfogel’s testimony is scheduled to continue Monday morning when the trial resumes.
This story was originally published March 21, 2025 at 1:10 PM.