After Wicklund and her neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, testified against him, Campbell was convicted of first-degree assault and sodomy and received a sentence of 40 years in prison.

Authorities did not make Wicklund aware of the fact that Campbell's sentence would allow him to be placed in a work release program after serving seven years behind bars despite Campbell being accused of multiple disciplinary infractions while serving his 40-year sentence, including the rape of at least two other inmates and the physical assault of a third; in 1981, he was placed in a work release facility under conditions that allowed him more freedom of movement outside of prison, unbeknownst to Wicklund.

[4] On October 29, 1970, eight days after his 16th birthday, Campbell's father reported him to the police in Edmonds, Washington, for stealing the family car.

The next day, he burglarized his grandparents' home and was promptly arrested after stealing several guns to finance a trip to California.

Bob Williams, the superintendent of Green Hill School, recalled Campbell was "a real cold-blooded person" who "promised that he would try to hurt anybody that came around him".

Wicklund was not alerted to the fact that Campbell's sentences ran concurrently, not consecutively, meaning that he could theoretically have been paroled in significantly fewer than 40 years.

[citation needed] During the intervening years, Wicklund had separated from her husband, Jack, due to the lingering stress of the assault and devoted herself to raising her daughter, supporting herself and Shannah with an in-home business as an accountant for local beauty parlors, as well as helping students obtain loans for beautician school.

[citation needed] Jack Wicklund, meanwhile, fell victim to a bizarre incident in December 1977, when he was found tied to a chair in his West Seattle home with massive third-degree burns.

After receiving medical treatment, he said that a complete stranger visited his house, tied him up, doused him with gasoline, and set him on fire.

The exact circumstances surrounding Jack Wicklund's death are unclear, and police never satisfactorily determined whether he had been murdered or had died by suicide.

[citation needed] During his stint serving his concurrent sentences in the Washington State Reformatory, Campbell accumulated several disciplinary infractions, including possessing a homemade liquor he illicitly brewed using stolen yeast, physically assaulting other inmates, raping at least two fellow inmates and threatening to murder one of the victims if he reported the rape, physically assaulting an inmate to the point of that inmate needing to receive treatment for head injuries, conjuring homemade liquor from yeast Campbell stole from the prison's kitchen, and having a sexual relationship with a prison substance abuse counselor, who would later give birth to a son by Campbell in October 1982; the counselor was fired for her illicit relationship with Campbell.

The psychological review also stated Campbell was "[blithely] uncaring of others, conscienceless, malevolently intolerable of the social order which imprisons him, and [was] imminently harmful to all who directly or indirectly capture his attention or interest".

Two hours later, at 6:30 pm, Hendrickson's husband Donald visited Wicklund's home to check on his wife and discovered the dead bodies of all three victims in different rooms of the house.

Campbell's car had dried blood on the driver's side door handle, and Shannah's earring was found in the back seat.

In addition, a fellow work release resident directed police to a location along the banks of the Snohomish River, where he and Campbell had been on the evening of April 14.

Held in the Snohomish County Jail, he was unpopular with other prisoners because he had murdered a child; additionally, the circumstances of his crime meant that stricter rules would be imposed on the freedoms of inmates on parole.

Testifying for the prosecution were neighbors who had seen him sneaking around the house on the afternoon of April 14, and his girlfriend Judy Dirks, who said that on the morning of the killings, he'd been at her home, where he consumed an entire six pack of beer.

Dirks testified that Campbell had "considerable resentment" towards Renae Wicklund and had driven past her home a couple of times while on work release.

The defense did not call any witnesses or present any evidence other than that the case was a miscarriage of justice because investigators immediately focused on Campbell and did not search for any other potential suspects.

Renae Wicklund's mother and sister, who lived in North Dakota, were particularly shocked by the murders because she had never told them about being raped eight years earlier.

During the trial, Campbell's attorneys argued that he could not be charged with rape, since the wound in Renae Wicklund's vagina was a post-mortem injury that had not bled.

Snohomish County Coroner Dr. Clayton Haberman, who performed the autopsies, pointed out that brain death does not occur until a few minutes after circulation ceases, and she could technically have still been alive when the assault happened, but it may just as easily have been hours later.

Because the only living witness to the murders would not speak of or recount what happened, investigators had to roughly piece together the sequence of events on April 14.

Shannah was found lying in the bedroom next to her, and it was believed that Campbell may have shown the girl her mother's lifeless body prior to slitting her throat.

[5] Campbell's mother claimed that he had sex with a pet dog that he adopted, and after learning of his arrest for first-degree murder told investigators that, "It was inevitable.

On April 29, 1985, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected one of Campbell's petitions for appeal, and on May 17, a second death warrant was signed, scheduling his execution for July 25, 1985.

[1][15] On April 28, 1993, Campbell filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court arguing that hanging violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it was cruel and unusual punishment; in this appeal, Campbell also argued it was unconstitutionally cruel to make inmates choose a method of execution or to encourage inmates to choose a method of execution, arguing that Washington encouraged inmates to make a choice by making hanging their default method.

Lowry's press secretary characterized the meeting as "Mr. Campbell's opportunity" to advocate for the commutation of his sentence to life without parole.

Officials determined that a rope permitting a five-foot drop would be sufficient to successfully break Campbell's neck during his hanging.

Campbell's drop of five feet was the minimum allowed in the U.S. Army manual that Washington officials consulted when crafting their hanging protocol.