A Mat-Su Valley couple were arrested in Washington state over the weekend after the grandmother of one was found shot to death in her Klipson Beach home in southern Washington.

23-year-old Wasilla woman, Katherine Joanne Chace was arrested on suspicion of Murder I on Saturday, while her boyfriend, and father of her three children, 25-year-old Willow resident, Paul Dwayne Rankin, was arrested the following day on charges of Criminal Conspiracy to Commit Murder.

The investigation would be initiated following a 911 call from Chace reporting that she and her children had been kidnapped, driven to nearby Loomis Lake State Park, then had $1,500 robbed from her purse and her keys thrown away. Officers met her at the park, and gathered more information that they soon found was inconsistent. Other Long Beach and PCSO law enforcement officers were soon dispatched to the residence. When they arrived they discovered 64-year-old Paula J. Rice dead from gunshot wounds.

Rice’s son, Michael Cooper, who is also Chace’s father, was determined to have been asleep in another part of the home at the time of the shooting, and is not considered to have had a part in the murder. [xyz-ihs snippet=”adsense-body-ad”]Chace told investigators that she had moved down from Alaska to re-kindle a relationship with her father.

Upon further interview, Chace would tell investigators that while she was putting her children into her vehicle after having had a knife to her throat by her kidnapper, the kidnapper fired rounds from her 9 mm pistol inside the home. They were then taken to the park.

Her story kept on changing, and soon she told detectives that she had woke up in her vehicle with the weapon in her pocket, then concocted the kidnapping story and disposing of the weapon.

But, soon, she would divulge that she, and her boyfriend, Paul Rankin, had plotted to murder both the grandmother and her father. But, when the time to carry out the murderous plot, Rankin couldn’t do it. And so, Chace pulled the trigger. Cooper, her father, lived only because Chase lost her nerve after shooting her grandmother.

A factor in the murder plot is reported to be a large trust fund that belonged to the grandmother, but police are continuing the investigation.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]

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