Assassination on Queen Anne

Investigators can't say who ambushed federal prosecutor and gun-control crusader Tom Wales, and neither could Tom Wales. One of the slugs that ripped through his basement window at 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 11, 2001, hit him in the throat as he tapped away at his computer. The divorced father of two grown kids crumpled at his desk—he was able to grasp a phone and press 911, but he could only mumble. He didn't leave the name of the person who had stood, perhaps unseen by Wales, in the darkened backyard of his restored 1905 home on Queen Anne Hill. The figure snapped off at least four rapid shots, confident the faithfully unarmed Wales wouldn't return fire, then slipped away along a narrow side yard. A neighbor peeked out to see someone walk briskly to a car and speed away.

Within minutes, the first of what would become a national task force of cops and federal agents arrived to find Wales, 49, dying on the floor. They quickly realized the degree of difficulty in this homicide. The bespectacled, curly-haired prosecutor had scores of potential enemies after 18 years as an assistant United States attorney, during which he locked away embezzlers, con artists, and corporate swindlers. A political moderate with a yearning for public office, Wales also was a passionate—some say arrogant—anti-gun advocate, a speech maker and money raiser for one of the country's leading anti-gun groups. He is thought to be the nation's most prominent gun-control advocate to be murdered in the line of duty. Then there was the timing—one month to the day after 9/11, a chaotic moment in America. Was the shooting terrorist-related? Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske called it an assassination. Other U.S. attorneys immediately took extra security precautions. At a press conference the next day, Attorney General John Ashcroft opened his regular terrorism briefing with the news of Wales' extraordinary slaying, but quickly added, "We have no knowledge of motive." Today, the FBI, which has revealed almost no crime details, including the caliber of the death gun, has nothing new to add officially. The impression is that Wales, who spent most of his adult life prosecuting crime with great success, has become the victim of one nobody can crack. Agents are still tracking down leads of any sort.

In fact, says one U.S. official, the suspect list has grown dramatically thanks to a $1 million reward announced in April (up from the original $25,000). Investigators also are examining Wales' personal life and conspiracy theories, considering whether the shooter was a friend who knew the home well enough to tiptoe around the security lights in the yard or a hired hit man who studied Wales' habits and property layout. Led by a top organized-crime specialist, investigators have increasingly pinned their hopes on tipsters, awaiting the person who might successfully drop a dime on the killer. "There is reason to believe that there are people who have knowledge of this homicide," says Seattle FBI chief Charles Mandigo, who wouldn't elaborate. "It is time for them to come forward." A U.S. official says the agency has several prime suspects; officials announced the reward to induce specific witnesses to open up. So far, no luck.

At least one new theory has also surfaced from an unlikely source: some of Wales' former opponents in the gun-control war. Investigators, they say, have missed the obvious: an inside job. "They needed a martyr, and they got one," says Alan Gottlieb, director of the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, a national gun-rights group. "My feeling is that he was done in by one of his own." It's a bewildering notion in a case that doesn't necessarily need another one. But at this point, no one has proved Gottlieb wrong.

"What the public doesn't know," says Dennis Boyd, "is just how dangerous this work is." In his offices in Springfield, Va., the executive director of the 10-year-old National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys (NAAUSA) keeps a computer log of threats and violent attacks made on the federal government's approximately 4,500 deputy prosecutors. He taps a key and brings up a report detailing more than 40 incidents in the past 15 years. "There are lots of cases where assistant U.S. attorneys must be protected by federal marshals," he says. "It doesn't get much play in the press, but it's probably better that way." Threats are often anonymous phone calls or letters, and a murder such as Wales' seems an aberration. Yet Boyd's log shows some prosecutors are lucky to be alive. In Phoenix, an irate man involved in a civil-rights case was nabbed entering the federal courthouse with a shotgun and three shells taped to his legs; he intended to ambush a prosecutor. In San Diego, a prosecutor threatened by a drug gang spent seven months under U.S. Marshals Service protection at a series of safe houses. In memos they've sent to Boyd, prosecutors from Alaska to Florida report being stalked by vengeful families and physically attacked in court. Over the years, threats have piled up from outlaw bikers, Chinese tongs, suspected terrorists, narco traffickers, mafioso, and Aryan Nations followers.