Sammamish woman's murder traced to Bellevue

Bellevue Police have determined that a Sammamish woman whose body was found on a boat off Orcas Island in August was murdered in Bellevue.

Detectives have evidence that Albert Carl Beutler of Bellevue strangled Rhan Rha around 2 a.m. on Aug. 12, when she was visiting his condominium apartment. Beutler, who had been dating Rha, took her body with him to Seattle and then to the San Juan Islands in a powerboat.

Rha was found on the boat that afternoon, after Beutler fatally shot himself as investigators closed in on the boat. Police and the Coast Guard began looking for Beutler after he sent a text message to a friend in which he claimed he had killed his girlfriend.

The San Juan County Sheriff's Office initially assumed jurisdiction for both the murder and the suicide. Now the murder is a Bellevue case, only the second in the city in the last three years. There were no murders in Bellevue in 2008 and 2007.

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