Woman who prosecuted some of Pierce County’s most notorious criminals has died
Barbara Corey wasn’t afraid to go to trial.
She handled some of Pierce County’s major cases during the decades she worked as a prosecutor and defense attorney and could immediately spot flaws when someone was testifying.
“Barbara was relentless when she got her teeth into a case,” good friend and former colleague Kit Proctor said.
Corey died of natural causes June 7 at the age of 68, surrounded by loved ones, her family said.
Among other high-profile cases, she and colleague Jerry Costello prosecuted serial killer Robert Lee Yates Jr. in 2002. He killed 15 people across the state and is serving life in prison without parole.
She also prosecuted Guy Rasmussen, who was sentenced to life without parole for the 1996 death of Cynthia “Cindy” Allinger. The 9-year-old was kidnapped, raped and murdered after she left her home in Lakewood to see a friend.
After Corey prosecuted Earl Shriner for the 1989 rape, stabbing and mutilation of a 7-year-old Tacoma boy, Shriner was sentenced to 131 years in prison.
Corey was also part of one of the first prosecutions in the state that used DNA evidence.
“She was so sharp,” Proctor said. “... She was just passionate about her work.”
Corey also was a great mentor, she said, especially to other women in the office at a time when they were finally starting to be allowed to be felony prosecutors.
They’d have regular lunches for camaraderie and to support one another.
“She was at the center of that,” Proctor said.
With the exception of when she was in trial, Corey was always available to give advice.
Proctor also remembers her as a strong advocate for prosecuting infant homicides, which she said were often hard to prove.
Formidable attorney, devoted parent
Son Robbie Corey-Boulet said he had an impression of his mother as a formidable attorney growing up, from seeing her cases in the news.
But he said he experienced her as a fiercely devoted parent, who was invested in her children’s education and making sure they found careers they were passionate about and became avid readers.
“That was really what we talked about and what she wanted for us,” he said. “I guess I have a different angle on this intelligence and sharpness and talent that everyone saw exhibited in the courtroom.”
She always juggled being a devoted parent and a successful attorney.
“I think she was pregnant in law school,” he said.
Corey earned her degree from the University of Washington School of Law in 1981, worked for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and joined Pierce County in 1984.
Corey-Boulet said he remembers her lawsuit against Pierce County decades later, when he was away at college. She sued after then-Prosecuting Attorney Gerald Horne fired her in 2004, and jurors awarded her $3 million in damages.
She alleged Horne disparaged her in comments he made to the media and that she was fired after she refused to be made a scapegoat for a personnel move in the office that wasn’t popular. She was the felony division chief at the time.
“That had been her entire career up until that point,” Corey-Boulet said about her departure from the office. “That came as a big shock to her. Certainly not something that was planned. I just remember being really proud of her ability to make something out of that.”
She went on to start her own successful criminal defense practice, sparring in court with her former colleagues at the Prosecutor’s Office.
Another son, attorney Warren Corey-Boulet, said she was “remarkably zealous in her defense of her clients. She does not shy away from the combat part of practicing law.”
He said in the eight years he practiced with her, she was always willing to take time to workshop theories about his cases with him, no matter what she was doing.
He also said she was an accomplished baker and that he made her give him the recipe for her peanut butter drop cookies, which he makes dozens of each year. Instead of straight peanut butter cookie dough, she added chocolate chips.
Corey loved reading and taking care of her most recent Airedale terrier, MacGregor.
She also spoke Russian.
“When she was in college in the ‘70s, she did at least one semester in the Soviet Union and spoke Russian at the time,” Warren Corey-Boulet said. “Isn’t that wild? Back at the height of the Cold War.”
Decades later she was at Robbie Corey-Boulet’s tennis tournament, where parents were not allowed to coach while their kids were playing. She’d retained enough Russian to realize another parent was doing just that. As she liked to do, she objected.
“That was kind of classic her,” Robbie Corey-Boulet said. “She was very much somebody who enjoyed fighting battles, and they didn’t necessarily have to be hers.”
That’s because she had a “sharply honed sense of justice and injustice,” he said. “I think she approached her clients in the same way.”
Corey is survived by her husband, William Pierce Hay III; her sons Warren Corey-Boulet, William Barnes, Robbie Corey-Boulet, Ian Corey-Boulet and their families; and her brother Brian Corey, among others.
The family suggested that, instead of flowers, donations be made in her honor to Kid Connect of Pierce County and to The Innocence Project.
