Man stabbed his wife’s housemate to death in Fife. Now he faces 18 years in prison
More than three-and-a-half years after a 42-year-old woman was stabbed to death while picking up her belongings to leave what had become an increasingly tense home in Fife, the man convicted of killing her was sentenced Friday to prison.
Daniel Hatch, 57, was ordered to spend 18 years, 8 months in prison for the killing of Sarah Mercer, who rented a home with the defendant’s wife for several months in 2018. Hatch was found guilty last week of second-degree murder in a jury trial in Pierce County Superior Court.
Family of the victim, including Mercer’s daughter, her parents and older sister spoke at the sentencing hearing. In a phone call before it began, Mercer’s sister, Jennifer Robbins, said family members were showing up to support her sister and to request that Hatch receive the maximum possible sentence.
“My sister’s murder was heinous and unnecessary,” Robbins said during the proceeding. “There can be no justice, but there can be consequences. The maximum sentence seems to me to be the minimum consequence.”
The prison term Hatch was ordered to serve was a mid-range sentence handed down by Superior Court Judge Stanley Rumbaugh. In similar cases, defendants such as Hatch with no prior felony convictions are typically sentenced to between 12 years, 4 months and 20 years, 4 months.
Hatch’s defense attorney could not be reached for comment Friday.
Feuds at Fife rental home led to tension
In court filings, prosecutors said Mercer and Hatch’s wife decided to rent a home together in Fife in April 2018 after the defendant and his wife separated. The women lived in a house in the 4000 block of 61st Avenue East with their then 16-year-old daughters, who prosecutors said were close friends.
In the months that followed, the housing arrangement soured as Mercer and her housemate feuded over rent and utility payments, upkeep of the home and whether men, including Hatch, were allowed inside. According to prosecutors’ trial brief, Mercer was uncomfortable with Hatch in the home, and as the women continued to live together, tensions worsened.
Prosecutors said Mercer then lost her job and became unable to make household payments, leading Hatch’s wife to change the locks, believing that she had a right to evict her housemate.
Mercer tried to move her belongings out of the residence twice in September. The first attempt ended with an angry confrontation between Mercer and Hatch’s wife. The second, on Sept. 30, ended with the victim stabbed twice at the front door with a foot-long knife.
Prosecutors said Mercer went to the home with her daughter and sister about 1:45 p.m. Mercer went to the front door while the others went around the house to grab a grill in the backyard.
When Mercer knocked on the front door, her housemate and Hatch were in a bedroom upstairs, according to the trial brief. Mercer had a pepper-spray device clipped to her back pocket. When Hatch heard her knocking, he grabbed his “survival-style” knife and went to the door.
“Almost immediately after Ms. Mercer entered the front door the defendant stabbed Ms. Mercer to death,” the state’s trial brief states. “Ms. Mercer suffered a deep stab wound to her left buttocks and a 6-to-8-inch stab wound to her chest, nearly severing her aorta. She died within seconds to minutes.”
Defendant in murder trial argues self-defense
When law enforcement arrived and questioned Hatch, he told officers that Mercer attacked him and that he stabbed her, according to initial charging documents. The defendant’s wife described hearing an altercation and shouting, telling police she heard Hatch say, “Get off me, get off me.” According to the probable cause document, Hatch had a small cut on one of his knuckles and a small scratch on the left side of his face.
During the month-long jury trial that followed years later, Hatch called only his wife as a witness, court records say, foregoing spousal privilege. According to the state’s trial brief, the defense initially planned to call a forensic scientist from the Washington State Patrol crime lab to the stand, but after Hatch’s counsel learned what the expert’s opinion would be, the defense decided against calling on her.
Two weeks into the trial, after prosecutors had questioned law enforcement, a forensic pathologist and family of the victim as witnesses, Hatch did not appear in court and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. Previously out of custody after posting a $250,000 bail bond, Hatch was arrested the same day and held for the remainder of the trial without bail.
Hatch’s counsel argued he stabbed Mercer in self-defense. Defense attorney Warren Corey-Boulet wrote that he expected the defendant’s wife to testify that weeks before the killing, Mercer made threats to pepper spray her, and that Mercer referenced her father’s concealed weapons permit, which was taken as a threat.
According to the court filing, fear over these statements is why Daniel Hatch was asked to be at the property the day Mercer came to move.
Before the trial began, the victim’s sister, Robbins, described Mercer in a phone interview as a gregarious and friendly person who was very involved in her church in Fife.
“We did everything that we could to support each other,” Robbins said. “My sister was such a loving and generous person, always wanting to think the best of people.”
