He killed his pregnant ex-girlfriend, dumped her body in UP. He’s now been sentenced
A Tacoma man pleaded guilty Monday and was sentenced for murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend in 2020 and dumping her body off a hillside in University Place.
Colin Patrick Dudley, 40, was sentenced in Pierce County Superior Court to 26 years, 8 months in prison for first-degree murder in the domestic violence killing of 33-year-old Kassandra Cantrell. That sentence is the high end of the standard sentencing range for similar cases.
Cantrell was missing for nearly a month when a Pierce County Sheriff’s Department’s investigation led detectives to Chambers Creek Road on Sept. 22, 2020. The victim’s body was found in trash bags about 100 yards down a hillside.
Detectives noted what appeared to be stab wounds on the victim’s body, and an autopsy noted fractures to her skull, according to the declaration for determination of probable cause.
At that point, law enforcement had interviewed Dudley about his former girlfriend’s disappearance, which was reported by relatives concerned about the fact that Cantrell missed her first ultrasound appointment. A friend of the victim who was going to accompany her to the appointment told detectives that Cantrell didn’t want to tell Dudley about the pregnancy because he didn’t want children.
Several of the victim’s relatives spoke during the defendant’s sentencing hearing, including her twin brother, Robert Cantrell. KIRO 7 reported that the brother said he felt like Dudley was being allowed to make up his own punishment. Outside the courtroom, the victim’s mother, Marie Smith, told the television station that she didn’t feel she had closure over her daughter’s murder.
“People say that when it gets to this point, you feel closure,” Smith said. “I don’t. Closure would have been her coming home. That’s never going to happen.”
According to court records, surveillance footage from Sound Transit showed Dudley leaving Cantrell’s vehicle in a Tacoma parking garage the same day she was last seen.
Cantrell’s cell phone was later found in the water off Owen Beach by a law enforcement dive team, and GPS records showed that the device and Dudley’s phone were in the area of the defendant’s residence on Aug. 25, 2020. Days after those records showed the two were together, Dudley told investigators in a phone call that he hadn’t seen his former girlfriend for years.
Detectives searched Dudley’s home on Sept. 1 with assistance from the FBI, and according to the probable cause document, investigators found traces of blood in the basement.
