By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
NEWPORT – One by one they walked up to face the man who had just admitted Tuesday to killing Mark Campbell of Waldport nearly two years earlier.
Gone was their brother, their son, their husband.
Fighting though tears, a sister, a mother, a brother and wife stood six feet from Jack Sigler, 54, who pleaded guilty to stabbing Campbell to death during a burglary of a next-door apartment on Dec. 6, 2020. Campbell, 66, was the co-owner of Crestview Golf Course, a longtime Waldport city council member and an active, respected member of the community.
“You took the first son of my mom,” Campbell’s sister, DeeDee Renton of Waldport said as she held out a photo of the two for Sigler to see. “You took a father, son, a protector.”
Campbell’s mother, Jean Campbell of Waldport, said Sigler “forever changed all of our lives … I hope one day I will be able to forgive you. But not now.”
Mother and daughter wore special T-shirts with pictures of Campbell on them and the words “He went to help.”
Jay Campbell of Lynnwood, Wash. said he still suffers bouts of anger over his brother’s killing.
“I don’t know what it’s like quite yet to forgive,” he said. “With that said, I hope that God’s healing grace will come over you, my mom and his wife.”
Mark Campbell’s wife, Christine, was one of the last to speak. She hoped Sigler understood the impact of his actions. “My world was destroyed,” she said. “But you will never take away the legacy that Mark created.”
After a one-day settlement conference Monday, Sigler appeared in a crowded Lincoln County courtroom Tuesday to plead guilty to manslaughter and four counts of burglary. After acknowledging each crime, he was immediately sentenced to 27 years in prison without the possibility of parole. But with credit for time served and potentially good behavior, he could be released from prison after 21.6 years.
If he had been convicted on the original murder, burglary and theft charges, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison.
Sigler broke down in tears several times as family members spoke. Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and sandals, he stood briefly to address the courtroom saying “I wish I could take everything back that night.” Sigler said he was “sorry for taking a son, a brother and a dad away” before he was overcome with emotion and returned to his seat.
Campbell was stabbed to death when he interrupted an early-morning burglary in a next-door apartment overlooking his golf course.
Three days later sheriff’s deputies arrested Sigler on charges of burglarizing the apartment of Ron Remy, a prolific collector of swords who lived next door to the Campbells. On Jan. 14, 2021, a grand jury indicted Sigler on three counts of second-degree murder and six counts of burglary and theft.
Sigler had been living in his parents’ garage on Crestline Drive six blocks north of the Campbells. Tuesday he admitted to burglarizing the apartment three times before his fatal encounter with Mark Campbell.
Sigler, who worked on local landscaping crews around the area and has a long criminal history on drug, burglary and theft convictions, had been in jail since his arrest.
The settlement conference – a normal procedure on complicated cases – was an attempt to see if the parties could reach a plea and sentencing agreement before a four-week murder trial scheduled to start in mid-November. Sigler had to agree to the settlement before it could move forward. Christine Campbell and Renton also participated in Monday’s negotiations.
With his sentence, Sigler got the slight chance of leaving prison in his mid-70s. The Campbell family, in turn, can begin healing without having to go through a long, emotional trial with potential appeals.
Following Tuesday’s sentencing, Judge Eric Bergstrom, a retired judge from Multnomah County brought in to oversee the settlement conference, said Campbell was a “remarkable man” who had made great contributions to the community.
“I hope this brings closure to everyone,” he said.
Night of death
Mark and Christine Campbell were asleep in their apartment overlooking the golf course early the morning of Dec. 6, 2020 when she heard a noise from the vacant apartment next door. Christine Campbell went to look and saw someone with a flashlight inside the adjacent unit, according to documents filed in Lincoln County Circuit Court.
She woke her husband, who grabbed a key and went next door to investigate. The next thing she heard was a scuffle and her husband and another person yelling, according to the court filings. She went to the deck outside and saw a man throw her husband to the ground and begin “slugging” him, according to the documents.
By the time Christine Campbell returned with a neighbor her husband was on the ground bleeding. The burglar had fled.
In a later news release, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s office said Campbell died of “severe trauma received from multiple stab wounds.”
The Campbells knew Sigler because he did some landscaping work over the years for family members. He also had previously been in a relationship with Mark Campbell’s ex-wife, Patricia.
The settlement
Bergstrom worked all of Monday in private with Lincoln County district attorney Lanee Danforth, deputy district attorney Lynn Howard and three defense attorneys to hear synopses of their cases and to see if the charges and sentencing could be settled without going through a lengthy, expensive, emotional and potentially risky trial.
Danforth said Tuesday that prosecutors had bloody gloves from Sigler’s bedroom and locations from his cell phone that put him in the apartment when Campbell was killed.
But defense attorneys had filed motions the past year disputing the DNA results, to exclude statements Sigler made and evidence gathered as deputies searched his bedroom, and sought release of the cell phone so their own experts could examine it. They also asked for separate trials on the burglary and murder charges.
In a news release later Tuesday, Danforth said she believed a jury would have convicted Sigler had the case gone to trial.
“What many people don’t know is that years of ongoing litigation, especially in a homicide case with complex legal issues, can follow a conviction,” she wrote. “The ongoing litigation that follows a conviction at trial causes victims’ families to relive the traumatic loss of their loved one repeatedly and plagues them with uncertainty as to the outcome …”
Danforth said it was important to the Campbell family “that Sigler serve a predetermined number of years in prison and give up his right to litigate any issues in this case …”
- Quinton Smith is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
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