On Thursday morning, September 17, 1981, two women were killed during an armed robbery at the West Olympia branch of the Tumwater State Bank. Twila Capron, 30, a bank teller, and her colleague Candace Hemmig were shot at point-blank range when Mitchell Rupe entered the bank to rob it. The robbery yielded about $4,000.

Twila Capron’s husband, Michael, arrived about 11 a.m. to take his wife to lunch and found both women on the floor; Hemmig was already dead and Capron had suffered massive, unsurvivable brain injuries. Police located a bloodstained checkbook belonging to Mitchell Rupe on the counter, and Rupe spoke to an officer outside the bank shortly afterward. He was arrested the same day and later confessed during interviews.

The case went to trial in April 1982, when a Thurston County jury convicted Rupe of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder. Subsequent sentencing trials produced multiple death sentences that were overturned on appeal; later proceedings resulted in life without parole. Did anyone in Olympia remember seeing either woman at the bank that morning or notice anything unusual before the robbery?