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Washington Businessman Killed at Home, Leading To Discovery of Another Murder and Oil Industry Scam
Doug Carlile was shot dead in his Washington state home, but that wouldn't be the only horrific crime traced back to James Henrikson.
The 2013 slaying of a beloved businessman in Washington state helped federal officials not just uncover another man’s disappearance some 800 miles away, but led them to a group of violent men motivated by greed.
Douglas Carlile, 63, was shot seven times in his kitchen on December 15, 2013, after the victim and his wife, Elberta Carlile, returned to their affluent South Hill home that evening from a church-related function.
Elberta, who called 911, later told police during questioning that she'd made eye contact with a masked man dressed in black before retreating upstairs to a bedroom closet.
"I don’t know what happened. Hell happened,” the distraught widow told detectives in a video-recorded interview, as seen in the "A Dangerous Man' episode of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen. “A nightmare happened.”
Mark Burbridge and Brian Cestnik, detectives with the Spokane Police Department in Washington, headed the case. After Elberta's interview, they thought that her statements felt “rehearsed.”
“Did she kill him herself? Did she hire somebody? Did she get one of the children to do it?” Burbridge wondered at the time, he told Dateline. “These are all my concerns.”
Elberta told Dateline that she informed investigators of a suspicious white van that was parked near her home earlier in the evening on the night her husband was killed. A neighbor, also finding the vehicle suspicious, had called police because she was “freaked out” by it, reporting that the van had no lettering or plates, outside of temporary ones on the back.
Homicide investigators later brought in a scent dog, which led them from the Carliles’ back door to a neighbor’s gate, through a patch of woods, and then into the parking lot of a nearby elementary school. Near the scene was a fresh shoe print in the mud and a peculiar welding glove on the ground.
Surveillance video from the school’s grounds would confirm Elberta’s story, showing a man in black running across the screen. Detectives Cestnik and Burbridge suspected the shooting was a hit.
“I knew this was going to be a very complicated investigation,” Burbridge told Dateline.
Who are Doug and Elberta Carlile?
Doug and Elberta were high school sweethearts who’d married young before eventually having six children. Doug worked in the excavation business, and despite ups and downs in their marriage, the couple were still going strong, primarily due to their devotion to the church.
But, according to loved ones, Doug struggled in his work life. He’d faced multiple bankruptcies, tax troubles, several failed businesses, and fallings out. The couple’s daughter MeLainee said things were improving in her parents' lives.
“They were doing the best I ever saw them do,” MeLainee maintained. “They were happy... They’d figured it out.”
Homicide investigators studied the married couple’s financial records, soon finding several reasons why someone might have wanted Doug dead.
“There was a lot of financial paperwork, and the ones that struck me immediately was loan paperwork that appeared Doug had filled out for different businesses,” Cestnik told Dateline. “They had his net value between $6 and $12 million, depending on which piece of paper you looked at.”
Documents, some of which were typed in Arabic, would connect Doug to the oil business in North Dakota.
Doug Carlile's Oil Business Dealings
Elberta said that her husband caught wind of the “booming” oil business, namely on the Native American MHA (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) Nation, part of which extends into North Dakota. Doug partnered with the Blackstone trucking company — operated by a man named James Henrikson — and invested in oil rigging.
To lease 640 acres on MHA tribal land with exclusive drilling rights would cost Doug a whopping $2 million. He enlisted the investments of those he knew — including his son, who’d dropped $100,000 — and sought investors to give upwards of $100 million for eight wells to access oil.
“The whole thing kind of fell into his lap, and I think he thought that that was his calling from God... to move forward in that lease,” Doug's son, Shane Carlile, told Dateline.
It left Doug open to scams, as proven in the Arabic documents that swindled the man, with promises of 100% overnight returns.
Ultimately, the Carliles were broke, and the suspect list kept growing.
“I was running this investigation, eventually, in about eight directions, trying to eliminate a lot of business partners,” said Burbridge.
Elberta suggested that detectives sleuth around Henrikson, the owner and operator of Blackstone, and his then-wife, Sarah Creveling, known as the Barbie and Ken of the North Dakota oil fields. Doug and Henrikson were partners in the $2 million lease, with the murder victim investing $40,000, and the Blackstone boss investing $600,000.
Doug Carlile warned his son, Seth, “If anything happens to me, it was James Henrikson.”
Complicating matters, a convicted gangster, Robert Delao — an associate of Henrikson — volunteered himself for a police interview, only to state he had nothing to do with anything criminal.
The vanishing of Kristopher “K.C.” Clarke
Soon after Christmas of 2013, just weeks after Doug's killing, Cestnik received a flyer called a “Rip-off Report,” stating that Henrikson and Creveling — the latter of whom managed Blackstone’s accounts — were con artists fleecing people out of their money.
The flyer also referenced 29-year-old Kristopher K.C. Clarke, an employee who disappeared on February 22, 2012, from Blackstone’s headquarters in New Town, about 150 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. According to oil employee and friend Rick Arey, he and Clarke had secretly planned to work for a rival oil trucking company.
“He was extremely worried about [Henrikson] finding out about this whole transition,” Arey told Dateline.
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Meanwhile, in Spokane, a hit from the DNA found inside the welding glove that was discovered near Doug's murder scene led investigators to Timothy Suckow, who lived 10 miles from the Carliles. According to detectives Cestnik and Burbridge, Suckow was a “violent” convicted robber who worked for an asbestos removal company that used white vans — like the one spotted at the crime scene — as part of their operation.
Evidence against Suckow began to mount, from surveillance video showing the van at his storage unit shortly after Carlile was killed, to having Henrikson’s contact information in his phone. A to-do-style list was also found inside Suckow’s personal vehicle.
“[It was] a piece of notebook paper with a list of items to be done,” said Burbridge. “The very top of the paper is the word ‘glove’ with a question mark, and then there’s statements about ‘wheelman’ and ‘wingman,’ ‘show getaway route on Google Earth,’ ‘practice with pistol'... It’s almost Hollywood-like, it was shocking to find that.”
North Dakota investigators look at James Henrikson
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Agent Darrik Trudell worked the North Dakota side of the ongoing investigation, looking into Henrikson and his business. According to Henrikson’s now-ex-wife, Sarah Creveling, Henrikson had impregnated her 19-year-old friend, Payton Martin, the daughter of MHA Nation’s chairman, Tex Hall.
“You could say [Henrikson] comes across as a used car salesman, but that’s really not fair to used car salesmen,” Trudell told Dateline.
In January of 2014, investigators learned that Henrikson allegedly looked to have his estranged wife killed, and soon, he was arrested at a friend’s apartment on weapons-related charges. It wasn’t long before Suckow cracked and confessed that Henrikson paid him to kill both Doug and Clarke.
Henrikson associate Delao also caved, admitting he worked as the middleman between Henrikson and Suckow.
“It’s almost like a tragic comedy when you see this group of people that were involved with this case,” Trudell said.
In September 2014, Spokane and federal authorities worked together to have Henrikson extradited to Washington to face a potpourri of federal charges, including conspiracy and murder-for-hire.
Prosecutors declined to charge Henrikson in connection to the alleged attempted murder-for-hire against Creveling, given the indictments related to the Carlile murder and Clarke’s presumed homicide.
The trial of James Henrikson
Federal prosecutors Aine Ahmed and Scott Jones had an uphill battle before them, especially without Clarke’s body. Also, they knew their star witnesses, Suckow and Delao, would have their credibility called into question.
“My concerns, our most important witness (Suckow) is going to admit that he killed two people; literally beat K.C. Clarke’s brains out,” Jones told Dateline. “Our number two witness (Delao) has a tattoo on his back of him urinating on the headstone of the last guy that he killed.”
Suckow said in court that he answered the door when Clarke showed up at Blackstone headquarters in North Dakota, growing angry when learning the employee wanted to break an appointment with Henrikson.
“I hit him in the back of the head, and he stumbled and fell,” a distraught Suckow said in his confession. “He tried to get up, and I hit him about three or four more times... he stopped moving.”
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Clarke’s body was never found. But a burn pile containing the killer’s bloody clothes supported his statements. Suckow also said Henrikson watched him dig the hole in which he buried Clarke’s body.
According to federal prosecutors, Henrikson wanted Doug dead because he believed his oil deal was worth tens of millions of dollars, and he wanted the Washington grandfather out of the way.
Countless text messages and phone data confirmed that Henrikson hired Suckow to do his dirty work, with Delao corresponding between them for Doug's murder.
“I had the pistol pointed at him, and I told him to back up and get in the house,” Suckow admitted. “I saw Mrs. Carlile come into sight from the hallway. She backed away, and Mr. Carlile moved his hand, and I panicked. I fired.”
Suckow said he brought the welding glove in case he needed to break a window, not wanting to leave his DNA behind.
The triggerman gave an impassioned plea in court, begging Elberta for forgiveness.
“He said, ‘I can’t forgive myself, but can you forgive me?’” Elberta said on Dateline. “I told him, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I forgive you, and God forgives you.’”
Suckow was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his part, while Delao was sentenced to 22 years. Henrikson, who allegedly planned to have more killed, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms behind bars.
“A serial killer is someone who causes the murders of three people, and he certainly got an A for effort because he tried,” said Ahmed. “There were about 11 people that we know of that he tried to have murdered.”
For her part in the oil business-related fraud, Henrikson’s wife, Creveling, was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to pay $340,000 in restitution.
Watch all-new episodes of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
