06/26/2006

Associated Press

Steven Allison had a chance to tell police who had beaten him but refused. Days later he was dead and now, nearly a year later, the investigation has stalled.

Investigators have been focusing on two individuals but have little to show for their efforts to bring whoever was responsible for the death of Allison, 44, of Spokane, to justice, said Sgt. Joseph Peterson, head of the major crimes unit, and the lead detective on the case, Timothy Madsen.

"We still don't have any clues," Peterson said. "We didn't get dealt a great hand in this."

Critical laboratory tests are caught in a backlog, and a $2,000 Secret Witness reward offer produced "nothing remarkable," Madsen said. "What'll eventually solve this case, I believe, is the right person coming forward."

Shortly after midnight last June 29, patrol Officer Jamie Pavlischak found Allison walking on the street after a homeowner called to report being awakened by a bleeding man who pounded on his door.

Allison had two black eyes and a herringbone-tread shoe print on his forehead, was bleeding from facial wounds and a head laceration and appeared to be drunk, Pavlischak wrote.

According to court documents, Allison initially claimed he had fallen down but, when asked whether more than three people had beaten him, he replied, "Yeah, it was three."

Against Allison's wishes, Pavlischak insisted on driving him to Sacred Heart Medical Center. By the next day he was in a coma after being found to have a fractured skull and a brain injury. He never regained consciousness before his family decided to remove him from life support, and he died three days later.

Allison was last seen before the attack in the home of his brother, Michael G. Allison, 27, who Madsen said had been less than cooperative and refused to take a lie-detector test.

"He stood us up on two appointments," the detective said.

Michael Allison couldn't be reached by The Spokesman-Review for comment, but his 47-year-old brother, Thomas E. Allison, insisted in an interview last week, "My brother Mike had nothing to do with it."

"I was the last one to sit and drink a beer with my brother (Steven)," Thomas Allison said.

"My brother (Steven) left under his own free power, and he was not hurt when he left the house," he said, "and my brother Mike was sound asleep and didn't even know he was there. I'll stick to that story to the end, and that's the truth."

Madsen said he was awaiting genetic test results that could exonerate or implicate a second subject of the investigation, Jimmie L. Yates, 45, a former boyfriend of Debbie Brown, who had been living with Allison at the time of his death.

According to search warrant documents used to seize clothing and what appeared to be a blood-stained towel from Yates' home, Brown told police she heard Yates threaten to assault or kill Allison and others when Yates came to her home in violation of a no-contact order.

Yates told the newspaper last July he "had no idea" who assaulted Allison and considered the dead man "a good guy."

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Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesmanreview.com