American judge tosses out Canadian killer’s lawsuit against his victim’s widow

A judge in Washington State has dismissed a Canadian-born killer’s lawsuit against the widow of the man he murdered — a controversial court action linked to the inmate’s failed bid to be transferred to a Canadian prison.

Larry Shandola, 62, is serving a 31-year sentence for the 1995 shooting death of his former business partner, Robert Henry, in the parking lot of the electrical company where the victim worked. Witnesses testified that a masked man blasted the window out of Henry’s car and then fired a second shot at his head.

Just days before the killing, the 33-year-old Henry had won a summary judgment in a lawsuit against Shandola over injuries sustained in a fist fight between the two men on New Year’s Eve 1993.

Shandola wasn’t arrested and convicted until 2001, three years after the 1998 discovery of a shotgun in a wooded area near the scene of Henry’s murder. A Tacoma, Wash., police detective spent years tracing the weapon to Shandola through a series of previous owners.

In 2011, Shandola applied to the state’s department of corrections to be transferred to a prison in his native Canada. Officials in Washington have confirmed Shandola holds Canadian citizenship but have not immediately responded to Postmedia News requests for further details on where Shandola was born or has lived in this country.

In December, after his bid for a transfer to Canada was rejected, Shandola sued Henry’s widow, Paula Henry, over comments she made in a letter to Washington corrections officials objecting to the inmate’s transfer application. Shandola blamed Paula Henry’s “highly offensive” letter for helping to scuttle his attempted transfer to a Canadian prison.

The killer’s statement of claim highlighted Henry’s “false” assertions that, “I know he will kill me,” “He is a skilled sociopath,” and “He stalked me and tried to intimidate me for five years.”

Shandola further claimed in the suit that Henry’s letter objecting to the transfer “constitutes invasion of privacy by placing Plaintiff in a false light.”

The lawsuit also repeated Shandola’s assertions from his 2001 trial that he is “innocent of the murder of Robert Henry” and that he was “remorseful for having inadvertently harmed his friend” during the 1993 fist fight.

Shandola’s lawsuit against Paula Henry was condemned earlier this week by Henry’s lawyer, John Ladenburg, as “frivolous” and transparently designed to harass and torment the grieving woman. He told Postmedia News that the “terrified” Henry was even served with the lawsuit at her apartment, prompting her to immediately move to a new home since Shandola or his friends outside of prison clearly knew where she lived.

The killer’s legal maneuver also sparked outrage in and beyond Tacoma. The city’s News Tribune newspaper editorialized this week that “Shandola has found a way to keep on hurting Henry” by forcing her to defend herself against his “frivolous” claim for $100,000 in damages.

“The lawsuit is outrageous,” the newspaper argued, “but it’s accomplishing exactly what Shandola probably hopes it would do: allow him to continue inflicting pain and suffering from behind prison walls.”

At a courtroom in Tacoma on Friday, Ladenburg requested that Shandola’s lawsuit be dismissed. Pierce County Judge Garold Johnson granted the dismissal, describing Shandola’s legal action against Paula Henry as “inappropriate,” according to local news reports.

“The judge gave each defendant an award of $10,000 plus costs and attorney’s fees,” Ladenburg told Postmedia News on Friday. “Of course, not much chance of getting that from him. (Shandola) can appeal within 60 days; we wait to see if it is over.”

With backing from two state legislators in Washington, Ladenburg and Paula Henry are pushing for a new law aimed at preventing those convicted of violent crimes from launching lawsuits against victims or their families without the permission of a judge in the presiding jurisdiction.

rboswell@postmedia.com