Anthony Garver pleads not guilty to refiled murder charges

SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. – One of two men who set off a statewide manhunt after escaping from Western State Hospital last year pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Snohomish County District Court on Tuesday.

Charges were refiled against Anthony Garver, who is accused in the stabbing death of 20-year-old Phillipa Evans-Lopez in her Lake Stevens home in June of 2013. Prosecutors believe Garver tied her up with electrical cords and stabbed her to death.

Garver was found not competent to stand trial at the time.

He and Mark Alexander Adams escaped from Western State Hospital last April and triggered a large-scale manhunt, and Garver was eventually found in the woods outside Spokane.

Last week, prosecutors learned that Garver was potentially hours away from being released from Spokane County Jail, where he was spending two years for violating his federal probation.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons told prosecutors last Wednesday that Garver was "entitled to credit against his two-year federal sanction for time spent in the Snohomish County Jail and WSH pursuant to this state case," according to court documents.

Prosecutors quickly refiled charges, a judge issued a warrant and Garver was transferred from Spokane to Snohomish County.

Prosecutors are leaning on a competency hearing Garver underwent in December on his probation violation. That hearing found that Garver was “exaggerating his psychotic symptoms and exaggerating, if not feigning, memory impairment.”