Kidnappers sentenced to lengthy prison time

PORT ORCHARD — The couple who assaulted, kidnapped and forced an East Bremerton woman into the trunk of her own car were sentenced this week in Kitsap County Superior Court.

Kevin Page and Charlotte Warfel both accepted the state’s plea agreement and were sentenced to 222 months (18 1/2 years) and 162 months (13 1/2 years), respectively.

On July 16, 2006, Page, Warfel and Michelle Machester, arrived at the woman’s home in the 7000 block of Thebes Street Northeast.

They reportedly had been living on the woman’s property and returned with a key they obtained without her permission to retrieve some of Warfel’s belongings.

The 26-year-old woman told Kitsap County Sheriff’s deputies she went outside to have a cigarette when Page grabbed her and covered her mouth. She was hit in the head and was held down by Warfel and Manchester as Page used packing tape to tape her mouth shut. She told deputies she was carried to the trunk of her car. As they began driving, she was able to free her hands and then her feet.

She said she removed a tail light socket from inside the trunk and used the light to see the interior trunk handle. She reportedly opened the trunk and waited for the car to slow down enough before she jumped out. She estimated the speed to be about 30 mph.

Covered in blood with tape on her face, she ran through a few yards and found a house on Perry Avenue and knocked on the door, requesting they call 911.

The next morning her car was found engulfed in flames on Misery Point Road in Seabeck. Page and Warfel, on the run, were arrested in Salt Lake City a few weeks later, driving a stolen 1998 Jeep Cherokee registered out of Mason County.

Manchester was arrested soon after the incident. She accepted the state’s plea agreement, pleading guilty to first-degree kidnapping as an accomplice, first-degree robbery as an accomplice, first-degree burglary as an accomplice and second-degree arson as an accomplice.

She was sentenced to 120 months, or 10 years, in prison.

Earlier this month, Page pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping with a deadly weapon and second-degree assault. Superior Court Judge Theodore Spearman followed the agreed joint recommendation by the defense and prosecution of 222 months, the top of the 177-222-month range.

Warfel pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping, second-degree assault and first-degree arson. Also an agreed recommendation, she was sentenced to 162 months, more than the 108-144-month range.

Based on additional holdback charges that could have been brought forth, the defense could have potentially faced the risk of increased sentence time if the case would have gone to trial, said deputy prosecuting attorney Tyler Tornabene, explaining the motivation behind the defense entering plea agreements with top-of-the-range sentencing.

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