Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking New Details in Washington Teen's Family Murder Case

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

A teenager from Washington state identified only as A.H. is trying to keep his case for the murders of his parents, Mark and Sarah Humiston, and his siblings in juvenile court. Lawyers for A.H. are preparing for a critical hearing and say the teen was being raised by religious extremists who kept him and his siblings isolated and were skeptical of the government. Prosecutors have said A.H.'s younger sister survived the massacre and detailed why her older brother carried out the murders. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the new information in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: John DayProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There's new information in the case of a teenage boy accused of murdering his family in Washington State. His lawyers want more time to prepare for a critical hearing claiming the teen was being raised in isolation by religious extremists. I go through the new information in the Humiston murders. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. The murders of Mark and Sarah Humiston and three of their children, allegedly at the hands of their 15-year-old son, is a crime that is really difficult to comprehend. And now the teen's lawyers are revealing new details to the judge in the case about the teen's upbringing that they hope will keep him from being tried as an adult. The lawyers for the teenage boy want more time. to prepare for a hearing that will determine whether A.H. is tried as an adult or whether his case stays in juvenile court. Now, last October, the teen, he's identified only as A.H. because he is

charged to the juvenile, was charged with murdering his parents, Mark and Sarah Humistin, and his three younger siblings. The Humistons were shot to death in their large home in Fall City, Washington that's outside of Seattle. And from the outside looking in, it probably looked like this family had it all. A.H. had an 11-year-old sister, and she survived this massacre. Thank God. She is the only living witness, and she told detectives that A.H. shot all of them. The girl said A.H. had recently gotten into a lot of trouble for failing some tests at school. She described her father as keeping a Glock pistol in a small lockbox, which he would sometimes put by the front door so he could bring it into work. The sister told interviewers that, of all the children, her brother,

was the only one who knew the combination to the Glocklock box. Now, that girl, according to prosecutors, told detectives a horrifying story about what happened. She said her brother shot her and her parents and her siblings and that she played dead by holding her breath and that she escaped through a window and ran to a neighbor for help. A.H. told another story in a 911 call and blamed his younger brother. An affidavit says that Humiston sounded out of breath and stayed. stated, he just shot my whole family and turned the gun on himself. During the ensuing conversation with the 911 operator, Humiston stated that his brother, BDH, had killed their family and taken

himself out, and that he, Humiston, was currently hiding in the bathroom on the main floor of the house. Humiston stated that a possible motive for Benjamin Humiston killing everyone is that he had been caught looking at pornography the night before and that he was about to get into a lot of trouble. Now, the claim about the pornography will become important later, so stay tuned for that. Despite A.H.'s claim that his younger brother Benjamin had shot and killed the family and then taken himself out, investigators didn't buy it. They say Benjamin Humiston was found with a gun in his hand, but died from multiple gunshot wounds. An affidavit stated, a black-block handgun was in his left hand that was lying on his chest. No apparent blood spatter was observed on Benjamin Humistin's left

hand or on the Glock. In the master bedroom, I saw a large amount of blood on the carpet to the right of the bed. The blood continued into the onsuit bathroom. The doorframe of the bathroom was splintered as if it had been locked, then forced open from the bedroom side. On the back of the bathroom door were several areas of blood that appeared to be handprints. Sarah Humiston, the mother of the children, was found dead in the bathroom and died from gunshot wounds. Her husband, Mark, The father of the children had been shot four times. Their children, Benjamin, and then Joshua, who was nine, and seven-year-old Catherine, had also been shot and killed.

Neighbors told local media that the children were homeschooled and that the family was active in the community, but A.H.'s attorneys, they're telling a different story as they asked for more time to prepare for a hearing that will determine whether he has tried as an adult or the murders. The lawyer's right, this case is unique, insofar as the teen and his semblings were being homeschooled, by their mother who is now deceased. Additionally, it appears that over the last few years, the teen's family grew increasingly paranoid of the government and of medical professionals, especially as it relates to the COVID-19 vaccine. We have been unable to find medical records detailing regular physical checkups for the teen and his siblings, nor records to address

medical issues. A family member indicated there were multiple significant head injuries, but there is no medical documentation to verify that thus far. The lawyers say they've talked to many people who claim the Humistin children were living in isolated existence. They write, a common theme that has been expressed amongst extended family, neighbors, and those who knew the humistins, is that the children were isolated from the outside world and did not engage socially with many peers, only a select few families that went to their church and were friends of their family. Furthermore, initial reports indicate the home was abusive, tightly controlled and dominated by extreme religious beliefs. The children were also given access to firearms and raised under a rigid, militant, survivalist ideology. But because of their isolation from traditional schools, doctors, and outside community, uncovering this information has been particularly challenging and time-consuming.

A.H.'s attorneys claim that Sarah Humiston's mother told detectives she was concerned about how the children were being raised. The lawyers wrote, The maternal grandmother was briefly interviewed by law enforcement and there was limited but critical information obtained. She reported that her daughter, the teen's mother, was abusive and demeaning to the children. She told law enforcement that she threatened to report her daughter if it didn't stop. The lawyers also say the humistins were using covenant eyes to monitor who was watching pornography in the home, and AH's lawyers claim his brother, Benjamin, may have had the motive for the murders tied to the viewing of the pornography. Finally, AH's lawyers

say they simply need more time to prepare for this declination hearing. The teen had has no criminal history is a high-achieving student and demonstrates a strong propensity to engage in treatment. These are all areas we intend to illustrate for the court. However, significant delays caused by the state, including delayed and incomplete discovery. Witness reluctance due to prior misconduct by law enforcement and limited access to critical records have impeded the defense's ability to fully investigate. Have you heard about upside? It's a great app that gives you cash back on things like gas, groceries, and takeout. Upside gives you real money that you can transfer from the app straight into your bank account. When I pump gas, I use Upside. I've also used it

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a big ask. I mean, they're asking to delay this hearing for over a year. How is that going to land with this judge? How do you feel? Right. Thanks for having me. So it is a big ask, but what the defense needs to do from their perspective is establish what is it in this young man's mind that led to this horrific incident. They need to put together a whole psychological profile of not only of him, but of the environment that he was living in. And so So from the defense perspective, they're telling the judge, we have a lot of work to do. This was a family that was living in a very unique situation. They were not part of regular society. They were very isolated. They had these beliefs that, in the eyes of the defense, led to what happened. And so they've got to bring in a whole panel of psychological experts, doctors, psychologists, to dive deep into the environment that this kid lived in. And in the eyes of the defense, this is going to take. a long time. There were a lot of factors that the defense team needs to look into. This was a family that was living essentially off the grid, out of society. They had a belief

system that was not in the probably mainstream. They were essentially a survivalist situation, kids being homeschooled, and something happened, something snapped, the defense is going to argue. So they just need to put together an entire book about how this young man lived and why he did what he did. Well, they have one shot at this, this hearing, this decline hearing, where the judge will determine whether or not this teen, A.H., who was 15 at the time that these homicides occurred, will be bound over to adult court. So you get one shot, right? It's not like you get a do-over on this. Right. And, you know, the difference between adult court and juvenile court is significant. The goal of juvenile justice has all along been treatment, rehabilitation, trying to figure out what's going on in the minds of kids, essentially, whose brains are not formed in the way the adult's brains are formed.

So the defense team is going to be trying to convince the judge that this child, in their view, should not be tried in adult court. At age 15, the physiological, psychological development of a 15-year-old boy is very different than even in a age of. 18-year-old young man. And so they get one shot at it, and they need to put together everything that they can in this package in this book to present to the judge to say, this is what's going on in this mind. It may be a twisted, deformed mind based on his environment, but he should not be tried in adult court for these reasons. And so that's what they're trying to do. And it sounds to me like they're kind of got, they've got a few things going on here, John, at least from my perspective in reading through the documents they're kind of saying

a he may not have done it you know the the the story kind of has been from the beginning or at least a h's story when he made the 911 call was that his younger brother did it um and then you know he runs to the neighbors for help but the younger sister who survived and played dead said no it was a h who did this he so they have an eyewitness but the defense is kind of going at this from a number of different angles. They're trying to suggest that possibly, you know, there was a system in the home, covenant eyes, that the parents were using to monitor for pornography usage, which is kind of interesting. It might play into that whole religious extremist kind of mindset that has been mentioned in these documents. But, you know, they're kind of coming at this from a different, a couple of different angles. A, he may not have done it. His brother may have done it. And B, you know, you know, know, he was isolated. We've got grandma, you know, the mother of the, of Sarah, coming forward, apparently, and saying, I was concerned about that my daughter and the way she was raising these children. So let's talk about that pornography part about the of this first. Like, does that kind of play into that whole narrative about these were religious extremists and they were kind of had these kids under a microscope and they were living kind of in a really restrictive environment? Right. And again, right, the fallback position is going to be, this was the environment, this was the fault of the way he was raised. Of course, the defense is going to start from the position of, it was somebody else, somebody else did this. But they've also got to have the foundation to say to the court, look, this was a family that was living completely outside the mainstream and not just outside the mainstream in an alternative way, but outside the mainstream in a way that was incredibly harmful to the development of this young man. And so they're bringing in, the fact that there were family members who were concerned, the grandmother, for example,

that there were eyewitnesses, including the surviving sibling. But at the heart of this is the importance to the defense of establishing how unique and dangerous and harmful the environment was. That's what the, it's what's at the heart of this. So they're going to be looking at everything, all the entirety of the family's existence, you know, dealing with, family members, dealing with neighbors, dealing with people who came in contact with them. But the defense has to establish that these people were so far out of the mainstream, so far out of normal everyday American life that the development of this young man was sort of this path. It was inevitable that something was going to snap, something was going to happen,

because the rigidity of the family's belief structure, the isolation from normal interaction with other kids is what the defense is going to be pointing to. So, yeah, they're looking at these unique outliers like the pornography situation, the grandmother, the observations of the grandmother. But the goal of the defense team is to say, because of the way the family was raising this young man, it was inevitable that something bad was going to happen. But does that keep the case in juvenile court?

I mean, we're talking about five homicides, a mass murder. I mean, that, that to me is a big ask. And yes, I feel like this is very complex because there's still a lot we don't know. But you're talking about taking a gun. Let's say, for instance, you know, let's take the position that AH did this as the prosecution contends. Grabbing a gun, your dad's gun and murdering your entire family. I mean, yikes. I mean, have you ever heard of anything where that case stays in juvenile court and then that person gets out at 21 or 25?

Right. Well, you know, there are these cases where courts will say this is a 15-year-old way. You know, you start from the idea that the brain development of a 15-year-old is very different. I mean, this is essentially a head full of mush. Their frontal lobes where judgment is formed aren't developed, and especially in a case where they're an environment that they're raised in is so outside the norm of American daily life, the defense is going to be saying, look, this is not a person, a young man who had the ability to make these distinctions between right and wrong. And again, the point of the juvenile justice system, the reason it's different from the adult system is that it recognizes that young people,

up to the age of 18, generally, are not developmentally there. They're not. They're not development in a place where they can make the right decisions. I mean, you know, we recognize that all the time. We don't let kids have driver's licenses at age 12 and we don't let kids, you know, drink and do other things that adults are led to do. And the reason is, because they don't have the capacity to make the right decision. So in this case, yeah, it's a, the allegations are horrific, a mass murder of a family, but there was something underneath it. There was some backstory that led to that. It wasn't just, you know, just one moment in time. There been happening. in a vacuum. There was a reason in the eyes of the defense that led this 15-year-old young man, boy,

whatever, to do that. And so, again, it gets back to why we have separate courts for juveniles and adults. Prosecution pushing for him to be tried as an adult is not unexpected. I mean, that's what prosecutors do, especially in horrific cases like this. But underlying it is the idea that is this young man's brain formed well enough to make a decision, give him? given his environment and given the way his parents raised him. You know, the defense contends that they're being kind of prohibited in some respects from interviewing the maternal grandmother, Sarah Humiston's mother, that she's represented by counsel who used to work for the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor's office wants to be present during any interview of the grandmother.

Is that strange? Because if she's represented by counsel, Wouldn't the defense attorney, if she's saying all of these things, just be able to interview her with counsel present, that seems a little odd to me? Yeah, normally, if there's a witness, you set up an interview. If the prosecution wants to be there, I mean, that's not unusual. But this is a lot of maneuvering, a lot of trying to develop a situation that's favorable to the prosecution and the defense in a witness interview. The grandmother is going to be a key witness for the defense in terms of establishing the background and the framework for how this family was raised because she's someone who saw red flags, apparently. Maybe there are no other family members who had that unique perspective.

So, yes, she's a key witness. The prosecution wants to have a tight control over what the witnesses are saying. That's also not unusual. But at the end of the day, nobody owns a witness. Neither side owns a witness. And most likely she's going to have to give a statement and most likely if everyone wants to be there for both sides, it's certainly fine. But you don't own witnesses in these cases. You don't get to protect them from questioning.

And in this case, the grandmother, Sarah's mother is going to be an incredibly important witness. John, the defense has come out very aggressively against the prosecution in this case. In this filing, they've said that they've withheld discovery. It sounds like they're accusing investigators of tunnel vision in this case. And they say they have a lot of witnesses they still need to interview and they can complete that by April of 2026 and then have forensic and medical evaluations completed by August of 2026. So that's an entire year. And then they expect to be fully prepared for the decline hearing in October of 26 well over a year away. If you're the judge in this case, and we haven't seen the prosecution response to this yet, do you say, okay, yeah, let's delay this until October. of 2026, or do you kind of split the baby and maybe give them, you know, half that amount of time? You know, the conventional wisdom among defense lawyers is that delay favors a defendant in a criminal prosecution. But it may be that the defense team says, look, we have so many witnesses, we have

so much information we have to gather, this is why we need this. Is the judge going to buy that entirely? Probably unlikely. I mean, it's probably going to be some effort to meet somewhere in the middle. But if you're defending this young man, you do want to get as much time as possible because you want to make sure that you've gone down every road to see what's there. They're not, you know, there may be a lot of witnesses to interview, but this does seem like an extended timeline. It's unlikely that a judge is going to delay as long as the defense wants. But on the other hand, the judge is going to want to give the defense as much time as is as reasonable because this is an incredibly serious situation. And it's a unique situation.

in the sense that there's a lot of psychological and family background that has to be gathered. So I see them meeting somewhere in the middle. So you think the judge will give them extra time, but just not until October of 2026 for this hearing? Yeah, I think it's likely the judge will give them some more time, but probably not as long as they're asking for. Because on that time frame, that's a lot of delay that a judge is going to want to move this thing forward a little more quickly. Yeah, it seems like an extraordinary delay. And meanwhile, you've got this kid, he'll be 16 by the time the year anniversary of these homicides occurred. And then, but he'll be 17 by the time that if the decline hearing, the declination hearing happens if it's delayed until October, 2026.

So that's quite a bit of time that would go by. Right. The flip side of that is if you're the defense, suddenly this young man is no longer 15. He's getting closer to adulthood. it. So it's going to, you know, be tried before the judge, ultimately, or a jury, if it's an adult case, the danger for the defense is suddenly it looks more like an adult than he did when this happened. So there is a downside to the delay from the defense perspective. Yeah, and they certainly, they brought that up in their filing. Well, it'll be interesting to

see how the prosecution responds. I expect some pushback from them in their response to this. And it'll be interesting to see how the judge. ultimately rules. Thank you so much, John Day. Appreciate it. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.