Judge orders Palms Inn murder suspect to trial despite a ‘self-defense’ argument

Judge Robert LaForge on Friday ruled that prosecutors had sufficient evidence to bring Skylar Rasmussen to trial for the murder of William Woodard last December, advancing a tragic case that has put a spotlight on conditions at the Palms Inn, a permanent supportive housing site for Sonoma County’s homeless.

Woodard was pronounced dead at the hospital after being stabbed in his room at the Palms five times with a kitchen knife. The fatal strike came through the left side of his face and severed both his carotid arteries, according to testimony from forensic pathologist Kimi Verilhac.

Rasmussen’s attorney, Evan Zelig, a court-appointed Santa Rosa defense lawyer, set the stage for a defense at trial that will center on Rasmussen’s accusations that Woodard tried to sexually assault him when Rasmussen came to his room fearing he was in the midst of an overdose and seeking the opioid-reversing drug naloxone.

“This case is a self-defense case all day long,” Zelig said in his closing arguments Friday, adding that “we believe a jury will see it that way.”

Precisely what happened in a second floor room of the Palms between 2:25 and 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 13 wasn’t clear in Friday’s testimony. Two other people were in Woodard’s room, but had fallen asleep after using fentanyl, according to testimony from the detectives who interviewed them in the hours after Woodard’s death.

One of those people woke up to see Rasmussen standing over Woodard, she told investigators, before he walked out of the room. She then woke up her partner and the two left to call 911. When firefighters, EMS personnel and sheriff deputies arrived they were unable to open the door because Woodard, a large man, was lying against it in a pool of blood.

What was clear from the testimony was that a number of the people now involved in the murder case, whether witnesses or, in Rasmussen’s case, the suspect, did not live at the Palms but frequented the property to acquire and use drugs. The Palms Inn, a former hotel, is a privately owned facility that converted to a permanent supportive housing facility in 2016.

The business makes a profit by accepting homeless people placed through housing agencies with Sonoma County and Santa Rosa as well as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Residents’ monthly payments, ranging from about $1,100 to $1,250 per unit, are largely covered by federal housing vouchers, which are distributed by local housing authorities. But tenants kick in as well, paying 30% of their incomes.

Permanent supportive housing sites are supposed to pair housing for the homeless with considerable wrap-around services, including drug and alcohol treatment and mental health counseling. The model is designed to not just house homeless people but aid them in the difficult work of confronting underlying issues like substance abuse.

Woodard featured prominently in a May 2022 Press Democrat investigation that raised myriad questions about whether The Palms Inn was achieving that goal.

Six days before Woodard’s death, Rasmussen, whose criminal history includes two previous stabbings but no other murder charges, violated his probation over a November 2021 high speed chase down Highway 101 that ended with his car in flames. After a judge sent him to a residential treatment rehabilitation program in San Francisco, Rasmussen walked away from the facility during intake, previous Press Democrat reporting showed.

On Friday, detectives on the stand said Rasmussen had then begun hanging out at the Palms, with Woodard and others, and had done so for a few days before the crime.

The night of the stabbing, Rasmussen was in the depths of serious methamphetamine intoxication according to witnesses. They said he believed he had also ingested fentanyl or even rat poison, and roamed the former motel at a jerky, high speed pace, knocking on doors in search of naloxone, or, in at least one exchange, more drugs.

The two people who told detectives they were passed out on fentanyl during the stabbing also did not appear to live at the Palms. They told detectives they were friends of Woodard’s and sometimes stayed in his room. They did fentanyl and fell asleep after eating a dinner of Hot Pockets purchased from a nearby convenience store.

Zelig called one witness, Lucas Michael Coleman, a 19-year-old currently incarcerated in the Sonoma County jail on misdemeanor charges. Coleman testified that sometime before Rasmussen entered Woodard’s room, he had his own run-in with Woodard.

Coleman also did not live at The Palms Inn but said he knew people who hung out there and used fentanyl and methamphetamine. When he visited the permanent supportive housing facility it was in search of such drugs, he testified.

Coleman said the day of the stabbing he went to Woodard’s room looking for fentanyl and that Woodard acted strangely as Coleman waited for him to find the drug. Woodard seemed “super high on meth,” Coleman testified, and at one point took off his pants and, Coleman felt, sought to come on to him.

Zelig called Coleman to the stand to bolster his case that Woodard could come on to men sexually without their consent. He said Rasmussen entered the room unarmed but defended himself with a kitchen knife from a sexual assault that came as he was “desperately seeking” naloxone. Rasmussen told a number of people he was overdosing that night and told detectives he believed he was going to die, according to testimony.

Opioid overdoses are typically characterized by a low heartbeat, a limp body and nonresponsiveness, and Rasmussen’s toxicology from that night did not come up in the preliminary hearing. He took at least one dose of Narcan, the most common naloxone brand.

Methamphetamine was found in Woodard’s blood.

After the stabbing is alleged to have occurred, video surveillance footage played in the courtroom shows Rasmussen leaving the room and walking quickly down the open-air walkway of the Palms Inn, waving one of his arms wildly. Det. Ryan Patrick testified that Rasmussen left bloody footprints visible in the footage as he moved down the walkway.

Prosecutor Thomas Gotshall told the judge it seemed “extremely improbable” that Woodard had made sexual advances on Rasmussen when the other man let himself into Woodard’s home in the early morning hours, extremely high on meth and acting erratically, and was only inside for five minutes.

LaForge ultimately did not rule on Zelig’s request that he throw out first degree murder charges — which require proof of premeditation and intent — and instead said the question should be put to a jury trial. A new arraignment in the case is scheduled for Sept. 14.

Zelig, however, had “pointed out all the issues, and there are many,” LaForge said.

The night Woodard died, Rasmussen ended up in the hospital, heavily sedated, after going to his mother’s RV and telling her and a friend he was having an overdose. He also told those witnesses he was raped, detectives testified.

Paramedics had responded to a 911 call for an overdose at that location about fifteen minutes after the stabbing is alleged to have occurred. Detectives did not link the two events until later — leading detectives to an urgent quest to save Rasmussen’s clothing from the landfill once they realized their murder suspect’s clothing had been snipped off by first responders looking for signs of injury and later discarded in a hospital trash can.

With the help of one of the paramedics and hospital staff, investigators ultimately located the clothing in the hospital’s waste facilities, Det. John Barr, the lead investigator on the case, testified.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88