A high-ranking firefighter charged with strangling his wife to death told investigators he was a happily married man — but he actually was having an affair and had planned to move out the day of the killing, a probable cause affidavit alleges.
Battalion Chief Kevin West is now on unpaid leave from his $160,000 a year job at the Camas-Washougal Fire Department, according to a spokesperson. He was arrested Friday on a first-degree murder charge in the death of his wife of 22 years, Marcelle “Marcy” West, 48.
The affidavit filed Monday in Clark County Superior Court reveals how investigators pulled key details from Kevin West’s digital devices during the more than 70 days since his wife’s death.
First responders from West’s own department rushed to the family’s home in Washougal around 4 a.m. Jan. 8, where West, 50, said he woke up, saw his wife was having a seizure and desperately performed CPR, according to the affidavit.
A medical examiner, however, noted bruises and under-the-skin bleeding on Marcy West’s neck and jaw — injuries consistent with death by strangulation, the affidavit said.
A tipster also contacted police, saying he’d seen Kevin West at a bowling alley with another woman, Cynthia Ward, about a year ago and believed the two were having an affair, the affidavit said.
Kevin West’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Ward hung up when reached on her phone.
Investigators wrote in the affidavit that they arrived at the West home on Jan. 31 to interview Kevin West and saw Ward’s car parked in the driveway. Yet West told the detectives during the new interview that he and his wife had spent their last night together happily watching movies and eating Chinese take-out, the affidavit said.
The couple had been able to “rediscover what we have,” Kevin West claimed, as their daughter had recently left for college and their son had begun an intensive internship at the fire department, according to the affidavit.
When pressed, Kevin West admitted to the affair with Ward, saying they met when she interned for the fire department in the early 2000s and had begun an affair in 2004, broke it off but then reignited the relationship in August, according to the affidavit.
Still, West told investigators: “I talked about divorce but … there’s no way I could go through with it,” according to the affidavit. “Marcy and I had too much together.”
Detectives say they found much evidence to the contrary after searching the Wests’ home and their cellphones.
In a box in the garage, police found a love letter to Ward from Kevin West promising “2024 will be our year” as well as text messages discussing divorce papers and references to Kevin West’s plans to move out on Jan. 8 and meet with his attorney the next day, according to the affidavit.
The Wests were about $100,000 in debt, a detective also noted in the affidavit.
Marcy West appeared to be well informed of the relationship trouble, investigators say.
She wrote, “Not happy with me for a long time, 10-14 years,” in a note on her phone in 2016, the affidavit said, and wrote another note about her husband in 2023 saying, “You get angry frequently.”
“When we went to Seattle for family weekend, you spent multiple hours in car talking to ‘dad,’” she wrote in another late 2023 note, per the affidavit.
Kevin West texted his wife in December, “I’ve been nothing more than a paycheck,” according to the affidavit. Marcy West responded later that day: “You have made yourself clear that I have made you unhappy for 23 years.”
West remains in custody at the Clark County jail on $1.5 million bail.
