Mark Stover Murder Case: Oakes Trial, Verdict, and Appeals

The Mark Stover murder case ended with the October 2010 conviction of Michiel Oakes for the first-degree premeditated murder of Stover, a well-known Pacific Northwest dog trainer who was killed at his home near Anacortes, Washington, on October 28, 2009. Oakes, the boyfriend of Stover’s ex-wife Linda Opdycke, was sentenced to 320 months in prison. Stover’s body has never been recovered.

Who Mark Stover Was

Stover, 57, had spent two decades building a reputation as a canine behaviorist and trainer of aggressive and protection dogs. His clients included Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, filmmaker Cameron Crowe, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, and Ichiro Suzuki.¹²³ By 2009, he had relocated his business to Anacortes and was engaged to Teresa Vaux-Michel.

How Oakes and Opdycke Entered Stover’s Life

Stover and Opdycke married in 2002 after roughly 14 years together, separated in 2005, and divorced in 2007.⁴ The split was bitter. Opdycke said Stover became obsessive, breaking into her home, calling her dozens of times a day, and once placing a pistol on the pillow beside her while she slept.⁵ She obtained a restraining order in early 2008.

In March 2008, Stover was charged with stalking and theft after taking trash from containers at the bottom of Opdycke’s driveway. He entered an Alford plea to the stalking charge, received two years of probation, and was ordered to complete a 12-month anger management program. The Okanogan County District Court also entered a domestic violence protection order barring him from possessing firearms or ammunition through April 2010.⁶ According to the defense, Stover had no further contact with Opdycke after April 2008.⁷ Stover’s sister, Vickie Simmons, disputed the portrayal, calling her brother a man trying to move on rather than a genuine threat.⁸

After the divorce, Opdycke hired Michiel Oakes, a self-taught security specialist, to assess the threat Stover posed. The two soon began a romantic relationship and lived together at her home in Winthrop, Washington.⁵

What Happened on October 28, 2009

At around 5:00 a.m. that morning, surveillance cameras at a Mount Vernon Walmart recorded Oakes buying a backpack, ankle weights, anchor rope, and camouflage clothing.⁹ He then drove to Stover’s home carrying a .22 caliber Browning pistol and a 9mm handgun, and wearing a bulletproof vest.

What occurred inside is known largely through Oakes’s own testimony. He said Stover summoned him to retrieve wedding photos, pulled a revolver on him, and was killed in the ensuing struggle. Prosecutors said Oakes went there planning to kill Stover and ambushed him. Investigators found blood on the walls of a downstairs hallway and bedroom, a bathroom that reeked of bleach, and Stover’s Belgian Malinois protection dog, Dingo, shot in the face but initially alive.² Three .22 caliber shell casings recovered at the property matched Oakes’s pistol.⁹

Oakes put on Stover’s hat and jacket, loaded the body into Stover’s station wagon, and drove away. A neighbor saw a man transferring a large bundle wrapped in clear plastic between two vehicles parked rear-to-rear near the property.¹⁰ Oakes later testified he dumped the body off a dock into water near the Swinomish Channel. Divers and cadaver dogs searched the area but found nothing.

How Investigators Identified Oakes

Teresa Vaux-Michel reported Stover missing on October 29, 2009, after he stopped answering his phone, something she said was unheard of for a man who called her three to five times a day.⁹ Stover’s employees told her his dog was loose and there was blood outside. She called the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office.

Detectives, led by Dan Luvera, quickly focused on Oakes and tracked him to Opdycke’s home in Winthrop. When officers arrived that evening, Oakes threw a white plastic bag over an embankment. It contained a .22 caliber Browning pistol, a hunting mask, and a bloodstained piece of carpet cut from his car.⁷ A search of his vehicle turned up traces of Stover’s blood and a bulletproof vest with a spent bullet lodged in it. Stover’s station wagon was found at the Swinomish Northern Lights Casino with blood on the exterior; Vaux-Michel said Stover had “complete disdain for gambling” and would not have parked there.⁹

Oakes was arrested on October 30, 2009. Prosecutors initially charged him with second-degree intentional murder, then filed first-degree premeditated murder charges in Skagit County Superior Court on November 13, 2009.

The Trial and Competing Stories

The four-week trial opened in September 2010 before Judge Michael Rickert, with Skagit County Prosecuting Attorney Rich Weyrich leading the State’s case. Seattle defense attorney John Henry Browne and co-counsel Corbin Volluz represented Oakes.¹¹

The prosecution built its case on Oakes’s pre-dawn Walmart purchases, matching shell casings, and the physical evidence recovered from his vehicle. Prosecutors argued the bullet hole in Oakes’s vest had been fired at a straight, centered angle, suggesting it was staged to support a false self-defense claim.¹⁰ Oakes’s second ex-wife, Jennifer Thompson, testified that hours after the killing Oakes told her it was “a job gone bad” and that if police saw what was in his car, he would go to prison for life. Thompson also identified Oakes’s voice on an August 2009 anonymous 911 call that falsely reported Stover for drug activity.¹² Video from Opdycke’s home showed Oakes loading rifle cases into his vehicle four days before the killing.⁵ Detective Luvera testified that Oakes “went to Mark Stover’s house that day with a mission, and that mission was to kill him.”

Browne called Stover a “domestic-violence terrorist” and portrayed him as a man who had surveilled Opdycke through a rifle scope, broken into her home, and monitored her communications.¹³¹¹ Oakes took the stand and testified that Stover ordered him to wait in a basement washroom, returned with a revolver, and was shot when Oakes lunged to disarm him. He demonstrated the disarming maneuver in court by grabbing his own attorney and slamming him to the floor.¹⁴ The defense noted that investigators could not locate five of Stover’s registered .22 caliber firearms and that police found no signs of a physical struggle at the scene.⁹

Verdict and Sentence

After roughly three and a half days of deliberation, the jury convicted Oakes of first-degree premeditated murder on October 22, 2010.¹⁵ On November 30, 2010, Judge Rickert imposed the maximum sentence of 320 months, roughly 26 and a half years, with no possibility of parole. Rickert cited the “absurdity” of Oakes’s account and said he was “pretty sure” Stover’s body was not where Oakes claimed to have dumped it.⁵

The Appeals

Oakes challenged his conviction on several grounds, including the warrantless seizure of the plastic bag thrown over the embankment, the exclusion of defense witnesses, the sufficiency of the evidence, and alleged juror misconduct after it was discovered that one juror had sent at least 20 tweets during trial. On December 22, 2014, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division One, affirmed the conviction in full. The Washington Supreme Court denied review in 2015.¹⁶

A later property dispute produced one partial win for Oakes. In May 2024, Skagit County Superior Court ordered the forfeiture of his two pistols, ammunition, and bulletproof vest. In a June 2026 opinion, the Court of Appeals upheld the forfeiture of the firearms but vacated the forfeiture of the vest, finding the State had not shown a sufficient legal basis to keep it, and sent that issue back to the trial court.¹⁷

Unanswered Questions

Suspicion around Linda Opdycke never fully lifted. Prosecutors theorized Oakes may have acted as a hired killer, and Detective Luvera said publicly that Opdycke “knows more than what she’s telling.”⁵ Stover had reportedly told people before his death that he suspected the Opdycke family wanted him killed.³ Opdycke stopped cooperating with investigators after Oakes’s arrest but later testified for his defense at trial. Investigators never found evidence directly linking her or her father to the killing.⁸ She has never been charged and maintains that Oakes acted in self-defense.

Stover’s sister, Vickie Simmons, posted a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any accomplices, believing Oakes did not act alone.¹² After the verdict, Stover’s niece Julia Simmons told reporters it was “a weight off our shoulders, but we won’t have full closure until he is found.”¹⁵ As of 2026, Oakes remains in prison, the investigation into the full circumstances of Stover’s murder remains officially open, and his body has never been found.

1
The Spokesman-Review. Man Guilty in Death of Dog Trainer to the Stars
2
NBC News. Celebrity Dog Trainer Missing in Washington
3
CBS News. The Dog Trainer of Anacortes
4
People. Mark Stover Dog Trainer Stars New Podcast Trained to Kill
5
CBS News. The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard Part 2
6
Washington Court of Appeals. State v. Oakes, No. 66229-5-I
7
Charley Project. Theodore Mark Stover
8
CBS News. The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
9
Justia. State v. Oakes, No. 66229-5-I
10
The Everett Herald. Trial Begins in Slaying of Renowned Dog Trainer
11
The Seattle Times. Murder Defendant’s Lawyer Aims to Tell Rest of Story
12
CBS News. The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
13
Seattle Weekly. Michiel Oakes Twitter Defense
14
The Spokesman-Review. Man Claims Self-Defense in Dog Trainer’s Death
15
The Seattle Times. 26-Year Sentence for Killer of Celebrity Dog Trainer
16
CaseMine. State v. Oakes, No. 66229-5-I
17
Washington Courts. State v. Oakes, No. 86806-3-I