Wales, 49, had two, both prominent: During his 18 years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle, he racked up a perfect conviction record while prosecuting dozens of white-collar criminals. As president of Washington CeaseFire since 1994, Wales was also one of the nation's most tireless gun-control advocates, pushing for laws requiring trigger safety locks and safety training for gun owners. "His life," says Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, "has been taken by the very kind of violence he worked so hard to protect us from."
But was it taken by someone he prosecuted? Or by a progun zealot? "We don't have a definitive motive at this point," says Duane Fish, spokesman for the Seattle Police Department.
The assassin, however, did a thorough—and bold—job. At 10:30 p.m., Wales was working at his computer in the basement office of his Seattle home when he was shot several times through a window. One neighbor later reported seeing a man running away from the scene and jumping into a car. Law-enforcement friends and neighbors in this quiet, residential part of town were horrified. His Oct. 29 memorial service drew hundreds of admirers, many of them as passionate about gun control as he was. "He fought so hard trying to make reasonable gun-control policies," lamented former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II of Massachusetts, an advocate for the same cause. "He made this world a better place." The two close friends roomed together at Milton Academy outside Boston after Joseph's father, Bobby, was shot and killed in 1968.
The first of three children born to Thomas, 74, a prep school math teacher, and Sonia, 73, a homemaker, Thomas seemingly bolted from the womb in overdrive. "From the time he was 6, he had a goal," recalls Eve Carey, 81, a potter who shared a faculty house with the Wales family on the grounds of the St. Mark's School in Southboro, Mass. "He was going to be President of the U.S." At Milton Academy, Thomas became student-body president and captain of the football team. He also strongly believed in the school motto, "Dare to be True." "Tommy Wales took it all seriously," says fellow student Elizabeth Mueller, who herself took him seriously. In 1973, on his 21st birthday, they married.
After Harvard, he attended Hofstra University School of Law in New York, clerked for a federal judge in New Jersey, then joined the Manhattan law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. During those years, he and Elizabeth had two children, Thomas VII, now 24, and Amy, 22. In 1983 Wales moved his family to Seattle, where, says a Cease-Fire board member, he became a federal prosecutor "to use his talent for the greater good."
Presumably the relocation wasn't all altruistic. A daredevil outdoorsman, Wales took full advantage of the state's extraordinary hiking trails and Whitewater rafting. Once, while climbing in the Olympic Mountains, he encountered a couple without protective helmets. When he warned them of falling rocks the woman looked nervous, so he handed her his helmet, asking only that she return it to the store where he had rented it. Says Seattle attorney Eric Redman, 53, who married Elizabeth's sister Anne: "He trusted she was going to return it." She did.
Wales was an accomplished chef, a music aficionado and a loyal friend. "All the public stuff was a fraction of what he was as a person," says Redman, who remained close to Wales after both men's marriages broke up. Wales and Elizabeth, 49, a Seattle literary agent, divorced amicably last year. In recent months he had been dating Marlis DeJongh, 50, a court reporter.
Since his death, CeaseFire has established the Tom Wales Endowment Fund, which has raised $100,000. "Whoever was trying to silence Tom and his cause," says lobby member Jon Scholes, "just made it louder." As for Wales's premature death, Elizabeth offers some consolation: "He was at peace with himself always, because he always lived his life with purpose and he felt he could make a difference."
Jill Smolowe
Marion Daniel in Seattle and Tom Duffy and Anne Driscoll in Boston
- Contributors:
- Marion Daniel,
- Tom Duffy,
- Anne Driscoll.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
