Prosecutor’s Investigation of Winlock to Last Another Week After New Information Received

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While Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer expected to complete the office’s investigation in the city of Winlock by Friday, he now believes the investigation will take an additional week.

“Yesterday we received another email bringing up another issue,” Meyer said Friday. “I anticipate I will look at that issue over the weekend. I have an appointment scheduled next week to meet with the interested party.”

The Lewis County Prosecutor’s office has been conducting an investigation into the city of Winlock since mid-December, 2018. The prosecutor’s office has declined to comment since on what, specifically, it is investigating.

This is the second week in a row that the prosecutor’s office has received additional allegations just before it expected to complete the investigation. Meyer said his office usually receives all allegations at one time.

“I would hope that we would receive the bulk of the information at one time, so that we could sort through it in an orderly fashion,” Meyer said. “But this is — it’s not old information trickling in. It’s new allegations that are coming up. So it’s somewhat understandable why we get it piecemealed. I’ll review it over the weekend. I don’t anticipate that it is going to impact the timeline that we have set.”

Meyer now expects to close the investigation by the end of next week. He said that he has browsed the new allegations, but hasn’t looked at them in depth. He said the allegations are “different issues.”

“It’s kind of across the board,” Meyer said. “Various issues (are) coming up, but they all deal with city business so I guess they do have that commonality.”



The Winlock City Council held a special meeting Friday afternoon. No one spoke to the investigation during the meeting.

“I haven’t heard anything officially,” said Winlock Mayor Don Bradshaw after the meeting concluded. 

Bradshaw said he has not spoken with anyone from the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office about the investigation and he does not know what the allegations are. Meyer said Bradshaw spoke with investigators from his office, but may not have realized they were with the prosecutor’s office. The investigators also have a limited commission through the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.

“I don’t know what they (the allegations) are and I haven’t been told,” Bradshaw said.

Winlock City Councilors Jodie Curtis and Connie Sneed also said they do now know what the allegations are. Councilor Anne Randt could not be located for comment after the meeting and councilor Barbara Pedersen was not present.