State v. Mellis

On a warm August evening in 1968, two young women left their rooms in the Bellingham YWCA to go for a walk. After proceeding a few blocks on one of Bellingham’s main thoroughfares, they encountered two men, one tall, the other short. The men forced the girls at gunpoint to enter their car. The girls’ assailants drove them to a secluded gravel pit area where, the prosecuting witness testified, she was repeatedly ravished by the appellant Raymond Mellis. The girls were then returned to town. Subsequently, Mellis was identified by both girls and charged with rape. Judgment and sentence were…