By Erik Lacitis

The Seattle Times

SHELTON — It’s a dilapidated, two-story, vacant house along Highway 3, and it is here that Seattle police detectives say they found more evidence in their investigation of three octogenarian Seattle brothers charged with possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexual conduct.

Don Emery was the owner of the house. He died last year at age 85.

His brothers — Charles Emery, 82; Thomas Emery, 80; and Edwin Emery, 78 — remain jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail.

“I’ll say this much, we did find supportive evidence for the child pornography investigation,” says Capt. Mike Edwards, head of the Seattle Police Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, about the Shelton home.

The house is literally falling apart, with the porch gone and parts simply crumbling.

Edwards says it’s his understanding that now the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office will search the 14-acre property with cadaver dogs.

Authorities in Grays Harbor County have said they’re working to establish a possible link between the brothers and the 2009 disappearance of 10-year-old Lindsey Baum in McCleary. However, authorities concede there is no specific information to connect the two cases.

More and more details are emerging about the brothers’ lives.

The search of their Seattle home near Green Lake — a search now completed — revealed child sex-abuse images dating back decades.

That included magazines and other publications that would have been available, in some cases mailed “in a brown paper envelope with nothing else on it,” says Edwards. He says investigators found pages in which only the image of a child remained. “Other stuff they cut out. It was all about the image of the child,” says Edwards.

The brothers later found images online, Edwards says.

“It’s frustrating how easy it is to find that stuff,” says Edwards.

Charles Emery was recently hospitalized, and his brothers disappeared and were the subjects of a missing-persons investigation in July by Seattle police, according to a guardianship petition filed last month in King County Superior Court. The brothers returned after a week and the investigation ended.

Edwards says his team is aware of the report, but that “there’s nothing at this point.”

The document doesn’t indicate when Charles Emery was admitted to the University of Washington Medical Center to be treated for blood in his urine, but while there, a doctor diagnosed him with dementia, the petition says. He was ready for discharge on July 21, but according to the petition, hospital officials would not release him because it was deemed unsafe for him to return to the house he shared with his brothers on Northeast 59th Street. An adult relative was appointed his guardian.

Charles Emery received a monthly pension of $3,100 from Boeing and has an estimated $250,000 in the bank, the petition says. He also stands to inherit one-fifth of his deceased brother’s estate, which has an estimated value of $200,000 to $750,000, it says.

Charles Emery was ultimately placed in a skilled nursing facility in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood, according to court documents filed in the guardianship case. He reportedly was in favor of the guardianship, and court records show he was found to be an incapacitated person on Aug. 3 — six days before the relative appointed as his guardian first went to the house to begin cleaning out the garage and came across boxes of obscene materials, according to charging documents.

A 78-year-old Auburn man who worked with Charles Emery at Boeing for more than 20 years said Charles was a car collector and hoarder. Years ago, the man — who asked not to be named in order to protect his privacy — said he once visited the Emery brothers’ Seattle home intending to buy a vintage speedster but balked on the deal because Charles Emery didn’t have the title. He said he immediately recognized the house from a photo published this week in The Seattle Times.

“I’ve been in the basement of the house. He had all kinds of headlights and taillights and rims and wheels and engines. That was his domain,” he said of Charles Emery.

The man said he also visited the Emerys’ Shelton property when he accompanied a friend who was buying a late-1920s truck from Charles Emery. At the time, he said, there were three or four garages on the property.

Edwards says about the Emery brothers, “These guys are massive hoarders. They would fill a shed and then build a new one.”

The Auburn man said he knew Charles Emery about 25 years, and last saw him three or four years ago.

Learning about the allegations against the brothers “kind of shook me up,” the man said. “I would never guess something like this would ever come up.”

In Shelton, Roxanne Zehner owns two properties right across from the Don Emery home.

She remembers that Emery loved car racing. The Grays Harbor Speedway isn’t far away.

“He talked about how he sponsored his granddaughter in car racing,” says Zehner.

She finds that odd.

“As far as I know he wasn’t married,” says Zehner. “And if he wasn’t married, how could he have a granddaughter?”

She says that Emery had let the house run down because, “He was mad at Mason County. I guess it was over permits.”

Jill Himlie also lives across the highway from the Emery home.

Both women say they mostly encountered Emery at the mailboxes by their homes.

“I never felt uncomfortable; we just had normal talk, neighborly stuff,” says Himlie.

But then on Monday, she says, she counted 10 police cars around the property.