Mike Dudley: Burien Landlord Convicted of Suitcase Murders

Mike Dudley is the Burien, Washington landlord convicted of murdering his two tenants, Jessica Lewis and Austin Wenner, in June 2020 and dismembering their bodies, which were later found in suitcases by teenagers filming a TikTok video on a West Seattle beach. In April 2023, a King County Superior Court judge sentenced the then-65-year-old Dudley to 560 months in prison. The Washington Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions in August 2025.

The Tenants and the Rent Dispute

Jessica Lewis, 35, was from Federal Way. Austin Wenner, 27, was from Kent. The couple had been together for years and in December 2019 began renting an upstairs bedroom in Dudley’s house on Ambaum Boulevard South in Burien.¹ Charging documents put the rent at $1,500 a month, which Lewis and Wenner could not pay. Dudley grew angry with the couple, accusing them of stealing from him and of bringing criminal activity into the house.² Witnesses told police that Lewis and Wenner had described their landlord as “kind of crazy.”³

The Night of the Killings

Prosecutors determined that Dudley shot both tenants inside the house on the evening of June 9, 2020. Neighbors reported hearing gunfire, and at least one heard a man pleading, “Please don’t do this, just let me leave.”³ Burien police went to the house around 7:15 p.m. that night but left after no one answered the door. Lewis’s phone stopped sending texts shortly after 7 p.m.⁴

The King County Medical Examiner later determined that Wenner died from a gunshot wound to the torso and Lewis from multiple gunshot wounds, and ruled both deaths homicides.³ Dudley left the bodies to decompose in his backyard before dismembering them and packing the remains into suitcases, duffel bags, and trash bags. He dumped the containers in Puget Sound, the Duwamish River, and along Interstate 90.⁵

How the Bodies Were Found

On June 19, 2020, a group of teenagers using Randonautica, an app that generates random GPS coordinates for exploration, were sent to a West Seattle shoreline near Duwamish Head.⁶ While filming a TikTok, they spotted a black suitcase on the rocks. One of the teens pried it open with a stick, and the group was hit by an overwhelming smell. They called 911 and waited roughly 90 minutes for police.⁷

The video went viral and eventually passed 30 million views. The footage itself was not graphic, but the caption identified what was in the suitcase, and the story spread quickly.⁸ Three days later, deputies pulled a second bag of remains from the Duwamish River. The remains were identified as Jessica Lewis and Austin Wenner.⁷

The Investigation and Arrest

Detectives traced the remains back to Dudley’s house as the couple’s last known address. On August 19, 2020, police served a search warrant on the Ambaum Boulevard South property. In the upstairs “blue room” where Lewis and Wenner had been staying, investigators found bullet holes, bullet strikes, spent rounds, and a smudge of Wenner’s blood.² Several bullet holes had been patched with plumber’s putty and painted over, and a can of the putty sat on Dudley’s dresser.⁹

Cell phone records placed Dudley near the dump site. His phone pinged a tower near Alki Beach late on June 18, 2020, a location it had not connected to in nearly three months of records investigators obtained. The suitcase was found there the next day.⁴ No blood was found in his vehicles, and the murder weapon was never recovered. Prosecutors noted that Dudley had more than two months between the killings and the search to clean the house.

Dudley was arrested the day the warrant was executed. Charging documents listed prior convictions for a felony drug offense, vehicle theft, and DUI.¹

A woman named Jennifer Leon, who knew Dudley through friends, became a central witness. Leon testified she visited the house the evening of June 9, 2020, and found Dudley with broken glasses and scratches, saw a bloody hand sticking out of a pile of clothes, watched him lay plastic sheeting on the basement floor, and noticed shell casings and bullet holes upstairs. She said that when she asked about the hand, Dudley told her: “Let’s just put it this way, his gun misfired and mine didn’t.” Leon later moved into the house and said she was afraid of him. She gave police her flip phone, which held photographs of the bedroom.¹⁰

Trial and Verdict

Trial began September 13, 2022, in King County Superior Court.¹¹ Without a murder weapon, direct eyewitnesses, or DNA tying Dudley to the shootings, prosecutors built a circumstantial case: the neighbors’ accounts of gunfire and a man begging for his life, the cell tower data near Alki Beach, the forensic findings in the bedroom, and Leon’s testimony.¹²

Defense attorney Bradley Barshis called the police investigation “shoddy” and argued that Dudley, 62 at the time of the killings, was physically incapable of carrying them out. The defense pointed to alternative suspects, saying Lewis and Wenner had been afraid of a group that had previously held them at gunpoint inside the house, and told the jury that “other people committed this crime.”⁴ Barshis also noted that a thorough State Patrol search turned up only one small blood smudge and that firearms experts concluded three bullets found in the bedroom had not passed through a human body.

On December 8, 2022, after about a day and a half of deliberations, the jury returned guilty verdicts on four counts of second-degree murder.¹² Two of those counts were vacated at sentencing, leaving Dudley convicted on two counts of second-degree murder with firearm enhancements.¹¹

The 560-Month Sentence

On April 7, 2023, King County Superior Court Judge Aimée Sutton sentenced Dudley to 560 months, roughly 46 years, in prison. The sentence combined 280 months on each murder count, served consecutively, with a mandatory 60-month firearm enhancement on each.² Dudley was 65 at sentencing, so he would not be eligible for release until age 111. It is effectively a life sentence.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Don Raz asked for the top of the range, citing Dudley’s “contempt and utter disrespect for the victims” in how he disposed of the bodies. Wenner’s mother, Charleen Kriens, called Dudley “manipulative” and “calculated.” Judge Sutton said the post-mortem treatment of the bodies was “challenging to understand” and noted that the inability to recover all of the victims’ remains was “its own tragedy.”⁴ Dudley maintained his innocence, telling the court: “This isn’t really about me — it’s about justice for Austin and Jessica, and when all things are considered, I’m sure the truth will come out.”

Appeal and Current Status

Dudley appealed to the Washington Court of Appeals, Division I, raising claims of prosecutorial misconduct during jury selection, improper use of his pre-arrest silence, an overbroad cell phone search warrant, exclusion of alternative-suspect evidence, and governmental mismanagement in discovery.¹³

On August 25, 2025, a three-judge panel affirmed the convictions, rejecting each argument. The court did send the case back to the trial court to strike the victim penalty assessment and recalculate the total legal financial obligations.¹³ The court denied reconsideration on October 2, 2025. Dudley then filed a Petition for Review with the Washington Supreme Court, raising substantially the same issues along with a cumulative-error argument.¹⁴

Dudley is serving his sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.⁵

The Netflix Documentary

The case is the subject of an episode of the Netflix series Worst Roommate Ever (Season 2, Episode 4, “The Lethal Landlord”), which features interrogation footage, witness testimony, and interviews with the victims’ families.⁵ Beyond his prior drug, vehicle theft, and DUI convictions, reporting tied to the documentary describes a 2016 arrest for allegedly assaulting an ex-girlfriend and a petition filed by Dudley’s adult daughter alleging years of childhood abuse. A court denied that petition, ruling the alleged conduct fell under domestic violence statutes rather than Washington’s sexual assault protection order framework.¹⁵

1
Federal Way Mirror. Burien Landlord Charged With Murder of Federal Way Woman, Kent Man
2
KOMO News. Michael Dudley Sentenced in West Seattle Human Remains Suitcase Case
3
Kent Reporter. Burien Landlord Charged With Murder of Federal Way Woman, Kent Man
4
Seattle Times. Burien Man Sentenced to 46 Years in Prison for Killing Couple
5
Westside Seattle. Lethal Landlord Provides Complete Picture of Gruesome Murders
6
National Post. Teens Filming a TikTok Find Dead Body in Suitcase After Using Popular Exploring App Randonautica
7
BBC News. Seattle Beach Human Remains Found by TikTok Teens
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FOX 13 Seattle. Man Sentenced to 46 Years for Killing Tenants, Stuffing Bodies in Suitcases Found on Seattle Beach
9
Seattle Times. Burien Landlord Found Guilty of Murder in Couple’s Deaths
10
Washington Courts. State v. Dudley, No. 85199-3
11
Federal Way Mirror. Landlord Sentenced to 46 Years in Prison for Deaths of Austin Wenner, Jessica Lewis
12
Westside Seattle. Michael Lee Dudley Found Guilty of Murder in Deaths of Austin Wenner and Jessica Lewis
13
Justia. State v. Dudley, No. 85199-3
14
Washington Courts. Dudley Petition for Review
15
Den of Geek. Worst Roommate Ever Season 2: The Full Story of Lethal Landlord Mike Dudley