Prosecutors say Jack Waldrop III threatened to kill a former girlfriend during a 2022 attack that left her with broken ribs and a fractured sternum.

KENNEWICK, Wash. — A Washington man with a prior manslaughter conviction was expected to change his plea in a kidnapping case after prosecutors said he drove a former girlfriend out of the Tri-Cities in 2022, beat her inside his pickup and told her she was going to die.

Jack Waldrop III, 57, had been charged in Benton County Superior Court with first-degree kidnapping, second-degree assault and violating a court order after the March 11, 2022, attack on a 63-year-old woman identified in court records as his ex-girlfriend. Court officials said Waldrop, who had pleaded not guilty in May 2022, was scheduled to appear in February 2026 for a plea change. The expected deal called for Waldrop to change his pleas on the kidnapping and protection-order charges, with the assault count set to be dropped. The case drew renewed attention because prosecutors tied the assault allegations to Waldrop’s earlier conviction in Oregon for killing another former girlfriend.

According to charging records and police accounts, the case began when Waldrop offered the woman a ride to run an errand in March 2022. Prosecutors said the two argued after she overheard part of a phone conversation that upset her. She got out of his Ford F-150 and started walking toward a bus stop, but Waldrop soon pulled up again and offered to take her home. After she got back in, police said, the trip changed from an errand to a violent drive out of the Tri-Cities area. Investigators said Waldrop told the woman that she was “going to die today,” then drove her against her will toward Central Washington. During the struggle, prosecutors said, the woman fell out of the truck at one point. They alleged Waldrop stomped on her, yanked her hair and punched her in the back while repeating threats to kill her and also threatening to take his own life.

Police said the violence continued as Waldrop drove west. A Kennewick police release said the woman escaped while the truck was stopped in Ellensburg, where she sought help from another person. Prosecutors said Waldrop had been backhanding her during the trip and told her to go into a gas station to clean herself up. Instead, she hid in a bathroom and asked for help. Police said patrons inside the station told Waldrop to stay away from her. By the time officers were notified, he had left in the truck. The woman was taken for immediate medical care. Court records and later news accounts said she suffered two broken ribs and a fractured sternum. Earlier police reporting described bruises and cuts to her face and neck and said Waldrop struck her at least 15 times during the drive. Investigators said the woman had already obtained a protection order against him, and prosecutors later charged the alleged attack as a violation of that order.

The criminal case unfolded against a background that prosecutors and local reports described as deeply troubling. Waldrop had already spent about two decades in prison in Oregon for killing Angela Walker in Salem in 1998. Records cited in later reporting said he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in that case after beating and strangling Walker at her apartment. He received a sentence of a little more than 21 years and was released in 2018. That history became a major part of how the new allegations were viewed by police, prosecutors and local media. Some reports said it was not clear whether the woman in the Washington case knew the full details of Waldrop’s Oregon conviction when they were involved. Kennewick police also said in 2022 that Waldrop had ties to places outside Washington, including Boise, Idaho, and Salem, Oregon, which became important once he disappeared after the Ellensburg stop.

His flight after the attack added another step to the case. Kennewick police said local and federal law enforcement searched for him after developing probable cause for kidnapping, felony assault tied to domestic violence and a felony order violation. In the days after the March 11, 2022, attack, police warned that Waldrop was believed to be traveling in a white 2014 Ford F-150 and often slept in the vehicle. He was found in California several days later. Reports from the time said law enforcement caught up with him in Mendocino County after a vehicle pursuit, and authorities there discovered he was wanted on a Washington felony warrant. He was later returned to Benton County, where he was booked into custody. Jail and court records reflected the three main felony counts tied to the March 2022 case, with bond set in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He then entered not guilty pleas, setting the case on a path toward trial before the expected plea change in early 2026.

By February 2026, the case appeared headed away from a jury and toward a negotiated resolution. Court officials told reporters Waldrop was due in court on a Wednesday hearing to make the change. Local reporting said the agreement would spare him a trial that had been set for June 13 and could leave him facing as much as eight years in prison. The exact terms of sentencing were not fully laid out in the public summaries that were available at the time, and a final judgment was not included in those reports. That left several pieces of the case unresolved in public view, including whether the judge would accept the plea deal as presented, what sentence prosecutors would recommend in open court, and whether the woman planned to address the court. What was clear was that the prosecution had moved from preparing for trial to negotiating a result that would keep the kidnapping and court-order charges in place while removing the assault count.

The allegations also fit a pattern that domestic-violence investigators often describe in court records as escalating control, isolation and threats during travel. In this case, prosecutors said the woman was first offered help with an errand, then drawn back into Waldrop’s truck after she tried to leave. The route described in police and court summaries stretched from Kennewick through Ellensburg and toward Snoqualmie Pass, turning ordinary roadside stops into key moments in the case. The woman’s escape at a gas station became the point where the alleged kidnapping ended and witnesses outside the relationship entered the story. Patrons, according to police, intervened when Waldrop yelled for her, and their presence helped keep him from reaching her again inside the station. The scene then shifted quickly from a private assault inside a moving truck to a public criminal investigation that crossed county and state lines.

For investigators, the woman’s injuries and account of the trip formed the backbone of the case. For prosecutors, Waldrop’s prior record and the protection order gave the charges added weight. For the court, the key question became whether the plea agreement would settle a case that had been pending for nearly four years. The public record available before the scheduled plea hearing showed a defendant with a violent history, a woman who survived a brutal attack and a prosecution that was trying to avoid the uncertainty of trial while still securing felony convictions. The scheduled hearing stood as the next major milestone in a case that began with a ride for an errand and ended with a hospital visit, a multistate search and another serious set of charges against a man already known to the criminal justice system.