DeLena found guilty of murder in Stevenson this past May

DeLena will be sentenced on Oct. 1 at 9 a.m. 

On May 15, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) Communications Center received a call for service from the White Cap Apartments off Northwest Gropper Road, across the street from Stevenson High School. There, officers and emergency medical personnel found Candice lying unresponsive on the stairwell a floor below her mother's former apartment, who died of natural causes earlier this year.

Candice was presumably clearing out her belongings when she died from a stab wound above her ear, multiple to her torso and lacerations across her neck.

Blood analysis performed by Brad Dixon, a forensic scientist with Washington State Patrol who testified during the trial, showed “very strong support” that DeLena’s DNA was present in the apartment's kitchen. Multiple experts also affirmed that the cuts observed on DeLena’s hands were not consistent with a bike crash, as he claimed, but rather from holding a sharp object. Additionally, SCSO Detective Stephen Sloniker found several items of clothing soaking in bleach inside DeLena’s unit, also in the White Cap complex.

Shortly before 9 p.m., roughly seven hours after the initial report, officers located DeLena and two of the children at Candice’s Cascade Village apartment; the third had already been picked up from Carson Elementary, and none were harmed.

In the five years preceding the incident, court documents show that the pair had filed 14 domestic violence complaints against each other, and that Candice was denied a protective order in March 2025. DeLena also assaulted a police officer in May 2021, alongside multiple drug-related offenses.

For more on the crime and trial, see an upcoming edition of Columbia Gorge News.