Audrey Griffin’s Arrest at the Westin Hotel

Audrey Griffin’s arrest at the Seattle Westin Hotel turns a late-night complaint into a public confrontation, exposing the gap between Audrey’s defense of her family and the scene police find in her son’s room. Presented through a formal account and later recalled by Audrey, the incident also complicates her role in the surrounding conflict: she acknowledges having been arrested, but says the charges were dropped and treats the episode as evidence of how forcefully emotion can overtake her.

Complaint and Discovery

At approximately two in the morning on Monday, December 20, hotel night manager Steven Koenig received a call from Audrey Griffin in Room 1601. She complained about noise coming from Room 1602. Koenig checked the registration list and found that room unoccupied. When he relayed this to Audrey, she became angry and insisted that he investigate in person.

Koenig followed the noise and smell to Room 1605. After he knocked and identified himself, the music stopped and the hallway fell quiet, followed by giggling. Audrey then approached him in a hotel robe and maintained that he had the wrong room: Room 1605 belonged to her son, Kyle Griffin, whom she said was asleep. Koenig told her that Room 1605 was the source of the disturbance. The disagreement shifted from the location of the noise to an exchange of insults, first about Koenig and then about the hotel. When he reminded Audrey of the hotel’s policy on verbal abuse, she continued to denounce the facility.

Confrontation and Arrest

The encounter escalated when Audrey grabbed Koenig’s hair as he used his master key at Room 1605. Koenig reported being distressed and in pain, then radioed the Seattle Police Department. Audrey entered the room and screamed. Koenig followed and counted nine people: Kyle and eight other young people he described as street youth. He observed an assortment of drug paraphernalia, including smoking devices, papers, prescription bottles, and other equipment. His account distinguished those objects from controlled substances: on his visual inspection, he saw no controlled substances apart from shake and seeds on the mini-fridge.

Audrey spent several minutes expressing disappointment in her son’s choice of friends. She then lunged at a girl whose jacket had a teddy bear safety-pinned to its back. The responding officer described the bear as the apparent focus of Audrey’s acute distress. He ordered her to lower her voice and step into the hallway, warning that she would otherwise be handcuffed. When she continued to resist the officer’s instructions verbally, he placed her in handcuffs and told her she was being temporarily detained while he determined what had happened. Audrey invoked her husband’s position as a district attorney and threatened to use the hotel’s video surveillance to challenge the detention publicly.

Charges and Conflicting Accounts

Two hotel security officers arrived, and, with assistance from another officer, escorted the people who were not hotel residents off the premises. Koenig then reported the hair-pulling incident. Audrey denied it. Asked whether he wanted to press charges, Koenig said that he did. The officer’s report consequently asked that Audrey answer to the charges.

The accompanying legal information characterized the alleged conduct as disorderly conduct in a public place and fourth-degree assault, both misdemeanors. It stated that a conviction could carry a fine of up to one thousand dollars, imprisonment for up to thirty days, or both. The document also explicitly assessed Koenig’s testimony as truthful and reliable. These formal statements record the allegation and the complainant’s account; they do not, by themselves, establish a conviction or explain the later disposition.

Later Recollection and Significance

In a later fax to Soo-Lin Lee-Segal, Audrey referred to the incident while responding to Soo-Lin’s news about her pregnancy with Elgin Branch. Audrey reassured Soo-Lin that an earlier email from Ushuaia was not evidence of her worst condition, then offered the Westin arrest as her own example of being emotionally overwhelmed. She added that the charges had been dropped. The fax supplies an outcome absent from the arrest account, but gives no explanation for why the charges were dropped.

Audrey’s later self-description does not erase the sharp disagreement between her account and Koenig’s: she denied grabbing him at the time, while the hotel manager reported that she had. Instead, the episode remains in the narrative in two forms, first as a detailed institutional record of disturbance, detention, and an accusation, and later as Audrey’s personal recollection of emotional excess. Her mention of the arrest also sits beside her concern about Bernadette Fox’s disappearance in Antarctica: she rejects the idea that Bernadette froze to death and asks Soo-Lin to send the captain’s report. The juxtaposition makes Audrey’s past arrest part of a broader portrait of someone who can recognize her own emotional volatility while remaining urgently invested in another person’s fate.