This article was first published by InvestigateWest.
In July 2024, Joseph Leitz walked into a red brick sheriff’s office building in the small Western Washington city of Shelton and turned in two handguns.
A court commissioner had ordered Leitz to do so after his then wife, Lauryn Berg, secured a domestic violence protection order, alleging he had beaten and raped her, threatened to take their kids, and held an unloaded gun to his head, pulling the trigger three times. Leitz denies the allegations…