Yellowjacket season is ending and the nests are being shut down for the winter. The workers are irritated and hostile because they're being starved to death by the queens, so the victim in this crime did not have long to live either way.
In return for my curiosity about spiders, and some time on the Internet, I learned a bit. This particular spider appears to be a Garden-Orb Weaver, a relatively common, large arachnid in the Pacific Northwest that builds spiral, wheel-shaped webs in gardens, fields and forests. The Garden Orb-Weaver is an engineer, often floating a line on the breeze to reach another surface as it starts to build a new web, which it does daily.
And get this: it has eight eyes!
