Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Brit. And the story I have for you today is about the chillingly similar murders of two girls that have haunted Tacoma, Washington, for decades.
This is the story of Michellea Welch and Jennifer Bastian.
The first time I met her, I was like, I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
August 4th, 1986 is a quiet summer night in Tacoma, Washington.
Patty Bastian is expecting an easy shift at the local store where she works.
And it is. But her night gets upended with a single phone call.
It's her husband, Ralph, and he is frantic, telling her that she needs to get home right now.
Their 13 -year -old daughter, Jennifer, is missing.
And at first, Patty's like, what do you mean missing?
Like, it probably doesn't even fully register for her.
This has to be a mistake.
But Ralph tells her that Jennifer never came home for dinner.
Now, Patty had been at work for a while now, so she's trying to, like, piece together what her husband is telling her.
And what she gathers is that Jennifer had called Ralph at, like, 2 p .m.
while he was at work and asked him if it was okay to ride her bike through this nearby park that was just a couple of miles away.
She's been training for a few weeks for this upcoming YMCA biking trip in the San Juan Islands, and she wanted to just get another ride in.
So he told her, yeah, fine, go, but call when you get home, which, per a note she left on the counter, should have been 6 .30.
But she hadn't called.
And now he's home, and both her and her bike aren't, which he knows is too long.
And this is only mentioned once in the sources, but Jennifer supposedly had plans to be home on time, specifically so she could go to the movies with her sister.
And this girl's a responsible kid.
According to the Bellingham Herald, Ralph even says, quote, you could set your watch by her, end quote.
And she definitely wouldn't flake on plans without letting her sister know.
So once she hears all this, I mean, Patty's heart just falls into her stomach.
And without a second thought, she leaves work and speeds the whole 40 -minute drive home to help Ralph find Jennifer.
Have they called any of her friends to see if she just, you know, stopped by one of their houses?
Well, I mean, that's actually one of the first things Patty does when she gets home, but it doesn't help.
Person after person tells her they don't know where her daughter is.
However, she does find one friend who saw her that afternoon right before her ride.
And it's a friend that Jennifer actually normally rides with.
And that friend tells Patty that Jennifer stopped by on her way to the park to see if she wanted to join her.
But the friend didn't think she could keep up, so she passed.
And Jennifer specifically told her she'd stop by again on her way home at around six.
But of course, she never did.
Now, the friend initially figured she forgot or changed her mind, but now she's worried, just like Jennifer's parents.
So by 8 .30 p .m., this is now six hours after Jennifer left the house, Patty reports her daughter missing.
Police jump right into action.
They immediately start searching the park and even stop by the house later that night with bloodhounds asking Patty for Jennifer's clothes to pull her scent off of so they can try and piece together her route from the house to the park and hopefully to where she is now.
Maybe stranded with a flat tire, maybe hurt somewhere off the trail.
Those are the best case scenarios.
But the next morning, not even the bloodhounds have been able to find her or her bike.
Were they able to track her at all, like even from her house?
They do find a weak trail of her scent around the route that she typically bikes.
But Jennifer went there so often, they don't know whether that track that they're picking up is old or new.
And I know we've talked about how long a scent can stay in an area before, and it varies wildly depending on the area and even depending on the dog.
Yeah, and I can find the source later and link to it, but I know that I read somewhere that scent dissipates quickly.
It's strongest in those first few hours.
There's a strong chance that this scent that they found on this trail is recent, but it really does depend on the environment and the skill of the dog.
I mean, especially when you're talking bloodhounds, they're super, super sensitive and a skilled one, I think can track a scent that's like weeks old.
Yeah, so they've got their best chance here with these dogs.
But to your point, she's been riding this trail all week.
Like this could be from last week.
This could be from that very day.
They don't know. So as more ground is covered, police widen the search radius and even shut down the park.
So a team of over 300 searchers, including neighbors and friends and even Jennifer's softball teammates can scour every corner.
And they're on foot horseback ATV pickup trucks.
Patty really feels like everyone is going above and beyond for what she could have even hoped for.
Oh my gosh, Ashley, I know you told parts of the story when you covered different cases of girls in Tacoma in fan club like years ago, but clearly there is just so much more too.
How big is this park?
I mean, this thing's huge.
At the time, it's almost 700 acres of forest trails and beaches.
And to kind of set the scene, remember, we're in Washington.
So the land kind of juts out into the south of the Puget Sound.
So it's encircled by water on both sides.
And there are lots of steep cliffs, cliffs they're afraid she might have fallen off of.
Though nothing specific, I think, is leading them to that conclusion.
It's not like her scent was traced to the edge or anything like that.
I think they're just...
Like if she's in this park, maybe she fell over one of these cliffs.
But no matter what they do, they're still not finding any sign of her or her bike, which is leaving one singular and terrifying option.
She was abducted. Yeah.
And they really lean into this theory after a few boys from Jennifer's school report that they saw a man on a bike following Jennifer while she was riding around.
And this would have been at like 4 .10 p .m.
They tell police that this guy was white.
He's in his late 20s wearing black riding pants, white Nikes, and mirrored sunglasses.
And even though Jennifer was peddling hard in front of him, he was, like they say, following her close and fast.
Was she peddling fast like she was being chased and was trying to shake this guy or peddling fast like she was just training for her ride and maybe didn't even realize he was behind her?
The second one. So the boys say that Jennifer didn't seem worried or scared.
This guy might have been what they say or like they call it drafting, which I guess is when a cyclist basically is right behind someone else to kind of block the wind.
So they're looking for this guy.
And I know they're like now talking about an abduction, but they're not necessarily thinking he for sure did it.
They definitely want to talk to him.
It is possible he did something.
But I mean, just at a bare minimum, he might be able to tell them more about her movements in the park.
He saw her. Right. Right, right.
Within four days of Jennifer's disappearance, police are able to get a sketch made of this guy and get it out to the public during a press conference that they hold.
Patty speaks during this press conference and she addresses the kidnapper directly, pleading with him to let Jennifer go.
She still has to believe that her daughter might come home, that she's out there alive somewhere.
But even that hope is a hard weight to carry because as she lays in bed that night, she barely sleeps despite the exhaustion.
Every thought she has is about Jennifer.
Like where is she? Is she scared?
Is she okay? Is she asking for me?
Like what's being done to her?
Who has her? So when her doorbell rings, I can imagine her heart skips a beat.
But when she answers it, it's not her daughter or even the police.
It's a woman who right away asked her, are you Patty Bastian?
And Patty says, yes.
And this woman goes on to introduce herself as Barbara Welch.
And she says that when she saw Patty on the news, she knew she had to go talk to her because she might be the only other person going through the exact same thing right now.
What Patty learns is that just a little over four months before Jennifer disappeared, Barbara had gotten a call at work just like Patty did.
Her oldest daughter, 12 -year -old Michellea, had gone missing after riding her bike with her sisters, also in a local park.
Now, the circumstances were a little different because even though Barbara had explicitly told her girls that they couldn't go to that park that day while she was at work on March 26th, she found out that all three of her girls had actually gone anyways.
So is this the same park that Jennifer had gone missing in?
No, this is a different park.
I mean, again, we're talking the same like Tacoma, Washington area, but two different parks.
But anyways, Barbara's girls, they were all on spring break that week, and they're probably like getting antsy at the house waiting for mom to come home so they could go out and play.
So they'd gone without her permission.
And at some point in the late morning or early afternoon, Michellea, who's the oldest, told her sisters that she was going to bike the mile and a half or so home to make some lunch for all of them.
Now, while she's gone, the other two went for a bathroom break, and when they got back, they saw Michellea's bike was like padlock to one of their bikes close by, and there were lunches and Easter candy on a picnic table.
So they assumed all the food was from her, but there was no Michellea.
Now, they ate, they played, still no Michellea.
And so they started eventually to look around, call out.
Still, no Michellea.
According to Dan Vopel's article for the news tribune, the girls eventually called their neighbor, who was basically like they're in case of emergency person while mom was at work.
But even this person comes out to the park and they can't find Michellea either.
And so it was the neighbor who eventually called Barbara.
So Barbara had reported her daughter missing and a search immediately ensued.
And here's the other thing that is different about their circumstances.
Barbara didn't have to wait days wondering what happened to her daughter.
The very same night, at 11 .27 p .m., a search dog found Michellea's body in a fire pit area off the gulch that cut through the park.
And Barbara tells Patty that even though they got lots of tips and sightings of a man, whoever killed her daughter is still out there, and their girls' cases could be connected.
I mean, to Barbara, there's just too many similarities.
Jennifer and Michellea were about the same age -ish.
Both of them were riding their bikes in local parks pretty close to one another.
They even had some physical similarities.
But even though she appreciates Barbara's visit, and even if Patty can see the similarities too, she is sure that her daughter is still alive, like she can't bring herself to think anything else, not now, not when she still needs to search.
Either the day of or the morning after Barbara's visit, the search for Jennifer in the park ends because police haven't found any signs of her there, which probably feels a little like good news.
I mean, if she's going off what Barbara said, they found Michellea the same day in the park that she went missing from.
Maybe this is a sign that things are going to end differently.
But even if that's the case, police do have to plan for the worst, at least if they're doing their jobs well.
And at the time, they've also put two and two together, so they decide to go search the park that Michellea went missing from and was found murdered in, just in case they might be looking for the same guy.
But again, Patty gets to breathe a momentary sigh of relief when they find nothing.
But then, all those dark thoughts keep creeping back.
If Jennifer's not there, then where is she?
Since their press conference, tips have been coming in right and left on Jennifer's case, some saying that they spotted her in the park, outside the park.
One source even mentions a sighting of her alive and well as far away as Seattle.
There was another tip that said they spotted the composite sketch man on a train in Vancouver.
This guy was supposedly staring at girls while talking to himself about murders in the area, so, like, definitely super sketch.
But even though they go and look into all of this, they don't get any closer to finding Jennifer.
For weeks, Patty waits for any information, any lead, no matter how small, that might reunite her with Jennifer.
And on August 28, 1986, 24 days after she last saw her daughter, Patty is met with another surprise visitor who has the answers she has so desperately been seeking.
Patty is up on a ladder painting the walls when she hears her screen door open.
An officer walks in and takes the paintbrush out of her hand before helping her down the ladder and sitting her down.
And he says to her, we found her.
And it takes a minute for Patty to realize that she is hearing the worst news a mother can ever get.
The officer explains that a search and rescue team had found Jennifer and her bike about 150 to 200 feet off the path where Jennifer was planning on riding her bike when she went missing.
Had she just been dumped there?
How did they not find her before?
No, so based on how they even got to her, it sounds like she'd been there a while.
So this is what happened.
So two days before, a jogger had contacted the park's police because during his evening run, he said he smelled what was described as this foul odor off the trail.
So police, you know, knowing that there was a missing girl here that they had like had this huge search for, they started looking into this right away.
But it was dark, and the search dog that they brought in wasn't a cadaver dog, so they didn't find anything initially.
But they go back the next morning, they bring in train dogs, and by the time night fell ending the search, they still hadn't found anything.
So they come back the next day.
This is the day that the officer was showing up notifying Patty.
The search and rescue team that they brought in had noticed Jennifer's bike laid on its side and covered with fern fronds.
And then deeper down a path into the woods, they found the body of a young girl that they're assuming is Jennifer.
She was found covered by high, rough brush, like branches and leaves formed into almost like a cave or an igloo.
And it was this like structure that had kept her body hidden from the police and the community volunteers who had been searching every inch of the park for her.
I guess I don't get how they didn't find her with the dogs and everything they have.
I know, like it is, it's hard for me to understand and I've had this happen enough in cases that like I'm finally starting to wrap my head around it where I'm like, oh, they were right there.
And then I actually, I see the crime scene photos and I'm like, holy crap, there is no way you would have found that even if you were looking for it.
And in this one, like whoever put her there, they didn't just dump her body.
Like it is clear to police that the killer spent hours, they say, maybe even days before the murder preparing this spot.
Now when they find her, she is laying on her back and her arms and legs were splayed out.
The swimsuit and shorts she'd been wearing were pulled down to her right ankle and it was obvious that she'd been sexually assaulted.
They also found a twine ligature with a loop wrapped tight around Jennifer's neck.
So it's not a surprise to anyone later when her autopsy results come back and confirm that her cause of death is strangulation.
Now that Jennifer has been found, there are even more similarities to Michelle's case.
The way the girls' bodies were positioned are similar.
Also the way they were found with their clothes disheveled.
So now police have to be pretty sure they're looking for the same guy for both cases.
Yeah, especially because back in May, a jogger had called in a tip about seeing a guy who matched a composite sketch that police released in Michelle's case running in the park that Jennifer went missing from.
But right away, even with that lead, police are up against a challenge.
Since Jennifer was out there for so much longer than Michelle had been out in the open, the evidence in her case that might have been there may have degraded or been contaminated.
Was there usable evidence in Michelle's case?
Yeah, so in her case, they actually have a sperm sample that was collected from her body that produced a profile.
Now there's some conflicting reports about when that profile was developed, but I know police use some form of a profile to exclude suspects in 1986, like in their current investigation.
So they at least have something.
But it's not like they can just enter it into a CODIS system either.
CODIS doesn't even...
CODIS doesn't exist, right?
Yeah, it doesn't even start as a pilot program until 1990.
It's not widely adopted until 1998.
So that's like so far off.
So knowing they're up against something big and probably fearing that this person might strike again, Tacoma police bring in help from the Green River Task Force.
Not necessarily because they think that the Green River Killer was connected, but that task force had mad experience, especially with processing outdoor crime scenes in particular.
And Tacoma needed all the help they could get to process this scene and get everything they can out of it.
Right, these are the big dogs.
Yeah, and they do find some things, like hair and twigs and even insect larvae, that they think could be important.
But what's highest on their list of findings to process is a partial fingerprint that they find.
And I'm assuming they found it on the bike?
I actually don't know.
So it's not reported where they get this.
But it doesn't matter really, because if they thought that that was going to be the clue to solve this, they were sorely disappointed.
They test the print against 200 ,000 prints in a new statewide automated fingerprint identification system.
But even with this fancy new tech, they get no hits.
And they don't end up recovering anything else from Jennifer's crime scene that helps them hone in on a suspect.
So investigators form this six -person task force to focus on Michelle and Jennifer's murders together.
They don't have any standout suspects, just vague reports of maybe a man hanging around under a bridge in the park Michelle went missing from leading up to her being killed.
And then that biker may be following Jennifer.
But the more and more publicity this case gets, the more and more leads that do come in, including a very concerning one from a man who says that he saw Jennifer being forced into a black van between 2 and 2 .30 p .m.
the day she went missing.
And where was this guy weeks ago?
I know. I think at the time they said that, like, they thought Jennifer was just getting help with her bike from the guy.
So that's why they didn't say anything sooner.
And I don't know if they ever end up finding him or confirming anything there.
But I guess, like, based on tips from those witnesses, other witnesses, whatever, investigators do end up tracking down a guy who lives in a van.
I don't know if it's the same guy or not.
But this guy who lives in his van ends up looking really suspicious because he is known to have been seen in the park that Jennifer went missing from.
And then when they track him down and get a peek inside his van, no one feels better about this guy because the van walls are covered in drawings of underage girls in explicit positions.
What? I know. Lock him up.
They don't because they don't find any evidence in his van linking this guy to Jennifer's murder.
Okay, but if Jennifer was murdered outside, what do they expect to find in the van?
I mean, I think they're looking for anything they can take to court because it's going to be a fight.
This guy denies that he had anything to do with it.
Of course he does. You're not just going to get handed a confession in every case you work.
I know. They know. But the other thing that I think, you know, makes this go away is I guess he does end up providing a DNA sample that they were able to compare to the DNA profile recovered from Michelle's body, and this guy wasn't a match to that.
So they have him for sure crossed off in Michelle's case, which they think in turn crosses him off for Jennifer's case.
And the other thing that makes this guy...
I mean, again, don't get me wrong, this guy's a creep, but less and less likely to be their specific creep today is that there are more and more witnesses who say they saw Jennifer riding her bike around the park between 3 and 5 p .m.
Even someone who says they saw her resting and drinking water at the park entrance at 6, which is way after this alleged van abduction thing, which again may or may not even be this creepy man in a van, but his DNA is crossed out.
I don't know. So all in all, they kind of rule this whole thing out because, again, creepy drawings van guy...
But the timing is wrong.
Well, we don't know timing for him, right?
Because we don't know if it's the same guy, but he's ruled out through DNA.
The sighting everyone says they have was at 2 .30.
We know she's seen after.
So either it's the same guy and he's ruled out, or there's two different people, and they're still ruled out.
So after this, the investigation seems to just hit a wall.
There are still some tips that come in, but no real progress is made.
So by March of 1987, the six -person task force is disbanded.
Despite there still being a lot of untested evidence.
And here's the reason.
By now, Washington's crime labs are focusing on cases that have suspects.
So a lot of the evidence collected from Michelle and Jennifer's crime scenes by the Green River Task Force is left unprocessed, which sounds bananas to us today.
Like there is still so much you can do.
I know you did, Britt, but I don't know about the listeners, if they watched or listened to my deck episode on Dana Chisholm.
Her case took place like a decade after this, across the country in Washington, D .C.
But the former detective in that case told me that even then, they didn't have the funding, TBD, even the tech, to use physical evidence as what he called a fishing expedition.
He said back then they only used it if they had someone, and you're like trying to prove that the person you had like actually did it.
And in this case, they don't have anyone that they're like trying to make that physical connection to the scene with.
So they're kind of reserving their resources, essentially.
Yeah, so they do no testing.
But they are forced to re -pick up the cases in 1988, when investigative reporting from a local station, Cairo, suggests links between 20 unsolved murders of young women and girls in the Tacoma area.
And this list of 20 includes Michelle and Jennifer's names.
Now in response to the broadcast, the head of the Green River Task Force says their quote, is very little question that we've got at least one, maybe more serial killers operating, end quote.
You couldn't pay me to live in Washington in the 80s.
Honestly, like even now, girl.
I'm thinking about you Washington crime junkies.
Be weird, be rude, stay out of Washington.
Stay out of Washington.
I have to actually go there this month to investigate a case.
So like I can't even take my own advice.
I can't stay away. I love you guys.
I'll give you a tour stop, I promise.
Anyways, this puts pressure on the police to explore this possibility.
But despite being convinced that Jennifer and Michelle were killed by the same man, they're not confident that their deaths are related to these other cases.
I don't know what makes them confident.
I had a hard time even figuring out what those other cases were, if those got solved.
All I know is that once Jennifer and Michelle get removed from that list, their cases go back on the shelf.
So this renewed media attention didn't do anything for their cases?
No, I mean, there was almost nothing that came in after that.
Oh my God. Which had to have been incredibly discouraging.
And maybe that's why no one looked at the case meaningfully again until 2009.
And that's when Detective Jean Miller forms a cold case unit in Tacoma.
Back when Michelle and Jennifer still had a task force assigned to their cases, Detective Miller was just a young, injured patrol officer assigned to desk duty.
He actually did some of the grunt work for the task force, like collecting background information on suspects.
But he never forgot the thousands of hours officers put into their cases.
Seeing that dedication made him want to be a homicide detective.
So when he starts this unit, he wants to give closure to Michelle and Jennifer's families, even decades later.
So he starts by digging into all the unsolved murders in Tacoma, and he finds two other teen girls from the same county as Jennifer and Michelle, who were murdered by strangulation in 1986.
Denise Sally was 17 and Kimberly Payne was 16 when they disappeared separately and eight months apart from one another.
But they disappeared from the same bowling alley.
Denise was taken first in January, and her body was found three days after Michelle was killed in March.
And Kimberly's body was found the day after she went missing in October.
Like Michelle and Jennifer, the investigations into their murders stalled without answers.
But, as promising as this lead is, it too goes nowhere.
Or at least nowhere for Michelle or Jennifer.
But it did actually go somewhere for Denise and Kimberly, because there turned out to be DNA samples in Kimberly's case.
And that sample didn't match the sample that they had in Michelle's case.
So, in turn, that ruled out Jennifer.
But the detective is able to connect Kimberly's case to Denise's definitively.
And the sample that matches their cases was connected to a serial killer, Timothy Burkhardt.
Burkhardt died by suicide back in 2001 after a relative called in a tip implicating him in the murders of other people.
72 -year -old Catherine Coates and 48 -year -old Rebecca Nash.
And after his death, they tracked down his storage locker, where they found tons of evidence belonging to Catherine and Rebecca, leaving no doubt that he was their guy in those cases.
So now, almost a decade after his death, Detective Miller is finally able to give Kimberly and Denise's families some much -needed closure, even if it's not the justice that everyone hoped for.
And now Detective Miller has to turn back to Jennifer and Michelle's cases.
And knowing how he solved the other case, he's even more sure that the DNA profile is going to be the thing that solves this.
So, in 2012, he applies for a federal grant to fund DNA testing for cold cases.
And he partners with Detective Lindsay Wade.
Wade grew up in Tacoma, and she was almost the same age as Michelle when the murders happened.
And she remembers, like, this moment experiencing a clear loss of innocence after the murders.
Before, Tacoma was a blue -collar town where kids kind of rode their bikes.
They stayed out all day without their parents worrying about anything happening to them.
People were watching out for one another.
But, like, distinctly, after Michelle and Jennifer's faces were in the paper every morning and on the TV every night, she became afraid of being snatched by a stranger in the bushes.
Her parents were afraid that she wouldn't come home.
So, this case was personal for her, especially when she meets Patti and Ralph Bastian.
She feels this instant connection with Patti, and she is determined to solve this for her.
Now, CODIS is a thing by this point, so they try and run the profile through that, but it doesn't match any of the 11 million profiles in the national database of felons.
So, whoever this guy is, he is dead or flying way under the radar, which is a scary thought that keeps them pushing forward.
So, Miller and Wade pivot again, and they present Michelle and Jennifer's case to a 20 -person panel of experts, including FBI behavioral analysts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
They leave that with pages of suggestions and a detailed profile of the killer, which, I'm going to have you take a peek at this.
It's from Stacia Glenn's article for the News Tribune.
OK, the list is, might have lived in Tacoma's north end in about 86 or had family who lived there.
Might have been semi -transient in 86 and stayed in the parks causing a disheveled appearance.
Likely had mental health issues and could have been jailed or institutionalized since 1986.
Might have shown assaultive behavior toward family and might have become estranged from them.
Probably did not have stable employment and might have turned to petty thefts and foraging.
Had an intestinal parasite called Strongeloidus stircoralis, which eventually would have caused abnormal pain, heartburn, a dry cough, rashes, and intermittent episodes of diarrhea and constipation.
How the f*** do they even know this one?
I know. I've never seen that on a profile, so I actually had to do some digging because the only thing that's ever been talked about was a sperm sample that they had.
Right. And when I looked into it, it says that it is possible for parasite larvae to be found in sperm, but it is super rare.
So either detectives have more evidence than they've released to the public or this guy's that insanely rare needle in a haystack and they got lucky.
I don't know. Right.
And there's some additional stuff like, you know, he's a loner who, because of his transience and poor hygiene, may have had a strong body odor at the time.
That and his creepiness would have made people steer clear of him.
So he probably wasn't able to manipulate or lure people in easily.
So he prayed on vulnerable people like kids.
He was also familiar with and comfortable in Tacoma's local woods and parks, so he might have grown up there.
He walked or rode a bike because if he had had a car, he would have left the parks with his victims and they don't think this was his first try at kidnapping.
So, I mean, it's a pretty detailed profile.
And I know some agencies are, you know, super precious with a profile.
Like I've encountered departments who don't want to release a profile even after a case has been called for decades.
But in this case, they've got nothing to lose.
So they share it far and wide.
And it's exactly what the case needed because 60 new tips are reported.
And as Detective Wade follows up on this outpouring of leads, she learns that DNA from residents of the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island, which is this Washington facility where sexually violent offenders are committed to.
She finds out that those people have never had their DNA collected.
And that's because these crimes were committed before 1990, and 1990 is when the state law first required DNA collection from sex offenders.
So when that federal grant comes in that they had applied for, one that gives them resources to, you know, test more, like collect more, whatever, they go and test these people.
But when they input the samples into CODIS, each one is ruled out.
So Miller and Wade have to change tactics again.
A forensic expert recommends that they submit Jennifer's swimsuit to a crime lab to get a reference DNA sample for Jennifer, which they hadn't gotten up to this point.
But, you know, they figure now they've got this grant, they've got these resources, like let's do this in case we need it in the future.
So they do that and they wait and they wait and they wait.
And then a few months later, they get a call after all these years.
They have it. They have this DNA from sperm on Jennifer's bathing suit.
And for a second, I bet it's just almost like this, like check the box moment for detectives, like, okay, great, more evidence that's going to help us like come trial time.
Because the lack of DNA in Jennifer's case was probably going to be an uphill battle when they got there.
So like, cool, this is going to help.
But this call, this news ends up requiring so much more than just checking a box because the DNA on Jennifer's swimsuit doesn't match the DNA in Michelle's case.
What? Miller and Wade are chasing two different killers.
And this turns the investigation on its head.
So Detective Miller goes back through the case files again and looks at anyone who has ever been looked at, however briefly, even if they've been eliminated or had an alibi in Michelle's case.
Because that doesn't mean they had an alibi in Jennifer's case anymore.
Right, right. They'd just been using that one case they had DNA in to rule out people for both, which made sense if they were connected.
But now up is down, down is up, and they have to start all over, truly from the beginning.
And I'm guessing there's no CODIS match for the DNA from Jennifer's swimsuit, right?
Nope, which feels so wild.
It is going to take time, I mean, years to start over.
And in those years, Detective Miller retires.
But as tough as his decision is, he is confident leaving Detective Wade in charge.
He knows that she won't give up until the case is closed.
And she feels that pressure.
Pressure to get answers.
Answers that for Jennifer's dad didn't come fast enough, because in 2015, Ralph passes away.
With the clock ticking, Wade is always on the lookout for the next thing that might help her solve this cold case.
So she pays attention when she gets wind about a new way Phoenix police are approaching solving cases through familial DNA.
She starts making some calls, and she eventually gets in contact with Parabon Nano Labs, and she has them create digital renderings of what the two killers in both her cases may have looked like, based on their genetic markers.
Now, they can't apply height or weight, but they apply genetic traits to a 3D model of a 25 -year -old man.
Those traits show Michelle's killer had mostly northern European ancestry and also 10 % Native American ancestry.
He likely had fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, blonde to brown hair, and a few or no freckles.
Jennifer's killer was white.
He likely had fair skin, green or blue eyes, blonde or red hair, and some freckles.
We've got the side -by -side of what Parabon made, and they look a lot like the same guy.
Yeah, I mean, even listening to you list off these traits they have.
They have fair skin, they have brown or hazel eyes, or green or blue eyes, blonde to brown hair, blonde or red hair.
Maybe some, maybe a few, maybe no freckles.
They're almost indistinguishable.
They still try and use these.
They release those composites publicly, and they do something that law enforcement hasn't tried before.
Wade activates CART, which is the Child Abduction Response Team, which is this multi -agency response team that includes local law enforcement, that includes state, basically different ones trained to respond to child abductions.
And what they do by bringing them in is they're having CART investigate Michelle and Jennifer's deaths like they just happened.
And activating CART gets all these agencies working together and gives them access to a lot of different technologies to sift through evidence that they have.
And this is the first time, by the way, that this is being done on a cold case.
So they're hoping that these composites are going to jog someone's memory decades later, so they'll call in tips, and then the people that they have on hand can bring those in.
And so I think the way that they made the sketches about the bikers and all of that, I think that's what they're trying to spawn with these images.
And while this is happening, Detective Wade is also creating a database for herself by entering every single male name ever mentioned in this massive case file, like basically in her own Excel doc.
You would love this.
My eyes literally lit up.
I was like, her own database, that's a spreadsheet.
And next to every name, she notes whether they have DNA in CODIS, whether DNA had been collected as part of the investigation at any point, whether they were alive, dead, incarcerated, and every little detail she can.
And by the time she finishes, she has over 2300 names.
Obviously, she can't test every single guy's DNA against the profiles that she has, but she does make a list of 160 that had a criminal record.
Now, at the same time, she is having someone run down the family tree angle.
So remember, this is early days.
She is doing familial testing, not investigative genetic genealogy.
People often think that they're the same thing, but they aren't.
Basically, what she does here is she sends YSTR DNA, which is DNA passed down from father to son.
She sends that from Jennifer's killer's profile to a genealogy expert who is going to try and build out a family tree on the dad's side of this unknown killer.
And around 2015, she gets three potential last names back, and one of them stands out to Detective Wade.
The names Wade receives are Smith, Holbrook, and Washburn, and it's that last name, Washburn, that she recognizes.
She scans her new handy database, and sure enough, there it is.
But it's a little strange because the Washburn name came from Michelle's case.
Not Jennifer's? Yeah, so here's the deal.
So back before Jennifer was killed when Michelle was the only victim and they were looking for the mystery man that they made a sketch of in her case, this guy, Robert Washburn, had called in a tip saying that while he was out jogging in a totally different park than where Michelle went missing from,
he thought he saw someone who looked like the sketch, which is pretty innocuous on its surface, right?
Except the park that he mentioned was the park that Jennifer would eventually go missing from.
What are the odds of that?
Exactly. I mean, this is far from a smoking gun, but your last name pops up in Jennifer's case because, again, it's one of three who might have left the DNA sample.
And someone with that last name called in a tip in Michelle's case?
But we know now that these cases aren't connected, so I don't even know what this means.
Well, neither did Wade, obviously, but she knows it's enough that she at least needs to keep digging.
And she realizes that this guy shows up one more time in the file.
So apparently, at some point, investigators bring Robert Washburn in to re -interview him about his tip.
This was after Jennifer had been found, so I don't know if this is one of those times where they just re -looked at everything or now that they thought that they were connected, whatever.
But they bring him in to talk about this tip he had originally called in, and while they're talking to him, he says something unexpected.
After confirming his original story about seeing the guy who looked like the composite in Michelle's case, he's also like, oh, you know, by the way, I was in the park the day that people found Jennifer, and I smelled a foul odor.
And Britt, I don't know if you remember, there was a tipster who called about quite literally smelling a foul odor in the park.
That's what led to Jennifer being found.
Was that Robert, too?
So investigators never actually confirm one way or another, but here's the thing I didn't tell you initially.
So when they had found Jennifer's body, what was so strange was that nobody actively looking for her actually smelled anything.
And there are no other complaints about a foul odor except for the one tipster who led them to her body, and then now this Robert Washburn guy, who's like putting himself there.
Right, and investigators never confirm one way or the other, but like, again, I say, what are the odds?
I know. And it kind of makes sense.
I mean, to me, it's a little red flaggy, but I can see with everything they had going on why maybe it wasn't relevant to investigators or why no one picked up on this tiny piece at the time.
Right. But in hindsight, as Wade is looking at this, she's like, OK, this is weird.
Like, Robert has a connection to both of these cases that we now know are not connected.
So everything combined makes her ears perk up.
Is this name Robert Washburn?
Is that familiar to any of Jennifer's family?
Well, so, yeah, so she obviously starts looking into him and it doesn't seem like they knew this guy, but he did grow up in Tacoma.
And we know he was working as an engineer at Boeing in 1986 when Jennifer was killed.
You know, as she gets a little bit more about his history, fast forward to 2000.
She knows he's filed for bankruptcy in Washington.
At some point, he has moved to Illinois with his daughter who has a condition that requires full time care.
And she can see that his record wasn't squeaky clean, but there's a reason he didn't pop up on anyone's radar.
I mean, he was arrested in 1985 for vehicle prowling and trespassing, but he wasn't charged.
So he had no criminal record.
And this guy lives a pretty quiet life as far as Wade can tell.
And obviously he was in the file, but were they ever even suspicious of him?
No, I'm telling you, prior to this, like, he's not listed as a suspect.
He's not listed as a person of interest.
I don't mean he's just a tipster.
Yeah, I don't think it's thrown up red flags that like he's a weird tipster, just like a tipster.
But now all the red flags are waving.
And with the family tree stuff pointing toward Washburn as a possible name, Robert seems as good a place as any to start.
So Wade gets the FBI to go see if he's going to be willing to give a DNA sample.
Again, he's in Illinois.
And it ends up being just quick and simple.
They don't even like tell him that they think he's a suspect there.
I think they just go in being like, hey, we know you said you were in the park.
We're just kind of ruling people out.
Whatever. He has no problem with it.
He just hands his DNA right over.
And listen, this is March of 2017.
A lot can change while people wait for DNA results.
They take time. And between sending the samples off and getting the results, Detective Wade actually has taken another job.
But she still is the one who gets a phone call when the time comes one year later in May 2018.
They have the results.
And Robert is a match to the DNA on Jennifer's swimsuit.
So they waste no time.
They send a SWAT team that surrounds his apartment.
They arrest him. But they don't actually tell him the crime that he's being arrested for yet.
And when he talks to detectives, he's super nervous, like full on sweating.
And he asked if this is about the SWAT that he gave the FBI.
And all detectives will say is that it matches DNA from the crime scene.
They do not say Jennifer and they don't share any specifics.
And that's when Robert blurts out, I didn't kill that little girl.
Yeah. And once he realizes just how deep in he is, Robert ends the interview and asks for an attorney.
Two weeks after his arrest, Robert Washburn walks into a courtroom for his arraignment.
A judge charges him with first degree murder in Jennifer's case and adds aggravating factors of sexual motivation and deliberate cruelty, per the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office.
Now, he ultimately pleads not guilty and his bail gets set at five million dollars.
Hold up. Robert really isn't connected to Michelle at all.
It was just the world's weirdest coincidence that he called in a tip on her case.
Well, I mean, I don't think there are any coincidences in crime.
So to be fair, yes, it could be a coincidence.
But I think it's also possible that this shows like premeditation, that maybe he was plotting because what I think everyone is at least theorizing is that he was planning to kill someone.
Maybe it was Jennifer.
Maybe, you know, she was riding in those parks, training for her thing.
So maybe he saw her.
Maybe he was just going to go after someone.
I don't know. But they're thinking like, oh, did he call ahead in this other park, try and put Michelle as killer there so that when another girl is killed in the park, it was automatically linked together and the cases were linked and he was kind of in the wind.
So if he really had nothing to do with Michelle's murder, then we still have a killer out there, right?
Right. And so they got to do it all again.
Only this time it is going to be a little different, maybe a little easier, because by May 2018, police get to reach back out to Parabon.
They have them upload the DNA from Michelle's case to GEDmatch.
So we're in full IGG mode now.
And GEDmatch, by the way, again, this is the public genealogy database where users can upload DNA data to find family members who've also uploaded data.
It's like a lot of the other systems.
But it's also the one that lets law enforcement tap into it to ID suspects in these crimes.
Yes. So here's the PSA of the episode.
If you have done an ancestry test from any company, you can upload your results to GEDmatch to help solve cases.
And I'll actually add some step by step instructions in the blog post for this episode or in the show notes.
But like if you're like, oh, like I did family tree or 23 and me and like I agreed they should have it.
Like you did not. My husband made this exact mistake.
I was like, Eric, I know you used I can't remember what company.
And he was like, yeah, for sure.
And like I gave him the thumbs up, said they could use it for I opted in or whatever.
And I was like, you definitely didn't because that's not even an option.
Like you have to take your results and put them into GEDmatch and then you have to consent in GEDmatch.
But if you never physically did anything yourself in GEDmatch, your results are not available.
Again, I'll give everyone the instructions for that.
But this is like the big takeaway because even my own husband didn't know.
And I feel like I'm like shouting this stuff from the rooftops.
So we know that this testing can be a lot more specific than just a family name.
It gets you to actual family members that help build out a more robust tree.
So that's how they identify two brothers with the last name Hartman who have the right amount of shared DNA to be a match to the killer in Michelle's case.
Now, both of these guys lived in the Tacoma area in 1986.
So in June of 2018, police start tailing both of these brothers, following them to restaurants, like sneakily getting samples from both of them.
One of them, they get a used napkin.
The other, they get a used straw.
They submit both of those things.
And it's the napkin that's a winner.
Gary Hartman is their killer.
Police arrest Gary at a traffic stop less than 10 miles from the park where Michelle's body was found three decades before.
He's booked on charges of first -degree rape and first -degree murder.
And like Robert, Gary pleads not guilty to the charges.
Did Robert and Gary know each other?
I mean, these guys lived close to each other back in 86.
But as far as I can tell, police can't find any evidence that they knew each other or were connected in any way.
And like Robert, this dude has a clean record, cleaner even.
He didn't have any disciplinary strikes at work.
His name doesn't appear anywhere in the case files.
But he did match the FBI profile closely.
In 1986, Gary lived in Tacoma, close to the park.
He struggled with mental health and addiction issues, and he had troubled family relationships.
Why Michelle, though?
Well, police think it was just a crime of opportunity.
And like Jennifer, Michelle was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And as the county prepares its case against Gary, Detective Wade worries that because Robert entered a not guilty plea that this case is going to go to trial.
Which means that Patty would have to sit through graphic photos and descriptions of her daughter's death.
But thankfully, three months later, she gets a call from Patty that shocks her.
Wade learns that Robert is changing his plea to guilty.
His sentence wouldn't be the longest as part of this, but I mean, he's like 61 by this point.
So the sentence he does get would probably mean he would die in prison anyway.
And this way, there wouldn't be a trial, no more re -traumatizing a family that had already been through so much.
And so on January 25th of 2019, 32 long years after Jennifer's death, Detective Wade sits next to Patty in a courtroom full of friends and family who never forgot Jennifer.
And together, they watch Robert.
He doesn't say a word, doesn't even look up from the floor.
But a judge reads a statement where he admits that he grabbed Jennifer's arm that he pulled her into the woods before strangling her.
But he never admits to sexually assaulting her or even gives a motive for what he did at all.
The statement that he made ends with him apologizing for his actions and saying that he wanted to plead guilty from the beginning to spare his family and Jennifer's family the stress of a trial.
And he says he hopes that his sentence will bring the Bastion family quote, one step closer in their healing process, end quote.
Even though Robert wouldn't look Patty in the eye, like I said, Detective Wade is by her side when she stands in front of the world and tells him about all the birthdays and Christmases with Jennifer that they never got to have, never would get to have.
Wade remembers that there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom that day.
And after Patty finishes her victim impact statement, a judge sentences Robert to 26 and a half years in prison, which is the upper end of the sentencing range that they were given.
Over three years later, on March 22nd, 2022, Michelle's case finally goes to trial.
Gary Hartman waived his right to a jury trial.
So this is just a bench trial, which means that the judge is going to make the sole decision after hearing the evidence from both sides.
And this trial is based on stipulated facts, which means that Gary admits to certain things about Michelle's murder, like the fact that his DNA profile from the napkin matches the sperm sample found during Michelle's autopsy.
But he does this without pleading guilty.
And that might sound a little confusing, but he does this in exchange for getting the first degree rape charge against him dropped.
Agreeing to these facts basically allows his defense team to appeal a motion filed earlier questioning the legitimacy of the DNA profile in the case.
And I know it's like a little bit of legalese, a lot of like mumbo jumbo, but basically they're arguing that since the DNA used to identify him wasn't his, it was DNA that was submitted by a distant cousin, they're saying there's nothing to directly tie him to the murder.
And they're also saying that police violated Gary's privacy by using that DNA without his permission.
So this is one of like the first times I saw in court this IGG stuff play out where they were really trying to fight how they got to him.
Right. I remember that being a really big deal early in IGG with like privacy laws, essentially.
It could have been a precedent set in case if they allowed this to go through.
But prosecutors at the time basically responded by saying that like Gary lost his right to privacy by leaving his DNA at a crime scene.
Exactly. So ultimately the judge denied the motion, which leads to the bench trial.
And the defense tries to drum up some sympathy for Gary who's barely able to make it across the courtroom, even with a walker.
And they say that his childhood was hell, that he was sexually assaulted and abused as a kid.
And they say his dad gave him alcohol while he was still a toddler to quote make him a man and that his mom got him addicted to pills before he even turned 10.
Oh my God. I know. And I mean, what's the saying, right?
Like hurt people hurt people.
But no amount of abuse or trauma can excuse what Gary did or even like perpetuating any abuse.
Right. But the defense is trying to argue that his mental health issues and struggles with addiction were so severe in 1986 that he actually believed he didn't kill Michelle.
Like they're saying he had no idea it happened at all.
Which seems a little convenient to me.
Same. And the prosecution kind of points this out because I guess they bring up something that Gary said when he realized police were following him.
He I guess told a coworker that he did something terrible 30 years ago and that he thought he'd finally gotten caught.
So like you knew, you knew that bench trial lasts less than two hours before the judge gives Gary the same sentence as Robert.
Twenty six and a half years in prison and Gary's 70.
So just like Robert, he'll probably spend the rest of his life behind bars.
And in court, Gary breaks down in tears.
He's sobbing apologies while Michelle, his mom and sisters watch finally getting at least some closure or justice.
Now, even though these cases that followed her from childhood to adulthood are finally solved, Detective Wade has mixed feelings.
She's happy to have resolution, but she knows that for the families going through this trial and even the process of like getting justice.
It's like ripping off a scab.
Like you might have answers, but you have to relive that grief all over again.
And she wanted to take that pain and channel it into something positive.
So she actually teams up with Patty to make sure Jennifer's memory makes a difference, that their loss can at least make kids safer all over the country.
And Detective Wade thinks that the best way to do that is by closing the DNA collection loopholes that she found in the system while investigating Michelle and Jennifer's cases.
Like, for example, back in 2011, she learned that Ted Bundy's DNA was never entered into CODIS by 2011.
I'm sorry, Ted Bundy, Ted Bundy, the Ted Bundy.
And like, if not his, then my God, how many others?
Who else? Right. And because DNA collection laws didn't start passing until the 90s, there were just all of these people who had been convicted of violent crimes that might not have had their DNA collected.
And yes, it became more common to collect DNA from released prisoners, but offenders who died in prison were never released.
So therefore, their DNA was never collected a la Ted Bundy.
Detective Wade also found out that there were sexually violent predators in a post prison treatment institution whose DNA samples were never entered into CODIS because they only collect DNA on release.
And in these cases specifically for those people she identified in those post prison treatment centers, I mean, it took two years to convince them to collect samples for Jennifer and Michelle's cases.
And here's the wild part when they like to prove the success of what she's trying to push forward when they finally did collect those and they entered those into CODIS.
And this is if you remember when they got their grant and stuff, one of those samples that were collected matched evidence in a completely different unsolved murder from 1980.
Oh, my God. So for years, Detective Wade and Patty drive to the state legislator to testify about expanding DNA collection and how it could change the game in solving cold cases.
And finally, in May 2019, the governor of Washington, with Detective Wade and Patty by his side, signs SHB1326, a .k .a.
Jennifer and Michelle's law into law, which adds indecent exposure to the list of crimes where offenders are required to submit DNA samples to the state and national DNA databases on conviction and authorizes detectives to collect DNA samples from deceased offenders.
Regardless of when they commit their crimes.
And is Washington the only state with this kind of law?
So from what I could find, it looks like it's the only state with a retroactive law where DNA samples from inmates who committed crimes like before the 90s or who are deceased have to be entered into CODIS.
Like there are some existing laws like New Mexico's Katie's law that required DNA to be collected from felons and inputted into CODIS.
And as of today, that's been implemented by 31 states to standardize DNA collection.
And in 2023, there were laws enacted in Alaska and Florida to also help close DNA loopholes.
I know currently Pennsylvania is kind of proposing their own, too.
But I mean, I think this should show you that it is like state by state.
There is no national.
There's still so many gaps.
So many states still have gaps in their legislation that allows cold cases to go unsolved.
But organizations like DNA Justice Project are working around the clock to make sure that we start filling in those gaps.
The website says, quote, DNA Justice Project works with states to pass laws which expand the national DNA database, utilize forensic DNA technology and to provide meaningful funding for DNA programs worldwide.
Our focus is on the power of DNA to create policy change, to provide justice, prevent crimes and exonerate the innocent.
Teresa Bastian, Jennifer's older sister, is following in Patti's footsteps on the board of this amazing organization.
And you can find out how to take action in your own state or how to donate to their cause by going to DNAjusticeproject .org.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast .com.
And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production.
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