Evil Was Watching

Transcript

Speaker 1 Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 1 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 1 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 1 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 14 Anytime a child goes missing, it's a scary thing. You know there's evil out there.

Speaker 15 She was almost 13. Do you remember what that was like? It was terrifying.
It's this sickening feeling that just overtakes you.

Speaker 15 Bloodhounds came. Police were there.

Speaker 14 This was a little girl that was doing nothing more than riding her bicycle in a park.

Speaker 15 The similarities. Blonde, blue-eyed, riding a bike.

Speaker 1 Somebody who's targeting young girls.

Speaker 15 Exactly.

Speaker 15 I would have a suspect that I was working and I would wonder, okay, could this guy be responsible? My working theory was this guy somehow slipped through the cracks.

Speaker 1 How many names did you have?

Speaker 15 About 2,300 names. That's a lot of names.
Yes.

Speaker 15 It's really the first big development in human identification in 20 years. I knew it was a big step in the case.
And I was like,

Speaker 15 no way.

Speaker 15 I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 I believe in the devil.

Speaker 15 And people that don't believe in the devil, I think they're in for a big surprise.

Speaker 1 Again and again, she came here, stood under the ancient canopy, walked the damp, narrow paths to the places the killer used to hide what he had done, as if looking once more after all these years would tell her something,

Speaker 1 as if the dense undergrowth would part and finally reveal a name.

Speaker 1 It's so peaceful here. It's not the kind of place you would associate with violent crime, that's for sure.
No.

Speaker 15 No, and nothing like this has ever happened at this park before.

Speaker 1 Lindsay Wade was just 11 years old that terrible summer in Tacoma, Washington.

Speaker 15 I just remember that it was really scary to me as a young girl.

Speaker 15 It was really scary, not just for me, but for everybody.

Speaker 1 And the questions about that place and that summer followed her.

Speaker 1 Up through the ranks of the Tacoma Police Department until as Detective Lindsay Wade, she came here to wrestle with something like an obsession,

Speaker 1 a mystery that lay dormant for more than three decades.

Speaker 1 A story that can finally be told.

Speaker 1 It was March 1986. Things were finally looking up for Barbara Leonard.
Hadn't been easy, she said, after her husband left her, to raise three girls alone.

Speaker 1 But here in Tacoma, Barbara had at last found a good job, a home, and prospects.

Speaker 15 I was working in a real estate office and had just bought a house in the north end of Tacoma. Scraped and saved money.

Speaker 1 Even a little extra to sign up her daughters for piano lessons. Her youngest was Nicole.
There was Angela in the middle, and the eldest was Michella.

Speaker 15 She was almost 13. She wasn't a rebellious child, but kids at that age want to be a little more independent.

Speaker 1 And it was spring break, so Michelle begged her mom.

Speaker 15 She wanted to go to the park with her sisters and be there before the piano lesson.

Speaker 1 Puget Park, a patch of green on the north end of Tacoma, just across the street from their lessons, a couple of miles from home. Michelle's sisters will never forget that day.

Speaker 15 We were approved for like half an hour. Not Like a half an hour, but we went like two and a half hours early.

Speaker 1 Freedom. They rode their bikes to the park where they realized they'd forgotten their lunches at home.

Speaker 15 So Michelle was just like, oh, I'll go grab them and come back. And then in the meantime, we had to go to the bathroom.
And so there's no bathroom at the playground back then. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So where'd you go?

Speaker 15 So we went down the street.

Speaker 1 It took a while. And when they finally got back, Michelle should have been there too.

Speaker 1 But she wasn't.

Speaker 15 Her bike was there and it was locked and we started looking. We have this family call

Speaker 15 and it echoes just far and wide. And so we...
It was a family call. Woo!

Speaker 15 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And so we yo-hooed for her

Speaker 15 and we didn't hear anything.

Speaker 1 That's when it happened. When the cold fear flooded their bodies.

Speaker 15 And like at that moment I knew.

Speaker 1 You knew what?

Speaker 16 I just knew something had happened.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that it was, there was, it was wrong. It was very wrong.
Something was really wrong.

Speaker 15 I left work. I remember that day and just, I was praying I wouldn't get a speeding ticket, but I was probably doing 70 miles an hour on the little road.

Speaker 1 Do you remember what that was like?

Speaker 15 It was terrifying.

Speaker 14 You're hoping you're going to see the kid come walking around the corner.

Speaker 1 Gene Miller was a patrol officer then. Tacoma police.
There's a special kind of horror or dread that goes with a little girl going missing like that.

Speaker 14 Anytime a child goes missing,

Speaker 14 it's a scary thing.

Speaker 1 Where was Michelle? The police looked, of course.

Speaker 1 But as the hours tick by, my God,

Speaker 1 there's nothing.

Speaker 15 There's an emptiness there. You just...

Speaker 15 Time kind of stands still.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And then it's all of a sudden it's gone. I mean...

Speaker 15 So so it was dark. They said we're gonna call in search and rescue because we haven't found her.

Speaker 1 It was late when they took search dogs into a nearby overgrown gulch.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 15 I was in one of the police cars, and they told me that

Speaker 15 they'd found her body. And, you know, when you say find a body,

Speaker 16 it's not the person.

Speaker 16 It was just that's terrible.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 They found her near a makeshift fire pit. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted, her throat cut.

Speaker 15 It's this sickening feeling that just overtakes you, and life is never going to be the same as you know it.

Speaker 14 And I think that it does one of two things to you. It's either going to eat you up or it's going to motivate you to find the bad guy.

Speaker 1 Day after day, they searched for the killer all that dismal spring. One of Michelle's classmates told the police she saw a man in the park looking at the girls.

Speaker 1 They made a sketch, and tips flooded in. One of them seemed especially worrisome.

Speaker 1 A man out jogging reported seeing someone who looked like the sketch in a different park, a place called Point Defiance Park, a few miles away. Scouting his next victim?

Speaker 1 Fear gripped the city, though for Barbara, it felt more like rage.

Speaker 1 She got a gun permit, kept the gun in her car.

Speaker 15 I'd go pull up at a stoplight, and I remember looking over, and there was a man in the car, and I was thinking, could you have done this? Did you do this?

Speaker 15 Because they had no clues for months, months and months. And it was fog.
You're just living in a fog.

Speaker 1 Then, it was summer. Five months had passed.

Speaker 15 August that year was fabulous in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 15 And woke up a little late. Jenny woke up a little late.

Speaker 1 Just the two of them, Patty Bastion and her 13-year-old Jenny.

Speaker 15 And we were sitting in the dining room on the floor

Speaker 15 in front of the patio doors, bathing ourselves in the sun.

Speaker 1 A moment in time so treasured and so terribly fleeting.

Speaker 15 About 11 or so at night, there's a knock on the front door. It's somebody with the police department with the bloodhounds.

Speaker 1 Another missing girl, another anguished family, another awful search.

Speaker 15 There were literally hundreds of people looking through the park for her.

Speaker 14 Everybody wanted to find Jenny.

Speaker 1 It was summer 1986, a sun-kissed morning.

Speaker 1 A few miles from the park, where they'd found Michelle's body, Patty Bastian was enjoying a quiet moment at home with the younger of her two daughters, Jenny, a blonde, blue-eyed dynamo.

Speaker 15 If there was a ball, she had it in her hand. If there was a bat, she had it in her hand.

Speaker 1 Jenny was 13. She had a brand new Schwinn bicycle.
She was preparing for an imminent bike tour.

Speaker 15 She wanted to master the bike. She didn't want anybody to be waiting for her.
She wanted to have the stamina to keep up.

Speaker 1 She'd planned a training ride with a friend. The friend backed out.

Speaker 15 And so that sunny day, August 4th, Jenny called her dad and asked for permission to do the five-mile drive around Point Defiance Park by herself.

Speaker 1 And he said yes, but be home by 6.30.

Speaker 15 So she wrote a little note and left it on the kitchen table.

Speaker 1 PD on Jenny's note to her mom stands for Point Defiance, Jacoma's huge and loved urban forest park.

Speaker 1 Jenny's older sister Teresa, 15 at the time, worked at a day camp there.

Speaker 15 It's majestic. I mean, all these overdone, you know, words of the poets don't begin to describe the just the primeval forest, and it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 The five-mile drive around the park was paved, well-marked, a popular hike. Patty left for her evening shift at a store about 40 minutes away.

Speaker 15 And then the day just

Speaker 15 becomes like any other day until a phone call comes in the evening.

Speaker 15 It's my husband saying that I need to come home.

Speaker 1 Jenny was hours late. Patty heard the fear in her husband's voice.
She drove home, terrified. Police were looking in the park, told her, stay home and wait.

Speaker 15 And then about 11 or so at night, there's a knock on the front door. It's somebody with the police department with the bloodhounds.

Speaker 15 They want a piece of Jennifer's clothing, something they can get a scent off of.

Speaker 1 They didn't find Jenny that night or the next day.

Speaker 1 Tacoma police closed Point Defiance Park for three days. Hundreds of people joined the search.
NBC affiliate King5 covered it.

Speaker 15 Have you guys heard about the missing girl in law?

Speaker 1 Jenny's sister, Teresa, pleaded for help.

Speaker 15 Just take time. Just think back.
Just sit down and remember. Any little bit would help.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, police worked at the angles. Was it a kidnapping?

Speaker 15 Maybe they were going to ask for ransom or we just didn't know.

Speaker 1 Or maybe Jenny got lost or was badly hurt.

Speaker 15 There were literally hundreds of people.

Speaker 15 looking through the park for her.

Speaker 14 Everybody wanted to find Jenny.

Speaker 1 Gene Miller helped run down down hundreds of suspected sightings.

Speaker 14 There was a lot of good faith effort on the part of citizens to call in and say, I think I saw her here, I think I saw her there.

Speaker 1 Patty waited, still hoping her Jenny would walk right in the door. She was at home when she got a visit from another mother, Barbara, Michelle's mom, there to offer support.

Speaker 15 It just seemed like the thing to do. She was very, very sweet, very nice.

Speaker 15 I said thank you. She left.

Speaker 15 And I said to a friend who was sitting there, I'm not sure why she came. Jennifer's not dead.

Speaker 1 You represented the outcome she desperately did not want to have happen.

Speaker 15 Exactly, exactly. And she didn't want that to be her reality.

Speaker 1 But was it? It seemed like all of Tacoma feared the worst.

Speaker 15 After about, I don't know, 20 days, I decided I needed to do something beside hang out in the backyard drinking coffee.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 decided to paint the dining room.

Speaker 15 I know.

Speaker 1 And that's where she was when the detective arrived.

Speaker 15 Took the brush or roller out of my hand,

Speaker 15 helped me down the ladder, sat me on the chair in the dining room, and said we found her.

Speaker 1 Today's date is August 29th. This is police video from the next day.
They had found Jenny in a thickly wooded spot near a narrow footpath.

Speaker 1 She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and her killer had hidden her body and her new Schwinn bicycle. And a second mother learned all about permanent heartbreak.

Speaker 1 Have you let your mind go to what probably happened to her that day?

Speaker 15 I have my fairy tale, I think,

Speaker 15 and I'll just live with it.

Speaker 15 She was riding her bike.

Speaker 15 The monster came out of the woods and grabbed her and killed her.

Speaker 15 More than that, I can't wrap my brain around. No.

Speaker 1 Twice in five months. And the victims,

Speaker 1 very similar.

Speaker 15 Blonde, blue-eyed, riding a bike in a city park.

Speaker 1 And after? Kids in Tacoma lost the freedom to roam alone. Just like that.

Speaker 1 Turns on a dime after.

Speaker 15 Yes, it did. It was immediate.
It was like we couldn't go down the street and play with our friends anymore. And we shop around everywhere.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because there was evil out there. A man, a monster, who needed to be found.
Everybody, it seemed, wanted to help the police.

Speaker 14 At one point, I think we were up to nine or ten binders full of just tips. And it was everything from

Speaker 14 I saw a strange person in the park that day to

Speaker 14 my neighbor has got issues.

Speaker 1 Police released another sketch of a possible suspect, a man in his 20s wearing mirrored sunglasses. A tip led to the man who drove this van.

Speaker 14 He was familiar with Point Defiance. He was familiar with the five-mile drive.

Speaker 1 They took a good hard look at him, but.

Speaker 15 Dead end. Dead end.

Speaker 1 There were many dead ends that year, and in the years that followed. The police collected all the evidence they could, but really there was only so much they could do.

Speaker 1 The science of DNA was in its infancy. And eventually, the murders of Jenny and Michelle went cold.

Speaker 14 It changed the way people thought of other people when the bad guy's still out there and when you don't know who the bad guy is.

Speaker 1 The whole town kind of carries it around. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Miller carried it around, too, for two decades.
And then he met a young detective who was just a kid that summer of 1986.

Speaker 1 But did she remember? Yes, she did.

Speaker 15 It definitely scared the heck out of me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 There would be certain times where, if I was out riding my bike or if I was walking, it would be something that I would think about.

Speaker 1 Another detective joined the case. And after all these years, old evidence was about to yield a new clue.

Speaker 15 It was a shocker.

Speaker 1 Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 1 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 1 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 Lindsay Wade wasn't friends with Michelle or Jenny, but she certainly could have been.

Speaker 15 I definitely, I guess, identified with a little girl out riding her bicycle. Oh, sure.

Speaker 1 She was 11 years old back then, in the summer of 1986.

Speaker 1 And because she lived in Tacoma, of course she heard about those girls, just like her, how they'd been snatched in broad daylight and murdered.

Speaker 15 It definitely

Speaker 15 scared the heck out of me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 There would be certain times where, if I was out riding my bike or if I was walking, it would be something that I would think about.

Speaker 1 The layer of that glossy childhood varnish, forever stripped away.

Speaker 15 Probably for the first time made us recognize that there's really bad people out there.

Speaker 1 Takes away a little innocence, doesn't it?

Speaker 15 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Definitely.

Speaker 1 She got to thinking about bad people. In high school she read a book about the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
Who is from here?

Speaker 15 Who's from Tacoma, yes. And I was fascinated by the book and terrified at the same time.
And I just decided that that's what I wanted to do for a living. I wanted to catch people like him.

Speaker 1 But even after she joined the Tacoma Police Department and earned her way through patrol and narcotics and sex crimes, she never forgot about Jenny and Michella and the summer of 86.

Speaker 15 I would have a suspect that I was working and I would wonder, okay, could this guy be responsible.

Speaker 1 The mystery kept its grip on Gene Miller too, inspired him to start a cold case unit here.

Speaker 14 I mean, things have changed dramatically in how cases are investigated. There's so much more that can be done.

Speaker 1 Eventually, in 2013, Detective Wade joined him, eager to dig into the case of Michelle and Jenny. Binders and binders of police reports and interviews and leads, 27 years of dead ends.

Speaker 1 And point defiance, like a giant, ever-present question.

Speaker 15 So her bicycle was back here in this area, and it was laying on its side.

Speaker 15 The suspect had taken some of these fern fronds and ripped them out, and then laid them across the top of the bike to camouflage it.

Speaker 1 And further down the path, deeper into the woods, where they found Jenny, hidden from view.

Speaker 15 Very hidden.

Speaker 1 They discovered her body in a shelter of sorts.

Speaker 15 One of the the original detectives actually described it as something like an igloo almost. So like a cave

Speaker 15 that was made out of the vegetation.

Speaker 1 What do you get out of being at the place where she was found?

Speaker 15 For me, as an investigator, it was important for me to come out here and actually see it to try to understand a little bit better what happened and try to get myself into the mindset of the killer.

Speaker 15 I mean, there were days when I would get frustrated sitting in my office working on the case and I would just drive down here and park my car and sit down here, hoping that something would come to mind.

Speaker 1 One thing that did come to mind, assembling a list of all the names in those binders, persons of interest, witnesses, any male who had intersected with the original investigation.

Speaker 1 So how many names did you have?

Speaker 15 About 2,300 names. That's a lot of names.
Yes.

Speaker 15 My working theory at that time was this guy has got to be somebody who's been convicted of a sex crime or another murder, and somehow he slipped through the cracks.

Speaker 1 Back in 1986, investigators had recovered semen from Michelle's body. But when that semen was tested years later, it didn't match anyone in the FBI's national DNA database known as CODIS.

Speaker 1 They didn't have any DNA from Jenny's body, though they did still have the swimsuit she'd been wearing that day, so Detective Wade sent that out for testing.

Speaker 15 When the crime lab looked at the swimsuit, they found semen in the crotch of her swimsuit.

Speaker 1 For decades, everyone believed the same man murdered both girls, and now finally they had a way to prove it. But when they compared the two DNA samples, it was

Speaker 15 a shocker.

Speaker 9 Michelle was so fierce.

Speaker 15 There really wasn't anything that intimidated her at all. She just took life head on.

Speaker 1 It never left them. The spirit that was their sister followed them all around their growing up years and when they had families of their own.

Speaker 1 And they knew, always did, that their mom had lost a piece of herself.

Speaker 15 We'd be all together in this family environment and then this just closing would come down over her.

Speaker 15 Yep, you want

Speaker 1 mom back.

Speaker 1 The mystery of who killed Michelle and Jenny haunted two families for nearly 30 years. All they knew, or thought they knew, was that some unknown man assaulted and killed those little girls.

Speaker 1 This man who had killed once had killed again.

Speaker 15 Absolutely. There couldn't be two monsters in Tacoma.

Speaker 1 But they were wrong. DNA doesn't lie.
And the male DNA found on Jenny's swimsuit. Did it match the other case? No.

Speaker 1 There wasn't just one killer. There were two.

Speaker 15 I was absolutely dumbfounded. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I don't think I could speak. I was like, no way.
I think we were all just, we had to kind of take a moment to regroup.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because all this time you're looking for one thing and it's actually something else.

Speaker 15 But it was exciting at the same time because now we had a new lead.

Speaker 1 The DNA from Jenny's swimsuit, a brand new piece of evidence. It might lead them to her killer.

Speaker 1 But when they entered that into the national database, no match. Once again, they seemed to be right back where they started.

Speaker 14 You're just in the hurry up and wait mode.

Speaker 1 You're waiting

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 14 your offender to get their DNA in the database because of a conviction or whatever.

Speaker 14 And that could be a long wait.

Speaker 1 In 2014, Jean Miller retired, leaving Detective Wade in charge of the cold case unit. And she had a new helper, Jenny's mom, Patty.
29 years after her daughter's murder.

Speaker 15 My career was winding down. I thought I should probably do something.
And so I volunteered to help.

Speaker 1 Patty wasn't allowed to touch the two girls' murder files, but she could help in other ways.

Speaker 15 And we just hit it off.

Speaker 15 She was so

Speaker 15 supportive and so positive and just volunteered for anything she could do to help us make our jobs easier.

Speaker 1 Around then, Detective Wade decided to try something new with the crime scene DNA.

Speaker 1 She consulted this woman, Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, an expert in something called forensic genealogy.

Speaker 15 In an informal sense, it's been referred to as CSI meets roots.

Speaker 1 Maybe you've taken a home DNA test. A lot of people have.
You can sometimes track down distant relatives by uploading your DNA profile to public genealogy websites. Dr.

Speaker 1 Fitzpatrick searches all that DNA data to find not necessarily matches, but telling similarities.

Speaker 15 It's really the first big development in human identification, I think, in years, in 20 years.

Speaker 1 Her method can link an unknown DNA profile to possible relatives and therefore possible last names. Detective Wade was skeptical at first.

Speaker 15 It kind of sounded like smoke and mirrors to me, but I thought, well, I'm going to give it a shot. I mean, I want to solve this case.

Speaker 1 She sent Dr. Fitzpatrick the two DNA profiles from Michelle's and Jenny's crime scenes.

Speaker 15 And she did her magic. She entered into her genealogy databases.

Speaker 1 There were no exact matches, but there were some possible family names.

Speaker 15 I certainly, you know, dug into the names, and there wasn't anybody who jumped off the page.

Speaker 1 The only name that seemed remotely interesting was Washburn, because there was a guy by that name in the case file, but he he wasn't a suspect. He was a witness.

Speaker 1 He was the jogger who told police he saw someone in Point Defiance Park who resembled the sketch of Michelle's killer. But even more confusing, Dr.

Speaker 1 Fitzpatrick's genealogy research had linked the name Washburn to the DNA in Jenny's murder, which Detective Wade knew happened months after Washburn phoned in that tip about Michella.

Speaker 1 So, it's all just a fluke, probably.

Speaker 15 And so, it was something that I kept in the back of my mind as we continued on with the investigation.

Speaker 1 She also went to a company called Parabon that turned DNA profiles into computer-generated images, showing what the suspects probably looked like.

Speaker 1 In 2016, armed with those Parabon snapshots, these two are solvable. The Tacoma Police Department told the public they were searching for two killers and needed help to find them.

Speaker 1 Jenny's sister, Teresa, was hopeful.

Speaker 15 I didn't know exactly where it was going to end up, but I knew it was a big step in the case.

Speaker 15 We had a tip line open and we got multiple tips on the same person because he actually looked so much like the sketch.

Speaker 1 But when they checked him out, they eliminated him as a suspect. So much for new approaches.
Detective Wade once again looked at the huge lists she'd made. 2,300 men connected to the two cases.

Speaker 1 She couldn't test all of them against the crime scene DNA, but...

Speaker 15 There were several hundred that really did stand out because they did have documented history for violence and sexual assault.

Speaker 1 So she set out to collect the DNA of those men. She called them high-priority suspects.
She also included one guy who wasn't a suspect at all, the witness, Washburn.

Speaker 1 And though they were scattered all over the country, with the FBI's help, one by one, she tracked them down.

Speaker 15 We asked people, knocked on their door, literally told them we were investigating a cold case and, you know, we'd like to eliminate you as a potential suspect. Would you give us your DNA?

Speaker 15 We had, in total, about 160 people that we got DNA samples from.

Speaker 1 160 samples. They all needed to be compared with the DNA samples from the two crime scenes.

Speaker 1 Easier said than done, isn't like the movies. This would take months.
No idea if any of it would pay off.

Speaker 15 So, first batch goes out there. None of these guys were a match.
And then I send the next batch out, and it's the same thing.

Speaker 15 It was really frustrating because there were some people that looked like fantastic suspects up until the point that they were eliminated.

Speaker 1 Weeks, months, a year of dead ends. And then came the phone call.

Speaker 15 And I was like,

Speaker 15 no way.

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrison.

Speaker 1 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 1 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, Wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 Four more seasons came and went in Tacoma, Washington. As ever so methodically, in batches of 20, Detective Lindsay Wade sent her collected samples of DNA to the lab.

Speaker 1 DNA taken from 160 men, looking for two killers.

Speaker 15 First batch goes out there.

Speaker 15 I wait months, months, and months, and then get a report back that none of these guys were a match.

Speaker 15 And then I send the next batch out, and it's the same thing. It was really frustrating because there were some people that looked like fantastic suspects up until the point that they were eliminated.

Speaker 1 A year of DNA tests and not a single match. It was enough to wear any detective down, even one as passionate as Lindsay Wade.

Speaker 1 She'd given her best, but now she made a tough decision.

Speaker 15 It was time for me to move on.

Speaker 1 In the spring of 2018, Lindsay Wade retired from the Tacoma PD.

Speaker 1 She'd investigated both Jenny and Michelle's cases for years, and saying goodbye wasn't easy, especially to Jenny's mom. By that time, I'd you'd grown pretty close to Patty.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 She's a very very special gal.

Speaker 15 I told her mother I'm going to adopt her.

Speaker 1 Before she left, Wade sent one last small batch of samples to the DNA lab. No point really in waiting for the results.

Speaker 15 We're down to the last 18. I'm doubtful that

Speaker 15 we're going to get a match.

Speaker 1 So she said goodbye. and went on with her life.

Speaker 1 And 25 days later.

Speaker 15 My phone buzzed and I looked down.

Speaker 1 It was her replacement on the cold case unit.

Speaker 15 I answered the phone and he said, there's a match on Jennifer Bastion.

Speaker 15 I asked, who is it? What's the name?

Speaker 15 And he said, Robert Washburn, and I was like,

Speaker 15 no way.

Speaker 15 I knew exactly who it was,

Speaker 15 but I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 Robert Washburn.

Speaker 1 He was the guy who phoned in a tip about Michelle's murder. He was never a suspect.
On her short list, only because of that genealogy analysis.

Speaker 1 Why did Washburn's name end up on the list to be tested for DNA?

Speaker 15 Because of his last name.

Speaker 1 Just the last name. Yes.
Because he was in that list it was sent to you.

Speaker 15 Correct.

Speaker 1 At the time, it seemed like a coincidence, a fluke. But now here it was, no doubt.
Robert Washburn's DNA on Jenny Bastion's swimsuit. It was head spinning.

Speaker 15 And the funny thing is that he was not a high-priority suspect.

Speaker 1 He certainly hadn't acted like one. They learned that in the years after the murder rape of Jenny Bastion, Robert Washburn just blended into Middle America.

Speaker 1 Literally, he moved to Illinois, got a job, paid his taxes, stayed out of trouble. In fact, when investigators came knocking at his door, He voluntarily gave them a DNA sample.

Speaker 1 Now, more than three decades after that terrible day in in the park, Washburn was arrested at home. And then the new cold case detective Steve Riopel spoke with him.
How did he react?

Speaker 18 He was scared. He was very nervous.
He was sweating. He asked me, is this about that swab I gave the FBI a year ago?

Speaker 18 And then he told me, I didn't kill that little girl.

Speaker 1 With Washburn in handcuffs, it was time to let Johnny's mom know. And that job went to retired detective Wade.

Speaker 15 So, of course, I had rehearsed what I was going to say, and it all went out the window by the time I got there. I couldn't remember what I was going to say.

Speaker 15 And she walked in. I could tell she had been crying.

Speaker 15 And she said, we got him.

Speaker 15 And that's really all I could say.

Speaker 15 The next thing we were doing is crying and hugging each other.

Speaker 1 After 32 years, Jenny's alleged killer was finally in custody.

Speaker 1 But what about Michelle's murderer? His identity was still a mystery. Of the 160 men whose DNA was tested, none matched.
Did you get to the point where you thought this is just,

Speaker 1 we just live with this. Never going to be solved?

Speaker 15 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Whether it was solved or not was never going to bring her back.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 I did not ever want that to happen to other children.

Speaker 1 So in my mind, it would be a great idea to find this guy. Remember, back in 2016, Parabon made a sketch based on the suspect's DNA, but it didn't lead to a suspect.

Speaker 1 So in 2018, the company decided to try a newer, more advanced version of forensic genealogy.

Speaker 1 And what do you know?

Speaker 15 How could you find somebody? How could somebody still be out there?

Speaker 1 One mother still seeking answers and one more phone call out of the blue.

Speaker 15 I believe in the devil and people that don't believe in the devil, I think they're in for a big surprise.

Speaker 15 It's a hole. It's a big hole that that nothing else can fit, no matter comfort.

Speaker 1 The loss of her daughter, Michelle, hit Barbara Leonard like one of the sufferings of Job.

Speaker 1 And the grief.

Speaker 15 There's never an end to it. And there won't be, I don't think, until I see her again and I have that hope and promise.

Speaker 15 The Bible is true, and the Bible says that the dead are sleeping, they will be resurrected.

Speaker 1 That's where you find your comfort, huh?

Speaker 15 Of course it is. That's how I've been able to maintain a relationship and understand other people's pain.

Speaker 1 Of course, Barbara was glad for the Bastion family when she heard there'd been an arrest in Jenny's case in May 2018.

Speaker 1 But she knew it wouldn't shed any light on Michelle's murder.

Speaker 15 It was two different people, two different, distinct persons.

Speaker 1 So maybe they solved the other case, but they'd never solved yours.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it seemed for 40 days and 40 nights until June 20th, 2018,

Speaker 1 when Barbara's phone rang.

Speaker 15 Police chief calls and says, we've apprehended the man we feel is responsible for your daughter's murder.

Speaker 1 After 32 years, the breakthrough was once again genealogical DNA. Through this process, two brothers were identified as possible suspects.

Speaker 1 At the chief's press conference, Detective Steve Riopel told how he shadowed one of the brothers to a restaurant where he got lucky.

Speaker 18 I observed him using the napkin multiple times and I was able to collect it and get that submitted to the lab.

Speaker 1 And it was a match.

Speaker 15 It was surreal because after all this time, how could you find somebody? How could somebody still be out there?

Speaker 1 Michelle's alleged killer, Gary Hartman, was a nurse of all things in a psychiatric hospital. A working-class guy with no history of violent crime, just like Robert Washburn.

Speaker 15 I believe in the devil. I believe fully in the devil.
And people that don't believe in the devil, I think they're in for a big surprise.

Speaker 1 Barbara Leonard and her daughters were in court the day Hartman was charged with Michelle's murder.

Speaker 15 I was looking at him and I thought, who is this person?

Speaker 15 How could someone that looks so normal do something like this?

Speaker 1 In January 2019, Robert Washburn, the suspect in Jenny Bastion's murder, was back in court. This was the final step in a plea deal.

Speaker 15 How do you plead?

Speaker 1 Guilty.

Speaker 1 Washburn pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Speaker 15 I had prayed that he would not go to trial. I just wanted it to be over.

Speaker 1 As part of the plea agreement, Washburn had to tell the court about the murder. In a statement read by the judge, he said, He grabbed Jenny by the arm, brought her into the woods, and strangled her.

Speaker 1 And that was it. Which, for Patty Bastion, was not enough at all.

Speaker 15 I will always have this question in my head. So, you woke up on August 4th.
It was a beautiful sunny day. You went to the park.

Speaker 15 Did you intend to kill a little girl? Why?

Speaker 15 Why did you do this?

Speaker 15 Did you know what you did?

Speaker 15 Do you know how many birthdays you missed? How many Christmases?

Speaker 15 How many smiles? How many laughs?

Speaker 1 Do you have any expectation that he's going to answer that why question or any hope that he will?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 15 And the reason for that is not for me.

Speaker 15 The reason is for future.

Speaker 15 To help psychologists, parents, detectives understand

Speaker 15 what can be in a human being.

Speaker 15 What made him

Speaker 15 this person?

Speaker 1 13-year-old. And also, why did Washburn call in a tip about Michelle's murder months before he killed Jenny?

Speaker 15 That's another question that we would all like to know the answer to. Could he have been planning it all that time?

Speaker 15 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Watching for somebody?

Speaker 15 Certainly possible.

Speaker 1 Morning.

Speaker 1 Three years after Jenny's killer pleaded guilty, March 2022, Lindsey Wade sat in another courtroom along with Michelle's mom and sisters as Gary Hartman was found guilty of first-degree murder for killing Michella.

Speaker 15 Finally, after all these years in choked-back emotions, tears of crying and wondering whose black heart of darkness could have done this, this is the day he faces the judge.

Speaker 15 I say lock him up and throw away the key.

Speaker 1 The judge sentenced Hartman to 26 years in prison. Two killers, now behind bars, for what will likely be the rest of their lives.
In large part, thanks to the determination of Lindsay Wade.

Speaker 1 But she wasn't quite done.

Speaker 15 Each state gets to determine their own laws regarding DNA collection, who they can collect DNA from and when.

Speaker 1 Doesn't make it easier for you folks, does it?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 No, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 So she decided to do something about that. In Washington state, the governor signed a law that expanded DNA collection and made sure it got into a national registry right away.

Speaker 1 With this bill, we may be able to solve more crimes. It's called Jennifer and Michelle's Law.

Speaker 1 It's one way to honor those two little girls,

Speaker 1 two innocents,

Speaker 1 riding their bikes through a park on a sunny day.