During a five-month period in 1986 both Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian vanished from parks around Tacoma, Washington. What happened to them and who was responsible? Were police looking for one killer or two? Law enforcement was baffled and only the passage of time and new technological advances in DNA extraction would help solve these murders. Unfortunately for Tacoma that meant the killer or killers could strike again.
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TuneInMarch 26, 1986 – Tacoma, Washington
In March of 1986, Barbara Léonard had just purchased a home for her and her 3 daughters, Nicole, Angela, and Michella.
The three girls were taking piano lessons. That day their mother said they could leave a half-hour early to play at Puget Park. The park was a couple of miles from their house and across the street from their lessons.
It was spring break and their mom was at work, so they left a few hours early, around 10 am, to have more time at the park. While they were at the park they realized that they hadn’t brought lunches. Michella Welch offered to go back and make lunches while her sisters stayed at the park.
In the meantime, the sisters had to go to the bathroom. There wasn’t one at the park so they went down the street to a business. When they got back to the park around 1:15 they saw Michella’s bike locked up and the lunches on the table, but no Michella.
Michella Welch Goes Missing
They started to call out for her using her name but also a family call (like a bird call) that the family used, but there was no sign of Michella Welch. Her sisters contacted the police and their mother was notified. They began searching the park around 3:10 pm but could find no trace of Michella.
A thirteen-year-old classmate told detectives he saw a man in the park that day under the Proctor Bridge who kept looking at the girls. He was described as white, twenty-four to twenty-six, 5’9″, and skinny. He was wearing a blue jean jacket with holes in it, blue jeans, and dirty ripped white tennis shoes. A sketch was drawn and distributed, but the man was never found.
A man who worked at Michella’s school was driving by the park around 1:30 pm. He said that he saw Michella at the park speaking with a man he didn’t know or recognize. The unidentified man last seen with Michella Welch was described as possibly Hispanic, twenty-five to thirty-five, 5’8″ with black hair, a possible mustache, and light-colored clothing.
Her Body is Found
Nightfall came and the police deployed a search and rescue team using search dogs. Around 11:30 pm they were in an overgrown gulch when they found Michella’s body. She was left beside a makeshift fire pit, but she hadn’t been burned. She had been sexually assaulted and an injury to her neck was the cause of death.
For months they followed tips and eventually one caught their attention. A man jogging reported seeing a man that resembled the sketch that had been produced based on the classmate’s description. The man he saw was in Point Defiance Park, a few miles from Puget Park. This made police worry that the same predator was out searching for his next victim.
August 1986
Five months later, Pattie and Jennifer Bastian had slept in. They moved to lay out in the dining room and basked in the sun coming in through the windows. Jennifer was 13 and was a bit rough and tumble. She liked to playing sports and kicking a ball.
She had just gotten a new bicycle that she wanted to master. Jennifer had been practicing riding the bike so she could ride in the YMCA tour of Lopez Island. She called her father to ask if she was allowed to ride her bike around a 5-mile trail that goes around Point Defiance Park. He agreed but told her to be back by 6:30 pm.
Jennifer left a note for her mom who had gone to work her evening shift at a store about 40 minutes away and took her bike out around 2:30.
Jennifer Bastian Goes Missing
Around 8:30 pm Pattie got a call at work from her husband telling her she needed to come home. Jennifer Bastian had been due home hours before and was missing. Police were looking in the park and they told her parents to stay home and wait.
Three boys who went to school with Bastian saw her about 4:10 pm riding her bicycle in the opposite direction on Five Mile Drive. They recalled seeing a man riding near her but said she did not seem concerned or in danger. Two people spoke with a girl fitting Bastian’s description between 3 and 5 p.m. at the Dalco Passage viewpoint. The girl dropped her helmet on the ground, drank from a water bottle, and spoke about training for an upcoming ride.
Around 11:00 pm the police came to the door with bloodhounds asking for a piece of Jennifer’s clothing so they could get the search dogs out. Point Defiance Park was closed for 3 days with hundreds of people helping with the search, but they couldn’t find Jennifer Bastian. Keep in mind that this is 5 months after Michella Welch was found.
Jennifer’s 15-year-old sister Theresa, was pleading for help with the news platform. They didn’t automatically think this was related to Michella Welch. They thought maybe she could have gotten lost in the woods or it could have been a kidnapping.
Pattie got a visit from Barbara (Michella’s mom) just to offer support. Pattie remembers, she was very sweet and when she left Pattie said to a friend “I don’t know why she came here, Jennifer’s not dead?”
Jennifer’s Body is Found
On day 28 of Jennifer’s disappearance, Pattie needed to take her mind off of everything. She decided to paint the dining room to keep herself busy. It was then that the detective arrived. He took the paint roller from her hand and had her sit down. Then he told her, they had found Jennifer.
She was found in an overgrown area near a footpath by a group of joggers. Jennifer Bastian’s bike had been hidden with fern leaves and her body had been further down in what was described as an igloo of sticks and leaves. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Both victims were of similar ages, blonde, with blue eyes, riding bikes in city parks. Fear washed over Tacoma and children who used to have “free roam” were no longer allowed to go out alone.
Police Have a Suspect?
Police had one suspect, David Fisher. Fisher didn’t really fit the description but he had pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree manslaughter after sexually assaulting and killing Laura Burbank, a 13-year-old girl in Tacoma in June of 1970. He was 29 at the time. Fisher had been a model prisoner and by 1974 was on a Prison Farm with no walls and little security. He walked off campus mid-afternoon and it wasn’t discovered that he was missing until the evening count hours later. He had been missing ever since but the only connection to that case and these murders was the victims’ ages.
The MO was different as well. David knew Laura and convinced her to meet up with him. She wasn’t snatched and she was killed with a blow to the head.
Cold Case
The police were flooded with tips from everything to seeing someone suspicious to my neighbor is acting strange but they couldn’t get anywhere and the case went cold.
In 2011, Detective Gene Miller started the cold case unit of Tacoma PD. He noticed Lindsey Wade was making her way up through the ranks. She had made detective and in 2013 she joined his unit. They created a list of 2,300 hundred possible suspects. The theory was that this person had to have been previously convicted.
No DNA Matches
Semen had been found on Michella’s body, but when technology had caught up and it was tested, it matched nothing in the FBI database. No DNA had been found on Jennifer Bastian, but they still had the swimsuit she had been wearing so they sent it for testing. Semen was found on the swimsuit.
When they tested against the DNA from Michella Welch it wasn’t a match, so now they had two killers. They tested it against the databases as well and there were no matches. In 2015 Gene Miller retired and it was all up to Lindsey Wade. She contacted Colleen Fitzpatrick, an expert in forensic genealogy.
Genealogy Testing
She focuses on using DNA profiles submitted through genealogy websites to find possible relatives based on common markers. Detective Wade sent the samples and Dr. Fitzparick tested them against her existing database. She didn’t find an exact match, but she did find possible family names for Jennifer’s case. They began investigating those names but found nothing that raised red flags. They did see the name Washburn, but he hadn’t been a suspect, he was a witness.
He was the jogger that had first tipped police that he had seen someone in Point Defiance park that resembled the sketch from Michella’s murder. At this point, it’s just a similar last name. She also went to Parabond. Parabond takes DNA profiles and turn them into sketches of what the suspect could look like.
In 2016 they released the sketches and announced to the public that they were looking for 2 killers. They opened a tip line and got tons of tips based on the sketches, but nothing held water. Detective Wade then took her list of 2,300 names and tried to prioritize based on men who had been convicted or had a record. She began collecting the DNA of those priority suspects and the one name that had come up, Washburn. They collected 160 samples in relation to both cases and began testing, but it took a year to process, and no matches came through.
Another Suspect?
In 2018, Detective Wade retired from the force after years of working on these cases. Before she left she submitted the last batch of DNA samples, 18 to be exact. 25 days later she got a call from the detective that replaced her that they got a match on the DNA, to 60-year old Robert Washburn.
Since the murder he had been a model citizen, he had been married and divorced and was now lived in an apartment in Eureka, IL with his daughter. She was 20 years old and disabled. He was her full-time caregiver and it didn’t seem like he worked. He was arrested in his home.
Guilty Plea
Washburn was scared and nervous when questioned. He asked if it was about the swab and then said “I didn’t kill that little girl”. In Jan. 2019 he pleads guilty to 1st-degree murder and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. In a statement read by the judge, he said he grabbed Jennifer Bastian by the arm, dragged her into the woods, and strangled her.
Finding Michella’s Killer
Now it was time to find Michella’s killer. In 2018 Parabon used the original DNA profile with new forensic genealogy techniques to look for a familial match.
Forty days after Washburn’s arrest and 32 years after Michella’s murder, Barbara got a call from the Chief of Police telling her that they’d apprehended the man they felt was responsible. Through the familial DNA search, they had come up with 2 brothers as possible suspects. On June 4, 2018, Tacoma detectives began monitoring one of those brothers, Gary Hartman.
On June 5 Hartman went to his job at Western State Hospital and then to a nearby restaurant for breakfast with a coworker. He used a napkin that they were able to obtain and test getting a match to the 66-year-old. Gary Hartman was a nurse in a psychiatric hospital with no record, nothing indicating the monster that he was. He was arrested and bail was set at 5 million dollars, he is still awaiting trial.
Parabon Labs
Parabon Labs started Snapshot Genetic Genealogy testing in 2018. As of May 2019, they have helped solve 55 cases and growing.
Resources
- Murder of Michella Welch — Parabon Snapshot Case Summary
- Listen to the Dateline NBC Episode – Evil Was Watching on iHeartRadio
- M. Welch
- Jenny Bastian