by Ann Rule
Seattle Homicide Detective Hank Gruber shook his head in disbelief when Clarence Williams insisted he wasn’t the man in the 7-Eleven photos, even though Gruber glanced from the security camera shots of the man himself—and found them identical.
Mike Tando was a young homicide detective in 1978 when he was assigned to the murder investigation in the death of fifteen-year-old Sara Beth Lundquist. Although he worked around the clock for days, talking to Sara Beth’s friends and relatives and dozens of tipsters, the identity of her killer remained obscure. When it was finally solved, Tando had reached retirement age.
Sara Beth Lundquist got off a bus at midnight and walked into the darkness—forever. Although it took three decades to find her killer in a case long gone cold, she was never forgotten—not by her family, her friends, nor Seattle detectives.
Mike Tando points to blood stains on the interior door of the ladies’ room of a deserted gas station. Sara Beth was found inside, stabbed repeatedly.
A construction worker, remodeling the service station, could not open the white door on the right. Sara Beth’s body was blocking the door.
Seattle Police detectives, patrol officers, and crime lab experts gather evidence of an inexplicable murder on a Sunday morning in July 1978. It was one of the saddest cases any of them had ever worked on.
Seattle Police Detective Mike Ciesynski was just out of high school in Chicago when Sara Beth died in 1978. Now, he
is the Cold Case Unit of the department. At her brother’s request, Ciesynski vowed to solve Sara Beth’s murder. And he did.
Clarence Edward Williams, now sixty-four, agreed to talk to Mike Ciesynski in a Minnesota prison. But his mind was full of denial. Would he ever tell the Cold Case detective enough to tie up loose ends in
two murders?
NOT SAFE AT HOME
An air view of Third Street in Marysville, Washington, a “safe” small town. Traia Carr lived in house A, a widowed mother lived in house B with her teenage children, and building C was a washhouse that held shocking evidence of murder.
Marysville Detective Jarl Gunderson, who knew almost everyone in town, searched Traia Carr’s house and yard. He found that the flowers beneath her windows were crushed by someone who had watched her and stalked her. Traia was afraid, but she had no idea
who the male stalking her was.
Traia Carr’s phone line had been cut, her jewelry was stolen, and she herself had vanished into the night of July Fourth as fireworks blazed in the sky. It would be a long time before anyone knew where she was.
Snohomish County Sheriff’s Detective Bruce Whitman, and his partner, Detective Dick Taylor, came to Marysville on another case, but returned to join Jarl Gunderson in the search for Traia Carr.
Dick Taylor was one of the three detective who were determined to find out who had been stalking Traia Carr. They worked tirelessly to find her. Had she been abducted by an obsessed “admirer,” her fiancé, or had she left home suddenly for her own reasons?
Detective Bruce Whitman stands in a dense forest on an Indian reservation. At last, they had physical evidence leading to Traia Carr.
Third Street in Marysville, Washington. Ironically, in the end, all the answers to the disappearance of Traia Carr could be found along this street in a family neighborhood.
* Some names have been changed. The first time they appear, they are marked with an asterisk.
