Morbid: Episode 470: The Murder of Mandy Stavik

You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

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Hey weirdos, I'm Elena.

I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid.

It's Morbid.

This is Morbid at night.

Yeah it is.

Morbid in the evening.

Oh my god, it's so funny because I went to, I was gonna start singing with you and then

I was like, will she say at night or evening?

And then as you were about to say it, I was like, she's gonna say evening.

See you knew.

I didn't join in.

You knew.

And then trust my goot.

You just knew.

No.

That's because we're intuitive witches.

We are, obviously.

We had a crazy tarot card reading.

Yeah we did.

It was insane.

It solidified every single thing that I have been feeling and that I know you've been feeling.

And I cried at the end.

Clarity.

I cried because I was so happy and I wanted to just like, I just wanted to cry.

You did.

You cried.

She burst right into tears and she had good reason because that reading was wild.

It was crazy.

And the fact that it ended with like a tarot card that's like really super special to me

is even crazier.

It was a really cool one.

I've never really had a tarot card reading resonate as much as, I've had them resonate.

Yeah.

But like never to the degree that this one did.

No.

This one was knocking my socks off because we went in there saying, I'm not gonna ask

a specific question out loud.

I know what question I had in my head.

Like I'm gonna think it in my head the whole time.

Yeah I was thinking in my head but I just said, you know what, just give me a general

one.

And I feel like she was, at first she was like, I'm just gonna fly off the seat of my pants

here.

You're giving me literally nothing.

I was like, fuck you guys.

And then she started and she was like, just hit right on it.

Boom.

Nail on the head.

And like he came with us and his reading was perfect and like all of ours intertwined in

a weird way.

Yeah.

Dave, me and Drew all of us intertwined.

It was great.

It was really well.

But.

So that was happy.

So that's a thing.

Yeah.

You know?

That was a happy thing.

This is a sad thing.

It's so tough to like transition when we're like, hey guys, we're like, hey let me tell

you about my day.

And it's like, let me get into this really sad thing.

Yeah, you know.

But you know what?

You just gotta make the transition happen, I suppose.

Yeah.

A sagoo, if you will.

A sagoo.

Isn't that an end?

That's why we drink?

Ism.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

I think that's a M and Christine ism.

Oh, M and Christine.

Sagu.

Sagu.

I love you guys.

I love that.

I love it.

I love that.

And I love them.

I love that.

And I love all of them.

And it's Gemini season.

I love them.

You must live under a rock and you should move that rock and go listen to them.

Yeah, go listen to them.

They're great.

Honestly.

But yeah, I do have a really sad case for us today.

But at the same time, the way that this case turns around is crazy and it like feels very

fateful.

Okay.

In my opinion.

All right.

So we're going to start off in late November of 1989 when college freshman Mandy Stavik

was returning to her hometown in Acme, Washington.

She was going to celebrate the holidays with her family.

And on the afternoon of the 24th, obviously, which was back then, back then.

Back then.

In that year.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, Mandy told her family that she was going for a run.

But she never returned that evening.

Her mom became very, very concerned and called around to her friends, but literally none

of those friends had heard from her.

And when she still hadn't returned to the next morning, panic set in entirely.

And the search began.

So who is Mandy Stavik?

Amanda Mandy, Teresa Stavik was born on April 16th, 1971 in Anchorage, Alaska, which is

that's just like the most fun fact ever.

Also, if you look her up, gorgeous, that she has a smile.

Yes.

Like I immediately just went, because it just like, it's like one of the smiles that

like just hit you.

And she just seems like, and like, I'm obviously going to get into it.

She just seems like a cool chick and somebody who not only would have, but desperately wanted

to leave her mark on this world.

And she did.

Yeah.

But I wish she had more of an opportunity to be in this world longer because she would

have done.

Absolutely incredible things like truly.

But yeah, she was born in Anchorage, Alaska.

Out of four children born to parents Glenn and Mary Stavik.

The Stavik family wasn't a dysfunctional family at all.

But by the time Mandy was born, Glenn and Mary's marriage was kind of showing signs

of strain and they decided to divorce three years later in 1974.

It really sadly seemed to be one unfortunate event in their family that kind of set off

a series of unfortunate events.

Okay.

I feel like everybody kind of knows that family that has gone through so much more than their

fair share of what they should have to.

There's always that one family that you're like, why?

And it's always the best people.

I was just going to say, and it's always the people that you're like, come on, no, this

family's great.

Why are they like shouldering all this shit?

And every time they go through something, you're like, have they not gone through enough?

Yeah.

When does it end?

Oh my God.

Another thing, the Stavik seemed to be one of those families because just one year after

Glenn and Mary divorced, Mandy's 16-year-old brother Brent, he was shot multiple times in

the head and the chest in Anchorage by an unknown killer while he was out bow hunting.

Glenn, the father, told reporters in 1989, as far as the circumstances, they've never

found any clues or any reason for the murder.

Wow.

Never, never found out what had happened.

This family go through all of this.

I have no idea because a few years later, like a number of years later in 1988, Mandy's

stepbrother Spencer also died in an accidental drowning case.

What?

Yup.

Oh, this family.

It's, it's a lot.

So I think I don't know, I don't know really like what sparked the decision, but part of

me wonders if Mandy's mom was like, you know what, I think we need a new area, a fresh

start.

And that's when they decided in 1983 to move the family from Alaska to Acme, Washington.

And that's how they ended up there.

Now other than the tragedy and some of the disruptions like the move and the divorce,

Mandy's childhood was pretty typical, like aside from all the fucking craziness.

She was described as being smart, confident, and driven in ways that were just like not

common among children.

Her mom said of her, Mandy has always liked to be involved in people's lives, even as

a tiny baby, whatever was going on, there she was, which I was like, oh, and she also

said that Mandy was not ever shy about one, knowing what she wanted and two, setting out

to get it.

She told reporters, Mandy would never need to take an assertiveness training class.

And she said that level of self-confidence sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, but

more often than not, it got Mandy the respect and affection of those around her, not only

in school, but in her community.

It's upsetting that it even rubbed some people the wrong way.

A confident woman will always rub some people the wrong way.

And it bums me out because it's like, that's why people dull their shit.

Oh, absolutely.

And it's usually for other people.

Don't dull your shit for other people.

People don't like it.

That's honestly their own shit that they're going to have to deal with.

Don't dim your shit.

Don't dim your sparkle.

Don't dim your shit.

Because honestly, if you're a confident person and it pisses people around you off or people

who don't know you off, that's fine.

That's their problem.

That's fine.

Keep on.

Keep it on.

What other people think of me is none of my fucking business.

Exactly.

So never let it dull you.

I've seen that happen to people and it bums me out.

100%.

And you know what?

I don't think Mandy was one of those people.

Yeah.

I think she was like, I am who I am.

It sounds like she was that.

Yeah.

It sounds like she was like that.

That's just like, yeah.

This is who I am and I'm confident how I am and deal with it.

I don't think she had time for people that didn't like her.

I think she was just like, okay, they don't like.

And neither do you.

And I don't think there was a lot of people that didn't like her, you know?

Yeah.

Neither do you, friends.

You don't have time for that.

You don't have time for that.

What are you?

What's your tattoo?

What's my, it's only forever, not long at all.

So we only got so much time here.

It's so funny because I remember when you got that, I was like, I don't know if I get it.

The older I get, the more it resonates.

Yeah.

It really is.

Because I got it for that reason that it's like, yeah, it feels like you have forever,

but that's not long at all, no matter what.

We don't know how long forever is for any of us.

Immeasurable.

So make sure you're doing it your way.

Exactly.

Anyone else, but like, do it your way.

Yeah.

Be confident.

Be happy.

Take a page out of Mandy's book.

That's right.

Because listen, by the time she reached high school, her tenacity and her determination

and her just like sense of self was paying off.

She became a star on not one sport team, multiple sports teams.

Hell yeah.

She played varsity basketball, softball.

She did track.

She did cross country.

I checked.

Those are different, different seasons.

And she did cheerleading because at first I was like, she did track and cross country,

cross country.

Aren't those the same?

And then I was like, yeah, those are, those are different, different.

But honestly, I didn't know that until very recently, fun fact.

And so she played all of those sports, but she actually had trouble with basketball when

she first started and the first time she tried out for the high school team, she actually

didn't make it.

Oh, wow.

And her mother said that she was absolutely devastated by that, but she spent a ton of

time working on it.

She went to a basketball camp that summer to, to hone in on her skills, you know, and

sure enough, made the fucking team the next year.

That's my girl, Mandy.

That is my girl.

Outside of school too, she was an avid swimmer and she eventually trained as a lifeguard

at the Wacom family YMCA and also worked there part time as a day care instructor.

Damn.

This is what I mean.

She was really doing it.

She was really doing it.

And when I say like, I can't imagine what she would have offered the world.

That's the thing.

I'm like, she was taking even as much time as she was here.

She was already taking full advantage of this world.

Making the most of it.

She was already being like, I'm going to do all the things.

Hell yeah.

I have to say, like getting to know her and finding this story, I really, it was inspiring.

Like I was like, yeah, I need to do shit.

Like I need to try shit.

I don't know how long we're here for like it really was forever, not long at all.

It's such a, it's such a good quote.

Yeah.

Now the thing is she also wasn't just good when it came to sports.

She also worked really hard in school and she made honor roll almost every single semester.

By the time she had made it to her senior year, she had decided actually that she really

wanted to become a commercial pilot.

Oh, okay.

She was like, yeah, I just want to fly planes.

I just want to fly through the sky.

That's just what I want to do.

I've said it before.

I'll say it again.

Pilots fucking amaze me.

Truly.

You're flying, you're flying a giant thing through the sky.

I'm going on a flight tomorrow.

So I don't like, I don't want to like think about it too much.

No, it's amazing.

It's incredible.

It's a, it's awesome.

I love pilots.

Yeah.

I love pilots.

Planes are amazing.

It's an amazing thing.

Planes, pilots, all of that, aviation, aviation as a whole is a really wild, miraculous thing.

I was trying to find another key.

I was like, planes, pilots, pizzazz.

Pizzazz, precipitation.

Even.

Yeah, there's pretty amazing.

A chance of that.

Yeah, why not?

A chance of precipitation.

So yeah, she wanted to be a pilot and that was her full intention when she enrolled at

Central Washington University in the fall of 89.

However, she changed her mind after doing a couple of flights when she was like, you

know what, I actually don't think flying is my favorite thing in the world.

Okay.

She tried it.

Exactly.

She had a hard switch and changed her major to nutrition.

Damn.

Yeah.

That is hard switch.

Just a hard switch.

Yeah.

But I feel like it's, she's so multifaceted.

I was going to say, she seems very like just, she likes a lot of things and she's good

at a lot of things.

Yeah.

Like she can play any sport.

Hit it all.

She can do great in school every semester.

She can volunteer at the YMCA.

She can also be a daycare worker.

Try her hand at flying a plane.

I don't know about that.

How about nutrition?

Sure, I'll do that too.

I mean, how many among us will trash it?

Not a lot of people.

A lot of people don't.

It takes me.

It's hard for me to trash it.

So that's like really impressive.

Exactly.

And her mom said it wasn't really the field of study that like mattered the most.

But that quote, what Mandy wanted more than anything else was to leave the world a little

bit better of a place.

That hurts my heart.

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So on November 22, 1989, Mandy and her roommate from school, Yoko, they caught a ride with

Mandy's ex-boyfriend Rick Sender.

I think it sounded like they were still on pretty good terms.

So he was driving them home, basically, back to Mandy's mom's house in Acme, Washington

for Thanksgiving break or, I don't know, winter break, I dropped out of college.

I feel like I don't know what break that is, exactly.

But once Mandy and Yoko had settled in at Mandy's house, they headed to the gym at

Mount Baker High School so that Mandy could meet up with some of her friends, some of

her old teammates, and just kind of like, you know, you're home for Thanksgiving.

That's the first thing you do is you want to see your old friends.

So like I said, next day was Thanksgiving, and Mandy and Yoko spent the whole day with

Mandy's family, never left the house, just had a nice Thanksgiving.

Now the next day, Friday, November 24, Mandy and Yoko had a lazy morning, hung around the

house, of course they had some leftovers, we love Thanksgiving leftovers.

They went for a short walk, and later that night they had plans to go to a movie with

a couple of Mandy's friends from high school.

Brad Gorham and his friend Tom Bass.

Now Mandy knew that she wasn't going to have a lot of time later in the day since she had

those plans, so she decided to go for a run a little earlier than she usually would have.

Like she was a runner, she loved to run.

Now so she headed out a little after 2 p.m. that afternoon.

From what I saw the most, it was anywhere between 2 and 3 that afternoon.

And she took the family dog with her, and the family dog was Kira.

Which is a great safety precaution.

Totally, 100%.

So Mandy and Kira headed west on Strand Road, which was the same way that Mandy always started

her run.

She had literally been doing this exact route since high school.

Now about an hour later, Mandy's brother Lee and his friends saw her running back up Strand

Road just about 5 or 10 minutes away from their house, so it kind of seemed like she

was finishing up the run.

But when Lee got home just a little bit after that, there was no sign of Mandy and no sign

of Kira.

And he was like, that was weird.

I just saw her, kind of thought she'd be home by now.

But a few hours passed and at that point, Mandy's mom started to panic.

She was like, something's not right here, she would not do this.

And Lee had seen his sister, like I said, pretty much approaching the house at the end

of her run, so it was weird that it had now been hours.

And this was not something she did, like I was just saying.

She would not just disappear for a long period of time and not check in with anybody.

And even weirder, because like I said, she'd specifically gone out on this run early so

that she had time for her movie plans that night.

Yeah, so this doesn't make sense.

Nothing is adding up here.

So Mary, she doesn't want to jump to conclusion, she's not going to like go straight to the

police and be like, she's missing.

So she starts to call around to Mandy's friends, but none of them had seen her or even heard

from her that day.

So since she wasn't having any luck with that, she and Lee went out in her car to retrace

Mandy's usual route, but they came back a short time later because they still, there

was no sign of Mandy.

And then something I can't even imagine, like being in this situation and then this happens,

haunting, absolutely haunting, Kira returned back to the house.

Oh, I hate that.

But she was not with Mandy, obviously.

And she was looking, she didn't look herself, like she looked afraid of something, something

had affected her.

She was described as cowering and she had her, this is a quote, tail tucked and with

river silt covering part of her hind quarters, which they were like, what, like why is she

dirty and what is she like?

Something bad happened.

She's scared.

Oh no, this is horrifying.

It's terrifying.

So at this point now, Mary is freaking out.

And at that point, Brad Gorham, Tom Bass and Rick Zender had all shown up at the house

to pick up Mandy and Yoko for their movie night.

Yeah.

They had no idea.

Yeah.

So they all headed out one more time to retrace her route, check a couple other places, still

no sign of her.

So Mary did end up calling the police a little after 5.30pm that night to report her daughter

missing.

Oh.

Like, I can't imagine being in those shoes and I hope I never, ever, ever have to be.

Oh, I can't even fathom.

But like to report your kid missing, like, I can't.

No, I can't even put myself there.

It's horrible.

You just want to hug these parents so much.

And it's just like, it's, I feel like this, this story in particular is such a good example

of how fast things can change.

Oh yeah.

She had plans that night.

She was supposed to go back to school.

She was just home for a little bit.

Yep.

She went out for a run that she had always gone on.

Yep.

And then never came back.

It's like a blink.

And everything is different.

It's so scary.

Yeah, it's horrifying.

But the thing is, luckily, especially for it being the time that it was, luckily the

sheriff's department actually took Mary's concerns seriously.

And they weren't like, oh, she's just a runaway.

Yeah, because that's infuriating.

And they immediately engaged Wattcombe County search and rescue and Allen Pratt, who worked

with them.

And Allen Pratt was actually known as a human tracker.

He had like a rep for finding people.

Imagine being known for that.

That would be an honor.

Yeah.

So he got information from the family about the usual running route and he went out to

track Mandy's movements.

And he did this until he came up to a spot about a quarter mile away from the Stavik

house.

And he noticed, quote, a disturbed spot on the shoulder of the road.

And as far as he could tell, quote, there were several footfalls, which looked like

somebody had been walking or wrestling around or something.

I hate this.

This was unsettling.

Yeah.

I was just going to say, I feel very unsettled by this.

Yeah.

And he also noticed in this area, the grass along the side of the road seemed to have

also been disturbed.

And there was good amount of river silt discovered in the ditch by the grass, just like the kind

that was on Kira's bum.

Oh, no.

Based on the scene and the fact that obviously there's still no word from Mandy by the next

day, the police changed the status of the case from missing person to presumed abducted,

which that must have been like a devastating blow to her family.

So by Saturday afternoon, there was a massive search for Mandy.

It seemed like the entire town of Acme had joined the search.

There were people on foot, people looking out on horseback.

There were search and rescue teams flying above the area.

People were in planes, helicopters, like you name the mode of transportation or anything.

People were there.

They're looking.

Looking.

She was very well known in this community.

She was very liked and she had only graduated from high school six months earlier.

So people were very concerned for her safety.

She's a child.

She's so young.

She's so young.

Yeah.

Her high school principal, Robert Moore, told reporters this is not the type of gal who

just takes off on her own.

No.

And I don't mean she's a child.

She's a young woman, but it's like she's so young.

But she is so young, you know?

And then also district superintendent, William Bolton added, this is a very level-headed

kid.

Something here is not right.

And that's the thing.

She was involved in her community.

Everybody knew her.

This wasn't one of those that you can even think like maybe she did right away.

Absolutely not.

There was no doubt in anybody's mind something terrible happened.

And it's the fact that she went earlier, too, to make her plans that evening.

It's like, that's, come on.

And like her roommate from school is at the house with her, like if she wasn't, you know

what I mean?

She wasn't taken off.

No.

So her disappearance, it was extra disheartening for the small community of Wacom County because

just four months earlier, 23-year-old Diane Reeves had also disappeared without a trace.

Reeves found her car on a forest service road about 14 miles away, but no sign of Diane.

Oh, geez.

And before Mandy went missing, Diane was the latest woman in a string of four or five disappearances

or murders that occurred in the area.

So now residents were seriously concerned for their safety and their children's safety.

One resident named Donna Bolton, she commented, you just don't think of something happening

like that around here.

And Mary Stavik agreed, saying, this is just the kind of quiet rural neighborhood where

any of us would never think that our children wouldn't be safe.

That's always the worst.

Like it's a quiet town where nothing ever happens, it's like you just can't predict

it.

No.

And I feel like these predators know that it's a quiet town where nothing ever happens.

So they're not going to be suspected in this.

People aren't being extra vigilant because they don't have to be.

Exactly.

As we know, Mandy had gone missing Friday afternoon, full blown search by Saturday, like all day

Saturday.

And by Saturday night, the search upgraded to what Whatcom County Sheriff Larry Mount

described as an all out criminal investigation of a presumed abduction.

Oh, geez.

Now, in addition to the local police, the friends and the family that we're searching

and search and rescue teams, the search efforts would eventually include a mounted Whatcom

County Sheriff's Posse, a U.S. Customs Airplane, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and several scent

dogs.

Wow.

Like they were looking for her.

But by Sunday, they still had not found Mandy, still had not found even a clue as to where

she could be.

My God, that's awful.

And the thing was, poor parents.

Oh my God, I can't imagine.

And searchers had combed through like the heavily wooded area near her running route.

But by Sunday, the Sheriff's Department announced unless new developments occur, no further

ground searches planned because they had basically searched all the areas nearby.

And instead, investigators at that point wanted to turn their attention to the Nooksack River.

One team would be dragging the river and the other would search around the perimeter.

So while search teams worked the river, the Stavik family turned to the media to plead,

to make a plea to Mandy's kidnappers.

Mandy told everyone tuning in, Mandy is a real special person.

She's one of these people who wants to leave the world a better place.

The world needs her.

Whoever's got her, don't hurt her.

We need her back.

She's got things to do.

Oh.

Like I've read that a million times and I have chills still.

I was just going to say goose bumps.

Just like, please don't hurt her.

We need her.

She's got things to do.

Oh, that just keeps, that gives me full chills.

It's just, it's gut wrenching.

So with the days passing and literally not a single update in the case, the community

was feeling not only fear, but helpless.

They want to help this family and they can't, they're unable to.

So they decided to direct their energy because they could help, you know, toward collecting

donations for a reward fund.

And in less than 24 hours, less than a full day, they had raised over $8,000 and it was

comprised mostly of donations ranging from $10 to $50.

Wow.

So that's how many people were willing to put in some cash.

That tells you something.

And the funds organizer, Jim Kyle, wanted Mandy's family to know that they were supported

and wanted the world to know that this community was not going to let something like this happen

without putting up a big fight.

Damn.

So even with the community backing her though, Mary was starting to lose hope at this point

as the investigation's going on.

And on the second full day of searching, she told reporters, earlier today, I felt really

strongly that she was okay.

Now I don't know.

Oh.

Ruins you.

Yeah.

Ruins you.

That just ruined me.

Now, any kind of hope that anybody had was unfortunately shattered.

On the morning of November 27th, Mandy's body was discovered on a sandbar in the Nooksack

River.

It was about three and a half miles from where she was last seen jogging.

Wow.

Which was very, very close to her home.

Yeah.

She was found completely nude, which is awful.

And Sheriff Mount told reporters that the cause of death was not immediately apparent

and added that, quote, there were few marks on her body.

So the case immediately was labeled a homicide, obviously, because of the circumstances leading

up to this discovery and now because of the state that she's been found in.

So the Sheriff let the press and the community know as much and said, we know the beginning

and we know the end.

We do not know the middle at all.

So from the-

That's chilling.

It really is.

This whole case is just so chilling.

So from the moment her body was found, the investigators were at a pretty big disadvantage.

It was very clear that Mandy hadn't been killed where she was found, so they still had no

crime scene.

And worse, there had been a lot of heavy rainfall in the days since she'd gone missing.

So there was a pretty good chance that critical evidence was gone at that point.

That's so frustrating.

Washed away.

It's awful.

So knowing that they were at this disadvantage and given the nature of this case and the

other recent disappearances, the Sheriff's office called in the local office of the FBI,

which I think was the smartest move they could have made.

Yeah, absolutely.

The FBI's assistance in evaluating whether Mandy's death was related to these other

crimes and if so, to help develop a profile for the person responsible.

So while the Sheriff's office coordinated with other agencies, deputies got to work

tracking the only lead that they had so far, which was a suspicious vehicle spotted by

several residents around the time that Mandy had disappeared.

According to the Sheriff, the deputies were looking for a black or brown full-size Chevrolet

or Ford style pickup with a matching canopy and a gold stripe.

So that's a good description.

I was going to say, that's really detailed, so at least there's that.

You just think whenever they have to give the description of a vehicle, you're just

like, what happened?

You know what I mean?

Like when it gets that far, you're just like, I hate that somebody had to remember that

vehicle.

Exactly.

Because what did they see?

Exactly.

It just gives me chills.

How many cars do you pass throughout the day and you think absolutely nothing?

I always think that.

But then you pass one and you're like, I should remember that.

That's exactly because something happens that you're like, I need to remember that.

And I couldn't tell you one car I passed by today.

Oh my God, no, we were driving.

We didn't name it.

Except the purple truck.

Except the purple truck.

That was because it was purple.

Exactly.

But I couldn't tell you anything else about it.

No.

And that's the thing.

I think about that all the time, especially after I've just gotten done with a case.

I'm like, I need to be more vigilant.

I know.

It's so hard.

It is.

Now, so the day after Mandy's body was found, the autopsy was conducted by Whatcom County

medical examiner, Dr. Gary Goldfogel, I think is how you say it.

One of the first things he noted was that Mandy's body appeared to be covered in what

was quoted as long scratches on her legs, buttocks, and arms.

And there were more scratches on the front of the body than there were on the back.

So because a lot of the scratches were parallel, it indicated that Mandy was alive when she'd

gotten them to the medical examiner.

And it also indicated that she'd been in motion when she got these scratches because they

were parallel.

Yeah.

And the medical examiner noted that they were, quote, consistent with someone running

through brush, such as the blackberry bushes found along the riverbank where Mandy's body

was found.

Oh, God.

So she was running?

Yes.

Her body showed no signs of defensive wounds, no evidence of strangulation, and there was

no other DNA or evidence found underneath her fingernails.

There was, however, a significant blunt force trauma injury to her forehead.

And the doctor believed that it would have been, that, excuse me, that it would have

caused a very significant concussion.

But he wasn't able to say whether or not Mandy ever lost consciousness.

So ultimately, he identified the cause of death as a freshwater drowning.

Oh, my God.

Because she had been knocked unconscious and then thrown in the river.

Oh, yeah.

And noted that the time of death was between 3.30 and 4.30 p.m.

It's awful.

So during the autopsy, this is a bit graphic, and I just want to let you guys know that he

did find Seaman and Mandy's body and, quote, based on the sperm count, concluded sexual

intercourse had occurred no more than 12 hours before her death.

Oh, my God.

She had been raped.

And given the circumstances, he was comfortable saying that's what had happened.

It was a rape.

And so the Seaman sample was collected and sent to the state's FBI office and the

Washington State Patrol Crime Lab for analysis, where a DNA profile would later be created.

But remember, this is barely the 90s at this point.

Yeah.

DNA had not come that far yet.

Yeah.

And that's great.

But it's not where it is now.

Not at all.

It's not like they ran it through some system and it was like, ding, ding, ding, here's

your guy.

That's the thing.

It's like, yes.

It's great that they have the DNA.

It's great that they know what it is at this point, but like what to do with it is kind

of a different story at this point.

Exactly.

So now they knew the cause and the approximate time of death.

But other than that, again, investigators are stumped and not finding much of anything

else.

They spent hours combing the banks of the Nooksack and the surrounding area, but they did not

find anything that indicated where Mandy was kidnapped from, where she was attacked, or

who had taken her.

And the deputy coroner, no, sorry, the deputy, like an officer, Tim Ortner said of the person

who did this, quote, he either has to know the area or he's the luckiest son of a son

of a bitch in the world.

Yeah.

I'm going to go with knows the area.

I'm not going to tell you, okay?

So while investigators struggled to find who did this, the community in Whatcom County

continued just reeling from the news of this, this latest murder.

One resident told reporters, it's so damn frustrating.

I've wondered how many times I've talked to him, meaning the killer this weekend.

I look around and wonder.

And high school student Pete Stewart told reporters, it makes you think twice now before

you go out walking alone.

It makes you think what a crazy world it is out there.

And a lot of residents in this town started locking doors that they'd never bothered with

in the past.

This was a town where you were safe enough to not have to lock your back door, your front

door, not even think about it.

Something like this changes everything.

Yeah.

And people were going out and buying guns for protection, like arming themselves because

they were scared.

Yeah.

Because remember, she's not the first girl to go missing.

Yeah.

This seems to have been a pattern around there.

Exactly.

Which is interesting because I will tell you that they're actually not related.

Oh, wow.

Or they don't, like, they don't believe it's related.

They don't believe it's related.

Two days later, after a report of a young woman being nearly abducted elsewhere in the

county, another one, public fear prompted the sheriff's office to make a public statement

regarding the risk of human predators.

Speaking to reporters, the criminal deputy Dean Sandell, I think is how you say his name.

He said, the citizens of Whatcom County should be aware of the hazards and risks involved

in their daily lives.

The sheriff's office recommends that they try to avoid situations that put them in a

state of high risk.

These situations include walking or jogging alone, especially late at night and in the

unlit areas.

Which is true, but Mandy went for a jog in the middle of the afternoon with her dog.

I was just going to say, like, all that is absolutely true.

She wasn't alone.

She wasn't a well-lit area.

She was in her own fucking neighborhood.

There was literally no, there was nothing that would have made her think that she would

be even slightly unsafe.

No, nothing.

The time, the having a dog or lightness of day, bringing a dog with her, having people

know where she was going, she did everything right.

Everything.

That's the thing.

And sometimes you, that's what happens.

We've done these stories a million times where you do everything right and still.

And so the sheriff's office also reminded residents to be vigilant in their awareness

of strangers in the area.

And they specifically noted, including men who are reportedly watching young women or

children, especially near schools and bus stops.

So this community was like in crisis.

Huge edge.

Like I can't imagine living in this community at this time.

Yeah.

I wouldn't, I don't think I would leave my fucking house.

No.

And now by December, tips were coming in nonstop about Mandy's murder.

The detectives were actually said to be receiving almost 30 calls an hour while they were on

the job and outside of work.

They were getting tips called into their personal lines, like their own lines, which it's like,

maybe don't do that.

Yeah.

Don't do that.

But unfortunately, these tips were not very helpful in helping investigators narrow down

the pool of potential suspects.

And at that point, the pool included just about anybody in town that they hadn't ruled

out yet.

That's not great.

Rough.

Now the best lead investigators had was a description of a man seen in the area around

the time that Mandy did go missing.

And the press described this man as the pudgy faced man.

Wow.

He was described as being white in his early to mid 30s quote with a pudgy face and cheeks,

dark hair and a mustache and three to four days growth of beard.

So that's a pretty good description.

Yeah.

It's not nice to call people pudgy faced, but if this is a murder or whatever, then call

them whatever you want.

Exactly.

So based on the information from the public who had seen this guy driving a 1970s light

brown station wagon in the area.

So kind of similar.

So they were able to put together a composite sketch and they circulated that in the news

and around the community and also on AP wire, but it failed to produce any viable leaves.

A composite sketch.

Wow.

Now on December 3rd, 1989, Mandy was laid to rest at St. Joseph Mission Cemetery and

Clipper, which is a smaller town close by to Acme Acme.

And the funeral and burial costs were actually paid from a fund that was set up by the administration

of the Acme Elementary School.

So this community really banded around each other.

Yeah.

And later that day, they had a memorial service at the high school, Mandy went to Mount Baker

High and nearly a thousand people attended to pay their respects.

That I mean, this all tells you something about her.

It does.

It gives me chills.

As I say, and this family.

Yeah.

And this community.

Like even though they are in crisis right now, like I would want to be a part of this

community if I was in crisis, you know, it seemed like you could lean on your neighbor.

Yeah.

Seriously.

And you would need to at this point.

Yeah.

So any hope that the New Year would bring a break in the case quickly faded, the New

Year came and went.

Investigators were still trying, but they were coming up with nothing.

Now in late January, 1990, there was testing done on a pair of sweatpants that had been

discovered during the initial search.

The pants were believed to be Mandy's, but they weren't even completely sure that they

were.

But in a statement to the press, a spokesperson for the FBI crime lab told the reporters,

nothing that we received from this is certain.

So this is like wall after wall after wall.

And that's that.

And it's like people are getting hope because they're like, okay, they're like, unfortunately

was semen found.

We can test that.

We don't have much to do with it.

Okay.

So what pants might be hers?

Maybe that will help us like come up with a lead.

Okay.

We have a composite sketch and it's just like, nope.

That's a thing.

It's not for lack of them doing a great job here for them finding things and actually

like really moving this forward.

It's just, it seems like every time they get something, they just hit this massive wall.

It's so frustrating.

That's the thing.

And sadly, none of Mandy's other clothing was ever discovered.

So they couldn't do testing on it.

And neither was the Walkman that she had taken with her on her job.

So investigators, they were also staying silent on whether Mandy had been sexually assaulted

like to the press.

They didn't want this getting out.

They told the press at this time, not information is only known to us and the perpetrator of

the crime.

I think what they were trying to do was keep things close to the chest and kind of suggest

that there were certain aspects about this crime that were going to be able to be used

to identify somebody during questioning.

And they weren't going to let that out.

Absolutely.

But despite their best efforts up to that point, they had really only succeeded in ruling

people out.

They didn't really have suspects.

They were just ruling people out left and right.

And that's going to take a while.

And the composite sketch of the Pudgy Face Band had still not produced any concrete leads.

Investigators weren't finding anybody who matched that description.

And I mean, I would assume that they probably shaved their beard at that point.

Yeah, I would think so.

Or grew it even longer.

Yeah.

And in the weeks that followed, the new year, a bunch of investigators ended up being taken

off the case, which was indicating that the case was getting cold.

But by March, the tide actually seemed to be turning in favor of the investigators when

the sheriff's office announced that they had identified a person of interest in Mandy's

case.

Ooh.

Sheriff Larry Mount told the press there's one, excuse me, there's more than one suspect.

We're just waiting on lab results to help us decide whether we've been going in the

right direction or the wrong direction.

And what he was referring to were hair and fiber samples collected from Mandy's body

that they were hoping to tie to a suspect.

And they had also been collecting blood and saliva samples from suspects over the course

of the investigation, but those, again, were more useful in ruling people out than they

were in helping.

Yeah, than actually identifying someone.

So as the weeks passed and the lab results slowly came back from the crime labs, the

sheriff's investigators actually seemed further away still further away than they ever were

in the first place.

And the announcement of a person of interest proved to be one of the last encouraging leads

that investigators had in the hunt for Mandy's killer.

So in March, 1992, two years after the sheriff's office had made that announcement, that person

of interest was suing the county, saying sheriff's deputies duped, defamed and mistreated him.

Whoa.

So according to Paul Malick, who was that person of interest who lived on Strand Road

at the time of Mandy's disappearance, sheriff's deputies illegally arrested him and forcibly

took hair and saliva samples from him.

And he said it was while six deputies held him down in the county jail.

He also claimed they never advised him of his rights.

They never allowed him to speak with his lawyer.

They never even showed him the search warrant that allowed them to take the samples.

And he said actually that he had gone to the police voluntarily thinking that he was one

of the last people to see Mandy alive on the day she went missing.

Like he's thinking he's going to help.

Yeah.

And then this is what happens.

I think they may have been getting desperate if what he says is true.

Yeah.

And I wasn't there, so I can't say.

Yeah, that's not great if that's what happened.

Probably not.

That's not how you want to go about an investigation because then the community's not going to

trust you.

Yeah.

But he told reporters at first, I never considered I would be a suspect.

I firmly believe that it's only because I live in a dump and I was poor that I became

a suspect who could not clear himself by merely proving where he was and by having a witness

who could say they saw me leaving.

Whoa.

So he was like, I think I was kind of pinpointed here for all the wrong reasons.

Now according to the former sheriff, Larry Mount, who was no longer sheriff when Paul

filed the suit, quote, he was told that Malik initially resisted when deputies tried to

get the samples.

And he also stated that deputies definitely did not use improper force and they were well

within their rights to restrain him if need be.

Okay.

Now, actually, Wacken County Sheriff's Chief Criminal Deputy Dean Sandell agreed and he

said the investigators took samples in the most unobtrusive way we could.

All right.

So I was not there.

So I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know.

And actually it's kind of unclear if the suit was resolved or how or if it ever really

was or if it just got dropped, but it was the last time that Mandy's case received attention

from the press for many, many years.

That's upsetting.

It is.

So as the years passed after Mandy's murder, luckily DNA was coming a long way and had

come a long way in its ability to identify suspects and especially obviously as we know

in cases involving sexual assault.

And so a DNA profile had been developed from the semen collected during Mandy's autopsy

right after, but it wasn't until 2009 when the cold case was reopened that it did become

useful to the investigators.

And actually the scientific advances of DNA profiling were what prompted Detective Kevin

Bohai, I think it's Bohai, to reopen the case.

He was actually now a veteran officer, but he had just joined the department, why couldn't

I say that?

Right before Mandy went missing.

Oh, wow.

Like he was a rookie basically.

Oh, that's crazy.

And he didn't know it yet, but he would become one of the few investigators to see the case

all the way through from beginning to end.

That's cool.

Because don't worry.

There's an end.

There's an end.

Oh, thank goodness.

There's an end and this fucker, thank you for telling us that because it would really

make me angry if this was like still open.

Sometimes I feel like, well, we get to this point, you do have to tell people just like,

this is not still cold.

It's like, I promise.

Stay with us.

Stay with us.

This has a good ending.

Exactly.

So in the decade since the murder occurred, Bohai and other investigators had worked on

a theory as to how the crime unfolded, obviously.

They thought that Mandy's abductor was most likely somebody she knew or at the very least

was familiar with and they theorized that this person had pulled up alongside her while

she was jogging and pointed a gun at her demanding that she get in the vehicle.

They figured once inside the vehicle, this person drove about four miles away into a

wooded area and that's where Mandy was sexually assaulted.

And after that, they figured that she attempted to flee through the woods, which is why her

legs and her arms and everything got all scratched up.

And they believed that the attacker was chasing her through the woods, eventually caught up

to her, hit her in the head, which caused that blunt force trauma to her forehead and

then placed her in the river unconscious, causing her to drown.

Oh my God.

The most random and brutal attack.

That is horrifying.

That is something you see in a horror movie and we always say like, okay, that's a lot.

Yeah.

Well, and just for her family to have that kind of visual in their head, it's just like...

That's a nightmare.

Because I have the visual in my head right now and I can't even imagine.

How could you not?

That's a nightmare.

It's so many people's nightmare.

A real nightmare.

Yeah.

So Bo-A and his team went back to the original file and they re-interviewed every single

person involved and they took DNA samples from anyone living in the area at the time

who would have had any contact with Mandy that fall, anybody that was willing to at that

point.

Yeah.

And eventually, excuse me, eventually the detectives collected more than 80 samples,

which of course, we're all going to have to be processed.

Yeah.

And that's the thing with DNA.

It's like...

It's not like CSI.

It's not like CSI at all.

It's not like forensic files or it's like forensic files.

It's not like CSI in those, you know, like sitcom kind of.

Where the computer just goes like...

Where it's like...

Yeah.

And then it's like ding ding and it just finds someone within five seconds.

It takes time.

It doesn't happen like that.

There's waiting.

So several more years went by and all throughout those years, Bo-A and his team continued to

chase down leads.

And one of those leads would eventually introduce them to an Acne resident named Timothy Bass.

Now at the time of the murder, he actually would have been known to Mandy and her friends.

Actually, if his name sounded slightly familiar to you, that's because his younger brother

Tom Bass was one of the boys that Mandy had plans to go to the movies with the night

she disappeared.

Oh my God.

Yep.

What?

Small town coincidence.

The fuck?

So, but when the detectives went out to talk to Tim, who was the older brother, not the

boy she had plans with, he acted like he wasn't quite sure who Mandy even was at first.

Shut up.

And given his proximity to the case, the detective, Bo-A, found it pretty hard to believe that

he wouldn't remember Mandy.

Yeah, come on.

But still, he was like, let me fucking jog your memory asshole.

And he said, Bass looked up kind of like he was searching his memory.

And then finally said, oh, that was the girl that was found in the river.

What?

Like, Jesus Christ, dude, be a little more fucking callous.

How eloquent.

It's like, yeah, that was the girl from your community that was murdered.

Yeah, that's what you say.

The young, like the girl who just graduated high school.

Like barely.

When out for a run.

Yeah.

Took all precautions.

Like, really?

You're like, oh, that's that girl that they found in the river.

That girl that they found in the river.

I identify with you.

But then on top of all that weirdness, he also said he didn't really know her.

He had no idea where she lived, and he would absolutely not consent to giving any DNA without

a warrant.

Oh.

So like, look more guilty.

Yeah.

Come on.

So, but the thing was, they didn't have any physical evidence linking Bass to the crime.

So it was going to be really fucking difficult to convince a judge to issue a search warrant

for the DNA.

Now, coincidentally, Detective Kevin Boway was not the only one thinking about Tim Bass

in 2013, because yes, we are in 2013 at this point.

Mandy was killed in 1989.

Damn.

Her family went through so much.

Suffered.

So much time.

For how long?

Geez.

And remember, this is their second child that has been killed, and it's unsolved.

So in June of that year, a group of mothers had gathered for a group outing to a local

water park with their kids.

So it was just a, like, community being community.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Now, during a conversation between two of the mothers, Heather Backstrom and Merilee

Anderson, the subject of Mandy's death came up, and they both talked about how surprised

they were that the notorious case was still unsolved.

So they kind of talked about the case for a little bit, you know, like having a discussion.

And Heather Backstrom suddenly blurted out, I know who killed her.

What?

And was surprised when Merilee reported, or excuse me, replied, I do too.

I'm sorry.

What, ladies?

It turned out that they'd both, like they both, they did not know for sure, but they

had an inkling.

But they were pretty sure.

Because they both had really scary and rather unpleasant experiences with one Timothy Bass.

While they were younger and they had each had suspicions for years that he might be

involved in Mandy's disappearance.

Well, I hope they get this fuck.

Years later, they were still freaked out by this guy who was still a part of their community.

So this motherfucker stayed in his fucking community.

Just like whoever earlier was like, I wonder if I've talked to him this weekend.

Yeah, they definitely have.

Now, according to Merilee, Tim Bass had been friends with her now husband while they were

in high school.

And years later, he showed up at her house while she was home alone with her infant

son.

Oh God.

And because he's friends with her husband, she's kind of creepy.

I don't know.

And he said he'd been hunting and he needed to use a phone.

And she's like, you're a friend, like, okay, I don't love this situation.

But you know, so having known him from high school, she led him into the house and pointed

him in the direction of the phone.

But once he went in that direction, she could hear beeping from the phone, which proved that

he hadn't made a call.

What?

Like she knew he hadn't made a call.

So after that, he stalked back through the kitchen and just walked up to her and told

her he'd always been in love with her, that he used to drive past her and her husband's

house and that he wanted to make love to her.

She is home alone with her infant son.

I'm horrified.

And this man just shows up.

And he knew exactly what he was doing.

He didn't have a fucking call to make.

He's there for this.

Yeah.

As we all know, he's already raped somebody at this point.

He is a dangerous motherfucker.

Piece of shit.

Piece of garbage.

She was like, yeah, that's not going to be happening.

And in that moment, realized she'd made a huge mistake letting him into the house and

kept trying to coerce her into her own bedroom.

Oh my God.

And only left when she yelled at him that she was going to call the police if he didn't

get the fuck out of there.

So luckily he got out of there.

Thank goodness.

And probably because he was scared of her calling the police because he knew he had murdered

someone.

He murdered someone.

So Heather Backstrom, the other friend who was talking at the water park that afternoon,

she had a similar experience with Tim Bass only a few months before Mandy was murdered.

Oh God.

According to her, she was only 15 years old at the time.

And she'd gone to a softball game just to like, you know, and she's getting her ride

home from her friend, Dan, who was also driving his friend, 21 year old Tim Bass in the car.

Remember, she's 15.

He's 21.

21.

21 years old.

Holy shit.

So he was 21 when he murdered Mandy.

Jesus.

No, spoiler alert.

Now during the drive, he started aggressively flirting with her.

She said he would talk about my eyes and say they were beautiful.

Then he took a pen out of a cup holder and would start rubbing it along my knees.

What the fuck?

Just being a fucking creeper.

Now luckily Dan being in the car, her friend that was giving her the ride kept things from

escalating any further.

But she never forgot how predatory he seemed.

She went out of her way to avoid him anytime she saw him.

What a disgusting pig.

And that's the thing.

It's like, I feel like sometimes when a woman has an experience like that, like aggressive

flirting and like doing that weird thing to her knees, some people will be like, what's

like, why were you so freaked out?

Oh yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely people that will say that.

Like they minimize it.

Yeah.

But as a woman, you know when you're in a danger situation, like something happens to

your body and you know, there's alarm bells that immediately go off.

And I just wanted to say that because as I was writing it, I was thinking about people

that would be like, I don't know, like that doesn't really sound that scary.

No, she was terrified.

She was 15.

She was 15 years old and this 21 year old is touching her and she doesn't want to be

touched and she doesn't want to be flirted with.

Yeah, come on.

So I just wanted to say that.

Just put it out there.

I'm just putting it out there.

So at the time that each incident occurred, both of them felt powerless, like they were

like, I don't, I don't know if this is even anything to report.

Yeah, like, I hate that.

It sucks.

It's so hard.

And again, you're intimidated by people that are going to be like, what's the big

deal? Exactly.

That's and you start questioning yourself, like, am I overreacting to this?

Yeah, please.

If anything like this ever happens to you, you're not overreacting.

Any reaction you have is not an overreaction.

And that's the thing.

And if you feel like you are, it's OK.

If you feel unsafe, someone crossed your boundary and fuck them up.

Fuck them up.

Fuck them up.

Fuck them up.

So still, in the wake of Mandy's death, those experiences made both of them wonder

whether or not it was Tim Bass who had murdered Mandy.

But they knew that there was no evidence that they probably wouldn't be taken

seriously. And also, if they were wrong, they would do irreparable damage to this

guy's reputation, which probably isn't great, but like it is.

But they were like, I don't know.

What should we do?

Yeah, they didn't feel like they should they could report this.

OK.

But now they felt more empowered and it was kind of like,

in part of the validation of the two of them having a similar experience.

And so they decided to go and report it to the police together,

which like, had they not gone to that water park together that day

and gone to the police about Tim, I don't know if this case would have been solved.

Just two moms at this shit could be a movie.

I was going to say, this is like cinematic.

The way that this is coming together.

It is the way that they're just like sitting there.

I could see like a picture of their kids playing in the background

and they're like having this deep discussion.

Yeah. And they decide to do something about it.

Hell, yeah. And like I said, had they not?

I don't know. I don't know what would have happened.

So I might have lost my place.

No, I didn't.

So the reports from Heather Backstrom and Mary Lee Anderson

suggested to investigators that they were on the right track because they had heard

that name before they'd heard his name.

And now they're hearing it again from two women who had yucky experiences.

But the investigators, their situation with Tim still remained frustrating.

He was not providing any kind of DNA sample

and would not even speak to investigators further.

Shady motherfucker. Shady motherfucker.

So now it's 2015.

We fast forward and two more years have gone by.

Six years after the case was reopened,

Detective Bowie went back to Tim Bass because he's like,

I know I'm on the right track.

Yeah, I just got to get there.

And he was like, you know, maybe in the past couple of years,

he changed his mind.

Maybe I'll get some DNA, but he still would not give DNA.

He went years, years.

Something's wrong. Something is wrong here.

Something's wrong.

So the exchange with Bowie actually did freaked Tim Bass out

to the extent that he told his brother, Tom,

he was worried that he would become a suspect and that the reason he didn't want

to submit a sample and this is not true, don't even entertain this for a second.

He said he didn't want to submit a sample

because he actually had had sex with Mandy while she was home for Thanksgiving break.

Shut the fuck up, you pig.

No, the fuck you didn't.

You actual pig.

And even his brother didn't believe him because he was like,

Mandy had only been home for like two days at that point before she went missing,

one of which was Thanksgiving.

And you're fucking disgusting.

And you're gross.

Go away.

And he was like, I don't even know how you would have had time to have such

contacts with her. It's not possible.

And Tim told his brother, oh, I just went up to her and I said,

oh, you're keeping fit.

And that was it.

So he was like, oh, I just complimented her and it was that easy.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Go fuck yourself.

All this time goes by and he's this is the kind of shit he's still pulling.

Oh, yeah. After he's killed this woman.

Yeah, he is.

Oh, yeah, I don't.

There's not even a word for what kind of filthy fucking monster he is.

Like your piece of shit.

But then it actually gets worse.

Then he asked his brother, Tim asks his brother, Tom,

if the police ask Tom anything about this,

he wants Tom to tell the police that Tom also slept with Mandy.

Oh, my God.

Make it seem like she slept around, which she did not.

So he's just going to sit there and shit all over her reputation.

Knowing that he murdered her has brutally murdered her, raped her.

You're disgusting.

Chased her like to your fucking demise and threw her unconscious body

into a fucking disgusting.

And that was not the only bizarre conversation

that went down within the Bass family at that time.

According to Tim's then wife, Gina Malone, who is no longer his wife.

Oh, good. Not long after the conversation that Tim had with his brother,

he was actually talking to his mother, Sandra,

and asked her, quote, if they could agree to tell the police

that Bass's deceased father had killed Mandy.

Wow.

He wanted to pin this on his dead dad.

Holy shit.

And also it's like, dude, your DNA will still look different.

Yeah, you don't have the exact same DNA, my friend.

Like, oh, my God.

That shows what's going on up there.

Truly. Wow.

His mother was absolutely horrified at this.

And she's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Oh, my God.

She just apparently, according to Gina, she covered her face and just said, no.

So I don't know about that.

What is that about?

That is some that's some shit.

That's some shit.

So meanwhile, Detective Bowie was endlessly frustrated

with the lack of progress in the case.

Because it's right there.

Because that is exactly it is.

It's dangling in front of him.

It's the old man that's like, you got to be quicker than that.

It's truly like so close.

So he reaches out to Kim Wagner,

who was the manager of the bakery store, the bakery store where Tim worked.

Oh, my God.

He was a delivery driver for a bakery store.

This man may have given you a fucking cake.

Oh, hate it.

But so he approaches the manager of the store

and he's hoping he can get permission to swab the delivery trucks for touch DNA,

which would be left by the driver, obviously.

So Kim Wagner told Detective Bowie that he would need to get permission

from the corporate office.

So she gave him the phone number for corporate headquarters,

but they wouldn't allow it, which is bullshit, in my opinion.

Yeah, that's like you're fucked up.

Yeah, no.

So that stalled the case for another two years.

Oh, my God.

So now we're in spring of 2017.

Holy shit.

And Detective Bowie goes back to Kim and he's like,

can you provide the investigators with the general route that Tim drives?

Like, can you do? Can you just do that until then?

He hadn't told her who he was investigating or why.

But this time Wagner actually asked whether this was in relation to the

Stavik murder and he the detective confirmed like, yeah, it was.

Which is interesting.

Yeah.

So then Kim asked if Tim was a suspect and the detective confirmed.

Yes, he is.

And he explained we basically want to follow him so that if he throws anything

out along his route, we can take it.

DNA is DNA and it's public shit now.

Yeah.

So she was like, yeah, you can.

But they were they were able to follow him along his route,

but they never managed to collect anything containing his DNA.

So a short time later in August of 2017,

Kim actually ran into Tim Bass in the break room at the bakery

and she saw him drinking water from a plastic cup,

oh, which he then discarded into the trash before leaving the room.

So being the motherfucking MVP of the motherfucking decade,

she was waltzed.

I was going to say went and then I went for waltzed.

It was kind of crazy.

She waltzed on over, collected the cup from the trash,

put it in a plastic bag and handed it over to Detective Bowie.

And she actually, before she handed it handed it over to the detective,

she also did the same thing a few days later when she saw Tim discard

a soda can in the trash. Oh, my God.

So she got them two samples. Hell yeah.

Baddest bitch alive.

So she texts the detective and she's like, hey, I did a thing.

I did this thing. I did this thing.

And she's like, I want to give this to you as evidence.

So they met up in a parking lot that same afternoon

and Bowie accepted the DNA evidence. Yeah.

And the samples obviously were then submitted for rush processing

and came back as a DNA match to the semen

collected for Mandy's body in 1989.

Shit, he had murdered her. Wow.

And it was a slam dunk.

Yeah, you can't argue that. You can't argue that.

So later when asked why she took it upon herself to collect the evidence

and this like almost made me cry when I read it the first time.

Kim said, if Tim was potentially involved in that crime,

I wanted to do the right thing for Mandy, which I'm like,

fucking community. Seriously.

Like, wow, this story is banned around your fucking community.

Like, I love it. It takes a village, friends.

It takes a village.

So on December 12th, 2017,

Whatcom County Sheriff's deputies led by our detective Kevin Bowie

arrested Tim Bass at his home in Everson

for the first degree murder of Mandy Stovic in 1989.

And in a press conference, Whatcom County Sheriff.

Now, obviously there was a new sheriff because it's like so many years later.

Bill Elfo, he told reporters it was one of the best moments

in my professional career when we got to inform her mother that we were making

a rest. Oh, my God, I love that she was there to see it.

Thank. Thank goodness.

Like, because her heart would never ever be bended again.

No, but the fact that she knows what happened and to see someone be punished

for it exactly and knows that the person that did this is never

going to be allowed to do this to another person.

I can't even imagine.

And the sheriff told reporters that they made the arrest based on that DNA

evidence, connecting Bass to the murder.

So had Kim not made that decision, they would have been able to still be walking

free, but he did stop short of saying where the evidence had been collected

from in the press conference.

Can't really talk about that too much.

No. So while investigators and the prosecutor's office started building

their case against him, Tim Bass was desperately grasping for any alibi

or contrary evidence that would protect him from this murder conviction.

Man, it's like, dude, give it up.

They have your semen.

Yeah, like you're giving up.

No arguing.

Nope.

And he maintained to the detectives and everybody else working on the case

that they were all out to get him, he said.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

You're not special.

No, trust me, no one wants you in their presence.

No, we sure don't.

So in conversations with family members during visits to jail,

he allegedly asked his mother to provide an alibi for him, which is like,

God, yeah, you can have all the alibis you want.

Your semen doesn't just like jump across miles and miles and go anywhere.

That's not how it works.

Stop asking your mom to do these things.

You fucking nasty motherfucker.

So he said, maybe you can say that we were Christmas shopping.

Wow.

Are you joking me?

He gets worse and worse as the story goes.

You murdered someone the day after Thanksgiving.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

And he also kept begging his brother, Tom, to spread a rumor that Mandy was promiscuous.

Oh my God.

He said, Tom, do what you can.

Maybe other friends could say they knew her back then as well.

Ew, like, what the fuck?

You killed her in one of the most brutal ways possible.

And now you want to kill her memory, too.

Jeez, that is zero remorse.

Every single day on this earth is a living fucking hell for him.

Oh, I hope so.

So the DNA evidence connecting him to the murder was incredibly strong,

to say the least, and during his press conference,

Sheriff Elfo told reporters the laboratory determined that the match probability

was one in 11 quadrillion.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

So they were pretty comfortable prosecuting.

Now, on December 14th, Tim Bass did appear before a judge.

He was officially charged with first degree felony murder

and it alleged that he caused Mandy's death in the course

or furtherance of rape, attempted rape, kidnapping or attempted kidnapping.

Disgusting pig.

Now, in his statement to the press,

Whatcom County Prosecutor David McGeckron, that's one of this,

told reporters that he wasn't able to charge Bass separately for rape or kidnapping

because the statute of limitations had run out for both crimes.

I hate that.

So the felony murder charge was most likely the one that he would face.

OK.

Now, in the months that followed, the public defender,

Stephen Jackson, who is Tim Bass's public defender, obviously,

filed one motion after another.

First, he tried to get the kidnapping and the rape charges dropped.

Then he wanted to have the DNA evidence excluded from trial.

In what world are we going to exclude DNA evidence from the trial?

You can get fucked.

But he claimed that Kim Wagner was illegally acting as an agent of the state

when she collected the trash containing the DNA.

And he said, thus, it should be excluded.

He said, put simply, law enforcement officers cannot use private citizens

to obtain evidence without a search warrant.

Whereas search warrant would otherwise be required.

This search was done for a singular reason to assist law enforcement.

It's like, yeah, whatever.

So David McEcheran countered that Detective Bohay had never asked Kim Wagner

to get involved in the case or act on behalf of the Whatcom County Sheriff's Department.

And in fact, he actually made it very clear they weren't directing her to do anything.

Yeah.

Kim acted entirely of her own volition and said she had a daughter

and hoped that somebody would do the same if it were her daughter.

So after hearing both sides, judge agrees with the prosecution

and Jackson's motion to suppress DNA evidence was denied.

Bye.

Hey, oh.

So after 30 years of dead ends and false hope,

the opportunity to get Mandy Justice finally arrived on May 10th, 2019.

Wow.

This just happened.

30 fucking years, yeah.

Wow.

So in his opening statement to the jury,

David McEcheran presented the case as it had been assembled by the investigators.

They said she'd gone out jogging Mandy.

She was intercepted by Tim Bass.

He forced her into his cart gunpoint.

He took her to a remote area and raped her and she tried to escape.

He chased her down in the woods, struck her in the head

and again placed her unconscious body in the river where she drowned.

Now, the evidence collected during the autopsy,

obviously implicated Bass in the crime and his behavior following his arrest,

especially his repeated attempts to get friends and family to lie on his behalf.

Yeah.

Only confirmed his guilt.

And McEcheran told the jury,

we know that he wanted his brother to say that he himself had sex with her

to make her look like she was a loose girl and wanted an alibi.

I love that also he was hanging his hat on that.

Like somehow she had slept with multiple people.

That this was fine.

That it's OK that she got murdered.

It's like, yeah, that still doesn't work.

It still doesn't work that way.

Exactly.

So the public defender, Steven Jackson, on the other hand,

he just presented a case that really had little to do with Tim Bass at all.

He said to the jury that Tim Bass and Mandy Stavik had consensual sex

and, you know, he would know because he was there.

Yeah, absolutely.

And he said, obviously, that explains the presence of DNA in her body.

Yeah.

But, you know, as for her disappearance and her death, that's a mystery.

Still, 30 years later, he said, Tim Bass is not guilty.

He didn't kidnap anyone.

He didn't rape anyone, and he certainly didn't kill anyone.

I'm like, that's great.

Do you have anything to back that up?

Imagine trying to get a case to remain unsolved.

No.

When you have the killer right here.

No.

Imagine.

No.

I couldn't.

Couldn't be me.

But he actually argued that the prosecution had no evidence of rape.

Huh.

I'm like, I what?

And they were like, and he said that they didn't have any witnesses

who saw Mandy's abduction.

It's like, yeah, the semen in her body and the fact that she ended up

in a river directly after kind of tells us everything we need to know.

It's like, nope, no abduction can happen unless people see it.

Nope, that's it.

Nope.

If he actually, I'm just picturing him standing there in the courtroom

and being like, if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one's around

to see it, it didn't really fall.

Like, sir, like, no, have all the goddamn seats in the world

and get the fuck out of here.

Go get a granola bar.

Get the fuck out of here.

So basically he was just saying, like, you know,

a lot of people had seen Mandy jogging that day.

Any one of them could have been the person.

Yeah, absolutely.

Wow, shut up.

What a defense.

Nobody was really into this at all.

No.

And after a week of testimony and unfortunately very graphic evidence,

the prosecution rested their case on May 17th and the defense

rested theirs on the 22nd.

The jury deliberated for a little over one day and then they came back

with a verdict of guilty.

Hell yeah.

On the charges of first degree murder and they also found him guilty

in the special verdicts, first degree rape, attempted first degree rape,

first degree, first degree kidnapping and attempting first degree kidnapping.

Damn guilty on all mother fucking charges.

Yes.

And when those verdicts were read, almost everybody in that courtroom

erupted into tears, obviously overwhelmed with like every possible emotion

you could feel after 30 years of wondering what had happened to this poor girl.

So he was sentenced to 320 months or 26 years in prison.

By for the crimes against Mandy Stavik.

In 2021, obviously they filed an appeal because what else do they have to do?

And it argued, among other things, that the admissibility of the DNA

evidence linking him to the crime and the constitutionality of charging

bass under felony murder statute amended after the crime occurred.

So blah, blah, blah, blah.

No one wants to hear from you again.

Basically, what they were trying to say is that like one of the statutes

had run out for the crime for what he was convicted of and that the DNA

evidence was like not good or something, I guess.

Because because Kim Wagner had got.

Yeah, of course.

It's in and what they were trying to say, too, was that Kim Wagner

had violated Tim's constitutional rights.

I love that when the DNA matches, it's like, yeah, it was stupid.

The way you got it.

And it's like that's still fucking matches.

You did it. It's like, I don't know how I got it.

And like work is a public place.

Right. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

It works. We're like, I don't know if that's true, but whatever.

I don't know if it's true, but the appeals court, they they disagreed

that that Kim had violated the constitutional rights.

They agreed with us.

They said to prove a private citizen was acting as a government agent.

The defendant must show that the state in some way instigated, encouraged,

counsel directed or controlled the conduct of a private person.

And that they that Bassist lawyers had failed to prove that claimant court.

Yeah. So.

I don't think you can technically take somebody's DNA at work,

but it's very hard to prove that somebody made you do it.

Like law enforcement made you do it.

Yeah, absolutely. There was no proof that they did.

Exactly. And I don't think they did.

I think Kim was Kim was living.

Yeah. She was doing her job, man.

She was being a mama. Yeah.

Now, as far as the argument that the prosecutor applied a statute

that had been amended after the crime occurred, the justices wrote,

although we conclude the trial court

erred in applying a 1990 version of the felony murder statute to this

1989 crime, they were literally arguing the difference of a year.

Yeah, shut up.

The error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and it had no effect on the outcome of the case.

So after hearing arguments from both sides,

the appeals court sided with the prosecution and rejected all of Bass's arguments,

thus upholding his conviction.

So in hail, Tim Bass.

Rotten hail. Rotten hail.

In every fucking level of hell that there possibly could be.

Indeed.

And that's it. Bye.

That's the end of Tim Bass forever.

Wow. Fucking hate him with every vibrant.

What a disgusting piece of shit.

It's like I hate all of the people that we cover that murder.

Yeah, they're horrible.

There are people.

This one in particular, I was like,

are you kidding me?

The fact that he was trying to still like besmirch.

Her reputation after he had brutally raped and murdered her 30 years earlier after Thanksgiving.

And he's still trying to be like, ah, let's let's, you know,

let's paint her as this loose woman and maybe we can blame it on my dead dad.

Yeah, I mean, you know what? My dad's dead.

He can't say anything about it.

So why don't we blame it on him?

It's like you have no fucking bottom.

Do you know fucking bottom?

No, the lowest of the like the shit that that like that man,

that thing will hit the fucking magma in the center of the earth.

And he will still continue to go lower.

Listening to you. Disgusting.

You are really good at insults.

Thank you.

Sometimes I get so angry that I can't insult that.

That happens to me too a lot.

And I'm just like, you're a frog.

And I'm like, you're a froggy motherfucker.

Like it's just like mother first thing that will come out.

Yeah, I feel that.

But fuck that guy. Fuck that guy.

I'm so glad he's in jail.

Me too.

After rot, he had 30 years to fucking sit with himself and nobody did.

And he was perfectly fine doing it.

Yeah, rot, rot, rot, inhale.

And you know what?

Mandy deserved to fucking light the world on fire.

And she seemed like she was on her damn way to do it.

She deserved.

And it's so much better shame that she wasn't allowed to.

This world is less, is less, absolutely less.

So that sucks.

It does.

But I'm really glad that her family at least got a little bit of justice out of it.

I do too.

Yeah.

And just like everything that they had gone through.

I hope that that was, you know, I hope they didn't have to go.

Yeah, I hope they're not ever going through any more tragedy on time.

I hope it's nothing but a positivity from here on out.

Me too.

And on that note, guys, we hope your rest of the week is positive, too.

And we love you and we thank you for listening and we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

If I have to tell you not to keep it that weird, you're wild.

Yeah, love you.

Bye.

What if I said bye like that every time you guys would you still listen?

Yeah.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.