Experts treat 30-year-old murders as if they just happened

Tacoma police released composites of suspects in two 30-year-old murders of girls as part of an exercise by a group of experts.

On Wednesday, Tacoma police mobilized their child abduction response team, or CART, in an effort to generate new evidence and information in hopes of finding someone who may have seen something the day the girls vanished, but never came forward.

The composites were generated by DNA phenotyping, which identifies genetic markers that provide basic characteristics. The composites are approximate and are are much like a witness giving a description (DNA) and a computer program making a sketch based on known appearance factors.

Kidnapping experts are treating the cold cases as if they just happened in an attempt to solve the murders.

The results of the exercise could be life-changing for the families of the victims, who were raped and murdered in Tacoma four months apart in 1986, 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian and 12-year-old Michella Welch.

Welch was found in Puget Park on Wednesday, March 26. Bastian was found at Point Defiance Park on Monday, August 4.

No arrests were ever made and police had always thought that one man was responsible, but authorities say new evidence shows they were not killed by the same person.

“The crime scenes were very similar. The girls were of similar age in a very similar geographic location, so we operated on those facts,” Loretta Cool with Tacoma police told reporter Kevin McCarty last week.