Washington 1986 Cold Case Solved — Her Swimsuit Named The Killer 32 Years Later 

Washington 1986 Cold Case Solved — Her Swimsuit Named The Killer 32 Years Later 

Every community has those places that just feel safe, the spots families treat like their own backyard. In Tacoma, Washington, that place was Point Defiance Park. It was a massive park with old growth forests, saltwater beaches, and winding trails. A total sanctuary for joggers, families, and kids. In the summer of 1986, it seemed like the perfect playground for a 13-year-old girl who loved her bike.

 But on one August day, that feeling of safety was completely shattered. A young girl went for a ride in the park and just never came home. The search for her would end in tragedy, and the hunt for her killer would stretch on for more than three decades. This is the story of how a single piece of clothing, a swimsuit worn on a summer day, held a microscopic secret that time couldn’t erase, and how that secret would eventually expose a man who thought he’d gotten away with the perfect crime.

On a warm August 4th, 1986, 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian put on her swimsuit, hopped on her brand new Schwinn bike, and rode to her favorite park. She was training for a long-distance cycling trip with her dad. It was this special thing they shared. It was a goal they had set together, a multi-day ride through the San Juan Islands later that summer, and Jenny was determined to be ready.

 She wanted to prove she could keep up with him on the hills. Before she left, she promised she’d be home for dinner. But she never came back. For 32 years, her killer lived a quiet, normal life. He worked a job, raised a family, and was just another neighbor. He never imagined that the swimsuit he left behind at the scene held a tiny clue.

A biological signature that would one day connect his own family’s DNA directly to his front door, exposing the monster that had walked free for more than three decades. Jennifer Marie Bastian, or Jenny as everyone called her, was a kid who was just full of life. She was a great swimmer, a dedicated cyclist, and a much-loved daughter and sister.

The summer of ’86 was a good one for her. She had a new green Schwinn bike and was so excited to be training for a bike tour with her father. Her favorite spot to train was the Five Mile Drive, a scenic loop that ran through the beautiful, dense woods of Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park. She knew the park inside and out.

 It was her place. On the morning of August 4th, Jenny left a note for her family saying she was heading out for a ride. For an active teenager on summer vacation, >> [clears throat] >> nothing could have been more normal. She pedaled the 30 blocks from her house to the park, ready to take on the familiar hills of the drive.

But as the hours passed and the sun started to go down, her family started to worry. Jenny was a responsible kid. She knew she was supposed to be home for dinner. When she didn’t show up, her parents felt that sinking feeling that every parent dreads. They knew something was terribly wrong. Her dad immediately rushed to the park, driving the Five Mile Drive loop over and over, scanning the roadsides and calling her name into the woods.

He stopped at every pullout, every trailhead, hoping to catch a glimpse of green metal in the fading light. But there was no sign of her. Her new green bike was gone, too. The family called the police, and a search for a missing girl quickly blew up into a massive operation. Tacoma police and dozens of volunteers swarmed Point Defiance Park, combing through the thick underbrush and searching every trail as darkness fell.

 But the park stayed silent. Days turned into weeks, and the hope that had fueled the search started to fade into a grim reality. A cloud of fear hung over the entire city. Then, on August 28th, almost 3 weeks after she disappeared, a construction crew reported a strong, foul odor coming from a remote, heavily wooded area just off the main road.

Investigators followed the scent down a steep embankment, and there, carefully hidden under some brush, they found Jennifer Bastian. Her beloved Schwinn bike was hidden nearby. The autopsy confirmed the absolute worst. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The spot where she was found looked like it had been prepared beforehand, a chilling detail that pointed to a calculated, predatory killer.

The brush wasn’t just thrown over her. It had been arranged, layered in a way that suggested the killer had spent time trying to conceal what he had done. The news hit Tacoma like a physical blow. A child had been grabbed from a public park in broad daylight and murdered. It was a complete violation of the community’s sense of safety.

Investigators were desperate for leads and meticulously processed the scene, collecting every piece of evidence they could. Among the items they recovered was the swimsuit Jennifer had been wearing. At the time, it was just a heartbreaking piece of clothing. No one could have known that this one swimsuit held the key, a tiny, invisible trace of the killer that would lie in an evidence locker for decades, just waiting for science to catch up with justice.

 The investigation was immediately complicated by a tragic coincidence. Just 5 months earlier, in March 1986, another young girl, 12-year-old Michella Welch, had been murdered in a different Tacoma park. The similarities were glaring. Two young girls, both killed in public parks. The police and the public naturally assumed they were looking for a serial killer.

This theory would dominate the investigation for years. And while it seemed logical, it was completely wrong. Focusing on one killer for both crimes meant that the evidence from each case was seen through a flawed lens. Jennifer Bastian’s killer wasn’t some phantom responsible for two deaths. He was a singular monster who had blended right back into society.

The years after Jennifer’s murder were agonizing for the Bastian family and for the detectives on the case. The theory that one person had killed both Jennifer and Michella Welch became a huge roadblock. Investigators poured all their resources into finding a serial predator, but every lead went cold.

 The cases sat on a shelf, gathering dust under the weight of time. For Jennifer’s mom, Patty Bastian, time didn’t heal anything. It just made the injustice feel sharper. She later said in court, “Not a day went by in a normal way. You stole that from us. No longer were we able to look at beautiful summer days the same way.” That profound loss fueled her quiet determination.

Every year on Jennifer’s birthday and then on the anniversary of her disappearance, Patty would call the detective bureau. Not to yell, not to demand, but just to ask, “Is there anything new? Is there anything I can do?” She became a fixture in the cold case unit, a voice on the other end of the line that reminded everyone why they couldn’t let the boxes gather dust.

 She constantly kept in touch with the Tacoma Police Department, making sure they never forgot Jennifer. For almost 30 years, the investigation went nowhere. Police had a few persons of interest, but without hard evidence, they were just names on a long list. One of those names was Robert Dwayne Washburn.

 He had lived in Tacoma back in 1986 and had actually called the police with a tip about the Michella Welch case. He even told officers he was a frequent jogger on the trails right near where Jennifer’s body was found. This put him on their radar, but it was all circumstantial. The first real crack in the case didn’t come from a witness, but from a lab.

 By the 2000s, DNA technology was a game-changer. Detectives, including one particularly dedicated investigator named Lindsey Wade, decided to re-examine the evidence from 1986. In November 2013, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab analyzed the one item that had been closest to Jennifer in her final moments, her swimsuit.

 And from that swimsuit, they successfully extracted a full male DNA profile. It was a massive breakthrough. After 27 years, they had the killer’s biological fingerprint. They rushed to run the profile through CODIS, the national DNA database of convicted felons, hoping for a match that would finally give them a name.

 But the search came back empty. No match. It was this moment of huge triumph, followed by bitter disappointment. They were closer than they’d ever been, but the killer’s name was still a mystery. It meant he had either never been convicted of a serious crime or his DNA just wasn’t in the system. Around the same time, DNA from the Michella Welch case was also tested, and that brought another shock.

 The DNA from her killer did not match the DNA on Jennifer’s swimsuit. The serial killer theory that had driven the investigation for decades was officially dead. There weren’t one, but two separate monsters who had preyed on young girls in Tacoma that year. The case went cold again, but this time felt different.

 The killer’s DNA was right there, in a file. The question was no longer if he could be identified, but how. The big shift happened in 2016. The cold case team refused to let that DNA profile just sit there. They reached out to Parabon NanoLabs, a company in Virginia that was pioneering a revolutionary new field, forensic genetic genealogy.

 This was the same technique that would eventually catch the Golden State Killer, and it offered a whole new way to find suspects. Instead of looking for a direct match in a criminal database, genetic genealogy uses crime scene DNA to find a suspect’s relatives. Investigators upload the unknown DNA profile to public genealogy websites like GEDmatch, where people voluntarily share their own DNA results to build family trees.

If the killer’s second or third cousin has used one of these sites, a partial match will pop up. From there, genealogists work backward, using public records to build a massive family tree, trying to pinpoint one person who fits the age, location, and timeline of the crime. The genealogist on Jennifer’s case got to work.

 The DNA from the swimsuit was uploaded, and soon distant relatives of the killer started appearing. By tracing all these family connections, the genealogist identified three main surnames in the killer’s family tree: Smith, Holbrook, and Washburn. That name, Washburn, immediately set off alarm bells for investigators. They checked their old case files, and there he was: Robert Dwayne Washburn.

 The same guy who had called in a tip back in 1986. The guy who said he jogged the park trails all the time. He had been on their list for 30 years. The tip he had called in all those years ago suddenly took on a much darker color. Was it a genuine attempt to help? Or was it the act of a man inserting himself into the investigation to see what the police knew? Either way, his name was now written in ink, not pencil.

Now they had their prime suspect, but they needed his DNA for a direct comparison. And this is where the story gets even crazier. Around 2017, as part of a massive push, detectives started re-interviewing everyone connected to the case, asking for voluntary DNA samples to eliminate them. In what you can only describe as pure arrogance, Robert Washburn agreed to give them a sample in March 2017.

 The police lab had a backlog, so they tested the samples in batches. Washburn’s sample ended up in one of the last rounds. Finally, on May 7th, 2018, they got the confirmation. The DNA profile from Jennifer Bastian’s swimsuit was a perfect match to Robert Dwayne Washburn. The odds of it being anyone else were 1 in 57 trillion.

 After 32 years, the ghost finally had a face. If cases like this are the reason you keep coming back, stories that refuse to stay cold, justice that takes 32 years but still arrives, make it permanent. Hit subscribe. Turn the notification on. We’re here every week. Three days later, police arrested the now 60-year-old Washburn at his home in Eureka, Illinois.

 His neighbors were completely stunned. They knew him as a quiet man, a single dad who was devoted to caring for his disabled daughter. He had no real criminal record. He was described as a kind, helpful neighbor. The guy who shoveled the sidewalk for the elderly couple next door. The guy who never missed a PTA meeting for his daughter.

 The disconnect between the man they knew and the man being led away in handcuffs was almost impossible for them to process. The person they saw was the complete opposite of the monster who had committed such a brutal crime. He had hidden his secret by being totally, terrifyingly ordinary. Faced with the DNA evidence, Washburn knew he was done.

He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in January 2019. In a short, written confession, he admitted to grabbing Jennifer as she rode her bike, dragging her into the woods, and killing her. He offered an apology, but gave no reason for the evil he did that day. With the death penalty as available, would you have pled? No, I wouldn’t have.

No. Nothing’s going to bring Jennifer back. And I certainly don’t want to be responsible for anybody else’s life. That’s just not how my heart runs. He was sentenced to just over 26 years in prison based on the sentencing guidelines from 1986. I guess I was thinking about his daughter. And how he’s been taking care of her for so long.

 And then I realized what he did to my daughter. And I can’t put those two together in my head. Today, he’s incarcerated at the Airway Heights Correction Center in Washington, where he will likely spend the rest of his life. I never expected this to happen. I certainly didn’t expect the person who committed this crime to seem so old and small and weak.

 Using the same technology, police also caught Michella Welsh’s killer. Parabon identified two brothers as suspects. Police trailed one of them, a nurse named Gary Hartman, and got his DNA from a napkin he threw away at a restaurant. It was a match. The two cases that had haunted Tacoma for a generation were finally solved.

 The solution to Jennifer Bastian’s murder is a story about the persistence of a mother who never gave up, the dedication of detectives who wouldn’t let a case go cold, and the incredible power of science. But Jennifer’s legacy goes even further. Her mother, Patty Bastian, turned her grief into action.

 She became a fierce advocate for changing DNA collection laws in Washington state. Her efforts helped pass Jennifer and Michella’s Law. This law expanded the state’s DNA database, requiring samples from anyone convicted of a felony, and even certain misdemeanors, which are often precursor crimes. It closed loopholes and gives police a better chance of solving cases and even stopping violent crimes before they happen.

In the end, this is about more than just a swimsuit. It’s about memory and how a family, a community, and a team of detectives refused to let a 13-year-old girl be forgotten. For 32 years, her killer walked free, thinking his secret was buried. But he left behind one microscopic thread, and in the end, that was all it took to unravel his world and finally bring Jennifer Bastian justice.

And maybe that’s the most important lesson here, that no secret is ever truly safe, no matter how much time passes, because science keeps moving forward, and there are people, mothers, detectives, and strangers who share their DNA online, who refuse to let the truth stay buried. The man who killed her was caught because a stranger spit in a tube to trace their family history.

They had no idea they were holding the key to a 32-year-old murder. Drop a green heart in the comments for Jenny’s green Schwinn, and for every stranger who accidentally helped bring her home.