MAY 23 UPDATE: Robert Dwane Washburn is back in Washington state and has been booked into the Pierce County Jail.
New information was released Friday that people in Pierce County have been waiting three decades to learn: What led detectives to Jennifer Bastian’s alleged killer --- living in Eureka, Illinois.
KIRO 7’s Amy Clancy was at the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma Friday afternoon – where the suspect was expected to be booked soon.
Robert Dwane Washburn has actually been a murder suspect since before 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian was killed in August of 1986.
According to documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court, Washburn put himself on detectives’ radar after the death of 12-year-old Michella Welch in March of that same year. That's when Washburn called police to say he had seen a man who looked like the suspect sketch “while jogging in Point Defiance Park.”
Three months later 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian disappeared while riding her bike, also at Point Defiance.
Her body -- strangled and sexually assaulted – was found two weeks later. That December, Washburn was interviewed by police -- but not arrested.
“Michella and Jenny were in my age range,” Lindsey Wade, former Tacoma police detective, told Clancy in 2014.
Wade was a Tacoma Police Detective who worked the Welch and Bastian cold cases for years.
Now retired from the department, Wade -- a Tacoma native -- said the two unsolved murders haunted her for decades.
“It was really the first time I can recall hearing about something in the news that was particularly terrifying to me,” Wade said.
Wade was instrumental in testing the DNA of potential killers. In 2016, “a list was created of suspects whose DNA needed to be collected.”
Washburn -- long a person of interest -- was on that list.
In March of 2017, the FBI contacted Washburn at his Illinois home, where he voluntarily submitted a sample.
Last week, his DNA was matched to semen found in Jennifer Bastian’s swim suit, and Washburn was arrested at his home in Eureka.
The murder of Michella Welch still has not been solved.
Despite Washburn inserting himself into that case, the Tacoma Police Department say he is not a suspect.
He has been charged with first-degree murder in Jennifer Bastian’s case and is expected back in Washington within days.
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