If he had his way, Zina Linnik’s killer would be on Washington’s death row awaiting execution instead of serving a life sentence at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.
At least that’s what Terapon Adhahn told two FBI agents who interviewed him at the prison Sept. 8, 2008.
“I believe in getting punished for what you did,” Adhahn told agents William Donaldson and Jennifer Eakin during a six-hour question-and-answer session. “If given a choice here, through this whole thing, I would prefer a death sentence.”
The News Tribune recently obtained a copy of the video-recorded interview from the City of Tacoma through a public records request.
The interview, which spans six DVDs, is being used as evidence in the wrongful death lawsuit Zina’s family has brought against Tacoma, Pierce County and the state.
The Linnik family contends the county and state did not do enough to monitor Adhahn, a convicted sex offender, and that the city failed to issue an Amber Alert in a timely fashion when Zina went missing.
The case is set to go to trial later this year.
Adhahn, 46, escaped the possibility of capital punishment when Pierce County’s chief public defender and the prosecuting attorney made a deal July 12, 2007 – eight days after the 12-year-old girl was snatched from an alley behind her home on Tacoma’s Hilltop.
Zina was still missing when Michael Kawamura and now-retired Prosecutor Gerald Horne struck a bargain: If Adhahn led detectives to Zina, Horne would not seek a death sentence.
At a press conference on July 23, 2007 – the day he charged Adhahn with Zina’s death – Horne explained he’d made the deal on the slim chance the girl was still alive and could be rescued if authorities acted quickly.
“The only one with the answers was the suspect,” Horne told news reporters assembled in a conference room on the top floor of the County-City Building in downtown Tacoma.
Some people decried the decision, writing in letters to the editor and in online comments that if Adhahn didn’t deserve a death sentence, then who did?
They included a young woman Adhahn abducted and raped in 2000 when she was an 11-year-old girl on her way to a Tacoma middle school.
“I don’t think he should have any right to live,” Sabrina Rasmussen told the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer in May 2008. “He took away plenty of people’s lives.”
More than a year after the deal was struck sparing him a possible death sentence, Adhahn told Donaldson and Eakin, who worked with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, escaping capital punishment was not his goal.
“That was not my choice at all,” Adhahn said during the interview. “(The media) said I gave up the body so I could avoid the death sentence. I gave up the body because it was the right thing to do. I wanted the family to rest.
“Mr. Kawamura talked to me and said, ‘Do the right thing,’” Adhahn continued. “And I said, ‘OK.’ And he said he could ask for no death sentence. I didn’t ask for that. I want a death sentence. I took a life.”
Kawamura told The News Tribune last week he recalled Adhahn asking him at one point if he thought giving up the girl’s body was the right thing to do.
“I told him it was,” Kawamura recalled. “I think that certainly played a part in his decision-making.”
He also said he talked to Adhahn about potential penalties he faced if convicted of killing the girl, including a possible death sentence.
Kawamura said he didn’t recall Adhahn ever telling him he wanted to die for his crime.
Later in his conversation with the FBI, Eakin asked Adhahn if he ever thought about Zina’s parents.
Adhahn grew emotional and said he did.
“I know what it would be like if it was me,” the father of at least three children said while wiping at his eyes. “Before trial I asked my lawyer, you know, if I could have a chance to talk to them, and I wanted it to be their choice because what I took from them.
“If they want me to be put to death, then that’s what it should be,” Adhahn continued. “If they want my life in return, I know I wouldn’t complain too much, but it’s the best thing I could do. I wanted that to happen, and it didn’t.”
Eakin: “Would you still give them that choice if you could?”
Adhahn: “Yes, I would. Any day for the rest of my life.”
He went on to say he was making plans for the future, including enrolling in the prison’s barber school, trying to re-establish a relationship with one of his adult daughters and waiting for the day he could reconnect with his then-school age son.
The deal that spared him a potential death sentence apparently was struck, and Zina’s body recovered, during an 8-hour-35-minute stretch of July 12, 2007, according to a police report filed by Tacoma detective Lindsey Wade. Wade’s report also has been filed as part of the Linnik family’s wrongful death lawsuit.
Police met with prosecutors about 11 that morning to discuss the case and Adhahn’s possible involvement, Wade wrote.
After that meeting, a contingent from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and a handful of detectives met with Kawamura and “asked for his assistance in meeting with Terapon Adhahn in the hope that he would persuade Terapon Adhahn to tell us where Zina was located,” the report states.
About 1:40 p.m., Kawamura met with Adhahn at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma.
Adhahn, a native of Thailand, was being held at the facility on an immigration matter while detectives investigated his possible involvement in Zina’s death.
“After speaking with Terapon Adhahn privately, Kawamura advised Det. (Bradley) Graham and me that Terapon Adhahn stated he could not help us and that he was not involved,” Wade wrote.
At 4:05 p.m., Kawamura called Wade stating he’d heard from Adhahn, who wanted to speak to him again, the report states.
About an hour and 40 minutes later, Kawamura reported that Adhahn “agreed to tell us where Zina was if he could go outside and smoke a cigarette,” Wade wrote.
Detectives agreed.
While Adhahn smoked in the facility’s exercise yard, detectives asked Kawamura whether Adhahn had indicated whether Zina was alive or dead, the report states.
“He said Terapon Adhahn indicated that Zina was gone when he left her,” Wade wrote.
About 7:35 p.m., Adhahn directed detectives and FBI agents to an area near Silver Lake in eastern Pierce County where they discovered the girl’s body.
Eleven days later, Horne announced he would not seek the death penalty for Adhahn.
Adhahn also told them why he went out seeking a victim that night – he was in a rage because he couldn’t have his son for the July 4 holiday.
He told them how he snatched the girl from the alley and how, in his words, he accidentally killed her before he got her to his home by inadvertently tightening a plastic tie around her neck. He had used the tie and a rag to try to gag Zina.
“I choked her, but I didn’t realize it,” said Adhahn, who added he then took her body to his home and molested it.
Pierce County medical examiners ruled Zina died of blunt force trauma to the head with asphyxiation a secondary cause.
Adhahn told the agents he didn’t recall ever striking the girl and never intended to kill her.
He spent hours talking about his upbringing, his relationships with women and the fact he felt as if the people closest to him never let him forget he was convicted of sexually assaulting a relative years ago.
He blamed all that for sending him into rages in which he sought out people to hurt or humiliate.
“It’s a lot of rage, violent rage,” Adhahn said. “I didn’t care at that point. Whatever happened, happened.”
It was during such rages that he kidnapped and raped Rasmussen and abducted Zina, he said.
Donaldson and Eakin agreed not to pump Adhahn for information about unresolved cases in which he might be involved. Still, Eakin asked him at one point what it would take to get him to talk about other cases.
Adhahn said he’d tell her if there were any.
“It’s my only chance to be free from myself,” he said. “I can’t do any worse.”
But Adhahn declined to talk to Wade and Graham.
He said he felt the detectives tricked him early in the investigation into Zina’s death and he didn’t trust them.
Adhahn likewise refused a request to be interviewed by Lakewood police detective Chris Lawler, the lead detective in the murder of Adre’anna Jackson.
Adre’anna, 10, disappeared on her way to school in December 2005 and was found dead four months later.
Adhahn worked as a tow truck driver in Lakewood in 2005.
He said he did not like the way Lakewood police, shortly after his arrest in Zina’s death, let it be known that he was “a person of interest” in Adre’anna’s disappearance without doing any investigation first.
“They crucified me in front of the public and everything,” Adhahn told Donaldson and Eakin. “I don’t have a problem admitting to any crimes. For the record there, I did not have anything to do with that. I’m already at rock bottom. For me to hide another crime is pointless.”
Except for the fact that a conviction in another abduction and murder again could open him up to a possible death sentence.
Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644
adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
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