Records: Man and woman set up staged kidnapping at Tacoma Costco. She’s charged, he’s not.
A woman was recently charged for allegedly lying to police about her role in a staged kidnapping at a Costco in January.
Records show a 22-year-old woman and a man met on the dating app Whisper and mutually agreed to meet and fake a kidnapping. But when the attempted kidnapping occurred, the woman denied her consensual involvement in the scheme and the man was arrested.
The woman has been charged with causing “another to be arrested or proceeded against for a felony crime.”
The attempted kidnapping investigation details a situation where the man stalked and tried to forcefully put the woman into his Cadillac sedan on Jan. 23 at Tacoma’s Costco store on South 37th Street. According to the report, the woman told investigators the man said “don’t make a scene or you will get hurt.”
During the incident, a bystander asked the woman and the man if they were OK. The man said “yes,” while the woman said “no.” After that, the man let her go and exited the parking lot in his vehicle. The woman then rushed into the retailer and told a manager she had been attacked.
Detective Jack Nasworthy of the Tacoma Police Department worked with Sound Sound 911 and used Costco’s surveillance footage to track down the kidnapping suspect. Nasworthy later spoke with the woman, who said an unknown man approached her from behind and grabbed her neck and arm. She stated in her interview that there was a back-and-forth struggle, but it dissolved after the bystander intervened.
Nasworthy determined based on the woman’s testimony that he had probable cause to arrest and charge the man with first-degree kidnapping. The man was arrested Jan. 26, but said the situation was a misunderstanding. He confirmed that he was at Costco but said the woman actually proposed the situation over the Whisper dating app. Nasworthy believed he was trying to create a false alibi, so the detective booked him into Pierce County Jail on a first-degree kidnapping charge, which is a class A felony.
Later that day, Nasworthy called the woman to inform her about the statements the man made. During the phone call, she denied having contact with him, telling anyone she was going to Costco or having been on the Whisper app around that time.
Sixteen minutes later, she called the detective back and left a message. She admitted to having downloaded the app and had forgotten about discussing a kidnapping scenario with the man. “I was like joking with someone on it, about something like that … but I never expected anyone to try and shove me in their car,” she said, according to the affidavit.
The 22-year-old told the detective she was “joking around” with someone online about wanting to be stalked. She revealed that she sent the man photos of what she was wearing and that she would be at the retail store but that she only thought he would stalk her. He apparently sent the message “CNC,” which stands for consent/non-consent, a form of roleplay.
The man was released from county jail and later forwarded screenshots to the detective.
Under Washington law, malicious prosecution is defined as an act causing or attempting to cause “another to be arrested or proceeded against for any crime of which he or she is innocent” and is a class C felony. If the falsified crime is a felony, the person charged with malicious prosecution can be punished with up to five years in state prison.
This story was originally published April 6, 2023 at 11:08 AM.
