‘Cannot keep hiding in fear.’ 1998 murder of Tacoma family remains unsolved
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- Linda Tran and her children were murdered in Tacoma in 1998; case unsolved.
- Tacoma police cite fire damage and lack of evidence as major investigative obstacles.
- Detectives urge witnesses to share tips that could help identify a known suspect.
Hannah Scoccolo remembers eating Vietnamese food and watching cartoons with her cousin, 26-year-old Linda Tran.
After Tran’s family immigrated from Vietnam, Scoccolo said they were pretty much best friends because of their closeness in age. They would spend a lot of time together growing up, picking berries in the summer and being with each other for bigger moments such as the birth of Linda’s son, Austin Tran, 1.
“We’d always hang out in the berry fields and stuff so that was really a fond memory of that I have of us,” Scoccolo told The News Tribune recently. “When I got my tonsils pulled out, [Linda] was the one that stayed with me and kind of nursed me back to health, so we were very close. I just wish I would have taken more time to kind of steer her in the other direction at the time when I was focusing on college, but hindsight is 20/20.”
On Dec. 18, 1998, Scoccolo received a phone call from Tran’s youngest brother informing her the police had come to tell him that Linda, Austin and her 9-year-old daughter Patricia had been murdered. Tran was also seven months pregnant and her unborn child, Joshua, did not survive.
Tran and her children were found dead at their duplex in the Salishan neighborhood in the 1700 block of East 40th Street in Tacoma.
To this day, the case has been unsolved, but Tacoma Police Department detective Julie Dier remains hopeful.
“Hopefully somebody can feel guilty enough and give this family some closure,” she told The News Tribune. “The parents are getting older, and I’m sure they want some answers.”
Prior to their deaths, Tran and her kids were at her parent’s house cooking dinner for her father when she received a call. Patricia asked to spend the night at her grandparents’ home, but Linda insisted they go back to their duplex, according to News Tribune reports at the time.
After they got home, eyewitnesses said the family was met by a man outside who began arguing with the Tacoma mother at about 8:15 p.m. Witnesses reported the man, who had a baseball bat, then chased or lured Tran and her children inside. Minutes later, there would be an explosion in the home.
“So I raced over to my uncle’s house, which was only about 10 minutes away at the time, and the cops had already come in, you know, wanted to make sure nothing was suspicious there, and my uncle was there, and that was, that’s when everything, just, the tragedy happened,” Scoccolo said.
Through the investigation, police said it appeared the unknown man had beat Tran and her children before setting the house on fire. The man then left the house, locking the family inside to perish.
“There was a hole in the roof from an explosion that happened,” Scoccolo said. “Apparently from what the detective at the time had told me was he had already had the gasoline poured in the house, and so by the time Linda and them got there, the vapors had been accumulating in the house for so long that when the fire started, that’s what caused the explosion.”
The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office reported the family died from blunt trauma, smoke inhalation and burns, The News Tribune reported.
Scoccolo said a police officer drove her around that night, and she still remembers driving past the sight of Linda, Patricia and Austin’s home, which was now considered a crime scene.
“It was just unreal of my cousin’s duplex that she lived in, like, there’s fire trucks and police officers and the area was secured,” she said. “I still can’t believe that had happened.”
Background of Linda Tran and her children
Growing up, Scoccolo said, Tran struggled with acclimating to U.S. schools and the culture. Scoccolo and Tran learned North American culture together, which brought them closer.
“She ran away while she was a teenager and she had Patricia,” Scoccolo said. “When she, I guess, decided she had enough of that life, she actually called me and I let her mom know.”
Patricia was just a little girl when she and her mother were brought back to Tacoma.
“Patricia just immediately won her grandfather’s heart. They were inseparable, pretty much,” Scoccolo said.
Linda’s father owned a shop on 61st Street and East McKinley where he would spend time with Patricia.
“Patricia was pretty outgoing. She was very artistic. She enjoyed drawing and coloring,” Scoccolo said. “Her and other kids that happened to be around had coloring contests, and she was very prideful in her work of art.”
When Austin was born, Scoccolo said, she and Linda thought he would be a girl.
“We’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a boy.’ We don’t even have a boy name. And so we’re sitting there, we’re trying to go through names, and we ended up coming up with Austin,” Scoccolo said.
When Linda was pregnant with her third child, Scoccolo said, they had started drifting apart, but they had named the baby Joshua.
“She met some people, and I don’t, I don’t really know much about them. That’s kind of when we broke off, unfortunately,” Scoccolo said. “I kind of feel guilty about that, and I wish I would have been more in tune with what was going on with Linda at the time.”
How does the Tran investigation look today?
Decades after their murders, there have been no official suspects. Former boyfriends and the fathers of her children were interviewed by detectives at the time. They had all been ruled out as suspects, according to a News Tribune report from 1998.
The case has now been handed to Julie Dier.
“I wouldn’t even say I need strong evidence. I would need evidence that would point me in the right direction,” Dier told The News Tribune via phone call. “I need to know that this evidence belongs to a suspect.”
One of the challenges has been that a lot of the evidence was burned from the fire in the Tran home. Because of that, Dier said, investigators do not have much evidence to test. She has been able to gather some information and is waiting for results from what she has sent off to a lab.
“Since a lot of time has gone by, and technology has improved a little bit, I have been able to send some things off,” Dier said.
Dier said not everybody in this case has been interviewed, and she needs to have “ammunition,” or evidence, behind talking to certain people.
“There’s a couple people that I would like to re-interview. Unfortunately, some of those people have moved away,” she said.
Dier hopes someone might come forward with information they have been sitting on, which could drive the investigation forward.
While there have been no official suspects in the murders, Tacoma PD shared a composite of the man who was seen yelling at the family before the tragedy occurred.
According to previous News Tribune reports, neighbors described the man who chased Linda Tran as of Asian descent. Dier said that since the children also were targeted in the killings, it appeared the crime was personal rather than being random.
Scoccolo said the night before the killings, someone broke a window in the home. Police did a sweep of the house, but nothing was found.
Despite the passage of time, Scoccolo continues to hope the case will be solved.
“If anyone knows anything or heard anything, or think that they’ve heard anything, no matter how small it is, to please call Crime Stoppers or [the Tacoma Police Department] to report this, because anything right now at this point may be the one little thing that breaks this case wide open, no matter how small someone thinks it is,” Scoccolo said. “We cannot keep hiding in fear because we think of retaliation.”
In a statement to The News Tribune, Linda’s sister, Loanna Tran, asked that anyone with relevant information to come forward.
“For the past 26 years, my family and I have constantly felt the absence of Linda, Patricia, Austin and Joshua. I always wonder what life would be like if they were still here, and I fear that my elderly parents won’t be able to wait any longer for justice,” she said. “If anyone could provide relevant information and help our family find closure, please come forward.”
“Someone must know something,” Loanna added.
This story was originally published July 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
