Teen found dead after vanishing on walk home in 1994, WA cops say. Now an arrest
Tanya Marie Frazier finished her summer school class at her Washington middle school on July 18, 1994.
The 14-year-old, however, never made it to her Seattle home after leaving Meany Middle School, the Seattle Police Department said in a Nov. 5 news release.
Tanya vanished.
Her body was later found by a man walking his dog, just blocks from where she was last seen, police said.
For more than three decades, Tanya’s family went without answers in her slaying.
But now, in part thanks to advances in DNA technology, police said a 57-year-old man recently released from prison has been arrested in connection with Tanya’s death.
McClatchy News is not naming the man as he has not been formally charged.
“It’s a day I just never thought would come,” Tanya’s sister, Teara Frazier, said in an interview with KING-TV.
It’s a day police investigators have been working to bring to the family for more than 30 years, Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a news conference.
“She was only 14 years old. She was a daughter, sister and a friend. She had just finished middle school and also worked in volunteer service,” Barnes said. “Her life mattered. Let me say that again: Her life mattered.”
‘Murder shook the community’
Before her death, Tanya was set to start high school in the fall, having “just graduated from Washington Middle School,” according to media reports, police said.
She attended St. Clement’s Episcopal Church and worked with “the Chicken Soup Brigade, an organization providing meals for people in need,” according to police.
“Tanya’s murder shook the community,” police said.
For Teara Frazier, the toll her older sister’s death took on her has never subsided, she told KING-TV.
“It was like such a huge part of my life. I feel like it’s affected all my relationships like all throughout my life,” Teara Frazier said. “I’m hoping like some closure and having answers can help me from that.”
Decades-old evidence helps lead to arrest
At the news conference, Det. Rolf Norton praised the initial detectives on Tanya’s case, as their work in July 1994 helped lead to an arrest decades later.
“Back in 1994, we didn’t have a CSI team,” Norton said. “Homicide detectives went and processed the scene for evidence.”
Among the evidence collected was something critical for an arrest decades later: DNA, according to Norton.
A DNA profile from the evidence was eventually uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System, Norton said.
CODIS is “a computer software program that operates local, state, and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence, and missing persons,” according to federal prosecutors.
The man was identified as a suspect after a hit was made in CODIS, according to Norton.
The man waived his initial court appearance Wednesday, Nov. 5, when prosecutors detailed his criminal history, which includes “a series of convictions from 1996 for attempted rape in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, and robbery in the first degree,” KOMO News reported.
Norton told The Seattle Times that the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is expected to formally charge the man Nov. 7.
‘Today is not the day to take a victory lap’
Despite some closure in the case, Norton said it’s too soon to celebrate.
“Today is not the day to take a victory lap. It’s not a day to dance, to slap hands and like ourselves a lot,” Norton said. “Today’s a day to double down and refocus as we go to the next phase.”
Now, Norton said, is the time to support the “King County Prosecutor’s Office in being successful in their mission.”
“And to echo the chief’s comments, today is the day to take a step back and reflect on Tanya Frazier,” Norton said.
