Piecing together the portrait of a serial killer - Crime Reports ...
TRAIL OF MURDERS
Jan. 24, 1986: Denise Sallee disappears. The 17-year-old Parkland girl is last seen at Paradise Village Bowl on Pacific Avenue South in Parkland.
March 29, 1986: A 7-year-old boy finds Sallee’s body in wooded area near Pacific Avenue South.
Oct. 5, 1986: Kimberly Payne, 16, is last seen at Parkland bus stop.
Oct. 6, 1986: Three children discover Payne’s body in gravel pit near 170th Street South and Waller Road near Spanaway.
June 13, 2001: Kathryn Coates, 72, is beaten and strangled after interrupting a burglar in her house in the 11900 block of Bingham Avenue East in Summit.
June 27, 2001: Rebecca Nash, 48, is found strangled in her burglarized apartment in the 2300 block of South 96th Street in Tacoma.
June 16, 2001: The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department releases a composite sketch of a person of interest in Coates’ slaying. A relative later identifies the man as Timothy Ray Burkhart.
July 2, 2001: Burkhart, 35, commits suicide in Parkland as Pierce County sheriff’s detectives close in on him in Coates’ death.
April 2009: Tacoma police detective Gene Millers develops a cold case room at police headquarters. He catalogs 185 to 190 unsolved homicides.
Late 2009 to early 2010: Miller starts looking at whether the unsolved slayings of two Tacoma girls – Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian – are connected to the deaths of Sallee and Payne.
Tuesday: Tests at the state crime lab reveal Burkhart’s DNA matches the suspect profile developed in the Payne homicide. It does not match the profile developed in the Bastian and Welch cases. Miller believes other evidence ties Burkhart to Sallee’s slaying.
Stacey Mulick, staff writer
Denise Sallee, 17, went out with a girlfriend to the Paradise Village Bowl in Parkland on Jan. 24, 1986. Her body was found two months later.
Burkhart, then 19, hung out at the bowling alley.
Kimberly Payne, 16, had a wide circle of friends at Spanaway High School and went to the Paradise Village Bowl on Oct. 5, 1986. Her body was found the next day in a gravel pit.
Burkhart, a Parkland native, knew some of those same friends and liked to party at the gravel pit.
Kathryn Coates, a 72-year-old grandmother, was killed by a burglar in her Summit home in June 2001.
Burkhart, then 35, had some of Coates’ stolen belongings and pawned one of her rings. Plus, her blood was found on his clothing.
Rebecca Nash, 48, was killed in her apartment by a burglar in June 2001.
Burkhart had Nash’s stolen television, and her car was parked near an apartment complex where he’d done maintenance work.
The killings of Sallee and Payne were never solved. But 15 years later, investigators were tipped that Burkhart might be the killer of Coates and Nash.
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Betty Lou Young, the longtime resident who helped to shape the identity of Pacific Palisades with her pen and a shovel, passed away on July 1 at the age of
