Jennifer Bastian: 1986 Cold Case, DNA Match, and Guilty Plea

The 1986 murder of Jennifer Bastian in Tacoma, Washington, was solved in 2018 when DNA recovered from the 13-year-old’s swimsuit matched Robert Dwane Washburn, an Illinois man who had placed himself in Point Defiance Park on the day she disappeared. Washburn pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2019 and was sentenced to 340 months in prison.

What Happened on August 4, 1986

Jennifer left her North Tacoma home that afternoon on an 18-speed Schwinn to ride Five Mile Drive, a loop through Point Defiance Park. Three classmates later told police they saw her on the drive with an unidentified white adult male cycling near her, and two other witnesses reported speaking with a girl matching her description at the Dalco Passage Viewpoint between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m.¹ When she did not come home by 6:30, her mother reported her missing at 8:30 that night.²

Tacoma Police closed the park and launched a search that pulled in hundreds of volunteers and officers. The park stayed closed through August 7. Bloodhounds worked Five Mile Drive without result.¹

On August 26, a witness reported a strong odor near a jogging trail off Five Mile Drive. Two days later, search dogs found Jennifer’s body in a wooded area off the drive, her bicycle nearby. Investigators believed the site had been prepared before she was brought there, and the scene was processed jointly by the Tacoma Police Department and the Green River Task Force. An autopsy the next day determined the cause of death was asphyxia and found evidence of sexual assault.² Because the remains had been in the woods for nearly four weeks, investigators could not develop usable DNA from the body itself.³

Why the Case Went Cold

Jennifer was the second young girl killed in a Tacoma park that year. Five months earlier, on March 26, 1986, 12-year-old Michella Welch was abducted from Puget Park, sexually assaulted, and murdered.⁴ For decades, police worked on the assumption that one man had committed both crimes. That belief shaped the entire investigation and narrowed what detectives looked for.

Hundreds of leads produced no arrest. The paired killings reshaped Tacoma itself, and residents later described how families stopped letting their children play outside unsupervised.⁵

The DNA Evidence That Solved It

In 2011, the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office, the Tacoma Police Department, and the FBI formed a dedicated cold case team, supervised by TPD Detective Gene Miller.² Detective Lindsey Wade compiled a list of more than 2,300 men mentioned anywhere in the Bastian and Welch case files and worked with the FBI to collect 160 new DNA samples for lab comparison.⁶

In November 2013, an expert panel recommended testing the swimsuit Jennifer had been wearing. The Washington State Patrol Crime Lab identified semen on the garment and developed a male DNA profile.² That profile did not match the DNA from the Welch crime scene. The two murders had been committed by two different men, and the single-killer theory that had guided the investigation for 27 years was wrong.⁷ Neither profile matched anyone in state or national DNA databases.

In April 2016, investigators built a formal persons-of-interest list and began collecting DNA from each name on it. Robert Dwane Washburn was one of them. He had drawn attention to himself in 1986 by calling police to report seeing a man who resembled a composite sketch in the Welch case while jogging at Point Defiance Park. When detectives interviewed him that December, Washburn said he frequented the park, sometimes jogging the trails twice a day, and admitted he had been there the day Jennifer vanished.⁸

By the time investigators reached him, Washburn had long since moved to Eureka, Illinois. On March 6, 2017, FBI agents visited his home and asked for a DNA sample, which he gave voluntarily.⁹ On May 3, 2018, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab confirmed the match. The probability of an unrelated person sharing that profile was estimated at 1 in 57 trillion.²

Arrest, Plea, and Sentence

Washburn, then 60, was arrested at his Eureka apartment on May 10, 2018, by federal, state, and local agents. He waived extradition in Woodford County Circuit Court the following day and was booked into the Pierce County Jail on May 23.¹⁰ Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist charged him with first-degree premeditated murder; the complaint was later amended to add aggravating factors of sexual motivation and deliberate cruelty.⁹

At the news conference announcing the arrest, Jennifer’s mother Pattie Bastian told reporters, “We never gave up on wanting justice. Tacoma never gave up on wanting justice for Jenny, and now, after all this time, justice is Jenny’s.”¹¹

Washburn pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. In a written statement read aloud in court, he said he wanted to spare the families a trial and apologized. He admitted that he grabbed Jennifer by the arm, led her into the woods, and strangled her.¹²

On February 25, 2019, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Martin sentenced Washburn to 340 months, roughly 28 years, in prison.¹³ Judge Martin said “Jennifer’s life was stolen right as she was poised to begin it.” Jennifer’s sister Theresa addressed Washburn directly in court: “You made me an only child.” She told the judge she had never taught her own daughter how to ride a bicycle.¹⁴

Jennifer and Michella’s Law

The gaps the cold cases exposed moved Washington legislators to act. House Bill 1326, formally titled Jennifer and Michella’s Law, was signed into law in May 2019.¹⁵ Pattie Bastian and retired Detective Lindsey Wade testified in support of the bill as it moved through the legislature.¹⁶

The law made several changes to Washington’s DNA collection rules:

Required biological samples from every adult or juvenile convicted of a felony, and added indecent exposure to the list of qualifying offenses.¹⁷
Authorized law enforcement to submit DNA samples from deceased persons previously convicted of qualifying offenses, regardless of when the conviction occurred.¹⁷
Allowed convictions under municipal criminal codes to qualify for state DNA database entry, closing a loophole that had excluded them.¹⁵
Classified willful refusal to provide a required DNA sample as a gross misdemeanor and expanded the penalty to cover all individuals required to submit a sample.¹⁷

The same 2013 DNA finding that cleared the way to Washburn also allowed detectives to pursue the Welch case on its own facts. A separate investigation using genetic genealogy led to Gary Charles Hartman, who was convicted of first-degree murder in Michella Welch’s death and sentenced to 26 years and six months in prison in March 2022.¹⁸

1
KOMO News. Jennifer Bastian Timeline
2
Pierce County, WA. Pierce County Civic Alert – Bastian Case
3
NBC News. Michella Welch, Jenni Bastian Killings: Tacoma Detectives Never Gave Up
4
Pierce County, WA. Pierce County Civic Alert – Welch Case
5
KOMO News. Tacoma Police Release Timelines for Cold Case Murders
6
The News Tribune. Profile of Detective Lindsey Wade
7
The News Tribune. Two Separate Perpetrators Confirmed
8
Fox 13 Seattle. Robert Washburn Charged With Murder in 1986 Death of Jennifer Bastian
9
Pierce County, WA. Pierce County Civic Alert – Washburn Charged
10
Peoria Journal Star. Tacoma Cold Case Arrest in Eureka
11
Fox 6 Now. DNA Leads to Arrest in 1986 Murder of Teen
12
Peoria Journal Star. Eureka Man Sentenced in Washington
13
Fox 13 Seattle. Washburn Pleads Guilty, Sentenced to Over 25 Years
14
The News Tribune. Washburn Sentencing Coverage
15
National Institute of Justice. Expanding DNA Databases to Solve Cold Cases
16
KOMO News. Murder Victim’s Mom Pleads for Lawmakers to Pass Jennifer and Michella’s Law
17
Washington State Legislature. House Bill 1326
18
The News Tribune. Gary Hartman Convicted in Michella Welch Murder