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robert washburn. he was the guy who phoned in a tip about michella s murder. he was never a suspect. on her short list, only because of that genealogy analysis. why did washburn s name end up on the list to be tested for dna? because of his last name. just the last name? yes. because he was in that list that was sent to you? correct. at the time, it seemed like a coincidence. a fluke. but now, here it was. no doubt. robert washburn s dna on jenni bastian s swimsuit. it was head spinning. zblfr and the funny thing is he was not a high-priority suspect. he certainly hadn t abouted like one. they learned in the years after the murder/rape of jenni bastian, robert washburn blended into middle america. literally. stayed out of trouble. in fact, when investigators came knocking at his door? he voluntarily gave
hopeful. i didn t know, exactly, where it was going to end up. but i knew it was a big step in the case. we had a tip line open. and we got multiple tips on the same person. because he actually looked so much like the sketch. but when they checked him out, they eliminated him as a suspect. so much for new approaches. detective wade, once again, looked at the huge lists she d made. 2,300 men, connected to the two cases. she couldn t test all of them against the crime scene dna. but there were several hundred that really did stand out because they did have documented history for violence and sexual assault. so, she set out to collect the dna of those men. she called them high-priority suspects. she, also, included one guy who wasn t a suspect at all. the witness, washburn. and though they were scattered all over the country, with the fbi s help, one by one, she tracked them down. we asked people. knocked on
necessarily matches but, telling similarities. it s really the first, big development in human identification, i think, in years, in 20 years. her method can link an unknown-dna profile to possible relatives and, therefore, possible, last names. detective wade was skeptical, at first. it kind of sounded like smoke and mirrors, to me. but i thought, well, i m going to give it a shot. i mean, i want to solve this case. yeah. she sent dr. fitzpatrick the two dna profiles from michella and jenni s crime scenes. and she did her magic. she entered into her genealogy databases. there were no exact matches. but there were some possible family names. i certainly, you know, dug into the names and there wasn t anybody who jumped off the page. the only name that seemed remotely interesting was washburn because there was a
and also why did washburn call in a tip about michella s murder months before he killed jenni. that s another question we d like an answer to. had he been planning it all that time? i don t know. watching for somebody? certainly possible. after 32 years jenni s case had finally ended but the bastian wade partnership had not. the two joined forces 20 jennifer and michella s law. what would it mean to you to have such a law named after your daughter? it would be great. it would be terrific. to memorialize these two girls that did not deserve this. in may 2019 washington governor jay inslee signed that