Police: Missing Wash. Girl’s Body Found

BY GENE JOHNSON

TACOMA, Wash. – A Thai immigrant convicted of incest led investigators to the body of a 12-year-old girl who had been missing since the Fourth of July, and authorities were investigating whether he was involved with the disappearance of other children, officials said.

Zina Linnik, abducted the night of July 4 during a neighborhood fireworks display, died from “homicidal violence,” Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum and the Pierce County medical examiner’s office said.

The girl’s body was found in a wooded area in rural Pierce County, Fulghum said.

Police and FBI agents were led there with help from information provided by the lawyer for Terapon Adhahn, 42.

Adhahn is expected to be charged with the girl’s abduction and death, Police Chief Don Ramsdell said. He was jailed this week on an immigration complaint and was being held at a federal immigration detention center in Tacoma. He has been cooperating with detectives but has yet to provide a complete statement, Ramsdell said.

Adhahn served two months in jail and completed five years of sex offender treatment following a 1990 incest conviction after he violently raped his half-sister, court records say.

During an evaluation in August 1990, Adhahn told a therapist he’d been sexually molested countless times by an older brother when he was between the ages of 7 and 9 years old, according to court records. He also said his biological father was an abusive alcoholic.

The therapist called Adhahn’s personality profile “extremely problematic.” But by the time Adhahn completed sex offender treatment in 1997, his counselor wrote that he had made adequate progress and was actively involved in weekly group therapy.

The Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel, which is representing Adhahn, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Zina disappeared July 4 after being sent down an alley behind her home to bring back some of her siblings, who had wandered off to watch fireworks. Her father heard her scream, found a single flip flop on the ground and saw a boxy gray van driving away. His partial recollection of the license plate number led investigators to Adhahn.

A search of the Parkland home south of Tacoma where Adhahn had been staying turned up “girl’s undergarments,” according to a search warrant return.

At the Linnik home Friday, visitors left stuffed animals, flowers and cards.

Adhahn apparently made his living as a handyman, police said.

Fulgham said investigators were reviewing two other child homicides and two to three other disappearances for any connection to Adhahn. Specifically, authorities wanted to know if there were any similarities in the disappearances.

The cases being reviewed by police include two cases from 1986. Michella Welch, 12, of Tacoma, was found dead hours after the girl disappeared from a park on March 26, 1986. Later that year, Jennifer Bastian, 13, of Tacoma, was found dead in a park where she’d been last seen riding her bicycle two weeks earlier.

Other cases under review by authorities include a 4-year-old who vanished in 1995 and a 10-year old who vanished last year.

(This version CORRECTS spelling to Linnik, instead of Linnick.)