Murder With My Husband - 153. Mandy Stavik - Who Could Forget

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

On this episode of Murder With My Husband, Payton and Garrett discuss the murder of Mandy Stavik and how the case was uniquely cracked by civilians. Links: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: chillingcrimes.com/blogs/news/mandy-stavik 48 Hours on ID,  episode: “Mandy Stavik: The Case No One Could Forget,” aired June 3, 2020 on Investigation Discovery cbsnews.com/news/mandy-stavik-case-how-two-moms-chatting-at-a-water-park-helped-crack-thanksgiving-cold-case-murder/ abcnews.go.com/US/100-volunteered-bakery-worker-dna-crack-30-year/story?id=65537828 Newspapers.com sources: Carol Ferm, The Bellingham Herald, "Grief for Mandy reflected love and fear, say friends," 10 December 1989, archived (www.newspapers.com/image/770642815), citing print edition, p.B1 Associated Press, Kitsap Sun, "Student's brother, step-brother died tragically," 30 November 1989, archived (www.newspapers.com/image/873748339), citing print edition, p.B2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody welcome back to our podcast. This is murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Moreland and I'm Garrett Moreland and he's the husband and I'm the husband. Okay, let's get over right into Garrett's 10 seconds today. Peyton and I have been watching the last of us. You watched it. It's pretty good. It took us. I would say a couple episodes to get into it just to kind of I don't know get used to all the characters. Mm-hmm. An actress is an actor and all, but it's been great. And then Daisy, who was currently sitting on my lap, decided to pee the bed the other night. Well, she peed on top of our comforter.

Ah, didn't you. Just kind of for no reason, so we had to wash everything, so that was fun. She hasn't done it since, but. And that was the first time. And that was the first time. But what is learning? She's still learning. She's still getting there. But you know, we still love her. You just outed her like right here. Oh, yeah. Do it again. I'm gonna out you again. Do

it. I dare you. It's also currently dumping snow in Utah. So if you have any plans to come to Utah, be careful. I mean, I guess if you're skiing or snowboarding, then it's a good time to come. If you could fly in and get up. Just reminder, all our episodes are add free on Apple subscriptions or Patreon. And we also have bonus content.

So if you want to watch or listen to extra episodes or listen to all the episodes add free, you can go subscribe on there. And let's hop into this week's episode. Our episode sources are chillingcrimes.com, 48 hours on ID, CBS news, ABC news.go, and newspapers.com. Okay, I know I say all the time, but forensic genealogy has changed things so dramatically in the last four years. Not that today's case has any connection to forensic genealogy or genetic genealogy, as some call it, but this is the kind of case that if it hadn't been solved the way it was solved, it definitely would

have remained unsolved until forensic genealogy. Does that even make sense? It makes sense. Because now any case where they have the offenders DNA is solvable. Investigators no longer have to wait for the suspect to come to their attention and for the DNA to match because it's the DNA that can now lead authorities directly to the suspect. You know, I was thinking the other day, I wonder if at any point we as like the common people would be able to test and quotations DNA. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. Like at some point. Like collect someone's saliva and do it ourselves. Exactly. At some point is there gonna be some website or something where it allows us to look at someone's DNA. Right. I mean, I guess you can send yours in.

I assume it's kind of like an invasion of privacy. Yeah, really. Obviously I'm sure there's tons of rules around it. But you could collect someone's fingerprint. Yeah. But I guess you couldn't run it. But you couldn't run it. For example, I mean, we used to not be able to like look up license plates or phone numbers.

But now, I mean, you can look up someone's license plate and phone number and figure out every bit of information about them. Right. So I'm curious if at some point it becomes like, hubblick, not knowledge, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, it's a good thought. But in today's case, it was a chance conversation between two strangers, nearly 30 years after the murder, that finally put the killer on the radar of the investigation.

An investigation that had been cold for decades. So we're going to jump into it. We're just 20 miles away from the Canadian border in Washington state, in we are in a tiny little rural village called Akmi. Now Akmi is one of those communities where everyone knows everyone else. Literally, everyone goes to the same general store, the same post office, the same gas station and the same schools. Because there's pretty much only one of each, with a population of only 200 people.

There are no strangers in Acme. It's a place where everyone feels safe and sees no reason to keep their doors locked at night. I mean, 200 people is not that many people. In 1983, a new family moved into town from Alaska. Mary Stavick, a divorced mother of three, moved to Acme with her son Lee, and two daughters, Molly and Mandy.

And life for the Stavics in recent years had seen its share of hardships. Mary's marriage to Glenn Stavic felled and they ended up getting divorced in 1974. And in the following year, Mary's 17 year old son Brent was killed after being shot in the head and chest by an unidentified assailant. The short-come stances of his murder were unknown, and no witnesses ever came forward. It was a murder that went unsolved. But once moving to Acme, Mary and her three children began trying to build a new life,

and they settled comfortably in this friendly small town community, where Mandy attended Mount Baker High School and excelled not only academically, but athletically. She played on the softball team, she was a cheerleader and she ran track. She loved the outdoors. She was an avid runner and liked to take regular runs down the street on which she lived. You know, I wish I liked to run.

I really do. Yeah, I can't comment on it because I don't really like to run either. I like to see those people who are like, oh, this just lets me escape and I can just get lost in it. I wish not me. So one of Mandy's closest relationships in high school was with her basketball coach Jim Freeman, who just adored her as did most of people who knew her. By the time Mandy graduated from Mount Baker in 1989, she had blossomed into a promising young woman. She had a boyfriend, Rick Zender, and a lot of friends in the community. And in the fall of 1989, she began attending Central Washington University. When campus that year closed for Thanksgiving, Mandy returned to Acme, the small town,

to spend the holiday with her family. The Thanksgiving spread that year was especially plentiful, leaving everyone in the household filling stuff. The following afternoon, Mandy wanted to burn off some of those turkey day calories, so she left the house for a long run down her customary route. The usual one she'd taken before she moved away to college. This was Down Strand Road, the street she lived on, to the Nunsack River, and then back home. Usually, Mary, her mother, would join her daughter on her runs,

but on this day, Mary was still filling a bit way down by all of the food, so Mandy instead took the family dog, a German shepherd named Kyra. It was around 2.30 when Mandy and Kyra left for that run. By 4 o'clock, Mandy's mom had already expected her back home and was wondering where she was, why she might have been delayed. But then she heard something at the front door and felt a sense of relief. That is until she opened the door and saw Kyra, the German Shepherd, on the family's doorstep alone. The dog had returned without Mandy.

So that's when Mary Stavick knew something was wrong. She picked up the phone and began calling friends of Mandy's and friends of Rick's, her daughter's boyfriend, but no one had any idea where she was. Mandy's brother Lee had been in a friend's house that afternoon and had actually seen Mandy jog past the house, apparently, on her way back home. I think it's crazy that the dog returned home alone. Just knew the way. Yep.

But obviously, after her brother saw her jogging home, she never made it. By early evening, practically the whole entire town was out looking for Mandy. Volunteer searchers spent the whole weekend combing the area around the clock in shifts. So the search was just continuous from Friday night onward. And then on Monday, three days after Mandy went missing, searchers in a boat on the Noonsack River spotted something pink floating in the water up in the distance. And as they get closer, they could see that the pink was Mandy Stavik's pink running shoes, which was the only thing, along with socks, that she was wearing when they found her body.

Geez, a wheeze, okay. So the medical examiner determined that Mandy had been sexually assaulted, she was knocked unconscious and then drowned. It seemed like what happened was Mandy had been running and was close to her home, close to returning home, when someone in a vehicle abducted her. Police believed the abductor probably kicked her dog, Kyra, into a nearby ditch and forced Mandy into his vehicle at gunpoint, where he then drove her four or five miles

from the abduction site to the place where her body was later found. You know, not to interrupt again, but why can't we just live in a world where a woman can just run alone without fear of getting abducted or killed? Like that's just insane. Yeah.

Her body had scratches and abrasions all over it on her arms and legs. And this led investigators to conclude that Mandy had tried to escape after she was assaulted and took cover in some nearby blackberry bushes, which are covered in thorns. Before her attacker caught up with her and beat her over the head, knocking her out

and then putting her into the water where she drowned. Police were pretty confident that whoever abducted her had approached her from a vehicle because Mandy was very athletic and she was known for being a fast runner. So she would have probably been able to outrun a would-be a doctor on foot. And remember, her brother Lee had seen her jogging towards home before she vanished. And then, there was a delivery man named David Cracker who had seen Mandy run past his van while he was making a delivery at a house on Strand Road. That's the road she lives on. Cracker said that he had also observed another vehicle following closely behind her. He described that vehicle as a truck with two people inside who appeared to be in their 30s. There was another man who had been observed in the area around the same time Mandy was last seen driving a station wagon.

So they're kind of just asking around, seeing what kind of cars were in the area around this time. Because of all of this, a composite sketch was put out which later led to David Succi, a local drifter who claimed he had nothing to do with Mandy's murder. Now, at the time in 1989, DNA profiling was still very raw. The first murder case in which the perpetrator was identified using DNA was a case that we have covered on our podcast, The Murders of Dawn Ashworth and Linda Mann in England. Their killer was caught using DNA profiling in 1987, so only two years earlier. So to put that into perspective, the Golden State Killer was caught with forensic genealogy in April of 2018, nearly five years ago.

So in 1989, DNA profiling was newer in criminal investigations than forensic genealogy is now. And Acme was a very small town, so they had to go to the county sheriff's department to lead the investigation. Despite all of that, they were ahead of the curve and they did manage to develop a DNA profile from Seaman that was found inside Mandy's body, so they collected it and developed it. But it didn't match anyone in their local database. And it didn't match the Drifter, David Succi, so he was ruled out. Authorities then took a cue from the Ashworth man case and decided to do a DNA

dragnet. And if you remember from that episode, police in the villages where the murders took place in England took blood from all of the local men whose blood tight matched the killer they were seeking, and that's how they were able to weed him out. So in the Mandy Stavic murder, they took saliva swabs from about three dozen men in the community and ran their DNA profiles to compare Mandy's killer, but none of them matched. And in a town this small, this isn't really a bad strategy.

Yeah. Because there's only 200 people. I forgot that we were in a small town. Right. So police then turned their attention to Rick's sender. Of course, Mandy's boyfriend. I feel like you could then turned their attention to Rick sender. Of course, Mandy's boyfriend. I feel like you could just get DNA from all 200 of them. Right. Like just seeing everyone. Like everyone line up. Let's go. Then there's the chance that it's

not a local. True. So they then turned to the boyfriend whom she had been dating for about three years on and off. It was one of those relationships, you know, not without its issues, young love, kinda rocky. But Rick was cooperative and he had an alibi that they verified, and he gave investigators everything else they requested, so they were able to eliminate him too. Needless to say, Mandy Stavik's murder rocked the town of Akmi. It actually made national headlines and even newspapers in Japan. In the hometown of Mandy's college roommate who was a Japanese exchange student. So needless to say, this is a pretty big story for the size of town it comes from and everybody in the town was talking about it. Suddenly that long standing sense of safety was gone. People

were locking their doors, keeping them locked during the day even. Children and teens were not allowed to venture out alone. Parents who lived along Strand Road initiated a crime watch system where they coached their kids on how to defend themselves and how to stay safe. People in the community believed that whoever was responsible for Mandy's murder could very well do it again. Which would be scary in a small town like that of just a couple hundred people because the whole time that you're thinking, was it one of us? Was it the guy that works the grocery store? Was it my next door neighbor? Like, who was it? It's like, well,

who could have done it? Yeah. The general store in town was stocking up on mace and sober shopkeepers throughout the county. Acme's resident Marshall arts expert began offering a class called self-defense for gentle people. In fact, the registration meeting was held in the cafeteria of Mount Baker High, Mandy's old high school. Mandy was eventually cremated, and her ashes were buried in a wooden box at a St. Joseph Mission Cemetery, half a mile from the home where she spent the last six years of her life preparing for a future that never came because one man saw her life as being worth less than his momentary sexual gratification. And this is also heartbreaking because Mandy's mom Mary has now lost two kids to murder because her oldest son was also shocked and his killer

was never found. What? Yeah, remember? I said it at the very beginning. That was the reason they even knew to act me. That's insane. The funeral was attended by two dozen close friends and members of Mandy's family, a neighbor whom Mandy considered her adopted grandpa, covered the grave with plants, her basketball coach Jim Freeman delivered the eulogy at her funeral, along with Reverend John Stewart, whose speech was punctuated

by the cry of a lone stellar J. The Stavic family received an outpouring of support from, not just the community, but from strangers. They got dozens of letters in the mail, most of them from people who didn't even know Mandy personally, with envelopes literally addressed to Mandy's family. More than $20,000 in multiple monetary memorials for the Stavic family helped them with the funeral expenses and to ease the burden overall. Donations came from far and wide, many of them from out of state.

In 1990, a scholarship was created in Mandy's name and two students at Mount Baker High wrote and recorded a song called Mandy's Song and sold the song on cassette to raise money for the scholarship. The two students were Annie Sergai and Pete Stewart, the latter of which went on to become a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. Okay, you guys, we are getting into an ad. I know you guys have both heard the story about how Garrett and I were both paying separately

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Go to nativedo.com slash husband or use promo code husband at checkout to get 20% off your first order. That's native de.com slash husband or use promo code husband at checkout nativedo.com slash husband and use promo code husband. But throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, Mandy's case just got colder and colder. Tell us seemed like it might not ever be solved. Mandy's mother Mary had pretty much given up hope and resigned herself to never knowing

who took her daughter from her. But then in June of 2013, this is 24 years after Mandy's murder. A chance conversation took place between two strangers at a water park. And typically when I'm saying 24 years later, again it's because of DNA. It's typically because there's been a break in the case or detectives have come forward. It is never because two strangers at a water park started discussing the case. A conversation that would break this case wide open. Heather Backstrom and Marley Anderson were at

the Birch Bay water slides with their young children that day, 2013. They were among a group of moms at the water park and they got to chatting about their lives, and about their hometown, which was Acne. And then, at some point in the conversation, one of the moms brought up that murder. Remember that girl, Mandy Stavick, that was murdered? Since it's a thing that anyone from Acne of a certain age would know about and remember well, one of the mothers was like,

it's so crazy that they still don't know who did that to her. And as their kids played on the water slides, Heather and Mary Lee got to talk in just the two of them. Kind of like we do all the time with people in our lives, they got to talk in about true crime. Both of them had gone to the same high school to Mt Baker, but like I said, they didn't know each other very well, so they were virtually strangers.

But during their chat, the conversation turned back to Mandy Stavick and Heather just suddenly and pulsably said, I think I know who did it. And this stopped Marley in her tracks. What? Then she replied, I do too. And then they learned they both had the very same man in mind.

No way. A man named Tim Bass. During their conversation, Mary Lee recalled to Heather how Tim Bass, who was a friend of her husband, had stopped by her house one night, completely unannounced. This was back in 1991, two years after Mandy's murder.

Why? Okay, I know you're gonna keep going, but why are they saying this now? Well, because it's just a hunch. Oh, I mean, okay. it's just in the town of 200 people. You know what I'm saying? I know, but these two girls get to talk and then they're like, remember that guy? Oh, yeah, he was weird. I think he did it. I did too. I mean, I don't think it's as unnatural as anyone who has been on TikTok saying who they think the Idaho killer was. Got it. You know what I mean. So she was home alone with her infant son

at the time when she heard a knock at her front door. She then opened it to find Tim standing there. He told her he'd just been out hunting and needed to use her cell phone to call his wife. So she let him inside. Remember Tim is a friend of her husband's. And when he picked up the phone and dialed, she was close enough that she could hear

the three-no operator tone that precedes. This call cannot be completed as dialed. But Tim went ahead and pretended he was on the phone anyways. And so it gave Marley the creeps. And when Tim was done with this fake phone call, he proceeded to walk through the kitchen and into her bedroom. That's when Tim revealed that he often drove by her house, the house that she shared with her husband and baby, and he needed to make a confession. He had always been in love with her. And now he said he wanted to make love with her. What? Just out of nowhere?

Yes. Marily suddenly realized in that moment that she was in the company of a predator. Her husband's friend was not actually a friend, and she was terrified. Oh, weirdo. She told him absolutely not but Tim wouldn't take no for an answer. He kept trying to get her into the bedroom with him and he refused to leave the house. That was until Marilee threatened to call the police and at that point fortunately Tim got up and left. Heather, on the other hand, had her own story about Tim after hearing about this and this one happened only a few months before Mandy's murder, when Heather was 15 and Tim

was 21. It was 1989, Heather had just left a softball game and she and a group of friends crammed into a truck to go to the dairy queen. Heather was in the front seat, sitting between the driver, Dan, and Tim. During the drive, Tim Bass was relentlessly making advances toward the teenage girl. Told her she had beautiful eyes, wouldn't stop talking about her eyes. Again, he's 21. Then he took a pen from out of the cup holder and began rubbing it along her knees. Oh my gosh. Heather sat there, sort of just frozen,

not wanting to react one way or the other. There were other people in the car, including Dan, who incidentally would later become her husband. So she knew Tim wouldn't try to go any further than what he was doing. But even then, it still made her deeply uncomfortable. That's a new one of pen on the knees. I'll try that. Hopefully not to a young girl in the car. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But this just situation rubbed her the wrong way and it made her see Tim as a predatory sort of guy. So because of this from that point forward, she would go out of her way to steer clear of Tim bass. So both Heather and Mary Lee happened to both

be from Acme and they happened to both be at this water park and then they happen to both start talking about Mary and then they happen to both talk about this guy that they had these weird encounters with. For years after these incidents both of them had suspected that Tim Bass was the one who had raped and killed Mandy and now they're together going not you too and so because of this they both decide to go into authorities with their suspicions. Oh nice okay good. In looking into Tim Bass's 2013 they're like let's just go to the cops. Come on.

So police realized that he was never questioned about Mandy's murder, never investigated, and his DNA was never taken back then. His family was pretty well regarded in the community, so the attitude at the time was Tim Bass was above suspicion. Even though he lived on Strand Road, the same road Mandy lived on, and she would have jogged past his house that that very day of her disappearance and many times previously, Mandy also knew of Tim not well, but she had been friends with Tim's younger brother, Tom. And only a month and a half after Mandy's stavoc was killed, Tim got married and moved

to another town, so he kind of left town, which puts him out of sight in the investigation. So in 2013, after talking to Heather and Mary Lee, and giving Tim bass a closer look, investigators realized that they should track him down and talk to him. I mean, what's this hurt? These two girls come in. They're like, we had creepy encounters with him. He lived on her same road. He left town a month later. Why not? Why not? So they found him living in Everson, which is about 20 miles north with his wife and three children working as a bakery delivery man.

When they went to Tim's home to talk to him, they told him they were there to talk about Mandy. And hearing this, he then looked up toward the ceiling with a furrowed brow like he was straining to remember. He's like, Mandy. Oh my god. Mandy. Hmm.. He's like, Mandy. Oh my God. Mandy. Hmm.

I don't know what Mandy. Which was weird. Because anyone who lived in Acme at the time would instantly know who Mandy was. And he lived on the same road with her, especially also because his younger brother was friends with her. So the investigator was like, Mandy's stavic. And that's when he seemed to remember, oh yeah, I remember, I think she was killed or something, right?

They told him, yeah, she was, and we're here to collect a DNA sample. If you would just allow them to swab the inside of his mouth. Now, Tim Bass at this point becomes a little uncomfortable. He says, okay, I'm not really comfortable with that. I've seen too many crime shows. He told them, I know people give up their DNA and then it gets planted and they get sent to prison. So I just don't trust it.

I mean, the part he was leaving out here was the people on those crime shows who go to prison after giving up their DNA typically do because they're guilty. It's not because it's planted. But good response. Good response. It sees trying to avoid everything. Right. So if you're guilty, yeah, I can see why you might be afraid to give up your DNA. So after his refusal,

detectives then talked to Tim's wife, Gina. And Gina told them that on the day Mandy had been abducted. Remember, they were engaged. Tim was with her the entire day. So she knew he couldn't have done it. But there was something in Gina's tone, a kind of uncertainty. Maybe even fear, they just weren't buying her story and they weren't about to give up. Oh, I just, I don't never understand this. Like, I think in her, this is going, why, why is she lying for him? Right. Like, why does that happen?

Well, I think that it's a defense mechanism. I think as a wife, I mean, if the police shut up on our doorstep and said we think he killed someone in the past 24 years ago, I would immediately be like, no way. Correct. But you wouldn't say, oh, but Garrett was with me that entire night. Yeah. What I lie for you probably not. So police trying not to give up, they decide to do another round of DNA gathering, like

they had done back in 1990 and they collected DNA from another three dozen men. And they let Tim know that they were doing this and again asked if he would come forward and give a sample, again he refuses. They went to the bakery where Tim worked and talked to his manager, a woman named Kim Wagner, and they told her that they were investigating Tim in an unresolved matter. They didn't give her any details about why, and they wanted to look at his work history and delivery route. But the bakery would not permit them to do this.

If they wanted access to these records, they would need to return with his subpoena. So police hitting another dead end with Tim began surveilling him, following him around, waiting for him to discard something. Anything that might contain his DNA, they're gonna go Golden State Killer before Golden State Killer happens. But it didn't pan out.

It seemed that Tim was being very careful not to leave his DNA behind. So the case hit another dead end. So two more years would pass. They don't have enough evidence because it's just these two women's hunches. Wait, they can't get any DNA. I'm confused. No, they don't have enough evidence. They can't get a, they can't get a subpoena or warrant for it.

Oh, why? There's not enough evidence. You can't just demand, they can't get a subpoena or warrant for it. Oh, why? There's not enough evidence. You can't just demand someone to give you DNA. You have to have proper probable cause. And their only cause really is that these two women came in and said, hey, he's kind of a creep, you should look into him. It's so hard because look, I'm so on social media and I get everyone's like, well, don't give you.

I don't want to just give my DNA to anyone, blah, blah, blah. I know all this stuff. And I'm like, I got a cell phone. I'm on Instagram. I'm on TikTok. Like, it's too late for that. My stuff's out. My stuff's out there.

The government wants to know something about me. They already know something about me. Like, I have nothing to hide at this point. Like, I'm just gonna give my DNA. But you wouldn't, if you were guilty. Correct. So that's what I'm saying. Like, so then why not just issue the warrant? Right.

Like, if you're saying You're saying no it is something and it's we have rights. I mean, but do we but do we That's basically what I'm saying Thank you for shortening that story down for me a little bit No, I mean I get what you're saying but I also believe that like it's important that we follow the Greg steps Yeah, just breaking those house and grab it's important that we saw all of the Greg steps. Yeah, just breaking those house and grab it and. Right.

Okay. So two more years go by. And then one day, Kim Wagner, remember this is Tim's manager at the bakery where he works. She learns that the reason police were investigating Tim and it even visited the bakery two years ago was because he was a suspect in the murder of Mandy Stavick. She remembered Mandy's murder well as she'd been working as a delivery driver down and at me at the time that Mandy disappeared. She had never forgotten about this crime, kind of like everyone else.

Suddenly, Kim had regrets about her refusal to cooperate with police back then. And also, she didn't really like him. She found him weird, he was moody and unpredictable with a short fuse and he seemed to have a low opinion of women. In fact, he wouldn't even call her Mrs. Wagner or Kim. He addressed her as woman. So if Tim really did have something to do with the region's most notorious unsolved murder,

Kim decided she wanted to do her part in helping put him away, two years after the fact. Yeah. She got back in touch with the police investigators and told them that she was willing to help. She wanted to get them something with Tim's DNA on it so she began watching him closely, waiting for him to drink a beverage at work, discard a half-eat in muffin, whatever it may be.

She would make sure that garbage pals remained empty, waiting for him to deposit whatever DNA covered item into it with minimal possibility of contamination. But a month went by. And nothing. Like, literally, it's almost like this guy was consciously being really cautious. Yet another month passed and Kim still couldn't come across any opportunity to collect Kim's DNA. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, unsure of which direction to take in life? We all face those moments of uncertainty where the right path seems elusive.

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Finally, after three whole months, Kim observed Tim take a plastic cup from the water cooler and use it to pour some Coca-Cola into from a can. After he finished, he discarded the plastic cup and the Coca-Cola can and then went to the men's room. That's when Kim quickly scrambled to retrieve these items from the garbage pale, bagged them and turned them over to investigators. Who sent it off to a crime lab, and guess what? It matched. The results came back and it was a match to the DNA found inside of Mandy Stavick's dead body.

Horrible. So detectives, again, approach Tim Bass and ask him if he'd ever had any kind of relationship with Mandy. And he said he hadn't, which this is great. Because now at trial, it'll be much harder for him to turn around and go, actually, actually we were having an affair and I had sex with her that day and then somebody abducted her, which is why police even do this in the first place. They want to get him saying, no, I've never had a sexual relationship with her. They asked him if he'd ever even so much as kissed her and he denied it, said he didn't even know her. So they asked him, okay, well, then how did your semen end up inside of her? The day she was murdered. And he said he had no idea

what they were talking about. Tim Bass, who was now 50 years old, was then arrested and charged with Mandy's murder in 2017. That's crazy. And upon learning about his DNA matching the DNA from the semen taken from Mandy, that hazy memory of Mandy, when he seemingly had to think for a real long time before remembering her name. Well now he was claiming, oh, okay, actually, yes, I lied. And I did have a secret relationship with her. One that nobody knew about except him and Mandy. Investigators weren't buying it.

Again, they had already caught him in the lie and the district attorney wasn't buying it either. But Tim Bass pled not guilty and that story became the backbone of his defense, like I just said. At trial, his attorneys challenged the DNA evidence and produced a forensic expert who claimed that the semen could have been inside Mandy for up to three days, leading up to her murder. They argued that Tim and Mandy had had consensual sex the night before her murder, but a forensics expert for the prosecution disagreed, stating that it was likely have been deposited around the time of her murder. But a forensics expert for the prosecution disagreed, stating that it was likely have been deposited around the time of her death.

Though Tim Bass was now balding overweight and middle aged, his defense showed the jury pictures of him as a younger man. As though to suggest, see, he was good looking back then, Mandy would have loved to have her relationship with him. But even Tim's own wife and brother turned against him. His wife, Gina, admitted on the stand that Tim had demanded that she lie for him, telling her if she didn't, he would go to prison. Additionally, Tim had asked his mother if he could tell police that his father who had died many years before was Mandy's real killer, but his mother refused to condone this. Gina also testified that her marriage to Tim was a nightmare that he was abusive and controlling. He dictated to her the close she could wear where she was allowed to go,

who she was allowed to see. She said she only stayed married to him for the sake of their kids. She's basically abused. Yeah. And then as well, I can't believe he asked his own mom, tell them that my dad killed her. Yes. That's insane. His brother, Tom also testified against him that Tim had asked him to lie and back up his story that he had a sexual relationship with Mandy on the download, but Tom refused to lie for his brother about his high school friend. Tom recalled now when Tim was still in high school, he went off the deep end after a relationship with a girlfriend ended. He recalled the phone conversation and how Tim told his girlfriend he had a pistol and he was gonna kill himself. During the call he fired the pistol into the air. And from that point forward, his brother Tom said,

Tim just kind of openly hated women. The jury took a day to deliberate because the defense had nearly succeeded in creating reasonable doubt by planting the seeds that Mandy and Tom did or could have had a consensual relationship. That's so sad too. For like Mandy's family and Mandy's size. Yes. It just completely lie about that because that's not what happened. Right. It's obviously not what happened and they're just lying about it and... But it's a tactic we see coming from a mile away.

It's hard to because I guess there's so much that we could get into it about it that that's allowed. I mean because I mean obviously He told his attorneys know we had a relationship, you know, and so they're thinking okay, well That's what he's saying is true then we're gonna run with it But it's just a complete lie. There's a chance his attorneys came to him and said so you had a relationship with her And I didn't want to say that because right because we don't want to think attorneys do that But that that that's their job, I guess it's just adorable that the whole part I'm not saying they do that or that they did that I just saying yeah that their job is to get their client off

It just makes it worse for her family and just it does it's it's retraumatizing. It's revictimizing and it's awful Yeah, but looking at the totality of the evidence, the reasonable doubt disappeared and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. That was on May 24, 2019, nearly 30 years after Mandy's murder. And the sentence Tim received was less than that. He received 27 years in prison, which was because it couldn't be proven that the murder was premeditated. And that condition was required in order to secure a life sentence.

I guess that's just kind of how things work in the state of Washington. But Tim Bass continued to deny responsibility and instead of keeping his mouth shut during the penalty phase, he gave a statement. I would first like to say that I am 100% innocent of this crime. Furthermore, I don't believe I received a fair trial in saying that, though, the better man in me says I should say very little today I give this day to the Stabic family. How generous of him to give a day to them. Such a good guy. Tim Bass is currently serving his sentence And he'll be eligible for parole in 2036 when he's 69 years old, but we can't end it without pointing out

That he he probably could have eventually been caught if he somehow got his DNA taken and then they ran it through the system right or even forensic genealogy. But the fact that two women were gossiping at a water park and decided to take their suspicions to police which then gave police a suspect to look into in this cold case. And that's how it was solved. It just shows you the impact that people have in true crime. You know what I mean? Like that is, that's pretty intense.

That's pretty crazy. But anyways, that was the murder of Mandy Stavick. It's horrible. It just sucks that, like I said in the beginning, I mean, she was just going for a run She's 19 years old. She was so young and it messed up Also, I think I'm upset that he might get out at 69 years old and that is still saying He killed someone he'd not only did he kill someone he lied about it And he's still claiming that he didn't kill anyone, but they're like, okay, let's let him out and not only did he like

Kill someone changed. he's a change, he's changed. He abducted a 19 year old girl and then left her naked body to be discovered in that way. Do you know how traumatic that is and just dehumanizing and disgusting that is? So let's take this day to remember Mandy, think of her family, and remember that her mother suffered a lot. Her mother suffered a lot, her family suffered a lot.

And although I'm pleased to see that this case was solved, and in such an intriguing way, Mandy was still a real person, and doesn't there's no justice here. It still hurts. So let's just take a day to think about her and we will see you guys next time with another episode. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. you