'If something happened to my daughter, I'd want someone to help me. And the thought of her mom never having an answer of who did that to her daughter, if I could help her find that peace, I wanted to do it.'
Kim Wagner was working as a delivery driver in Acme, Washington, in 1989, when 18-year-old Mandy Stavik disappeared.
Three days later, Stavik's body was found in knee-deep water in a river just miles from her home. She had drowned and had been sexually assaulted, according to authorities.Wagner, who was 19 years old at the time, had grown up near Acme, and remembers the fear that gripped the entire community. Initially hesitant to cooperate with police, Wagner suggested they contact the bakery's human resources department. She had no idea that she would eventually be critical to cracking one of the area's most notorious cold cases, helping to finally bring Stavik's killer to justice.
"Lee, my son, he was at the Andersons' house, which is about halfway between my house and Highway 9, down Strand Road," Mary Stavik told ABC News."He was there visiting his friend, Jeremy. He remembers seeing her jog by, coming home.""I was panicky," Mary Stavik said."First person I called was her boyfriend, [Rick Zender]. ... I called the sheriff and I called everybody else I could think of, and I had everybody I knew out searching for her.
Meanwhile the exhaustive search for Mandy Stavik continued. Two days after she'd disappeared, a search-and-rescue team was checking side roads when they uncovered a pair of green sweatpants. Mary Stavik was brought to the scene and shown the clothing because Mandy Stavik had been wearing green sweatpants during her jog.
"I remember running out of the house. I ran off into the field and I just remember screaming -- screaming at life, at God. How could something like that happen? How could He let something like that happen?" Brighton said. Around the same time, Peterson had just returned from the FBI's academy in Quantico, where he had learned that DNA evidence could be used as an investigative tool. He said that in 1989, the only people doing DNA testing in the criminal world were officers submitting their samples to the FBI. Police sent the DNA evidence taken from Mandy Stavik's body to the FBI and obtained DNA profiles for both her and the unknown male assailant.
Dave McEachran, Whatcom County’s former district attorney, said that Bass was living on the same road as the Staviks in 1989 but he had not been contacted by authorities. Elfo said that there were a few houses between the Staviks' home and Bass' and that she would jog past his house nearly every day. His family knew her family and he'd attended Mount Baker High School just as she did. His younger brother, Tom Bass, was friends with Mandy Stavik as well.
When police traveled to Bass' home and asked him about Mandy Stavik, he appeared to be unable to remember her name, McEachran said. She directed them to the company’s human resources department. The corporate office for the bakery, however, needed more from authorities. The next time the police entered Franz -- this time in hopes of getting Timothy Bass' delivery route -- she was ready. She took the detective into her office and asked him whether he was investigating the Mandy Stavik case.
"I 100% volunteered to do it," she said."The reason I wanted to know was I'm a mom now. If something happened to my daughter, I'd want someone to help me. And the thought of her mom never having an answer of who did that to her daughter, if I could help her find that peace, I wanted to do it." In 2017, Timothy Bass was arrested at Franz Bakery and taken to the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office. Bowhay described Timothy Bass' demeanor as"flat" in the interview room with police.
Timothy Bass said that he had no correspondences between him and Mandy Stavik, and that he had made no phone calls to her. "I was on my way to Tim's house because I went to his house after school and I passed her. She was running," Malone told investigators in 2017."So, I saw her."
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