Thread: Mattawa, WA Missing girl killed by Illegal

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/112 ... tmlMattawa police chief vows reforms in wake of missing girl's death

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report on how police here and around the nation fumble missing-person reports, originally published in 10 parts.
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Mattawa police chief vows reforms in wake of missing girl's death

By LEWIS KAMB
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

MATTAWA -- Police Chief Randy Blackburn says his three-officer department has grappled with ways to handle calls for service amid dwindling budgets and spikes in crime over the past dozen years.

And each year, as the weather warms and cherries, apples and other mainstays of this rural economy grow ripe, his sleepy town awakens: Day laborers flood in, more than doubling the Grant County town's population. With more people comes more trouble, Blackburn says.

"We do what we can to keep up with the flow," he says.

But Blackburn now admits that as busy as his small department gets, there's simply no excuse for neglecting missing-person reports -- or, more specifically, reports about runaway teenagers.

There's no excuse, he says, for his department's failure to follow state law in such cases by not retrieving dental records and other critical information required when someone is missing longer than 30 days.

No excuse for how his department failed to follow up the case of a runaway teenager named Michelle Vick -- and Blackburn now vows "to lay down some new policies" for improving his department's response to such cases.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's recent 10-part series, "Without a Trace," featured Michelle's story as an example of how law enforcement lapses in missing-person cases can leave families without closure, allow the dead to remain unnamed and let killers go free.

"Runaways were kind of looked at as nuisance calls," Blackburn says of the way his department viewed such cases. "They were kind of at the bottom of the barrel."

The chief now says all missing-person cases will be taken seriously, adding that he is working on a new policy to be implemented "in a couple of months."

He also plans to revamp the forms used by his officers to get the names and contact information from the dentists of runaway juveniles. This, he says, will keep such information from being "forgotten or swept under the rug or whatever."

For the family of Michelle Vick, the changes are welcome -- they "just come a little late," says Tish Curry.

When Curry reported her daughter missing to town police in June 1998, an officer immediately took a report and filed it into state and national computers -- a federal requirement when anyone under 18 is reported missing.

But after Michelle remained missing more than 30 days, the Mattawa department didn't get her dental records and forward them to the State Patrol -- a key procedure that helps investigators identify bodies found.

"I wasn't even sure it was a law until I talked to you the last time," Blackburn recently told a P-I reporter.

Because of that lapse, Michelle's former boyfriend, Tomas Mendez, then 18 and on parole for a child rape conviction, had ample time to leave the country before investigators knew enough about the case to call him their sole suspect.

Without dental records, there was no way to link Michelle's name to the decomposed remains that hunters found 37 miles from Mattawa four months after she ran away. It took more than 16 months before a detective from another jurisdiction figured out that the remains were likely Michelle's, confirming the identity through the very dental records Mattawa police neglected.

Since Michelle's story was published, the demeanor of Blackburn, a gruff 51-year-old who says he plans to retire in four years, seems to have changed.

Incensed readers bombarded the P-I with angry comments about the perceived insensitivity of the Mattawa chief, pointing to a comment Blackburn made to a reporter who asked about Michelle's case:

"What's there to talk about?" Blackburn asked. "She ran away, she wound up dead. End of story."

The chief says he now regrets those words.

"I didn't know that I was such a butthead that day," Blackburn says. "I had several things on my mind. I think you caught me at a bad time."

Both Blackburn and town Mayor Judy Esser say they've received little reaction to the story featuring Michelle's case.

"The (town) council wasn't concerned," Esser says.

Although Blackburn says he is making changes, he is quick to add that the problem transcends his small agency. "It's not just my department, it's every department," he says. "I think these cases are going to need to be taken more seriously in departments in all of the state -- and probably nationwide."

Finding the time and resources to pay attention to such cases is a big part of the problem, the chief says. A recent citizens initiative devoured $186,000 from his budget, forcing Blackburn to reduce his staff from five officers to three.

Crime rates are "better now than it used to be," Blackburn says, but when harvest season arrives, "it's non-stop."

Grant County Sheriff Frank DeTrolio says his department has taken steps to improve missing-person investigations on a countywide level in recent months, but he says that no one case prompted those actions.

"We weren't really good about sharing information," DeTrolio says. "Now we automatically notify all departments countywide, as well as the State Patrol and (public utility) agents, game and wildlife agents -- people who are really out seeing things."

Resource constraints were a common explanation among departments across Washington as to why police tend to neglect missing-person cases, the P-I found.

Few missing-person cases involve foul play and usually resolve themselves quickly without police interaction, and so often departments tend not to thoroughly investigate reports -- if they take them at all.

And that allows cases that need attention to slip by -- like that of Michelle Vick.

"I just wish we could've done something more to find her and get her home," Blackburn says.

The chief's response is one a mother wishes she had received when her daughter ran away.

"Yeah," Tish Curry says, "I wish they could've done more, too."

P-I reporter Lewis Kamb can be reached at 206-448-8336 or lewiskamb@seattlepi.com

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