ZINA LINNIK - 12 yo (2007) - Tacoma WA

Tacoma WA ---- The family of 12-year-old Zina
Linnik filed a wrongful death lawsuit against multiple agencies,
claiming there were "multiple and significant" failures that resulted in
their daughter's rape and murder at the hands of a convicted sex-offender.

The suit also claims the government tried to hide its mistakes.



Zina was snatched from an alley behind her family's
Tacoma home on July 4, 2007. Four days later, police arrested Terapon
Adhahn and charged him with her rape and murder. Adhahn led police to
Zina's body on July 12 in exchange for being spared the death penalty.
He was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

In the suit filed Tuesday, the family says
multiple agencies allowed Adhahn to slip through the cracks by failing
to "adequately treat, supervise, classify, report or track" him, adding
that Adhan should have been deported or been in prison instead of killing Zina.

The family says authorities also failed Zina by
delaying issuing an Amber Alert until the next morning after the abduction.

The claim was filed against the city of Tacoma, Pierce
County, the state of Washington, and its subdivisions of the Department
of Corrections and Child Protective Services.

Tyler Firkins, the family's lawyer, said it has boxes of documents regarding Zina's
case, but says critical information is redacted.

"The documents we believe will show additional and further errors and omissions by the
various governmental agencies," Firkins said. "Currently they are
preventing us from seeing those."

The claim cites Adhan's violent
rape of his half-sister in 1990 and his ensuing plea deal to incest, a
lesser felony charge than rape, in exchange for five years of community
supervision and sex offender treatment.

Over the next five years, Adhan violated many restrictions set in supervision requirements
by DOC, with no penalties, the suit alleges. The suit also says that a
weapons charge against Adhan in 1992 should have resulted in his
deportation as a Thai national.

Once Adhahn was released from
supervision in 1997, he failed to register as a sex offender nor checked
in with his Department of Corrections supervisor despite moving 10
times, and it wasn't noticed by the DOC until traffic stop in 2002, the
suit claims. Adhan was not charged or cited for failing to register.

The Department of Corrections would not discuss the details of the claim,
but said at the time of the event, Adhahn had been off supervision for 10 years.

The claim lawyers filed Tuesday did seek specific
monetary damages, saying the figure would be released if the lawsuit
goes to trial. The family is also seeking the release of the document
that Firkins says will lead to changes in state law that will better
protect children from sexual predators.

"And if we can't see the errors and the mistakes that the governments
are making, we can't make the changes," Finkins said.

The other agencies named in the
lawsuit refused to comment. They have 20 days to file a response.

An Amber Alert about the abduction of 12-year-old Zina Linnik
in 2007 could have gone out six hours earlier had Tacoma’s police
spokesman not fallen asleep after receiving an early-morning call asking
him to issue the alert.
Recently filed court documents indicate a detective sergeant called spokesman
Mark Fulghum at home about 4 a.m. on July 5, that year, and asked him to send out the alert.
Fulghum had taken the over-the-counter pain reliever/sleep aid Advil
PM before going to bed about 1 a.m. and fell back to sleep before
fulfilling Sgt. Tom Davidson’s request, the records show.
Under the Police Department’s unwritten policy at the time, Fulghum
was the only member of the agency authorized to issue Amber Alerts.
The department since has adopted a formal written policy that allows
officers with the rank of sergeant or above to issue the alerts without
going through Fulghum.
The alert regarding Zina wasn’t issued until about 10 a.m. July 5 –
about 12 hours after the girl was reported missing.
The alert contained information gathered shortly after her abduction,
including descriptions of her and the van and driver seen leaving the
alley behind her Hilltop home about 9:40 p.m. July 4.
Fulghum on Tuesday declined to comment for this story, referring questions
to Jean Homan, the deputy city attorney. She, too, declined to comment,
referring questions to City Attorney Elizabeth Pauli.
Efforts to reach Pauli for comment were unsuccessful. Terapon Adhahn,
a convicted sex offender,confessed to abducting and killing the girl.
He led investigators to her body in eastern Pierce County a few days later.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Zina died
of blunt force trauma to the head. Adhahn subsequently pleaded guilty
and is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The circumstances surrounding Fulghum’s inaction are detailed for the
first time publicly in court pleadings recently filed in the wrongful
death lawsuit Zina’s family brought a year ago.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2014818216_linniksuit.html

For the first time we're hearing from Tacoma city leaders on the
heels of troubling revelations over how the Tacoma Police Department
handled the Zina Linnik case, with allegations of a police cover-up.
Last week, it was revealed that a Tacoma Police sergeant slept
through a call to issue an Amber Alert the night Zina Linnik
disappeared, July 4, 2007, resulting in a six-hour delay.
City leaders have decided to take no action against Sergeant Mark Fulghum or Police Chief Don Ramsdell.
But the Linnik family has filed a lawsuit against the city. The city
manager and the mayor acknowledge mistakes were made. But after meeting
in executive session with the full city council, they decided not
to discipline anyone.
"We have to make damn sure our performance re-establishes the public's trust," said City Manager Eric Anderson.
Trust broken by accusations the police chief tried to cover it up.
"I believe that in a stressful situation some information was not
released that should have been released," said Anderson. "The Chief
agrees with that and has apologized for not doing that."
Linnik, 12-years-old at the time, was abducted on July 4, 2007. Her
body was found three days later. Her confessed killer, Terapon
Adhahn, is now in prison.
Also for the first time, we're hearing Adhahn’s version of events. He
told investigators he was upset over not being able to see his son that
night.
“If I ain't gonna have my kid neither will anyone else, the hell with them,” he said.
He says that night he’d gone to see his son but he wasn’t
home. Angry, seeing red, he said, “I wanted to destroy a human...cause
pain make them feel that.” Why Zina, he was asked, “She was just there,”
he said, “I can grab her and do what I want.”
Adhahn says he accidentally killed her by pulling a zip-tie around
her throat within minutes after she was taken. Zina’s family disputes
that timeline, and blames sloppy and sleepy police work.
"But for the comedy of errors we discussed, Zina would still be alive today," said Linnik family attorney, Tyler Firkins.
Mayor Marilyn Strickland disagrees. She stands by Terapon Adhahn’s version of events.
"I mean anything's possible but he made a confession and he's behind bars and that's what happened," said Strickland.
Strickland says the city and the police department have taken steps
to improve the process for issuing Amber Alerts in the future.
"There was no redundancy in place. So at the time there was only one
responsible for issuing the Amber Alert. We fixed that so now there are
multiple people who could issue an alert if we decide to take that
route," said Strickland.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/Zina-Linnik-City-Responds-120748274.html

Tacoma's police chief has been reprimanded following revelations that
the department's spokesman was being paid to be on-call the morning he
fell back asleep instead of issuing an Amber Alert for an abducted
12-year-old girl.
The News Tribune of Tacoma reports that City Manager Eric Anderson issued the reprimand to Chief Don Ramsdell.
Zina Linnik was abducted and murdered on July 4, 2007. Early the next
morning, a detective called and asked spokesman Mark Fulghum to issue
an Amber Alert. Fulghum fell back asleep and the alert was not issued
for another six hours.
The city manager says Ramsdell never told him that Fulghum was on
call. Anderson says he only recently learned it when The News Tribune
requested a copy of Fulghum's time card.
Linnik's killer, Terapon Adhahn, told the FBI he killed her soon
after abducting her, making it unlikely that an earlier Amber Alert
could have saved her.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014911710_apwajuly4thabduction.html

“Asian guy with a gray van?” Randy Rush said into the phone, loudly repeating
what he’d just heard.Rush, 46, looked straight at his co-worker, Terapon Adhahn,
an Asian guy with a gray van.Adhahn didn’t react.It
was 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 5, 2007. The night before, 12-year-old
Zina Linnik had been snatched from a Tacoma alley behind her home.
An Amber Alert had been issued. Rush’s co-worker, Alma Austin, had
called him to share details: The kidnapper was an Asian man with a gray
van, partial license plate numbers of 1677.That felt too
familiar. Rush and Austin had known Adhahn for three weeks. They’d spent
the last couple of days working together at a house on East J Street in
Tacoma, fixing gutters and wiring and cleaning up. The job site was
less than three miles from where the girl had been taken on South J
Street. Rush, still on the phone, still looking at Adhahn,
repeated the plate numbers aloud: 1677. Sultan Hassan, the owner of the
property, stood a few feet away on the porch, listening. Rush and Hassan
later recalled looking at the plate on Adhahn’s gray van. The numbers didn’t match.
Everyone went back to work.Adhahn knew why the numbers didn’t match. He’d switched the plates.

SIX HOURS
Four years have passed since Linnik died and Adhahn led police to her body,
dumped at Silver Lake near Eatonville. Recent revelations and a lawsuit
filed by Linnik’s family have reopened the old wound.The suit contends
Zina might have been saved had Tacoma police not delayed the Amber Alert
– the first in department history. Court
records show police did delay. Some reasons (sketchy information and
pursuit of another, seemingly likely suspect) were explained at the
time. Others weren’t. Police Chief Don Ramsdell didn’t disclose
that department spokesman Mark Fulghum, weary from a double shift and
drowsy from an over-the-counter sleep aid, got the go-ahead to send the
Amber Alert at 4 a.m., but fell back to sleep without doing it. Six more
hours passed before the alert went out.The lawsuit hinges on
those six hours, and the idea that Zina was still alive. The city offers
various legal arguments in response, but the emotional core rests on a
murderer’s word. In a September 2008 interview, Adhahn told FBI
analysts he killed Zina within 15 minutes of snatching her at 9:40 p.m.
She’d been playing with friends, watching the July 4 fireworks.Adhahn
said he dumped her body at Silver Lake, and later dumped her clothes on
Tiger Mountain near Issaquah. If true, the delayed Amber Alert made no
difference; Zina was already dead.It’s a cold defense for the
city, but a review of 900 pages of public records of the investigation
lends credence to Adhahn’s story. The records are police reports:
statements from witnesses who knew Adhahn, worked with him and spoke to
him during the three-day window before he was captured, as well as
time-stamped cellphone surveillance records gathered by police during
the manhunt for Zina’s killer.

JULY 5
Adhahn’s account of the hours between July 4 and 5, given to FBI analysts more
than a year after the event, is murky. In some cases, it conflicts with
earlier statements from witnesses.He said he’d strangled Zina by
accident with zip ties meant to restrain, not kill. He didn’t say he hit
her, though the medical examiner noted blows to Zina’s head. He
said he took Zina’s body to his house in Spanaway. He said he molested
her corpse. He said he drank several beers, fell asleep and went to work
the next morning. He said he’d taken Zina’s body to Silver Lake
a “few days” later, according to records. Early
on July 5 or July 6, between 5:30 and 6 a.m., a diesel truck driver in
Eatonville saw a gray van and driver loosely fitting Adhahn’s
description pull into the road that led to Silver Lake. Police searched the
gravel turnout the truck driver described and found fresh beer cans and cigarette butts. A
woman who lived near Silver Lake saw a similar vehicle in the area
around the same time. Both witnesses were sure it was morning, but
neither could be certain about the date. Both witnesses gave statements
to police several days after July 12, when Zina’s body was recovered. Another
witness, Jiamchit Rowe, told police Adhahn called her early July 5 and
said he wasn’t coming over for breakfast, breaking his routine. Adhahn
was renting a house from Rowe, and working on it to cover the rent. He
was behind on the latest payment. “(Adhahn) complained of not
sleeping well because of the noise of the fireworks,” the report states.The
van Adhahn used to abduct Zina was filled with building materials July
3, according to Rush, his coworker. It was conspicuously empty July 5.
Rush told police it looked vacuumed out. Rush had arrived for work at the
East J Street site about 9:30 a.m. July 5. Adhahn’s van was already there.About
an hour later, Adhahn and Hassan returned from a trip to Lowe’s, where
they’d bought building materials. That was when Rush got the call about
the Amber Alert, and teased Adhahn about it. The men worked until 12:30,
Rush said. Then Rush left for a short time. Adhahn stayed at East J Street.
He was still there when Rush returned about 2:30 p.m.“Rush
noticed as he passed the sliding door of T’s van that it was clean and
empty … the back of the van appeared to have been vacuumed out,” a
police report states. “Rush noticed T was sweating profusely, even
though he was working in Hassan’s air-conditioned house.”The work
went on until 5:30. Rush asked Adhahn if he wanted to get a beer, the
report states. Adhahn refused, saying he needed to stop drinking.
Adhahn might have been seen near the South Hill Mall about 90 minutes later, according to police reports. A
witness familiar with the Amber Alert had seen a gray van and a man
matching Adhahn’s description. The man recalled seeing 1, 7 and 6 on the
license plate. He called 911 and tried to chase the van, but the driver
pulled a U-turn and sped away. At the time, police discounted
the story, for reasons that are not explained in the records – but
Adhahn later told FBI analysts he recalled being chased on South Hill.The
alleged incident is a junction of conflicting information. Adhahn told
FBI analysts he thought he’d already disposed of Zina’s body at the time
of the chase. That contradicted his statement that he’d dumped the body
a “few days” later. He said he’d changed his plates shortly after the
chase to avoid detection; but his co-workers, Rush and Hassan, had
already noticed the changed plates earlier that day.Later on the
evening of July 5, Adhahn went to dinner at the home of Testiva and Jiamchit Rowe.
From 9:30 a.m. until about 9 that evening, he had rarely been alone,
and his van was empty. No one had seen Zina.

JULY 6-7
Adhahn’s suspected movements on July 6, a Friday, also present mysteries.Hassan
said Adhahn returned to East J Street and worked the entire day. The
report does not provide specific hours. Police subsequently brought dogs
to the work site at East J Street. They found no traces of Zina.Adhahn
went to another job site on East 55th Street later that day, according
to a separate report. A witness, Pichet Ploykhoa, recalled Adhahn
loading his van with scrap lumber and talking of leaving the country. He
wanted to move back to Thailand and be a monk. “(Adhahn) said
there was ‘too much going and he wanted a simpler life,’ ” the police
report states. Ploykhoa added that Adhahn was a real nice guy who did
good work.That evening, Adhahn went to dinner with the Rowes again. Testiva
Rowe recalled he talked of getting a dog. She said she and Adhahn had
gone to the Humane Society for Tacoma & Pierce County that day,
looking for a dog. Adhahn couldn’t find one he liked, so he reportedly
chose two kittens. There is no sign of the animals in subsequent
reports.Reports of Adhahn’s movements on July 7, a Saturday, are
even sketchier. One witness told police Adhahn worked at the property on
East 55th Street during the day. Another witness who had been at Silver
Lake in the late afternoon recalled seeing a gray van at the site that
pulled away swiftly when she approached it. The witness was fairly
certain of the time because she was thinking of the Amber Alert when she
tried to get closer to the van.Adhahn didn’t come to dinner at
the Rowes’ house that night. By this time, police knew his name, traced
through a 2-month-old police report tied to an acquaintance who had
driven Adhahn’s gray van to a job. The walls were closing in.

JULY 8
Early Sunday, about 7 a.m., Adhahn called the Rowes and asked to
borrow Testiva’s car, a Nissan Pathfinder, reports state. Adhahn
said he had to drive over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge for a job, and his
van ate too much gas. He came by, picked up the car and left quickly.
Whether he went over the bridge is unclear, but reports say he bought
building materials at a Home Depot store in Tacoma about 10:45 a.m.From
there, he headed east, not west. By now, police had his phone number.
Armed with a search warrant, they tracked the phone’s signal. “The
device was moving in the area of SR 512,” the report states. “We
subsequently traveled n/b to SR 18 and then e/b in an attempt to locate
the suspect vehicle. Information received showed the device had stopped
at the Tiger Mountain Summit area for a short period of time, and then
proceeded back onto SR 18 in a w/b direction.”Adhahn knew he was
being watched. Records state he called Jiamchit Rowe and said police
wanted to talk to him. He was arrested later that afternoon.Four
days later, he led them to Zina’s body at Silver Lake. During
questioning, he said he’d left her clothes on Tiger Mountain, on the ground.

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/11/1702556/zinas-killer-used-trickery-luck.html#ixzz1P5MplrbX

The city will spend up to $50,000 for “an objective and unbiased
review” of Tacoma police’s handling of the Zina Linnik abduction and
murder case four years ago, the City Council confirmed Tuesday.City
officials must work out final contract details before formally hiring a
Texas lawman selected to conduct the probe, Tacoma Mayor Marilyn
Strickland said.Mark Simpson – a retired Arlington, Texas, police
sergeant-turned-consultant – has signed a contract with the city that
would pay him $150 per hour, plus expenses. City officials likely will
sign off on that agreement in the next few days, Strickland said.The
council’s latest move comes amid demands from the union representing
the city’s rank-and-file police officers that it be allowed to help set
the scope of the review.
Earlier Tuesday, Tacoma Police Union Local 6 representatives
separately met with city labor negotiators to discuss the review’s
details. City officials arranged the meeting after union representatives
contacted City Manager Eric Anderson to contend that the review was
subject to bargaining – and that the city faced legal action otherwise.“We’re
not trying to be obstructionist about it,” detective Terry Krause, the
union’s president, said Tuesday. “There’s procedure that needs to be
followed. If they talked to us first, as they should have, it wouldn’t
be an issue.”City labor negotiators will remain open to
discussion with the union, Strickland said Tuesday. But union issues
won’t derail the review, she added.“We’ve said we’re going to do this,” Strickland said. “So, we’re planning to move forward.”The
council’s unanimous vote Tuesday authorized paying for the review from
its contingency fund. After completing the review, the investigator will
be tasked with submitting a report to the council that will be made
public. The review’s goal is to strengthen the police department’s
effectiveness and improve public trust, Strickland has said.After Tuesday’s meeting, Police Chief Don Ramsdell said his department will work with the investigator.“As
an organization, we’re obviously going to cooperate with the review and
provide any records the investigator might need,” he said.The
council’s formal approval of the review comes two months after city
officials announced no further investigation of the Zina case was
needed.In April, The News Tribune revealed new details about why
the city delayed issuing an Amber Alert after the 12-year-old girl was
abducted from behind her Hilltop home in July 2007. New statements in
court records showed the delay was partly caused by Officer Mark Fulghum
falling back to sleep instead of issuing the alert as requested in a
phone call.Ramsdell later apologized to the newspaper for not
divulging those details during previous public statements about why it
took 12 hours to issue the alert. The information about Fulghum also was
left out of the department’s after-action report on the case. In
light of the new case details, the council met privately in April, then
announced it would take no further action. Anderson also said he would
not pursue disciplinary action against Fulghum or Ramsdell.But
after The News Tribune filed a request for Fulghum’s pay records from
the day of the delayed alert – records showing he was on “stand-by duty”
at the time he fell asleep – Anderson announced he had reprimanded the
chief and would conduct an internal investigation of Fulghum.He and Strickland also called for the outside review of the entire Zina case.In
May, Strickland announced Simpson, a consultant who specializes in
child-abduction cases, as her choice to conduct that probe. Among his
experience during a 32-year police career, Simpson led a task force in
charge of investigating the unsolved 1996 abduction and slaying of
9-year-old Amber Hagerman, whose case led to development of the Amber
Alert.Other than bargaining its parameters, the police union has no objections to the review, Krause said.”I
think an investigation is going to show that everything was done well,”
he said. “We’re not trying to hide anything or stop them from doing
this.”
Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/21/1715388/city-to-spend-up-to-50k-on-review.html#ixzz1PyOpU2oG

TACOMA, Wash. – A wrongful death lawsuit against city, county and
state agencies for the kidnapping and murder of Zina Linnik has been dismissed.
A King County superior court judge dismissed the lawsuit Thursday, reports the Tacoma News Tribune. The lawsuit, against the City of Tacoma, Pierce County, and the State of Washington, was filed by Linnik's family.
The 12-year-old girl disappeared from her Hilltop neighborhood on
July 4, 2007. Convicted sex offender Terapon Adhahn confessed to her murder.
The lawsuit contended the agencies did not do enough to prevent Adhahn from being a threat to the public.
It also mentioned that an Amber Alert was not issued until hours
after Linnik disappeared because a police spokesman fell asleep.

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Zina-Linnik-wrongful-death-lawsuit-dismissed-125964333.html