Perhaps, this man had succeeded in one abduction and then moved on - maybe to another region. In April of - just a couple of months after Teekah's disappearance - the "Teekah Lewis Bill" would be passed in Washington state, creating a multi-agency task force within the Washington State Patrol.
This task force would augment local and regional police when they were dealing with reports of missing and exploited children, and could be mustered together in emergency situations such as Teekah's.
In the months that had followed the disappearance of the two-year-old, police had attempted to link the witness sightings they had obtained - of both the pockmarked man seen in the bowling alley, as well as the repeated sightings of a white man with brown hair driving a Pontiac Grand Am - to registered sex offenders in the area.
It's unknown how successful they were in finding individuals that matched this description, but months would pass without police naming a suspect or person-of-interest - nor finding any sign of the missing child. For weeks, police held out belief that Teekah's body might be found in the area around the bowling alley. Speaking to the media, Tacoma Detective Larry Lindberg stated:. They would say she's near the bowling alley somewhere - we just haven't found her.
In particular, a large contingent of police officers seemed to believe that Teekah's body had been abandoned on a property nearby the bowling alley, adjacent to it, which was scheduled to be excavated for development later that year.
However, when the excavation was carried out - much to their surprise - no sign of Teekah was found. Months would begin to pass by without any sign of Teekah Lewis. Before long, more than a year had gone by, and the youngster's name would begin to disappear from local news headlines.
It wasn't until the Spring of that Teekah's case would be reported upon again, more than two years after her disappearance. On April 28th, , the body of a headless child was found in Missouri who would later become known as "Precious Doe". This girl, who appeared to have been around four years old at the time of her death, was found in a wooded area just outside of Kansas City, and had clearly been a victim of homicide.
Her head was found wrapped in a plastic trash bag about yards away from her body, and an ashtray - one of the murder weapons - had been left near her body. Police would begin to link the two together, since Teekah was one of the missing black girls that matched the description of the female victim, and their ages would have matched; Teekah had been missing for two years, and would now be four years old the estimated age of the victim.
Police would find that her stepfather and mother had conspired to kill her and dispose of her body, and were later sentenced to life in prison and 25 years, respectively. This would bring an end to that grisly story, but not the enduring mystery of Teekah Lewis, which remained unexplained nearly a decade later.
However, that same year - inspired by another news story from out of state - Teekah's name would make headlines yet again. It was announced in that a private investigator hired by Teekah's family had found a girl living in a Dallas, Texas RV park, who seemed to match the profile of the missing girl; not only did this girl look similar to Teekah and her older sisters, who were then 8 and 15 years old, but - according to Theresa - she had the same earlobes.
Speaking to the News Tribune, Theresa stated:. In my heart, this is my daughter. Photos were sent back to Theresa, which apparently showed this girl in the care of a woman that she supposedly recognized from the bowling alley; claiming that she had seen her there on the night of Teekah's disappearance. Even though Schuler admitted that the girl from Texas was a "look-alike," she said that there were enough differences to rule out a comparison, including birthmarks which the girl in Texas didn't have , but stated that DNA tests would make the ultimate determination.
It would take several weeks for the results from the DNA tests to come back, but when they did, they came back as a negative match. Despite the similarities, this was not Teekah Lewis. During this time, attempts would be made to link Teekah's case to others from the region. Among the most prominent were:. The disappearance of Lenoria Jones, a 3-year-old that went missing from Tacoma in July of The murder of year-old Adre-Anna Jackson from nearby Tillicum, who was murdered in December of and whose body was found in April of The murder of year-old Zina Linnik, a year-old Ukrainian immigrant who was abducted from her home in Hilltop, Tacoma and then murdered.
In each of these cases, police would attempt to link Teekah's case through one factor or another. However, despite each case bearing similarities to Teekah's disappearance, I find it unlikely that any of them would be linked. In the case of 3-year-old Lenoria Jones, who similarly disappeared from a public place in Tacoma, her guardian at the time is believed to have been involved changing her story numerous times, and having an alibi that was easily disproven. When it came to year-old Adre-Anna Jackson, she was last seen walking through an area frequented by drug users and transients, and very little information has ever been learned in her case.
Then, finally, in the case of year-old Zina Linnik, we know who killed her: a year-old immigrant from Thailand named Terapon Adhahn, a convicted rapist and sex offender from the area, who has since been linked to additional rapes of teenagers and pre-teens from the region including the murder of Adre-Anna Jackson from December of While Adhahn actually made for a valid suspect in this case I actually wrote an entire section about him that I'm omitting from this episode , I don't believe he's a match for Teekah's murder for one simple reason: he never targeted girls younger than 11, and I don't think he would have been able to abduct a two-year-old from a bowling alley without being seen.
In the research for this story, I have found several sex offenders that lived in the Tacoma region at the time, and had a prior history of not only targeting young girls - between the ages of 2 and 7 - for sexual purposes, but also had a history of violent and controlling behavior. Unfortunately, this is an exhaustive list, and it would be virtually impossible for me to disseminate this information in a thoughtful and responsible manner.
Needless to say, though In the years after Teekah's disappearance, the scene of the crime - the New Frontier Lanes bowling alley - would be demolished. Police would receive more than tips in the first few years after Teekah went missing, and would end up investigating leads in several states. The case would even be featured on several true crime television shows, including "America's Most Wanted," which aired segments on Teekah at least three times throughout The following year , Teekah's face would be plastered on the side of semi-trucks driving throughout the United States, which was part of a joint effort between the Washington State Patrol and Gordon Trucking to raise awareness for her case and others from the state.
During a vigil held on the 11 year anniversary of Teekah's disappearance , a man would tell Teekah's mother, Theresa, about a vision he had about the still-missing girl, claiming to know where she was. Theresa, who had never seen this man before, said that what the man told her was unnerving enough to the point of forwarding this information to police, who began looking into the man and his claims.
Following through on the information received, police would conduct a search at nearby Point Defiance Park, digging up a roughly 8-by foot area of ground in the Native Gardens. They would not find anything during this dig or subsequent searches of the area, and would later arrange to speak to the man, who was only described as a man in his 40s that lived in the Puget Sound. Since he wasn't being arrested or charged with any crime, police would refuse to release any additional details about the man.
Two years after this information was relayed to authorities - in July of - police would conduct a search at a home along the block of South Hawthorne Street.
This home belonged to a man named John William Black, who had been linked to another case from a different bowling alley Tower Lanes in October of In this case, Black had apparently motioned for a 3-year-old girl to come with him towards a nearby vehicle, where he claimed the child's mother was waiting. Fortunately for the child and unfortunately for Black , the child's father had noticed, and not only pushed Black to the ground but proceeded to punch him in the face at least once.
John William Black was later arrested and sentenced to 12 months in jail for the attempted luring. But according to Teekah's mother, Theresa Lewis, the man had apparently claimed to see Teekah on the night of her disappearance, during interviews with police.
This information would lead to police conducting a search of his home in July of , and the use of three cadaver dogs would fixate on a single location on the property.
Police would conduct digs in the backyard and extensively search the home, but were unable to find anything of-note. Weeks later, in August of , Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulgham would seem to clear Black as a suspect in Teekah's case, saying that:.
Other than the annual reminder of Teekah's still-unsolved case - which always came in January, when Teekah's family announced their yearly vigil at the scene of the crime - this would be the last news regarding this case until just recently. On the night of Teekah Lewis's disappearance - Saturday, January 23rd, - a young man had been at New Frontier Lanes with his family.
This young man, who was 17 at the time and has chosen to remain publicly anonymous, recalled having an odd encounter with a man in the bowling alley. Speaking to Q13 Fox News in January of this year , he would recall:. This rude guy bumped into me, with his little girl, and he was white - the little girl was mixed I just thought it was a father rushing his daughter to the restroom.
At the time, this witness had thought nothing of this encounter: he bumped into an older man rushing his daughter to the bathroom, and that was that. Even later in the evening, when this witness went to leave with his family and they noticed police officers in the parking lot, he didn't think anything was awry.
Officers would not reveal why they were there, so the family just went on their merry way home. It wasn't until a few days had passed, and the story of Teekah Lewis being abducted from the bowling alley began to spread throughout the region. That was when this young man began to realize what had happened: he had possibly encountered Teekah's abductor in the process of him carrying out the crime. Knowing that he had to reach out to police, this young man would reach out to investigators and speak with them, being interviewed once in January of and providing a statement of his encounter with the man.
This information would end up setting in the binders of tips collected by investigators, where it languished for the better part of 21 years. It wasn't until just recently that Detective Steve Reopelle began to dive through the older tips, and that's when he stumbled upon this buried lead.
Speaking to Q13, Detective Reopelle stated:. It's specific and it's detailed and unique enough that the description can maybe identify the last person who maybe had contact with Teekah. Within the past year, Detective Reopelle would begin reaching out to the older witnesses, including this witness, who had just been a teenager at the time but was now a grown man. He was more than willing to repeat the information he had given to detectives two decades prior, and one word that really stood out to Detective Reopelle was a descriptor used for the suspect, which had been lingering close to the case for years now: the word "pockmarked," a very specific and precise word, used to describe someone plagued with acne or other facial scars.
If you recall, a witness had described a pockmarked man hanging out near the bowling alley's arcade on the evening of Teekah's abduction. But this descriptor carried some added weight because of an additional lead that Detective Reopelle was able to resurface. About a week or so after Teekah's disappearance, the television show "America's Most Wanted" had filmed a segment for the show just outside of the bowling alley itself.
As they were filming a re-enactment of Teekah's case, a group of onlookers began to gather to watch the filming. One individual there in the group would later tell police about strange behavior from another person present at the filming: a man with a pockmarked face, whose behavior was so odd that it was worth reporting.
At the time, police had not released information about a person-of-interest with pockmarks, so this tip came in totally unprompted, and was based solely off of the man's suspicious behavior at the time of the filming. Using the information from these combined statements, it's believed that this was a white male between 30 and 40 years of age, who stood about 5'11" tall with a slightly-heavyset or husky build, who had a thick mustache, shoulder-length curly brown hair, potentially a large nose, and - of course - a pockmarked face.
She says the information Reopelle has shared with her about the witness account of the pockmarked man has forced her to confront a horrific reality. That was my world right there.
Memories -- Teekah's coat that she wore to the bowling alley that night, the Pooh bear she was so attached to -- are all she has left. It was seen speeding out of the bowling alley parking lot around the time Teekah disappeared. Investigators have never been able to find the car or tie anyone to it. River Flood Warning. Flood Watch. Special Weather Statement. Now, exactly 21 years after the disappearance, detectives are unveiling new information they hope will lead to a break in the case.
He was described at the time as a white man, between 30 and 40 years old, with brown curly hair, a mustache and pockmarks on his face. A witness described seeing the man with a young girl in an interview with Q13 News Thursday night.
The News Tribune reports a cold case detective was reviewing the case files when he noticed the man in question had never been positively identified. You can view all open missing person cases currently listed on the Washington State Patrol website. To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports patch.
Sponsored By. Lucas Combos , Patch Staff.
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