The Dateline episode “Evil Was Watching,” investigates the kidnapping, rape and murder of two young girls in the summer of 1986 in Tacoma, Washington. Michella Welch, 12, rode her bike to the urban forest park Point Defiance where she disappeared. Five months later, Jenni Bastian, 13, took her brand-new bicycle and intended to ride the five-mile loop around the park; she was also “snatched in broad daylight.” The two cases, which traumatized the city of Tacoma, went unsolved for decades, until a new detective, Lindsey Wade, with a local connection to the story tried to solve the mystery that haunted her childhood. Wade was 11 that summer in Tacoma. Thirty years later, in 2016, DNA linked a man to the death of Bastian.
In January 2019, Robert Dwane Washburn, 61, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for Bastian’s death. He was sentenced to 26 years in prison. According to The News Tribune, at his sentencing Jenni’s sister Theresa Bastian (who was 15 at the time of her sister’s death and worked at a day camp at the park) told the court how the crime had influenced the way she’s raising her children. She reportedly said she hadn’t taught her daughter how to ride a bike. In the courtroom she addressed Washburn, “You made me an only child.” In 2018, former Registered Nurse Gary Charles Hartman, 66, was charged with the rape and murder of Michella Welch based on DNA evidence. According to the prosecutor’s office, Hartman entered a plea of not guilty. Dateline airs Fridays at 10 pm on NBC.
