Two Girls. Two Parks. One City Changed Forever.

In 1986, Tacoma, Washington, was shaken by two devastating crimes.

Twelve-year-old Michella Welch went to the park to meet friends.Thirteen-year-old Jennifer Bastian went for a bike ride.

Neither came home.

Months apart, their murders left a community searching for answers—and fearing something even worse: that a single predator was responsible. For more than thirty years, both cases remained unsolved. But they were never forgotten. In this episode of Same Crime, Different Time, I tell their stories side by side.

Sources

In May of 1935, nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser walked home for lunch from school in Tacoma, Washington.

He never made it.

Within hours, kidnappers demanded $200,000 for the return of the heir to one of America’s largest timber fortunes. What followed was a terrifying eight-day ordeal involving underground pits, coded newspaper messages, and one of the largest manhunts in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

In this episode of Same Crime, Different Time, we explore how the crime happened, how the kidnappers were caught, and what this case reveals about desperation, wealth, and justice in 1930s America.

The day after Thanksgiving in 1989, eighteen-year-old Mandy Stavik went for a run along a quiet road in rural Washington.

Her dog came home.

She didn’t.

For nearly thirty years, the small community of Acme lived with an unanswered question: who killed Mandy Stavik? In this episode of Same Crime, Different Time, we explore the heartbreaking case that haunted investigators for decades, and the unlikely break that finally solved it. Sometimes the truth waits.