COPS TURN UP HEAT IN 1992 MISTY COPSEY KIDNAPPING

MISTY COPSEY

GREEN RIVER KILLER

FOR 19 YEARS, the story has been the same: a bloody brick wall. Misty Copsey was a well-behaved 14-year-old who vanished into thin air on Sept. 17, 1992 after a night at the Puyallup Fair with a girlfriend. She never came home and there has never been a body or a single trace of anything to solve the heartbreaking riddle. And, according to the Tacoma News-Tribune, the case was botched almost from the minute Diana Smith--Misty's mom--called the cops and reported her daughter missing. Cops, insisted she was a runaway and generally didn't bother much.
They thought Diana Smith was lying.
Evidence vanished, they pooh poohed witnesses and did a terrible disservice to the young girl and her family. They kept to that story for years. But that was then, this is now and they are calling the reopened case a homicide investigation. Largely thanks to the News-Tribune.
They've gathered forensic evidence, DNA and built a file. But still, there is no aha or home run moment. Deputy Chief Bryan Jeter said: "We need a spark. Somebody knows, is the bottom line."

And the possibilities are frightening: When Misty disappeared, at least six sex killers and predators roamed within 20 miles of the fairgrounds. Among them were: Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer; Terapon Adhahn, a convicted sex offender who would abduct and rape an 11-year-old girl in 2000, and snatch and kill a Tacoma girl in 2007; and Timothy Ray Burkhart, now deceased, lately identified as the most prolific serial killer in Pierce County. MORE IN THE TACOMA NEWS-TRIBUNE