Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

Girls’ bones were found in a ‘wet, weeping, soggy area’

Former Bothell, Wash. police detective Dennis Nizzi told the court this morning that he was troubled by finding the skeletal remains of Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, in Bothell when the girls had disappeared from Seattle, and he never was able to draw a connection between the two locations before he retired from the force in 1999. The area where the bones were found was “a very wet, weeping, soggy area” where an old, abandoned house had been demolished but an old barn still stood. Construction equipment turned up the bones. Nizzi testified that he was given a bag of bones to take to the medical examiner’s office to see if they were human or animal, and was surprised and shocked to discover they were human and were the bones of two young people. The site was immediately cordoned off and searched, and the rest of the girls’ remains, plus some clothing, were found.

Joseph Duncan, who’s been sitting in court with his chin on his clasped hands, sometimes closing his eyes but sometimes watching as photos of the Bothell site were displayed on a monitor in front of him, asked one question on cross-examination: “Was Joseph Edward Duncan ever a suspect … prior to July of 2005?” he asked the detective. Nizzi responded, “I’ve learned that the name Joseph Edward Duncan was on the bottom of a list of sex offenders that we obtained … but we didn’t get that far down the list.” Nizzi said Duncan never was the target of any investigation while he was on the force.



Eye On Boise

News, happenings and more from the Idaho Legislature and the state capital.