Arrest in La. leads to break in cold case
Tacoma Police detective Brian Vold starts a second hole during the search for the remains of Wallace Guidroz along Ruston Way in Tacoma on Tuesday. (AP Photo/The News Tribune, Joe Barrentine)
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Police in Washington state believe a man arrested in Louisiana in the death of his wife was also involved in the disappearance of his young son 28 years ago.
Stanley Guidroz was never eliminated as a suspect in the 3-year-old's disappearance in 1983, and now police are more certain than ever before that Guidroz was involved, Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said Tuesday.
Investigators spent Tuesday digging in a spot along Ruston Way in Tacoma where they believe little Wallace's body was buried.
Guidroz claimed at the time that the boy had been abducted by an unknown couple they had met in the area of the duck pond at Point Defiance Park. A search was unsuccessful.
Cold case detectives began reviewing the case in 2007. This March they learned that Stanley Guidroz had been arrested in Terrebonne Parish, La., in the slaying of his wife, and they traveled to Houma, La., to interview him.
Guidroz, 53, was indicted June 2 for second-degree murder in connection with the March 9 death of his wife. He is being held in Terrebonne Parish jail.
His public defender, Kentley Fairchild, had left for the day when The Associated Press called and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Guidroz turned himself into officers at the Zachary, La., police station on the afternoon of March 9, telling officers he had killed his wife earlier that morning in Houma, La., according to a March 9 release from the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office. He directed officers to his vehicle in the parking lot, where they found the body of 47-year-old Pepettra Guidroz in the back of a Ford Mustang, Zachary police Capt. David McDavid told the Courier of Houma.
An autopsy showed that she died as a result of fatal stab wounds to her neck and chest, according to the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office.
Guidroz told detectives that he and his wife were arguing about their relationship moments before the stabbing, the sheriff's office said.
In Washington state, police never found traces of little Wallace after he went missing on Jan. 10, 1983.
The boy's father told police the two had fished with another couple in Commencement Bay that afternoon, and later the boy went to play with a young girl whom he didn't know and her mother near the duck pond at Point Defiance Park, the News Tribune reported. Guidroz said he went for a walk around dusk and shared a beer with a man he took to be the girl's father, the newspaper reported.
"I could see the kids playing. I guess I felt secure," Guidroz told The News Tribune at the time. "When I turned around to look for the child, he was gone."
He told police he searched for the boy for about two hours and then called police from a nearby pay phone and reported him missing. Nearly 200 searchers looked for the boy over the next couple of days, but found nothing.