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

Man arrested in 2006 reservation killing

FBI agents today arrested a 20-year-old Nespelem, Wash., man at his home and charged him with the stabbing death of Lillian Jolene Lee in March 2006 on the Colville Indian Reservation. Ryan Seideman was ordered held without bond on a federal charge of first-degree murder after an initial appearance this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno. She set a bail hearing for next Wednesday. Assistant U.S. Attorney K. Jill Bolton asked that Seideman not be released from jail because he poses a flight risk and a danger to the community. If convicted in U.S. District Court for the crime on an Indian reservation, Seideman faces a possible term of life in prison. The federal warrant for Seideman’s arrest was issued Wednesday, less than a week after the FBI laboratory found traces of the suspect’s DNA in a blood stain located on underwear belonging to the 42-year-old victim, court documents say. The undergarment was found in a plastic bag containing clothing believed to be owned and worn by the suspect during the crime at the Convalescent Senior Apartments in Nespelem, the court documents allege. The plastic bag was hidden in a bush in an adjoining yard where a neighbor initially thought it was trash and flung it over a fence. A federal affidavit filed by an FBI agent says the plastic bag was recovered by Colville Tribal Police who responded to Lee’s apartment after her bloody, knife-slashed, partially nude body was found just inside the unit’s front door March 20, 2006. The victim died from “multiple slashes to (her) face and neck, including one through her jugular vein,’’ the affidavit says. She also sustained “defensive wounds” on her hands and nonlethal knife cuts on her abdomen and buttocks, it adds. The court documents don’t say if the murder weapon was recovered. In processing the crime scene, FBI evidence recovery experts found and photographed bloody footprints in the apartment unit and found a used condom. In January 2008, the court documents say, the FBI lab determined semen found in the condom matched Seideman’s DNA sample put in a Washington State Patrol database after he was a suspect in an earlier rape case. The following month, an FBI agent interviewed Seideman after serving a search warrant on him, requiring him to submit a hair sample and fingerprints, the documents say. During that interview, Seideman admitted being at the victim’s apartment before she was killed, but denied any involvement. His court-appointed attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Bob Fischer, did not return a telephone call for comment after today’s court appearance.
Bill Morlin can be reached at (509) 459-5444 or e-mail: billm@spokesman.com