Arrest made in 2006 killing
Suspect charged in stabbing death of woman on Colville reservation
FBI agents arrested a 20-year-old Nespelem, Wash., man at his home Thursday and charged him with the knife-murder 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 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno.
She set a bail hearing for Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney K. Jill Bolton asked that Seideman not be released from jail, saying he poses a flight risk and a danger to the community.
If convicted in U.S. District Court, Seideman could face 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 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, court documents allege.
The bag was in a bush in an adjoining yard, where a neighbor 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 and 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 became 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 he denied any involvement.
His court-appointed attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Bob Fischer, did not return a telephone call for comment after Thursday’s court appearance.