Spokane teen’s 1987 cold case finally closed after DNA test

Debbie Renn hugged and kissed her younger sister and watched her board a Greyhound bus in Spokane bound for Arizona in 1987.

It was the last time she would see her.

Years passed without any word from 16-year-old Deanna Lee Criswell.

“One part of me wanted her to be somewhere living happily with a family, but I guess that never happened,” said Renn, who lives in Spokane.

Renn found out Tuesday, more than 27 years after their goodbye, that the man Criswell traveled to meet in Arizona – a boyfriend named William Knight – shot and killed her.

Police in Marana, Arizona, found her decomposed body Nov. 25, 1987, near a freeway. Criswell had been listed as a Jane Doe.

DNA from Renn and the sisters’ mother, Beverly Criswell, confirmed this week that it was the Spokane teenager, closing a 27-year-old cold case and bringing closure to Deanna Criswell’s family.

Beverly Criswell is dying of cancer, so the news comes at the right time, Renn said. “She can pass knowing what happened.”

Marana police said in a news release that as a result of advances in forensic science “new evidence was developed and tested” that enabled authorities to identify Criswell’s killer in November 2011 as William Ross Knight, a convict who died of end-stage liver disease in a Tucson, Arizona, prison in 2005. He was serving a life sentence for a series of armed robberies.

Investigators believe it’s likely the lone murder case involving Knight. Although no witnesses ever surfaced, investigators believe Criswell may have been killed somewhere else a week or two earlier and her body dumped in Marana.

The girl had been an “incorrigible” runaway starting at age 11, Renn said, and she spent much of her time on Spokane streets. Her family’s home was in Davenport, Washington.

“We were pretty much making decisions for ourselves then,” said Scott Wing, a stepbrother. “Like any other kid, she was naive and wanted to have friends. She had a wild streak, but she was a sweetheart.”

Knight and Deanna Criswell met during one of those many nights on the streets. She called him her boyfriend. He left Spokane for Tucson and sent her a one-way bus ticket. The night before her trip, the sisters stayed at a motel, where their mother served as the manager.

“She’d just been emancipated from our mother,” Renn said. “I was 7 ½ months pregnant. She asked me to take her to the bus station.

“She called when she got there to say she’d arrived safely.”

No one reported her missing. They figured she’d return on her own terms.

Investigators think Criswell died Nov. 23, 1987, two days before she was found, her face already too decomposed to identify.

Criswell’s body was exhumed in 2009 and her DNA entered into a national database. In an effort to solve the cold case, the medical examiner used bones to do a reconstruction of her face, which was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database at doenetwork.org.

Last March, Renn’s uncle, Donny Criswell, decided to look through the thousands of pictures on the website, curious to know if he could find her. In January, he sent a picture – the medical examiner’s rendering – to Criswell’s dad, Jerry, who lives in Mississippi, Renn said. They thought the Jane Doe must be Deanna.

A detective sent DNA kits to Renn for her and her mother last month, and “they told us we’d find out at the end of February. I guess it was sooner.”

Renn knows regret is futile. She does have a wish: “I hope that her story can help someone else. Let this be a warning to young girls out there. Be careful.”