Tip On Missing Reporter Shelved For 3 Weeks Clue On Whereabouts Of Roberts Lost In Sheriff’s Personnel Shuffle

The tip that led to long-missing former reporter Jody Roberts came in nearly three weeks before authorities followed it up.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was handling the case when Madelyn Wright of Seattle called June 26 to say she had worked with Roberts in Alaska since her May 1985 disappearance. Wright recognized Roberts in recent media reports on the missing person case.

When that agency didn’t act on the tip, Wright called King County Police on July 7 - two days before they took over the case due to concerns about a possible conflict for the Pierce County agency.

King County Police called Roberts at her home in Sitka, Alaska, on July 15.

“We apparently had the solution to the case in our own hands and didn’t follow up on it,” Sheriff Mark French told The News Tribune of Tacoma on Wednesday.

The sheriff’s department reopened the case in January when an intern noticed that it was still unsolved. The case was subsequently reclassified as a homicide.

For a time, Capt. Gary Smith was the lead investigator, but he says he was off the case when he received Wright’s tip.

Smith was taken off the case in June after sheriff’s officials learned the captain, who has a long history of strained relations with French, might have been investigating French as a possible suspect.

“On June 3, I got a very direct note from Paul Pastor (the sheriff’s chief of operations) that said I was to eliminate all involvement in the Jody case, and I was to turn everything over to Art Anderson,” Smith said.

Anderson, a fellow investigator, took over the next day.

Smith went on vacation two days after he got the tip - without forwarding it to Anderson. He said he did not want to burden Anderson who, at the time, was busy investigating the killings of Sarah and Charity Warmbo, found slain at their Gig Harbor home June 13.

“To my knowledge, he never took any action on it (the Roberts case) because he was buried,” Smith said.

“There was not a lot of time to work the case, nor was there a rush. It’s 12 years old. It’s not like I have a criminal running around trying to prey on the community.”

Smith said he’d told Anderson to meet with him when he had time so he could be briefed on the Roberts case. The meeting never happened, Smith said. He did give Anderson a note about the case, he said, though he did not pass on the tip from Wright.

Smith’s notes from his interview with Wright were on a table in his office when Roberts was found.

King County Police Detective Tom Jensen followed up on the tip as soon as Anderson handed over the case files July 9, police spokeswoman Joanne Elledge said.

“When we got the tip - after 12 years of it being dormant, we’re going to attach ourselves to any tip,” Elledge said. “When we got the case, that’s when Jensen started making all the phone calls. It went really quick.”

French said he has ordered a review of how his department handled the case.

Pastor, who is handling the probe, would say only that he expects to complete it in about two weeks. He declined to speculate on what Smith should have done.