Ex-Detective Will Never Forget
Veteran homicide detective Jim Hansen retired two years ago to take one of those “less-stressful, private security jobs.”
The man who investigated murders now worries about shoplifters, bum checks and supermarket robberies.
But almost every day, he also remembers the 1991 abductions and murders of Rebecca West, 12, and Nicki Wood, 11, both of Spokane.
Wood’s body was found two hours after she disappeared - near a cabin where the prime suspect lived in the Seven Mile area.
West’s body hasn’t been found.
“It’s something you just don’t forget about,” said Hansen. “We’d just like closure for the little girls’ families.”
On Friday, the seven-year-old mystery moved closer to closure.
A former drifter, drug addict and convicted rapist pleaded “no contest” to two charges of first-degree manslaughter in the girls’ deaths. He faces 20 years in prison.
No one was happier than Hansen. He bolted out of his supermarket office to hear Michael W. Tarbert, 34, plead in Superior Court.
“I’ve thought from Day 1 he was the man who committed these crimes,” Hansen said.
Tarbert wouldn’t talk with Hansen, a county sheriff’s detective, and city Detective Greg Harshman when they interviewed him in jail in 1991.
The detectives took notice of marks and scratches on Tarbert’s body, and confiscated his jeans. They later became a key to unlock the case.
Tarbert, however, continued to profess his innocence - even after he was convicted of raping a 59-year-old Spokane woman not too far from where Wood’s body was found.
Wood was the daughter of a woman who helped hide Tarbert from police just days before the murders.
Investigators uncovered additional evidence, but could never find the missing girl’s body. Investigators thought it might be in the Spokane River.
Even without the second body, Hansen thought he had enough evidence to arrest Tarbert. The detective’s case file included the work of bloodhounds who picked up the girls’ scents at Tarbert’s cabin.
In October 1992, Hansen took his thick file of evidence to then-Prosecuting Attorney Donald Brockett for a murder warrant.
Brockett’s office reviewed the file until April 1993, then sent it back to Hansen for more work.
By then, the detective was investigating another high-profile case: the murder of an elderly Lincoln County woman whose body was dumped into the Spokane River.
Hansen did the follow-up work on the Wood-West case, including reinterviewing witnesses. He took the file back to the prosecutor’s office, but still couldn’t convince prosecutors to seek an arrest warrant.
There just wasn’t quite enough evidence without the second body. Hansen walked away from the case and retired on Jan. 31, 1996.
A break in the case came two weeks ago, after Tarbert’s jeans were resubmitted for scientific DNA testing. Prosecutors said the tests, which weren’t available when the girls disappeared, detected blood on the jeans.
Former Spokane County Sheriff Larry Erickson said Friday he was pleased to see that Hansen’s tenacity finally paid off.
“Jim worked on every case with intensity, including this one,” Erickson said. “Particularly when kids are involved, it tugs at the heart strings of all the guys working homicide.”