Murder suspect probe widens

A convicted rapist who is charged with the January slaying of a Spokane woman and the abduction rape of another woman in April is under investigation for new charges of kidnapping, rape and robbery that allegedly occurred nine days before his arrest.

Brian W. Frawley, 24, remains in the Spokane County Jail on a $1 million bond. A registered sex offender from a past conviction, he’s now charged with first-degree murder in connection with the slaying of 20-year-old Margaret Cordova, who disappeared on Jan. 17.

Her body was discovered Feb. 22 next to a pile of wood chips north of Spokane.

In an unrelated case, Frawley faces a variety of charges after a 25-year-old woman told Spokane County sheriff’s detectives that a man matching Frawley’s description kidnapped her on April 18, raped her twice, stole the contents of her purse and left her bound by speaker wire to a tree in Greenacres.

Now Frawley is under investigation for a kidnapping, rape and robbery that a third woman says occurred June 5, nine days before Frawley was arrested in connection with Cordova’s killing and the Greenacres rape.

According to a search warrant filed Thursday by Spokane Police Detective Bill Marshall, a woman identified Frawley as the man who picked her up June 5 near Second Avenue and Howard Street and promised to give her a ride to an address on North Division.

“Instead, defendant Frawley drove at a high rate of speed to the area of Clarke and Bennett,” Marshall wrote in court documents.

The driver pulled the dark-colored Pontiac Firebird off onto a dirt turnout, Marshall wrote. The woman tried to get out of the car, but the driver accelerated back onto the roadway and pulled the car into the next dirt turnout.

“Frawley pulled in so that the car’s passenger door was near a wall of brush, preventing (the woman) from rapidly exiting the car,” he wrote.

The man then told the woman, “If you want to live,” that she should perform oral sex on him, Marshall wrote. The man then ordered the woman to take off her pants.

“He reached over and reclined the passenger seat and pulled what appeared to be a 9mm semi-automatic handgun,” court documents say. “The defendant aimed the gun at her head and had his finger on the trigger.”

The woman told Marshall that the man then raped her. The man told the woman, “Bust out your money,” Marshall wrote. “The defendant told (the woman) that ‘She was lucky that he did not do to her what he did to other girls.’ “

The woman later picked out Frawley’s photo from a group of pictures, Marshall said in his report.

Lt. Scott Stephens said Frawley hasn’t been charged in the latest case. “It’s still under investigation. It’s primarily a county case. We’ve been assisting as needed.”

According to an attached report by Spokane County Sheriff’s Detective Tim Hines, three women were interviewed who said they had met Frawley in Internet chat rooms.

One of the women, who lived with Frawley in 2002 near Yakima, said they got back together just before his June 14 arrest.

She told Hines that Frawley “sometimes wrote ‘sex stories,’ some of which contained material involving the use of force during sex,” according to court records.

Hines also investigated Cordova’s homicide. She was last seen leaving an apartment at 2309 E. Euclid Ave. about 2:30 a.m. Jan. 17. She was wearing a dark-colored sweat shirt and blue-plaid pajama bottoms, according to court files.

On Feb. 22, Hines responded to the area north of Freya Street and Fairview Road in Spokane County where Cordova’s body was found.

“One leg of a pair of blue plaid pajama bottoms was tied in a knot around her neck with the other leg of the pajama bottoms tied around her right wrist,” Hines wrote. “A blue … drawstring type cord was tied tightly around her ankles.”

On Feb. 24, Spokane County Medical Examiner Dr. Sally Aiken performed the autopsy on Cordova and concluded that she died as a result of homicide. She sent semen samples to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

Forensic scientist Lisa Turpen examined those slides from Aiken and entered the DNA into the state’s database of convicted felons and it matched with Frawley, according to court records.

“The estimated probability of selecting an unrelated individual at random from the U.S. population with a matching profile is one in 15 quadrillion,” Hines wrote.

On Friday, Frawley declined a reporter’s request for a jailhouse interview.