Registered sex offender to face homicide charge

Vicki LaMere hadn’t slept well for the two weeks since a Spokane County sheriff’s detective told her he thought he’d found the man who killed her daughter last January.

On Monday afternoon, LaMere got another call from Detective Tim Hines, who was investigating the killing of 20-year-old Margaret Cordova, whose body was found at a landscape supply dumpsite Feb. 22.

This time, he said, he was certain.

“I remember calling all the family to let them know,” LaMere said. “I just cried the rest of the day.”

Hines called back Tuesday morning to identify that suspect as Brian W. Frawley, a 23-year-old registered sex offender from Spokane. Hines requested Tuesday that Spokane County prosecutors charge Frawley with first-degree murder in connection with Cordova’s death, sheriff’s spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan said.

Also on Tuesday, Frawley appeared in court in an unrelated case from April 18. He faces a variety of charges for allegedly kidnapping a 25-year-old woman, raping her twice, stealing the contents of her purse and leaving her bound by speaker wire to a tree in Greenacres, according to court documents.

Both cases were broken by a DNA match, the rape victim’s detailed description of Frawley’s car and detectives discussing their two cases, Reagan said.

Frawley was not previously considered a suspect in the Cordova killing, Reagan said. A man cutting wood discovered her body next to a pile of wood chips near the intersection of Freya and Fairview Road in Spokane County.

Cordova was last seen alive about 2 a.m. Jan. 17. She had left a friend’s house near Euclid and Crestline to walk to another friend’s house on West Mallon. But she never made it.

Spokane police investigated her disappearance. Reagan praised the work of city Detective Minde Connelly for helping eliminate several possible suspects.

County detectives Hines and Fred Ruetsch took over the homicide investigation because Cordova’s body had been found outside city limits, Reagan said. One of the first things they did was request DNA testing from what Reagan called “biological evidence” taken from Cordova’s body.

That DNA sample processed by the Washington State Patrol crime lab was checked against a database of DNA from convicted felons in the state and it came back earlier this month as a match to Brian Frawley, Reagan said.

“This guy really wasn’t on our radar screen,” Reagan said of Frawley. “Yes, he was a criminal. Yes, he had warrants but nothing on the significance of kidnap, rape or murder.”

A few days after the DNA match, detectives on June 14 arrested Frawley on several outstanding felony warrants. They included burglary, trafficking in stolen property, attempting to elude pursuit and failure to register as a sex offender in Yakima County, Reagan said.

As Hines and Ruetsch were developing a homicide case against Frawley, they had a conversation with fellow detective John Grandinetti, who was investigating a reported kidnapping and rape that occurred April 18.

In that case, a 25-year-old woman said she was walking along Sprague just west of Cook Street when she heard a man call to her from a white car. After a short conversation in which the man said he, too, lived in Browne’s Addition, the woman accepted a ride.

However, the driver drove the opposite direction, toward Spokane Valley. The woman pointed out the direction problem, but the man said he had to go clock out from work, court documents say.

“While waiting at the light the male had grabbed her hand and tied a black piece of webbing around it,” Grandinetti wrote in his report. “The male told her he was going to kill her and that he had a 9 mm (pistol) in the bag behind her seat.”

The two drove around in the white car with red interior. The woman later gave Grandinetti several detailed descriptions of the car, including that the CD player reads “See U” when it’s turned off and a number from a Diamond Parking sticker on the dash.

The driver eventually ended up driving north off Saltese Road on Chapman Road to a new home construction site, Grandinetti wrote.

“The male grabbed her other arm and tied both hands behind her back,” Grandinetti said in court documents. The man then raped her twice.

After about two hours, the man ordered the woman out of the car. “He put on a brown pair of work gloves and obtained some webbing from the bag,” Grandinetti wrote. “The male used a plastic-coated piece of speaker type wire and tied it around her arms.”

The man then stuck black webbing in the woman’s mouth and tied his ripped shirt around her head to keep the gag in place. “The male then used the plastic coated wire to tie her to a tree. The male told her he would send someone up in the morning to see if she was still there,” Grandinetti wrote.

The woman wriggled free and ran down the muddy hill to Good Samaritan Retirement Village at 17128 E. Sprague Ave. to call for help. The woman later looked through a vehicle sales magazine and was able to tell Grandinetti that she believed the suspect’s car was a Ford Probe, according to court documents.

After Frawley was arrested, Grandinetti and Ruetsch were “kicking around their cases” and Grandinetti relayed the rape victim’s description of the suspect’s car, Reagan said.

“Ruetsch and Hines, having been up to interview Frawley’s girlfriend, learned that he just purchased a white Ford Probe,” Reagan said.

Grandinetti gave them a list of identifiers the rape victim provided and asked Ruetsch and Hines to check Frawley’s car. Ruetsch “came back and said every one of them matched. It’s got to be the car,” Reagan said.

Grandinetti then took Frawley’s photo and placed it with photos of five other men. The woman who reported the rape and kidnapping immediately pointed at Frawley’s picture and said, “That’s him,” Grandinetti wrote.

As a result, Frawley faces two counts of first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping, and second degree robbery with sexual motivation. District Court Judge Harold Clarke ordered Tuesday that Frawley be held on a $500,000 bond.

Reagan said paperwork requesting the charge of first-degree murder from the Cordova case was forwarded to prosecutors. Frawley is expected to be charged today with her killing, he said.

Cordova’s grandmother, Margaret LaMere, said it was a relief to hear about the pending charges.

“We all were wondering, mainly because it seemed like nothing was being done. We knew they were working on it but they just couldn’t tell us anything. It’s very good news,” LaMere said. “My granddaughter can rest now.”

Vicki LaMere said waiting for word seemed like an eternity.

“I’m just glad that she wasn’t someone who got filed away and forgotten about,” she said. “It was a big relief.”

LaMere spent Monday holding Cordova’s picture and crying, she said. “I told her, ‘Thank you.’ She kept telling me in my dreams to have faith and let the detectives do their work, they are going to catch him.”