A teen girl was murdered in Spokane in 1982. Her family is trying to prevent her killer’s release

Sept. 26, 1982: It is a day John Strait has to relive again and again.

He was 18 and playing hockey in Canada when he got the call that his little sister Linda had been killed. A fisherman found her body in the Spokane River at Plantes Ferry Park.

Linda Strait, just 15 years old, had gone for a gallon of milk and at-home perm supplies from the Safeway at Monroe Street and Francis Avenue. It was just a quarter-mile from her home.

The search for Linda’s murderer took more than 20 years, when investigators discovered the person was Arbie Dean Williams, an inmate serving a life sentence for raping two 8-year-old girls. He attacked those girls a year after killing Linda by suffocating her with a pillowcase.

Armed with DNA evidence, prosecutors secured a guilty plea in 2006 that folded a 20-year sentence for Linda’s murder into his life sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex. Williams, now 82, is up for parole next spring.

Williams is nearly done serving the 20 years for Linda’s murder but is eligible for parole on his life sentence.

Williams was previously eligible for parole on his life sentence for the rapes of the two girls, but Washington’s Indeterminate Sentence Review board denied him that opportunity in 2010 and 2019. The board said in a letter their reason for the denial was because Williams had refused to meet with them since 2003, refused to cooperate with psychological evaluations, refused to participate in a sex offender treatment program, received 23 “serious” infractions since 2010 and is assessed as someone who has a high risk of reoffending.

The Strait family went before the review board and pleaded with them to keep Williams behind bars. They started a website and a Facebook page called “Justice for Linda Strait” encouraging people to write to the board to share their concerns, as well as their memories of Linda. John believes the pressure worked, and it is why he is encouraging people to do it again.

“I’m sick to my stomach, to be quite honest with you,” he said during an interview at Plantes Ferry Park, close to where his sister’s body was found all those years ago. “I’m angry, I feel helpless.”

In 2019, Linda’s cousins told The Spokesman-Review they assumed Williams would never be let out. Linda’s death not only took her from them, but took away their security and sense of hope. Every time Williams is brought up, there is pain, Strait said this week.

“I had the assumption that he’d be in for life,” said John Milla, Linda’s cousin, in 2019. “How do you not get life for doing what he did?”

‘How could this be?’

Williams kidnapped Linda in broad daylight and took her to a secluded area in Stevens County where he repeatedly raped her while taking her for walks on old logging roads, according to his parole denial letter from 2019. When they returned to his car, he noticed Linda studying his license plate number – a purposeful move John Strait believes his sister made so she would be able to identify him to police once she escaped.

Williams killed her for it, the letter states.

John Strait, who had to petition the board for that information, just learned of those circumstances this month and said he is “dealing with it” the best way he knows how.

At the time of Linda’s murder, John was away from home and tended to distance himself from his family until his mother, Donna Ragland, and her husband called him in a panic.

“It was very hard to make him out at first – He said ‘Some crazy guy got Linda, some crazy guy got Linda.’ And I, you know, I really didn’t understand what all was going on,” he said. “I came home the next day.”

Ragland had to identify her daughter after she was pulled from the river, John said. She was wearing jeans, a gray shirt, a Gonzaga sweatshirt and white tennis shoes at the time of her discovery. Ragland, now 94, will mention Linda every now and then, Strait said – “today is Linda’s birthday,” she’ll say, or “We’re coming up in September.”

“She is the strongest person I know, but she was so internally messed up when everything happened,” Strait said.

Linda is remembered as a girl who loved basketball and playing the flute. She’d often frequent Pattison’s North Roller Skating Center . And she was “sweet, smart and full of spirit,” her family told The Spokesman-Review. After her marble-white casket was blessed at her funeral service at St. Thomas More Catholic Church on Sept. 30, 1982, the Rev. Arnold Schoffelmeer remarked at how she loved life and was a wonderful girl with many friends.

As 450 people – family, friends and Linda’s fellow students at North Central High School – attended the service, many of them hugged and some sobbed uncontrollably, The Spokesman-Review reported at the time.

After the service, Strait walked into his family home to see it full of relatives and friends. Everyone was talking about the same thing, over and over, which was “how could this be?” and “I can’t believe this.” At the same time, people intending to prank the family during their tragic loss would call the home’s landline phone and claim they killed Linda.

“We weren’t letting my mom answer the telephone,” Strait said.

As time passed and no one was arrested for Linda’s killing, John said he and his family began to lose hope. Further into her unsolved case, he decided to come to his own conclusion that the suspect would never be caught. Until 2003.

The lead investigator on the case submitted a partial DNA sample collected from a pillowcase on Linda’s body. It was partially degraded, so much so that the sheriff’s office was confident it would not lead anywhere. But when it was checked against a database of convicted felons, Williams’ name came up as a match. He was already incarcerated and serving time for his assault on the two 8-year-old girls.

Williams had lured the two girls playing near Trent Elementary School to his car and pushed them in, drove them north of Spokane, forced them to take their clothes off and sexually assaulted one in the front seat. The other girl was able to escape, according to a parole denial letter. Williams drove the girl back to the Spokane area, raped her again and choked her so severely that “it’s a miracle she survived.”

Thinking she was dead, Williams dumped her in a wooded area. She regained consciousness and ran for help. When Williams accepted a 20-year sentence as part of a plea deal for Linda’s murder in 2006, that same girl – now a grown woman – spoke during his sentencing.

“I, too, was a victim of this monster and I survived … Unfortunately, I do know what Linda went through her final hours, because I went through it, too,” she said.

Williams said at the time he doesn’t see how Linda’s family would be able to forgive him.

“I’m not begging you for mercy. I don’t deserve any mercy,” he told the court. “I just didn’t want to put her family through a jury trial for three weeks.”

The trauma does not go away

That has not seemed to matter now, Strait said. He wishes someone at the time would have been strong enough to tell the lead prosecutor “no” – that the family would not accept the plea deal and move to trial instead. That way, maybe Williams would be guaranteed to remain in prison instead of continually coming up for parole every five years.

For the most part, Strait has tried to separate himself from the updates in the case. Each time he gets a letter in the mail warning him about Williams’ potential release, it reopens old wounds. It is just as bad traveling to the west side of Washington and sitting in front of the board, retelling the story of his sister’s murder all over again.

“Everybody’s gonna say, ‘My God, that is bad.’ But you know, until people walked a mile in your shoes and went through this repeatedly every five years,” Strait said, “to us, it’s a slap in the face.”

The family also has enlisted the assistance of Spokane County Prosecutor Preston McCollam, who met with some of them on Wednesday morning to discuss how he could help. Former Prosecutor Larry Haskell made a formal recommendation against Williams’ release in 2019, and McCollam intends to do the same.

“I am very much opposed to his release, and I want to support the family in any way we can so we don’t let a violent and depraved offender back into the community,” McCollam said during a phone interview. “My position is, if we have crime victims – regardless of what board they’re going before – if they ask for our assistance, we will assist them.”

Strait said the process has been nothing short of difficult. He felt the letter notifying him of Williams’ potential release is not personable and that the system should be more victim-centric. The letter, written by a victim liaison, does not acknowledge the family’s loss, but rather gives them general instructions on what to do when the hearing approaches. It does say, however, the notification may be upsetting and that there are support services available.

“They say talk to your legislators and politicians and all that. Well, there ain’t enough time in the day,” Strait said. “The only way I can see this changing is that it happens to a (politician’s daughter). And I don’t advocate for that, and I pray it doesn’t happen. But my point is, what will it take to get this fixed?”

Iva Rody, the chief operations officer for the National Center for Victims of Crime, said many survivors or family members of victims of crimes have a similar mentality. Having established victims’ rights and allowing them to be part of the system is good, and can be healing for some; for others, it is a constant reminder of the worst part of their life.

“When we reach this stage of the system, looking at parole and release, they are constantly reminded what is going on,” Rody said. “They are taken back to where they were years ago.”

Some victims do not participate at all because the risk to their mental wellbeing is too high. Others feel like the risk of not knowing is too powerful, so they participate to try to have a voice in the process.

One troubling act Rody has noticed is offenders leaving the prison system and getting social media. The survivor sees the social media profile and is immediately set back because the profile showcases their freedom, Rody said. As a former victim advocate herself, Rody said notification letters are supposed to be extremely formal. But some jurisdictions have taken the extra step to make them more personable, something McCollam advocated for when Spokane’s “South Hill rapist” Kevin Coe was released from civil commitment last week.

But the system to begin with has not been focused on victims, Rody said. Only offenders.

“If we violate an offender’s right, there is an opportunity for a case to be dismissed,” she said. “You violate a victim’s right and it doesn’t change the outcome of the case … I always encourage advocates to be transparent when working with survivors, to not focus on the system to be the only way for them to find healing.”

Time has passed for John. He’s had kids, grandkids now, but the time has not healed his recent fears.

“I got two of my grandkids. Let’s say I still live in Spokane and take them to the mall. And you’re walking around, enjoying Christmas shopping, and you turn around and he is walking in the mall,” Strait said of Williams’ release. “That’s reality to me.”

Williams will have completed his 20-year sentence for Linda’s murder on July 30, 2026, according to the Washington Department of Corrections. A parole hearing for the two rape sentences is tentatively set for March. His release date for that case is set for 2037 even though the sentence is life in prison.

“I can never make my sister come back, right?” John said. “So he shouldn’t be able to come back.”