No Suspects, Leads In Little-Noticed Murder Of Girl, 14

She wasn't an alternative rocker like Mia Zapata; no big-name bands raised money for a private detective to investigate her death.

She wasn't fatally shot as she slept in a flophouse; politicos did not attend her funeral as they did for Angelica Robinson.

The death of 14-year-old Tanya Marie Frazier in July, two days after her mother reported her missing, caused an ever-so-slight ripple, eliciting scant mention by the media and a brief investigation by police.

Members of the Mount Baker girl's church, St. Clement's Episcopal Church, were stunned when corporate policies barred them from posting fliers in major stores to alert people to her disappearance. Their frustration worsened when police treated the missing girl as a runaway and the media showed minimal interest in her murder.

"The police have a hell of a task. I want to be supportive of that," said Father Ralph Carskadden, pastor of the small congregation. "But I also feel that had Tanya not come from our neighborhood or not been mixed race, would more people have known this terrible thing had happened to her?"

In the East Capitol Hill neighborhood where Tanya's body was dumped, the slaying has prompted talk of organizing a block watch.

The last time she was seen alive was around noon Monday, July 18, as she left summer classes at Meany Middle School. Classmates saw her talking with an unkempt man who was walking a few steps in front of her. Police have been unable to identify or locate the man.

No one saw her after that. Not until a man, walking his dog along East Highland Drive on Saturday, five days after she disappeared, smelled death. The man, 62, who asked not to be identified, knew the scent from Korean War days; he got queasy and hoped he was wrong.

"I actually looked at the person for several seconds before the shock registered it was a human being," he said.

Tanya's body was found about 10 blocks away from where she was last seen alive.

Seattle police Officer Benny Radford imagined her last thoughts to be desperate hope that someone would find her, stop her attacker, help her. "Her face went to bed with me that night," Radford said. "I don't see how we could be so cruel."

Radford has a daughter the same age. Tanya's youth, her brutal murder, the dumping of her body, combined to rattle him. He took time off from work to recover from investigating the discovery of her body.

The medical examiner's office said Tanya did not die until sometime Wednesday, July 20 - two days after she disappeared.

The medical examiner will not say how Tanya died. Homicide Sgt. Cindy Tallman said detectives will use those details to help catch her killer.

Police have no suspects. Leads provided by Tanya's friends and classmates went nowhere. A Crime Stoppers poster describing her death resulted in only three calls.

"They weren't anything worth reporting," said Rich Moothart, Crime Stoppers manager. Some people "see a poster and they'll call in something bizarre."

The family noticed Tanya's absence about 6 p.m. on the day she disappeared, when she did not return from work at the Chicken Soup Brigade's Jackson Street thrift shop. Her mother, Theresa Frazier, went to the thrift shop; Tanya had never appeared. There was no sign of her at Meany Middle.

Theresa Frazier called police at 7:30 p.m. to report her daughter was missing. Throughout the written report, Officer David DeBusk called the girl a runaway.

"He kept asking me if I thought she ran away," said Teara, Tanya's younger sister. "He kept asking me if I knew anything."

"It wasn't like (Tanya) to just up and leave and not say anything," said Theresa Frazier, 33. "I do remember saying `She's missing, and I don't think she ran away.' "

The distinction between runaways and missing youths is a difference in investigation by a community-service officer instead of a detective. It's a difference between a willful act vs. a possible crime.

Some wonder if, for Tanya, it ultimately boiled down to difference between life and death.

Officer DeBusk visited two of Tanya's friends the night she disappeared. One said Tanya was going to spend the afternoon with her boyfriend. The boyfriend, Willie, said he had not seen Tanya since the end of school. Other friends couldn't be reached.

Later in the week, Theresa Frazier got calls from officers, asking if she had heard from Tanya. Church volunteers posted 1,500 fliers.

The family's conviction that Tanya was not a runaway was based on their knowledge of her. She and Teara were soulmates. She would not have gone without mentioning her plans to her sister or taking her along. Tanya took no money, nor did she take clothes, her mother said.

Tanya and Teara had been altar servers at St. Clement's. Tanya had been to a parish picnic the day before her disappearance, hopping along in potato-sack races and happily talking about her new haircut.

Tanya would lend friends money, then hit up Washington Middle School security guard Terry James Floyd Sr. for $1 to buy lunch.

"She wasn't a runaway. Her sister and her mother were real close," Floyd said.

Each day on the way to school, Tanya would pick out a stuffed animal from her collection to carry to class. Others began toting plush toys to school after she made it a habit.

In three years at Washington Middle, Tanya was neither a victim nor a victimizer, Floyd said.

"She was, I think, at times real shy, maybe - not maybe - naive about a lot of things, especially boys," Floyd said. "Boy, it's just a sad reflection on our society that you could do this in broad daylight in close proximity of a school where 600 other kids are. No one sees anything. No one reports anything."

In the Frazier home, sympathy cards were once on display, but they were so numerous, they had to be taken down. The immediate outpouring of support has been heartening, Theresa Frazier said.

Waiting for justice is happening at a snail's pace.

"I guess hopefully we don't have to wait too long," she said. "I guess that's all we can do is wait."

A memorial for Tanya was begun along East Highland Drive, 35 paces from the corner of 23rd Avenue East, where the sloped edge is stubbled by trees and underbrush. Purple carnations bloomed from a glass vase; once bright blue flowers and pink roses became faded and weary. A school portrait, covered in plastic, was tacked to a wooden cross.

Someone wrote a testimonial on a piece of wood: "We don't know her name, but she's dead anyway. 14 years old, one less than me. We'll remember her . . ."

Tethered to a branch was a funeral-program page with Tanya's short history: growing up in Mount Baker, graduation from Washington Middle.

Now she rests in a Queen Anne gravesite donated by a church member.

"I'm trying to be patient, not keep pushing on them, asking a lot of questions that might interfere with the investigation," Theresa Frazier said. "From the first report, I often wondered if they took it as more serious - if they looked in that first 24 hours - would there have been a chance she maybe would have been saved? That's a big question."