Remains are those of Kansas woman

A body found in the trunk of a car in Colorado on Thursday has been identified as that of Dana Anderson, the girlfriend of a man found unconscious Tuesday near the shore of Seattle's Discovery Park.

Anderson and the man, Steven Papen, had lived together in Wichita, Kan., until Aug. 11, when they were reported missing.

Papen, 37, remains in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center, unable to talk with authorities or his family - none of whom have been able to explain how or why Papen ended up in Seattle.

The El Paso County, Colo., coroner's office has found that Anderson, 29, died from strangulation, said Sgt. Rafael Cintron of the Colorado Springs Police Department. Anderson also appeared to have suffered blunt trauma to the head. Her death has been ruled a homicide.

Dana Anderson's father, David Anderson, said police told him last weekend that evidence of an assault found in the couple's Wichita home made it likely his daughter would not be found alive.

Papen has acute respiratory-distress syndrome, a form of sudden and often severe lung failure that can be caused by physical or toxic injury, or by infection. He is heavily sedated and on life support.

Capt. Robert Lee of the Wichita Police Department, which is handling a multistate investigation of the disappearance and slaying, said yesterday his detectives are interested in talking to Papen when his condition improves, but he said Papen is not a suspect in Anderson's slaying.

Papen is not under police guard at Harborview, and three Wichita police detectives who flew to Seattle after he was found Tuesday have since left for Colorado.

Anderson's body was discovered Thursday in the trunk of a car that had been left at the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. A passer-by had noticed a foul odor from the car and called authorities.

The car that held Anderson's body has Kansas plates, Cintron said. He would not say whether the car belonged to Anderson. But Cintron did say that when police ran a check on the car's plates, they came up in connection with a missing-person report.

The car in Colorado is not the only abandoned car involved in this bizarre case.

Shortly after Anderson and Papen were reported missing, Papen's pickup was found abandoned in a parking lot at the Wichita Municipal Airport.

David Anderson, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said Papen has been "a very loving and devoted individual to my daughter and to my grandson."

He said Papen has been active in the life of Dana Anderson's 12 1/2-year-old son, Cody, attending the boy's scouting events and soccer games though he is not Cody's biological father.

"He treated him like he was his own son," Anderson said.

His daughter and Papen would fight, Anderson said, but never violently. The couple had lived with him for a year before moving into their own home.

They had been dating a total of five years, Anderson said, and Papen had proposed to Dana Anderson several times, but she kept saying the time wasn't right.

"She just didn't feel she was ready," Anderson said.

As for what may have happened to leave his daughter dead in Colorado Springs and Papen in critical condition in Seattle, Anderson said he had no idea.

"That's just a total mystery," he said. "We know of no connection out there (in Seattle). And we know of no reason as to why Dana would have ended up in Colorado Springs. There's no family, there's no friends that we know of that they would have had in either place. It's just totally off the wall."

Eli Sanders' phone message number is 206-748-5815. His e-mail address is esanders@seattletimes.com.