00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: Bothell,
Washington, 1993-- teen girl Melissa
Lee goes missing one
00:00:18
night from her own family home. CRAIG MATHESON: The
doorjamb was broken. The lock had been forced.
00:00:26
The front room was in disarray. Melissa wasn't home when
they got home at 2:00. NANCY GRACE: Melissa's
body found the next day.
00:00:37
Detectives immediately worry
about a serial perpetrator. BRAD WALVATNE: Who would
do something like this?
00:00:45
Is this something that we
need to be concerned about? Is there a stranger out there
victimizing young girls?
00:00:51
NANCY GRACE: Investigators
do all they can, but Melissa's case goes cold. 30 years later,
advancements in DNA science
00:01:00
could provide them answers
they couldn't find in 1993. CECE MOORE: The DNA
really speaks for itself.
00:01:09
It's unbiased. I badly wanted Melissa's mother
and her family to have answers. NANCY GRACE: This is
the story of the 30-year
00:01:18
search for a vicious killer
who preyed on a little girl. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
00:01:27
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING] Bothell, Washington--
a city that's part of the Seattle
Metropolitan area.
00:01:56
Bothell straddles both
King and Snohomish Counties near the northeast
end of Lake Washington.
00:02:05
BRAD WALVATNE: Snohomish
County is the third largest county in Washington State.
00:02:08
It has approximately 2,000
square miles, a population of around 900,000 people. The mid '90s were a
real peak in homicides.
00:02:19
Bothell was a small community
that stuff like this didn't typically happen in. NANCY GRACE: 1993--
00:02:27
Bothell is also
home to Melissa Lee, a 15-year-old girl who
lives with mom, Sharon,
00:02:34
her 11-year-old
little sister, Kelly, and her mom's boyfriend, Gary. She liked to hang
with her friends.
00:02:42
She liked to go to the mall. She liked to help the homeless. She wanted to be a model.
00:02:50
KELLI LITTLEJOHN:
She was tall, thin. She was so beautiful. Beautiful. And the way she
carried herself--
00:02:58
she carried herself with pride. She was my protector,
I guess you could say. She had that mother nature and
nurturing inside of her already.
00:03:13
NANCY GRACE: April 14, 1993-- Melissa's mother, Sharon,
makes a distressing 911 call.
00:03:21
Melissa's mom, Sharon Lee,
called the sheriff's office to report Melissa missing.
00:03:30
Sharon was at work at the
Pine Cone Cafe in Linwood, and she got off work around
4:00, 4:30 in the afternoon.
00:03:36
And Sharon and her
boyfriend at the time, Gary, decided to stay
at the Pine Cone,
00:03:42
and then they ended up
going to the Eagles. SARAH JOHNSON: Melissa
was home alone that day.
00:03:48
Sharon had seen her that
morning when she left for work. CRAIG MATHESON: Sharon
had called Melissa
00:03:54
at approximately 9:30 PM. They had a conversation. Melissa had recently
broken up with a boyfriend.
00:04:00
Sharon was checking
in on Melissa. It was a fairly
innocuous conversation. Everything appeared to be
OK when they spoke at 9:30.
00:04:09
And then Sharon and Gary
got home shortly after 2:00, and that's when they
found their house--
00:04:14
the front door had
been kicked in. The door jamb was broken. The lock had been forced.
00:04:20
The front room was in disarray. SARAH JOHNSON: A coffee
table had been overturned.
00:04:27
A drink had been spilled. And there were a
pack of cigarettes and a lighter left in
the living room that
00:04:34
didn't belong to anyone else. It was fairly obvious
from the descriptions that some sort of
struggle had taken place.
00:04:44
Both Sharon and Gary
commented that they smelled this sharp chemical
odor, and Gary even said
00:04:51
to him it smelled like ether. BRAD WALVATNE: It was very
strong, to the point where they
00:04:55
had to open up the doors
and the windows in the house to vent the house out. Melissa wasn't home when
they got home at 2:00.
00:05:04
SARAH JOHNSON: They
didn't call law enforcement right
away because Melissa had a history of running away.
00:05:10
And Sharon thought initially,
perhaps she had just left. CRAIG MATHESON: The
morning of April 14,
00:05:18
Melissa was still not home. They start calling friends. No one had seen Melissa
or talked to Melissa
00:05:23
since the following evening. Sharon eventually called law
enforcement about 1:45 PM
00:05:28
on April 14, so that Wednesday. NANCY GRACE: Later
that same day, there's another distressing 911 call.
00:05:41
SARAH JOHNSON: About
7:30 PM on April 14, two women were walking
near the Everett-Mukilteo
00:05:49
border over a bridge called
the Edgewater Creek Bridge. They were looking
out over the bridge
00:05:56
down into the ravine below,
and saw what appeared to be the body of a young woman.
00:06:02
And so the two women went
to a nearby convenience store, Soundview Deli, and
asked to use the phone.
00:06:11
They called 911, and a few
members of the Everett Police department arrived on scene.
00:06:18
SCOT FENTER:
Initially, 911s were to be sent to a patrol officer. At that time, that area
was in the city of Everett,
00:06:27
so it was not a
county jurisdiction. CRAIG MATHESON: Everett
police officers were initially
00:06:33
dispatched to confirm or
deny whether that in fact was a body at the
bottom of the ravine.
00:06:40
SARAH JOHNSON: Sergeant Wayne
Meyer appeared at the scene as well. He and one of the
patrol officers
00:06:46
went down into the ravine. At this time, they didn't
know who the body was. They just knew it
was a Jane Doe--
00:06:52
a young white female with
strawberry blonde hair who was partially clothed. CRAIG MATHESON: Detectives
showed up and started
00:07:01
treating it as a crime scene. SARAH JOHNSON: They took
extensive photographs of the young woman's body,
and they called the coroner,
00:07:11
the medical examiner. And he arrived on scene and
took custody of the body. CRAIG MATHESON: They
climbed down to the body
00:07:19
also, and was able
to lever her up to the top of the bridge deck. SARAH JOHNSON: There
was not much evidence
00:07:27
at the scene itself. The only thing that law
enforcement could tell at this time is that she had
likely been dropped or tossed
00:07:36
off the side of the bridge. She was wearing a sweatshirt
that had been pushed up along with her
bra over her breasts,
00:07:44
and her chest was exposed. That suggested to
law enforcement that her murder involved
an element of sexual abuse.
00:07:54
She was also wearing a
pair of pink shorts, a pair of black socks, but
no shoes, and no shoes
00:08:01
were found in the area. CRAIG MATHESON: No shoes,
no identification, no purse. Just the clothing on her body.
00:08:10
NANCY GRACE: The detectives
head back to the station. Their focus-- to
identify the young girl.
00:08:17
By that time, the
missing juvenile report that Sharon,
Melissa's mom, would have gone out to
all of the nearby law
00:08:25
enforcement agencies. And the detectives saw
this missing girl, Melissa. Her physicals appeared to match
the Jane Doe they had found
00:08:33
the previous day,
and they made plans to meet with Sharon and Gary
at Sharon's place of employment
00:08:42
to see if they, in
fact, had found Melissa. SHARON LEE: The police
called me at my job
00:08:48
and asked about the clothes. And I went and got a photo,
and they said it was her.
00:08:59
Devastating. Totally devastating. KELLI LITTLEJOHN: I went
to my grandparents' house,
00:09:09
and I had an aunt
that lived there as well with my two cousins. My aunt had got a phone call,
and all I heard was, oh my god,
00:09:18
are you serious? And she was like, something
happened to your sister. SARAH JOHNSON: The
autopsy of Melissa Lee
00:09:29
was completed on
April 15 of 1993. And autopsies are incredibly
important in homicide
00:09:36
investigations because it
gives definitive information to law enforcement
about the cause
00:09:42
and the manner of
a person's death. CRAIG MATHESON:
After they removed the salmon-colored shorts
that she was wearing,
00:09:49
they discovered that the
underwear that she was wearing had been put on her backwards.
00:09:54
And again, that just solidified
in the medical examiner's mind that you're dealing with
some sort of sexual assault
00:10:01
at this point. SARAH JOHNSON: Melissa
Lee had bruises on her arms and her legs. She had some
abrasions on her back
00:10:10
that suggested at
some point, she had been drug over a hard surface. She also had what appeared to
be a ligature mark on her neck.
00:10:20
The manner of
death was homicide. The cause of death
was strangulation. NANCY GRACE: A murder
investigation now
00:10:29
underway, detectives take
a deep dive to learn more about young Melissa Lee's life.
00:10:36
They even attend her funeral. SHARON LEE: It was a
beautiful her funeral. She had a lot of
friends that went.
00:10:45
KELLI LITTLEJOHN:
It looked like there was about 400 people there. The police were there
watching, thinking maybe
00:10:50
he would show up--
whoever had killed her. BRAD WALVATNE: At this point, by
the time the funeral occurred,
00:11:00
there was a lot of work being
done by detectives being put in that place to be able to
talk to family and friends,
00:11:06
to maybe find out, hey, do
you have any information about who may be
involved in this
00:11:10
and why this may have occurred? Hardly ever do you
ever really have a true stranger on stranger.
00:11:16
It's typically someone
that they know. And so we were trying to, as
law enforcement back then,
00:11:22
trying to figure that out. NANCY GRACE: A
community in fear. Investigators
searching for answers.
00:11:29
What happened to
teen girl Melissa Lee in her final moments of life. And was her killer known to her?
00:11:39
That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives." Bothell, Washington,
April 1993-- 15-year-old Melissa Lee
vanishes from her own home
00:11:59
in the middle of the night. Then her body discovered
thrown off a bridge. Less than a day
later, detectives
00:12:08
returned to her family home
searching for evidence. CRAIG MATHESON: Arrangements had
been made to go to Sharon's home
00:12:16
and collect any evidence
that may be present, take photographs, and
get formal statements
00:12:23
from both Sharon and Gary. When the detectives
showed up at the house, they discovered, much
to their displeasure,
00:12:32
that Sharon had already
cleaned up the front room. The mess that Sharon and Gary
had found when they had gotten
00:12:40
home at 2:00 AM on April 14 no
longer existed in the fashion that they had found it.
00:12:47
There were a couple
of items that Sharon had located that she had
indicated to law enforcement.
00:12:54
She did not believe that
they were Melissa's. She didn't know whose they were. It was a pack of
cigarettes and a lighter.
00:13:01
So there was very
little physical evidence of the struggle that was in
place for law enforcement
00:13:07
to actually do anything with. What they did do, though, was
they searched Melissa's bedroom.
00:13:13
They were looking for
anything that might help point them in the right direction.
00:13:18
SARAH JOHNSON: And
in Melissa's room, law enforcement found a
calendar, a day planner,
00:13:25
an address book, and
various loose papers that Melissa had written various
things about her life in.
00:13:34
She had used the day planner and
the calendar as sort of a diary. What detectives learned
from her day planner
00:13:43
and her calendar is that
Melissa was a user of something called the Night Line, which was
a dating service back in 1993
00:13:52
where people could connect
with strangers anonymously over the phone and
get to know them,
00:13:59
strike up friendships
and conversations, and maybe even potentially
meet people in person.
00:14:04
It was kind of like a
pre-internet dating app. Her friend, Krista,
who by all accounts
00:14:12
was Melissa's best
friend, said that they would do it together when
they were having sleepovers.
00:14:18
It was just kind of a
funny way to pass the time. SCOT FENTER: Melissa spent
a lot of time on the phone,
00:14:25
to the point where Sharon
would take the phone and put it in her bedroom. But I don't think Sharon thought
that she was on chat line.
00:14:36
CRAIG MATHESON: They started
looking at the paperwork that they'd taken
from Melissa's home,
00:14:41
specifically the day
planner and the calendar and her address book. What they found in
her address book
00:14:51
were a number of names with
associated phone numbers. SARAH JOHNSON: Greg
Renta found the name
00:14:59
Michael and a phone number
in Melissa's address book and called it. BRAD WALVATNE:
Detectives found out
00:15:06
that Michael was not Michael. Michael was a name that this
other individual used when
00:15:13
he would use the Night Line. So detectives went and met with
Michael, who ended up being
00:15:18
a gentleman named Alan Dean. SARAH JOHNSON: Detective
Renta spoke with Mr. Dean.
00:15:25
He went, and he met Mr. Dean
in person at his residence. He showed Mr. Dean
a photo of Melissa.
00:15:34
And at that point, Alan Dean
said he did recognize Melissa. He said that they'd gone on
a couple of dates before,
00:15:40
but they had never had sex. He said he didn't know that
she'd died until Detective
00:15:47
Renta informed him. And when detectives
asked Alan Dean where he was on April
13 and 14 of 1993,
00:15:55
Mr. Dean didn't have an alibi. He said he couldn't
remember where he had been. I think detectives had
alarm bells in their heads
00:16:04
at this point, but
without anything more, there was nothing they could do. They documented everything
that he had told them.
00:16:12
They documented where he lived. But other than that,
they couldn't arrest him, and the investigation continued.
00:16:21
NANCY GRACE: Detectives
now turn their attention to Melissa's ex-boyfriend. SARAH JOHNSON: Melissa Lee,
shortly before her death,
00:16:30
had been in an on-again,
off-again relationship with a boy who was the
same age as she was,
00:16:35
if not a little bit older. I didn't like him. He tried to keep
Melissa away from me.
00:16:42
He was abusive to her,
would leave bruises on her. SARAH JOHNSON: The relationship
seemed pretty volatile.
00:16:48
They would spend a
lot of time together, but also have a lot
of lover's quarrels
00:16:52
and break up quite often. There are rumors he was
involved in some gang activity.
00:17:00
The night that
Melissa went missing, she had had a heated phone
call with her boyfriend
00:17:09
where he had told
her she was marked. That equaled a hit-- that he
had put a hit out on Melissa.
00:17:16
And so there was
speculation that he had either murdered
Melissa or hired someone else to do it for him.
00:17:22
SHARON LEE: He was abusive
physically, mentally. He was hateful. I just thought if it was
anybody, it had to be him.
00:17:33
Law enforcement spent
a lot of time running down information and leads about
Melissa's recently ex-boyfriend.
00:17:41
They investigated the rumors. They spoke to all of
Melissa's friends and family.
00:17:47
They spoke to his
friends and family. They spoke to him
multiple times. And ultimately, they
could find no evidence
00:17:54
that he was involved with
Melissa's murder in any way. Police rule out Melissa's
ex-boyfriend as a prime suspect.
00:18:04
They also began to
run out of leads. In 1993, forensic
science hardly existed. Even though detectives
preserved forensic evidence,
00:18:16
there wasn't much
they could do with it. SARAH JOHNSON: All that
law enforcement could do
00:18:21
was track down information,
interview witnesses, follow up on what individuals
had told them, trace evidence,
00:18:31
and forensic science just
didn't exist like it does today. At the time, the forensic
testing that they could do
00:18:39
was ABO typing for blood. CRAIG MATHESON: Law enforcement
for the first five, six months
00:18:46
worked this thing pretty hard. They chased down
every lead they got. Nothing really
leapt out at them.
00:18:55
Melissa Lee was kidnapped from
the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office jurisdiction, and
then her body was found
00:19:01
in Everett Police jurisdiction. So we had detective
units from both agencies trying to work together.
00:19:08
Well, you work
different agencies, you can imagine that
the communication probably isn't the greatest.
00:19:13
The case was worked. A lot of detectives
worked on the case, but ultimately it
just went cold.
00:19:20
NANCY GRACE: For now,
solving Melissa Lee's murder hits a dead end. As we see next on "Bloodline
Detectives," new science could
00:19:28
finally provide a breakthrough. Bothell, Washington,
2001-- detectives reopened the 1993 murder of Melissa Lee.
00:19:51
The 15-year-old girl
vanishes from home in the middle of the night. The next day, her body
discovered discarded
00:20:00
over the side of a bridge. Now, investigators pinning their
hopes on new forensic science.
00:20:09
CRAIG MATHESON:
By 2001, the state crime lab was using
DNA technology on a fairly regular basis.
00:20:18
When the clothing that Melissa
was wearing when her body was found was initially
examined in 1993,
00:20:27
the forensic
scientists at that time noted the presence of several
blood stains on those shorts.
00:20:35
SARAH JOHNSON: A
forensic scientist tested some of
those blood samples and realized that one
of those spots of blood
00:20:44
could not have come
from Melissa Lee. The minor contributor to the
mixed profile was Melissa Lee,
00:20:51
but the majority contributor
was an unknown male person. BRAD WALVATNE: And
so that profile
00:21:00
was eventually uploaded
into CODIS, which is the Combined DNA Index System. But there was never a hit.
00:21:06
There was never a match. CRAIG MATHESON: Most states
and the federal government,
00:21:10
if somebody is convicted
of a certain type of crime, they have to give a
sample of their DNA.
00:21:16
When that DNA is given
to law enforcement, it's uploaded into CODIS so that
when there are crimes that occur
00:21:24
after the fact or
old crimes, they can compare a forensic sample
against known offenders
00:21:30
and to see if they match. The individual who had left that
blood stain on Melissa's shorts
00:21:36
was not in the system. But at this point in time,
Melissa's ex-boyfriend had been arrested
a number of times
00:21:44
and been convicted of felonies. So he was in CODIS. There was no match to TJ, so
he is, by 2001, pretty clearly
00:21:52
no longer a primary
person of interest because it's not his
blood on her shorts.
00:22:00
Nothing much happened
with the case until 2016, when her underwear-- the
underwear that had been
00:22:07
placed on her body backwards-- had been sent back to the
crime lab to be reexamined.
00:22:14
When it was originally
examined in 1993, there had been some
indication that there
00:22:21
may have been a semen
stain on the crotch portion of the underwear. When the forensic scientist
re-examined the underwear that
00:22:29
had been on Melissa's body
when she had been found, that presumptive test
came back positive.
00:22:34
It was pretty clear, I
think, to everyone who was looking at this
thing, that Melissa Lee
00:22:41
had been sexually assaulted. NANCY GRACE: With no hits
from the national DNA data
00:22:48
bank, CODIS, and no new
leads, the case isn't reviewed again until 2018. That is when new
detectives utilize
00:22:58
a brand new forensic science-- investigative genetic genealogy. CRAIG MATHESON: Forensic
genetic genealogy
00:23:06
is when we use a forensic DNA
sample from a crime scene, and then compare that DNA
profile to DNA profiles that
00:23:15
are in a publicly
accessible database of DNA profiles like GEDmatch. And they're looking for
DNA genetic relatives.
00:23:24
And then from there, they'll
use just standard genealogical methods to work their way
back down the family tree
00:23:32
and come to a person
of interest who they think might be
the individual who left the forensic sample.
00:23:39
And we send that to
Parabon NanoLabs, and they use a DNA
profile from that. CECE MOORE: Most
important is that law
00:23:48
enforcement has a DNA sample
remaining from the crime scene. We cannot work with
the traditional
00:23:55
STR genetic profiles
that law enforcement has used for decades. And so for me to
be able to help,
00:24:02
I have to be able to go back
to that original biological evidence and reanalyze
that from scratch,
00:24:09
using more advanced technology. Detective Jim Scharf reached
out to Parabon in October 2018
00:24:18
about Melissa's case,
and we received the DNA sample on January 23, 2019. We sent that to our partner
lab where it was genotyped.
00:24:30
We quickly processed
that and uploaded the SNP file to GEDmatch. I got really pulled
into the case.
00:24:37
I was thinking
about Melissa's mom and how badly she needed
answers and justice.
00:24:43
And so I just kept going. And so I ended up identifying
a person of interest in Melissa's murder.
00:24:51
And I did the work
pro bono, because I so badly wanted Melissa's mother
and her family to have answers.
00:24:59
NANCY GRACE: The results from
Parabon NanoLabs are a shocker. The DNA taken from
Melissa Lee's underwear
00:25:07
belongs to an original
person of interest from 1993. Who is he? That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:25:28
Bothell, Washington, 2019-- the
science of genetic genealogy has given investigators
the name of a suspect
00:25:35
in the 1993 murder of
teen girl Melissa Lee. What's even more surprising
is that the suspect
00:25:45
is one of the original
persons of interest, all the way back in 1993. BRAD WALVATNE: We received
some very exciting news
00:25:55
from Parabon and CeCe Moore. Our potential suspect
of that unknown male DNA from Melissa's shorts came back
to a man named Alan Edward Dean.
00:26:06
And it was a high probability
based on the fact of, at the time of Melissa's
murder back in 1993,
00:26:17
Alan Dean was a resident
of Snohomish County, and he lived only 3.6 miles away
from the Edgewater Creek Bridge.
00:26:29
CRAIG MATHESON: When law
enforcement gets a name from Parabon as to
a person of interest
00:26:35
based upon genetic
genealogy, the first thing they're going to do is go back
to the original murder book
00:26:42
and take a look at whether
law enforcement had ever had any contact with
this individual,
00:26:47
or whether that
individual was even named anywhere in the discovery. In this particular case, when
the name Alan Dean was given
00:26:55
to them in early
2019, they discovered that not only, in fact,
did the name come up,
00:27:02
but law enforcement interviewed
Alan Dean on two occasions back in 1993, before they shifted
gears and went elsewhere.
00:27:11
CECE MOORE: Whenever I identify
a person as a potential person of interest in investigation,
I like to do a lot of research
00:27:19
on them and find everything
that I can about them. But what I learned
about Alan Dean
00:27:23
is he kept a very low profile. He had no social media
profiles that I could find,
00:27:29
and there was very little
information available about him out there. I found that he had been
married a couple of times.
00:27:36
He had a daughter
who was now deceased. It appeared one of his
parents was still alive,
00:27:42
and he had lived in the
Everett, Washington area for a big portion of his life. SARAH JOHNSON: They knew that
they needed to do some more
00:27:51
research into who Alan
Dean was and to get a DNA sample of his so
that they could test
00:27:59
that known sample against all
of the evidence in this case. It's best in these cases
to not tip off a suspect
00:28:07
that they have been identified
as the potential murderer. And so what law
enforcement did was they
00:28:15
put Mr. Dean under
surveillance around the clock to see if they could
obtain a surreptitious DNA
00:28:22
sample from him that they
could then use to test against evidence in this case. BRAD WALVATNE: We found
out that he was a smoker.
00:28:31
He would come out
to his front porch, and he would smoke
a cigarette, but he would always retain and keep
his cigarette butts with him.
00:28:37
We tried to obtain a
DNA reference sample from him through a gum ruse. SARAH JOHNSON: Three
undercover detectives posed
00:28:46
as employees of a gum company. They went to Mr.
Dean's residence, told him that they were
going door to door,
00:28:54
testing out new flavors
of their product, and they asked him if
he would participate.
00:29:00
He agreed to taste test
some of the gum flavors. And the detectives had
set up this ruse in a way
00:29:08
where they could present a piece
of gum to him, he could chew it, and then he could spit
it back into a cup
00:29:14
that the detectives
would provide. That would allow the
detectives to then seal the used piece of gum and retain
it for evidence and DNA testing.
00:29:25
However, even though
Mr. Dean would chew the gum, when he was
offered the cup to spit
00:29:33
it back into, he declined. He said, you're not here
to get my DNA, are you? And then threw away the gum
in his private trash can.
00:29:43
Came across as very paranoid. It made them think that perhaps
he knew they were on to him.
00:29:52
BRAD WALVATNE: We ended
up putting a camera in his cul-de-sac on
top of a light pole
00:29:56
to monitor his movements. And one day in April of
2020, we hit the jackpot. A detective was following him
as he walked off his property,
00:30:12
smoking a cigarette. And he walked to his mailbox. He was walking back to his home.
00:30:17
He threw his cigarette
butt on the roadway, and then he walked away from
it, went back into his house.
00:30:26
And the detective
was able to swoop in and recover the cigarette butt. SARAH JOHNSON: They tested the
cigarette butt very quickly,
00:30:36
and the results were that
the DNA on the cigarette butt Alan Dean had
dropped matched the stain
00:30:46
on Melissa Lee's shorts. To us, it meant that Alan
Dean was Melissa Lee's killer.
00:30:56
NANCY GRACE: The
bloodline detectives are sure they finally know
who killed young Melissa Lee.
00:31:02
When we return, they must
arrest their prime suspect. April 2020, Bothell,
Washington-- bloodline
00:31:19
detectives have matched
the suspect's DNA from the 1993 murder
of Melissa Lee to a man still living in
the same area, Alan Dean.
00:31:31
The 15-year-old girl, Melissa,
vanishes from her own home in Bothell, her body
discovered thrown over a bridge
00:31:40
in a nearby wooded area. Detectives revisit the case
on and off for 25 years, but in 2019, scientists
at Parabon NanoLabs
00:31:51
create a male DNA
profile from a sample found on Melissa's shorts. SARAH JOHNSON: Detective Brad
Walvatne of the Snohomish County
00:32:03
Sheriff's Office was the
lead investigator at the time that Alan Dean was arrested
on July 28 of 2020.
00:32:11
The arrest went off
without a hitch. He was taken to the major
crimes unit interview room
00:32:19
and interviewed by Detective
Walvatne and his partner, Detective Kendra Conley. Anything that
we said or asked,
00:32:29
he would just say the same
thing over and over again. And it was-- he said-- BRAD WALVATNE: It was a
very bizarre statement.
00:32:48
So it became obvious to us
that he's not going to talk, so he's basically invoking
his right to remain silent.
00:32:55
SARAH JOHNSON: However, the
recording was still going. And when the defendant
was alone in the room,
00:33:01
immediately after
he was told he was being placed under arrest for
murder and kidnapping, he said--
00:33:17
SARAH JOHNSON: There
was no question he understood why he
was being arrested, and he said he was sorry.
00:33:24
But I think more importantly,
he looked up at the sky and he said, I'm sorry. And to me, he was
talking to Melissa.
00:33:35
SHARON LEE: Detective Walvatne
called me first and said, we got him. We didn't know they were
doing that all them years.
00:33:46
We had no clue at all. KELLI LITTLEJOHN: What
rang the bell in a picture was the name that I knew
him by, which was Michael.
00:33:59
He had taken me and my
sister to "Fantasia." He ended up picking
us up from our house.
00:34:06
I didn't like him. He was weird. Every time I would come back,
he would try to make me leave.
00:34:15
Melissa wasn't having
it, so she eventually made him take us home. And it was probably about a
week, maybe a week and a half
00:34:24
later, I was sent off
to my grandparents, but I ended up coming back
home the very next day.
00:34:31
There's always that question in
the back of your mind-- what if? What if I was there?
00:34:36
What could have happened? Could I have deterred it,
or could I be dead too? SARAH JOHNSON: In
his home, they found
00:34:45
a number of things that related
back to Melissa's murder. One of the things that they
found that we ultimately weren't
00:34:53
able to use at
trial was a canister of carburetor cleaner, which
contained ether and heptane.
00:35:04
At autopsy, a sample
of Melissa's blood was taken for
toxicology purposes. There were no drugs or
alcohol found in her blood,
00:35:13
but there were traces of
ethyl ether and heptane. And what was interesting
about that is,
00:35:21
at the time of Melissa's
murder, Alan Dean was working at
Boeing as a mechanic and had access to
multiple types of solvents
00:35:31
and mechanical chemicals. NANCY GRACE: Alan Dean
appears in court one month after his arrest.
00:35:40
SARAH JOHNSON: When Alan Dean
was originally arrested back in July of 2020, he was
charged the next month
00:35:47
with first degree murder. However, those
nonsensical statements he was making to law enforcement
at the time of his interview
00:35:55
continued, and he would make
those statements in court. CRAIG MATHESON: They made
an initial evaluation
00:36:03
that he doesn't appear
to be competent, and we need more time. And the doctors at Western
came to the conclusion
00:36:10
that he was gravely disabled,
and he was committed civilly. SARAH JOHNSON: After about
a year of civil commitment,
00:36:21
the Snohomish County
Prosecutor's office received word that Mr.
Dean would be released
00:36:26
from his civil commitment
at Western State Hospital and would be released
back into the community.
00:36:32
His state had improved. And so when the
prosecutor's office learned that he
would be released,
00:36:39
we made the decision
to refile charges. It took a couple of times. Trial did not start
until March of 2023.
00:36:51
CRAIG MATHESON: He was
pretty stone faced. Yeah, Dean was pretty stone
faced the majority of the trial.
00:36:59
KELLI LITTLEJOHN: I
wanted to jump on him. I really did. It was a lot of control.
00:37:04
He would try and glance
at me and my mom and grin. Even the correctional officers
that were standing there
00:37:11
would stand to where
he couldn't see us. He would still find ways. I still wanted him to
go through that court
00:37:18
and realize you can't
get away with everything. You're eventually going
to have to face justice.
00:37:26
SHARON LEE: I really
wanted to do him harm. I really did. I was scared to death
after so many years
00:37:36
that he would be
found not guilty. I didn't know that they had
such incriminating evidence
00:37:45
against him. And it was just too awesome. CRAIG MATHESON: The
jury convicted Alan
00:37:52
Dean in just under three hours. That's really fast. I mean, the testimony was almost
two full weeks of court days.
00:38:00
They had had to listen
to relatively complicated scientific and forensic
material on a case
00:38:06
that was 30 plus years old. And he was guilty as charged. His offender score was a
zero, and he got the high end
00:38:13
of the standard range for
murder in the first degree, which is about 26.5 years.
00:38:20
KELLI LITTLEJOHN: I wanted to
jump for joy, but I couldn't. So all I could do was just
be like, yes, because he
00:38:30
got what he deserved. SHARON LEE: I
didn't feel closure after they read the verdict.
00:38:36
I had to go up there
for the sentencing. I just had to. And then it felt like
it was finally over.
00:38:47
I couldn't have asked for
more than what they did. They never, ever stopped
working on her case.
00:38:56
For 31 years, they
worked on her case. BRAD WALVATNE: If we didn't have
investigative genealogy, CeCe
00:39:04
Moore, Parabon,
this new technique, I think we'd be sitting here
today with this case still
00:39:10
being cold and not solved. It's what solved this case. It really did. SHARON LEE: I always wonder how
many kids she would have had,
00:39:19
if she would have
been married, what her life would have turned
out to be, what career choice
00:39:25
she would have made. I wonder about
that all the time. All the time. KELLI LITTLEJOHN: I feel like if
I let the pain go, I let her go.
00:39:38
And that's not
something that I've been able to work through yet. But I know she's at peace.
00:39:44
I believe she is. But I think seeing her
family like this, she's not. It's to the point where I
can't-- even after 31 years,
00:39:54
I still can't talk about
my sister, because the pain overrides everything. To me, she was the
perfect person.
00:40:01
I mean, I looked up to her, even
though she was my older sister. She was charismatic.
00:40:07
She was prideful. She was joy. She'd light up the room. NANCY GRACE: Alan Dean--
00:40:17
finally convicted for
the murder of teen girl Melissa Lee, March 28, 2024. On April 24, when he was
sentenced to the maximum term
00:40:30
of 26.5 years as
a first offender, he still proclaims
his innocence. He says police planted
DNA evidence against him.
00:40:43
Now, at age 66, he will no doubt
spend the rest of his life where he belongs, behind bars for the
brutal murder and sex attack
00:40:55
on a 15-year-old little girl. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives."