Saturday, October 9, 2004
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Eleven years after he became a "John Doe" killed by a hit-and-run driver on a lonely Central Washington road, attorney and former Judge David Glen Lewis of Amarillo, Texas, has been found.
A Washington State Patrol investigator, inspired by a 2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer series that critiqued law enforcement handling of missing-person cases, uncovered the identity of the long-dead victim, State Patrol authorities said yesterday.
Although the identification confirmed last week through DNA tests helps bring emotional closure to Lewis' family in Amarillo, it only deepens a cross-country secret:
How and why Lewis disappeared Jan. 31, 1993, from Amarillo and wound up dead a day later along state Route 24 near River Road in Yakima County. And who drove the car that killed him.
"That's still the mystery," Detective Sgt. Ken Harkcom of the State Patrol's Yakima office, said yesterday. "How he disappeared in Texas and wound up here. This is only a small piece. We want to finish solving the rest of the puzzle."
A newspaper-reading patrol detective, Pat Ditter, began to break the case after reading a P-I series, "Without a Trace," about missing-person cases in February 2003.
"The series got Pat thinking, 'if it can be wrong there, it can be wrong here,' and he began looking at the 1993 hit-and-run," Harkcom, Ditter's boss, said. Ditter was out of his office yesterday and unavailable to comment.
Among other things, the series documented long-unsolved missing-person cases, the low priority many law enforcement agencies give them and problems with law enforcement missing-person data banks.
Ditter, a 13-year veteran with a reputation for tenacity and attention to detail, focused on part of the series that dealt with the unreliability of NCIC (National Crime Information Center) computer hits. Why not think outside the box, he reasoned. Why not try Google?
"Pat is very computer-savvy, and after reading that, (he) thought about doing an extensive search on Google instead. He put in details like height, weight, and that took him to missing-persons sites," Harkcom said.
Within a week, Ditter had what expensive law enforcement databases were unable to find for years, a list of possible victims. One included a picture of Lewis on a site posted by the DOE Network and the Texas Department of Public Safety Missing Persons Clearing House.
Ditter noticed it resembled the face of the corpse in photos taken from the Yakima-area collision scene in 1993. The dead man was missing one thing, though -- Lewis' distinctive glasses.
Ditter consulted an evidence list of items recovered from the crime scene. Eyeglasses were among them. He retrieved the clothing the dead man had worn -- camouflage, military-style clothing and work boots -- and searched them.
"He found the glasses in the clothing," Harkcom said. "The glasses were identical to the ones (worn by Lewis) in the missing-persons photo. Pat thought, wow, is it a coincidence? That really got us rolling."
Ditter phoned the Amarillo Police Department and later forwarded to them for DNA analysis one of the hit-and-run victim's boots and a tissue sample preserved since 1993. Lewis' mother, Esther Lewis, provided DNA samples. The University of North Texas health science center began to examine them.
Ditter learned that Lewis was 39 when he disappeared 1,600 miles away in Amarillo and that Lewis' wife, Karen, reported him missing a day after he failed to come home -- the same day John Doe was found near Moxee, east of Yakima.
Lewis' wife had left Jan. 28 for a shopping trip to Dallas. She returned Jan. 31 to find her husband's videocassette recorder running, taping a football game. She found Lewis' wedding ring and watch on the kitchen counter. At first she believed he had gone to watch the Super Bowl with friends. When he didn't come home Feb. 1, she called Amarillo police.
Investigators learned that the game had been taped from the beginning but the recorder continued running after the game was over. They learned the last time anyone had seen Lewis alive was Jan. 30.
On Feb. 2, 1993, Amarillo investigators found Lewis' red Ford Explorer parked in front of the Potter County Courts Building in downtown Amarillo. His house and car keys were hidden under a floor mat. His checkbook, credit cards and driver's license were inside where he normally kept them. At home, none of his personal effects was missing.
Karen Lewis told police that her husband's life had been threatened and she feared foul play. So did his family, who described Lewis as caring and involved in charity work. Lewis was an attorney and former Moore County, Texas, court-at-law judge and might have enemies, they reasoned.
The investigation was shelved, however, after Amarillo police learned airplane tickets were bought in Lewis' name about the time he disappeared.
One, a ticket from Dallas to Amarillo, was bought Jan. 31, the day the football game was being taped. A second, from Los Angeles to Dallas, was bought Feb. 1, the day Lewis became a John Doe killed along a road in Washington state.
Police in Washington and Texas confirmed the hit-and-run victim was Lewis when Ditter received a fax Monday from the University of North Texas science center reporting a 99.91 percent chance that Lewis was the John Doe buried near Yakima. Wednesday, Amarillo District Attorney Rebecca King officially told Lewis' family.
Family members believe he was kidnapped. Lewis had no known ties to Washington state.
In 2002, Amarillo police told the Amarillo Globe-News that the plane tickets led them to believe Lewis was missing of his own accord and no foul play was involved. No solid leads ever developed over the years.
All that is known, according to Ditter, is that about 10:30 p.m. Feb. 1, 1993, passing motorists said they saw a man lying on state Route 24 outside Moxee, east of Yakima. They turned around and tried to warn other motorists, then returned and found him dead.
A Chevrolet Camaro was noticed leaving the scene. Tests showed the man in the road was not intoxicated. No identification was ever found, until last week.
ON THE WEB