Crime solved - Welches native Derek Bachmann, with help from a DNA database, learns what happened in 1984

The Oregonian

MARK LARABEE - The Oregonian

April 24, 2006

Derek Bachmann last saw his sister Marci in 1984, just before she ran away from home into the arms of a serial killer.

Bachmann, who grew up in the Mount Hood community of Welches, was 15 and in trouble. He was in MacLaren School for Boys when his mother told him 16-year-old Marci was threatening to run away from their home in Vancouver.

He escaped MacLaren so he could talk to his sister, but he didn't try to stop her from leaving home. How could he? He knew about the broken home and neglect, the anguish of being a child with no one to really love you, let alone steer you straight.

"I couldn't tell her not to," he said. "I wish I had now. I basically told her 'I can't blame you,' and that's my demon."

Though he cannot let go of the guilt, Bachmann can now put his sister to rest. Through DNA testing, her remains were identified April 6, nearly 22 years after her body was found in a shallow Montana grave.

Last week, Bachmann, who lives in St. Charles, Mo., met two brothers in Missoula, Mont., where they had Marci cremated and ended the mystery that brought Bachmann sleepless nights.

"I always wondered what happened to Marci, and I was mad that she never tried to get ahold of me," said Bachmann, 36. "I felt abandoned."

Body found

After Marci left home, Derek Bachmann continued his life of crime. As a teenager, he was a ward of the state, eventually serving 21/2 years in a California jail for burglary. He credits maturity and friends with helping him find his way to computer school and a steady paycheck. Then at 21, Bachmann began looking for his sister.

By then, Marci was dead and in cold storage, a "Jane Doe" that Missoula County sheriff's detectives linked to a serial killer named Wayne Nance.

Police said Nance, a Missoula truck driver, was responsible for the deaths of at least five women. Nance died in 1986 after breaking into the home of a female acquaintance, where he clubbed and tied up the woman's husband, then stabbed him. But the man got free and shot Nance in the head.

Marci apparently had lived with Nance for several months and was using the name "Robin" before he shot her three times in the head and buried her in the woods near the Middleton Dam. A hiker found her body Dec. 24, 1984, 10 months after she left her mother's house in Vancouver and seven months after she was reported missing.

Bachmann said that three-month gap says a lot about the life she fled.

Search begins

In 1992, Bachmann was living in Portland and making good money. He hired a private investigator who found little but suggested that Marci might be working as a prostitute. Bachmann did not believe that.

Still, he played a hunch and called the King County Sheriff's Office in Seattle, which was investigating a serial killer who targeted mostly prostitutes and dumped their bodies near the Green River.

The Green River Task Force eventually identified 49 victims. But in 1992, none matched Marci's age and body type. Bachmann's inquiry went into a bulging file drawer, said Tom Jensen, a retired King County sheriff's detective who returned to the task force in 2001 when police arrested Gary Leon Ridgway and accused him of the Green River killings.

Now a Web site developer with his own business, Bachmann said he spent most of his nights looking for Marci. He called police agencies, read news clippings and researched case files of unidentified dead women throughout the country. He estimated he had looked into more than 12,000 "Jane Doe" cases over the past 12 years.

About 11/2 years ago, Bachmann discovered the Doe Network, which helps law enforcement agencies solve cold cases. Their Web site -- www.doenetwork.org-- publicizes unsolved cases and includes a database of missing people and unidentified bodies.

He scoured photos on the Internet and, sometime last year, saw a picture of a girl who he thought could be his sister. Most of his family's photos had been destroyed in a fire, so comparing the database photo to a family photo was difficult. Bachmann showed the database to his stepmother, but she didn't think the picture was of Marci.

"I just kind of put it on the shelf," Bachmann said. "I knew it was her, and I didn't want it to be her. There was always that hope that she would walk in the door one day with my nieces and nephews."

Case solved

In a way, Marci Bachmann helped solve her own mystery. Although she was unidentified, her bones were put to work.

Missoula detectives sent her skeleton to the Smithsonian Institution, where experts studied it to do a makeup of her body type, age, dental chart and other physical characteristics that could help identify her, said Missoula County sheriff's Capt. Greg Hintz. In 2004, the detectives shipped a femur to the University of North Texas, where her DNA was extracted and put into a national database.

Meanwhile in Seattle, as part of his 2003 plea deal, Ridgway directed investigators to another body. In an attempt to identify the woman, detectives began looking at missing-person reports they previously ruled out. Last year, they revisited Derek Bachmann's inquiry and found that Marci fit the age profile.

In August, King County Detective Raphael Crenshaw collected DNA from Bachmann's mother in Vancouver. It didn't match Ridgway's victim, but Crenshaw added the DNA sample to a national database.

Eventually, the two sets of DNA came up as a possible match. Last month, Crenshaw called Bachmann to get more DNA from him and his father and confirm the findings.

On April 6, the Missoula "Jane Doe" whom detectives had been calling "Debbie Deercreek," was identified as Marcella Cheri Bachmann.

More work to do

After searching for his sister for so long, Bachmann said he wants to push for a law requiring police around the country to enter missing people and unidentified bodies into a national database. It is currently voluntary.

Identifying Marci Bachmann was a great relief to Missoula police. Hintz, who inherited the case from retired Detective Larry Weatherman, said they both were pretty emotional when they found out the case had been solved. But it doesn't end their investigation of Wayne Nance.

Another of his victims -- "Christy Crystalcreek" -- lies unidentified in the Missoula County morgue. She was about the same age as Marci Bachmann when she died.

"Hopefully, we can identify her," Hintz said. "She died of a gunshot wound to the head. She was executed, just like Marci."

Researcher Kathleen Blythe contributed to this report. Mark Larabee: 503-294-7664; marklarabee@news.oregonian.com