To her daughter, i wouldnt wish this on even my worst enemy. It was on everybodys radar. The case was never closed. It was constantly being investigated. I remember turning on the tv and just seeing an arrest had been made. Tonight investigators say theyve cracked the case. I saw a picture of mandy. Oh, my gosh, is this really what i think it is . It was stunning. How could this have happened after so long . The story of mandy stavik is the story of a young womans disappearance from a tightknit rural community. Its the story of a family devastated and a whole community devastated. It was a big deal. I was initially appointed sheriff in 2003. I went out and spoke with mandys mother, mary, and told her that i was going to make every effort, that we would solve this case. Mary stavik is a very sweet woman, but shes a very tough woman. I remember the first time i went out to meet her, she was out splitting wood in her front yard, and she was in her 70s at that time. I dont think i ever believed, ever, that they would catch the guy. The stavik family lived out in acme, which is a little tiny town down highway 9 in rural Whatcom County. Whatcom county is the most northwest county in Washington State. It is quite beautiful. This is about 15 miles east of bellingham. Bellingham is the largest city in the county. Its rural, so its not a lot out there. You know, open roads and lots of cows. We had very little crime out in that area, so it was a place where people dont lock their doors, they leave their car keys in the ignition. Its a very tranquil and a very nice community. My memory of their house is that its set back from the road quite a bit. It was, like, ideal. It was on a dead end street, a mile from the highway. It was quiet and peaceful. The lots were all between 10 and 25 acres. Absolutely the nicest neighbors anybody could ever have. You knew your neighbor. You talked to your neighbor. Everybody knew who was coming in, who was leaving. They probably set their clocks by, you know, there goes mr. Jones headed to work. He should be back pretty soon. Land had been owned by families for generations. People could tell stories about what your grandma did to my grandma years and years and years ago. When you live in a small town you dont know everybody, but you know somebody who knows everybody. You just have this feeling that bad things arent going to happen because people know each other. And that, in most cases, is true. Everyone that lived out there, even today, knows about mandy stavik and what happened to her. Mandy had just graduated from high school. She was in her first year at Central Washington university. She came home for thanksgiving break. Mandy left her home on the day after thanksgiving in 1989. She wanted to get in a run. It was kind of in the late afternoon. She had a daily route that she used to jog that took her down the road that her house was on, on strand road, down to the Nooksack River and back. She went with their dog kyra, a German Shepherd dog. It was an older dog, but it was very protective of mandy. I normally went with her. I rode my bike, she ran. And the dog panted along after us. But that last morning when she disappeared, i didnt go with her because my sister was there. And so i kicked myself. The houses along the way, there cant be more than 10 to 12 houses. I mean, its just not many people. She turned around and was running back home, where she was seen by a neighbor as well as her brother, lee. Lee, my son, he was at the andersons house, which is about halfway between my house and highway 9, down strand road. And he was there visiting his friend jeremy. He remembers seeing her jog by, coming home. She was maybe a quartermile from her home. Definitely should have been there before lee had gotten home. And when she didnt show up, there was concern. When she didnt come back, when she should have come back, and then the dog came back without her, i was panicky. First person i called was her boyfriend. Mary was worried that mandy was missing. Then i got worried. The dog came home alone after about two hours. And they suspected something terrible had happened to her. It was so unusual that people started looking immediately. As the minutes and hours pass, you cant you cant believe anything other than something bad has happened, and so so they called the police. I called the sheriff, and i called everybody else i could think of. And i had everybody i knew out searching for her. Any kind of missing person call is a 911 call. It requires immediate response. And a deputy will go out and talk to the reporting party. What i remember hearing from them is this is something weve got to move on right away. Its not right. You can tell that this is not somebody who runs away from home. Theres no history. Theres no past reports. I think the anxiety increased and increased. In any investigation like this, youre going to look at boyfriends, anybody that they might have had trouble with. Fingerprints, everything. Questioned by a couple detectives. Mom called me and said, mandys missing. And i just its like, this cant be happening to us again. The calming scent of lavender by downy infusions calm. Laundry isnt done until its done with downy. The first and only full prescription strength nonsteroidal antiinflammatory gel available overthecounter. New voltaren is powerful arthritis pain relief in a gel. Voltaren. The joy of movement. 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Mandy stavik was a bright, vivacious, gregarious 18yearold. Graduated from mount baker high school, was in her very first semester at Central Washington university. Mandy loved anything athletic. She could do things that i could never do. She could jump on a horse bareback and take off running across the field. She loved softball. She loved track. She loved baseball. She loved basketball. She played everything she could. I said to her, you cant turn out for track and play basketball at the same time. And she says, you want to bet . Never bet with mandy. She always wins. In 89 i was the band director at mount baker. Mandy wanted to be the best at whatever she was doing. We spent a lot of time going for walks and things and just talking. You know, we talked about relationships and just Different Things and things that you would talk about, you know, as young teenage girls. What i loved about her, shes independent. I met mandy when i was a sophomore, and maybe she was a freshman. I was a year ahead of her. First big love, of course. And for some reason she loved me. I think she was way out of my league, but, you know. Everybody liked her, so she wasnt the typical student that may have one or two enemies. Komo news 4. Good evening. Im kathy goertzen. And im dan lewis. An extensive search for a missing teenager. Her brother who was visiting a neighbor actually saw her run one direction and then a few minutes later run the other way, he was the last person to see her. Every tv station, radio station, newspaper from across the state, and even outside the state National Media were covering it. I was in my first year as a reporter at the Bellingham Herald at the time. I hopped in my car and i drove out and interviewed mary. She understood that there was a chance that we could help. And then we called everybody all of the neighbors and all of her everybody all of the everybody all of the everybody all of the neighbors and all of her friends just to see if anybody had seen her. Mandys mother is a School Bus Driver for the mount baker district. Shes a survivor. With everything that shes gon through. Mandys family had come from alaska. Her parents were divorced. Mary had come down with three kids, mandy and molly and lee, and settled in acme. Mom called me and said, mandys missing. I just its like, this cant be happening to us again. She had had an older brother who was killed in alaska years before. My oldest sons name was brent. We lived very close to ft. Richardson in anchorage. And he had permission from them to hunt on base. And one day somebody shot him. They called me and said they had his body. He had 17. 22 shells in his back. There was a lot of investigating. It was basically an unsolved murder. I still dont know who it was. She said, i thought i had lived through the worst thing that could happen when brent died. Its like molly said, this cant be happening to our family again. I think i said to her, Something Like, oh, of course it cant happen. Were going to find her, and itll be okay. Even though i didnt really believe that. But i just wanted to give her hope. Rick zender was Mandy Staviks boyfriend. And as is typical in murder investigations, they wanted to question him. We dated for about three years. Weve probably broken up two or three times. Its just one of those high school things. That point in the relationship it was on and off, on and off, but he had brought her home from college. They checked to see where her exboyfriend was. I want to be viewed as a suspect. Thats what they should do. Thats their job. Usually, its the person closest thats the killer. They spoke to him. He was extremely forthcoming. He came in and gave a statement. The authorities ultimately cleared rick zender, but of course they had to look at him. The first night, didnt hear anything. So by the second day, it was pretty obvious that this was even more serious than we originally thought. It was such a mystery. I mean, beautiful 18yearold smart, strong women dont just vanish. They dont do that. Were checking a lot of side roads and found something they thought was a little bit suspicious. The first thing i did was take a video. When they found the sweatpants, it was, maybe this is something, you know, this is a clue. Arthritis. And take. It. On. With rinvoq. Rinvoq a oncedaily pill. Rinvoq helps tame pain, improve sy stiffness, swelling. And for somerinvoq can even significantly reduce ra fatigue. Thats rinvoq relief. With ra, your overactive immune system. Attacks your joints. Rinvoq regulates it to help stop the attack. Rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. 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Theres a speed for that. Not ready to commit . Try a plan with no annual contract. Wanna save even more . Just add xfinity mobile, and save big on your wireless bill. Its internet with the power of options. And thats simple, easy, awesome. Get started with xfinity tein aetrnobnd 30 a month each, and save up to 400 a year on your wireless bill. Call or visit xfinity. Com savebig. The search effort to find mandy was really extensive. The whole town practically was combing everywhere. Looking for clues, hoping to find her alive. Theyve called out the Border Patrol helicopter. And the sheriffs posse. Were going to get into some of the areas that you wouldnt be able to drive in with a fourwheel drive vehicle. An exhaustive search goes into its second day since 18yearold Amanda Stavik suddenly disappeared yesterday afternoon. We had every kind of mode of transportation to search, from riding motorcycles, jeeps, going doortodoor, walking the ditches, bringing in blood hounds. Through fields that were adjacent to her house. We had specifically trained people that are called man trackers. My name is joel hardin. I was the Border Patrols expert tracker for 20 years. The biggest conception about when someone says tracker is someone is down on their hands and knees looking for shoe impressions, or footfall they call it. Its so much more than that. I see in the surroundings, in the ground cover and so on, that which other people see but are not conscious of. I took several classes, and the instructor would say look at this leaf. Turn it over. See this mark . Its a bruise. Thats probably four to five hours old. When a branch on a live bush is broken, it bleeds and it scars. By looking at that you can pretty well predict when it was broken. Expert trackers used the term sign to indicate any discoverable evidence that could be linked to the missing person talked to the family and learned what mandys normal route was and followed the sign and found the evidence that it was her sign that was coming out onto that road. It was her tracks. And followed it to a place wherh shouldnt have. Her dog was running with her, and the dog tracks stopped there also. It makes you think probably someone pulled her into a car and took off with her. I mean, thats kind of the worst. Shes not going to be forcibly taken forcibly unless two or three guys grabbed her. And there was no evidence of that on the road. There was no scuffling and pushing and shoving, and that type of thing. The question was, was it just somebody driving by that drove up that road and sees this beautiful girl running with a dog and decides to grab her . Or was it somebody that knew her . Our man tracker went to the stavik home, talked to mary stavik, to mandys mother, and the dog had come home alone. The dog was on the porch. It was a german shepard. She was upset. She didnt know what to do with herself. I said, wheres mandy . Wheres mandy, kyra . What did you do . Where is she . Our man tracker tried to get the dog to come down, thinking the dog would lead him to where she had last been. And the dog would come off the porch and the dog cowered and he thought something happened to the dog by looking at the dog. We believed that the dog was kicked or hit or something to control the dog. We actually believe maybe even kicked into the ditch where it couldnt fight back or protect mandy. Enough people along strand road had seen her heading out and then coming back that they knew pretty close to the time that she had disappeared. Her brother had seen her. Some neighbors had seen her. We call it a neighborhood canvass, where we would go out door to door, find neighborsed that seen her and kind of leapfrog from there. You get numb. You just get focused on searching for her and hoping and that you will find her or somebody will discover something. On sunday, two days after she disappeared, the Skagit County search and rescue team were checking a lot of side roads and pulloffs, anything, and they found something they thought was a little bit suspicious. They wanted us to look at it. The first thing i did was take a video of the entire area. The only opening in the foliage here has been made by the lane. The situation was an overgrown road, and everything on that road looked old, wet, had been there for a long time. Over to the left of this area on top of some other debris, appear to be an article of clothing. A pair of green sweatpants. Mandy was wearing green sweatpants. Mandys mother, mary, was brought to the scene and shown those pants. I didnt remember exactly what she was wearing, but i didnt think they could have been. For one thing, they were dirty. And they had ripped holes in them. And mandy wouldnt have worn ever worn anything like that. Mary said at the time that she didnt think that they were hers, but she also said that she didnt want to think that they were hers. They were eventually sent to the laboratory for analysis to look for trace evidence, look for anything that might be related to our missing person. There were some tiny fibers and there were also some semen stains that were analyzed and not connected to mandy or anybody else in the case. I dont know. I feel so bad for her mother. I just feel so bad for her family. Strand road, where mandy stavik was believed to be kidnapped so close to her family home, is empty today. People were absolutely shocked that this could happen in a Community Like acme. That changed everything. I would think of seattle, new york, a bigger city. Not even bellingham. I didnt even think this would n person was. Jogging. It could have been anyone, and everywhere we went could have been the person that did this to mandy. Everywhere i looked there was danger. We had a vessel searching the river by boat. And one of the searchers called out that he had seen something. That im