A month of agony, without answers

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 10, 2006

SEATTLE – David Stodden said he’s still living day to day.

He’s working, going to the gym, running around Green Lake, drinking coffee and red wine, and talking with friends.

Every day he continues to get sympathy notes, often from people he doesn’t even know. People who didn’t know his wife, Mary Cooper, or his daughter, Susanna Stodden.

“It’s affected so many people that don’t even know us,” he said Thursday.

A month ago today, Cooper, 56, and Stodden, 27, were found shot to death on the Pinnacle Lake trail near Mount Pilchuck.

Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives continue to work the case. No arrests have been made.

Investigators have received 265 tips since Cooper and Stodden were found slain on the trail southeast of Verlot, sheriff’s deputy Rich Niebusch said.

Those tips have provided valuable information, Niebusch has said.

But David Stodden said he believes there are more people who might have more information for detectives. Someone might have seen a car speeding down a Forest Service road or spotted something amiss from the Mount Pilchuck lookout.

“Susanna and Mary would want me to do everything I could to help find the person who did this, person or people,” he said.

Since the deaths, he’s appeared on national television in hopes people in other parts of the country might have clues.

Now, he hopes talking to reporters again will encourage others with information to come forward.

Stodden said he talks with detectives a couple times each week.

They’ve told him little, he said, but it seems the investigators have good information and are working hard on the case.

“I think more publicity would help,” he said. “Until (police) tell me they have the right lead or the right tip, I’m going to keep doing stuff.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Niebusch said he encourages anyone with information to step forward and call the sheriff’s tip line.

Earlier, sheriff’s investigators said they were looking for people who they believed had key information about the homicide. Niebusch was unable to say if detectives were able to find those people and what information they may have provided.

“This is still an active investigation, and we are still working information,” the deputy said.

David Stodden said he feels more alive every day.

He hadn’t thought much about the one-month anniversary but does think about the brutal killings every Tuesday.

“It’s another week,” he said. “This is the day Mary and Susanna were killed.”

He’s struggling to keep up with bills and paperwork that his wife used to manage, he said.

His friends still bring him meals, and his surviving daughters Elisa, 24, and Joanna, 21, visit him each week.

He became emotional explaining how friends have come up with money to help the daughters visit from work in the San Juan Islands and college a good distance from Seattle.

Earlier this week, Stodden and some friends hiked the Pinnacle Lake trail, the same trail where his wife and daughter were found.

He said the trip was emotionally hard. The next morning, though, he said he had a little more energy, a little more understanding.

“I was at the place where they were last alive,” he said.

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.