Alan Edward Dean refused to agree to the proceedings during his first arraignment at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Monday. (Andy Bronson / The Herald)

Alan Edward Dean refused to agree to the proceedings during his first arraignment at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Monday. (Andy Bronson / The Herald)

Charge: Suspect had chemicals used in 1993 Bothell killing

Alan Dean is accused in death of Melissa Lee, 15. He refused to cooperate in a Monday court hearing.

EVERETT — At the time of his arrest in a long-unsolved murder, Alan Edward Dean lived at a Bothell home on Sixth Avenue SE.

It was less than 3½ miles north of the house where Melissa Lee, 15, was incapacitated and abducted in April 1993.

At Dean’s home in late July, police carried out a search warrant that revealed a can of starter fluid in the garage — containing the same substances, ethyl ether and heptane, detected in Lee’s bloodstream after she was killed, according to new charges filed in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Dean was charged Friday with first-degree murder for a killing 27 years ago.

Melissa Lee

Melissa Lee

Lee’s mother came home from a night of karaoke on April 14, 1993, to find the house a mess and a strange chemical smell lingering in the living room. Milk, cigarette ashes and peanuts were spilled on the floor. There was no sign of Lee.

Hours later in the afternoon, two passersby spotted a young person’s body about 50 feet below the north end of the Edgewater Creek Bridge, on the western outskirts of Everett.

Lee had been strangled. A bloodstain on her shorts suggested she “put up a struggle prior to her death,” the charges say. Lee was shoeless with socks on, in a hockey sweatshirt she only ever wore at home. Her underwear was on backwards.

Toxicology tests showed no common drugs in her system. However, a lab discovered in her blood she had ether, a chemical compound used in the 1800s as an anesthetic or recreational drug that was known to cause unconsciousness.

Dean worked at a Boeing factory about 3½ miles from the bridge. He then lived on Madison Street, near his workplace.

Police found his phone number in Lee’s planner. She wrote that she had gotten together with “Alan” and another friend on March 15, 1993.

At the time, Dean was 35. Charging papers say Lee dated older men and sometimes told them she was older than her true age. She would use a talk line, also known as a date line or party line, an artifact of the 1990s, when people could dial a number to meet strangers for fun.

As detectives made their way through phone numbers in Lee’s address book, they contacted Dean in May 1993. He acknowledged he met Lee through the phone line, where he used the fake name Michael. He told police he’d gone on a couple of dates with her but denied any sexual contact.

Dean remained a possible suspect for years. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office case went cold, however, without conclusive evidence to link him to the crime.

Ultimately, genetic family tree research led to a breakthrough in the case in the past year. A private lab, Parabon, extracted DNA from crime scene evidence and sent the profile to CeCe Moore, a nationally known genealogist. She was able to build a family tree for the unknown suspect through public genetic databases and other research.

Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney announces the arrest of Alan Edward Dean, with genetic genealogist CeCe Moore participating over Skype on the screen behind him, during a press conference at the county courthouse July 29. (Sue Misao / Herald file)

Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney announces the arrest of Alan Edward Dean, with genetic genealogist CeCe Moore participating over Skype on the screen behind him, during a press conference at the county courthouse July 29. (Sue Misao / Herald file)

Dean was identified as a likely suspect in early 2019. He had no recent felony record, meaning his genetic profile was never entered into a federal database. Detectives put him under surveillance and tried to obtain his DNA through a ruse in which three undercover detectives showed up at his door, asking if he would try some new flavors of gum.

But when they told him to put the chewed gum in a Dixie cup, he grew suspicious. According to the charges, Dean asked, “You’re not here to collect my DNA, right?”

He finally discarded a cigarette outside his home on April 21, 2020, and an undercover officer picked it up from the street to have it tested at a state crime lab. The DNA profile came back as an apparent match to semen on Lee’s underwear, according to the charges.

Prosecutors wrote that Dean fled Arizona in the 1980s, soon after two girls reported he picked them up, gave them beer and marijuana, and sexually touched one of them.

At the time, Dean was 28. The girl was 13.

Alan Dean around 1993. (Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office)

Alan Dean around 1993. (Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office)

Formal charges were never filed.

Another woman reported Dean fed her alcohol on a first or second date, until she was “highly intoxicated.” At his apartment, she passed out. Dean allegedly raped her and then would not let her leave the apartment for days, according to the woman’s account.

The incident was not reported until well after the fact. Dean would have been in his early 30s at the time. The woman was about 10 years younger than him.

Dean was expected to make an initial plea at an arraignment hearing Monday afternoon. Instead, he objected to any court proceedings and asked to be released from jail. He would not cooperate.

Another hearing was scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“This is under duress,” he said when he first appeared in front of Judge Paul Thompson on a television screen. Dean was in a different room because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Thompson asked Dean to confirm his name. He was silent. Thompson asked if Dean could hear him through the speaker they used to talk.

“Yes, I can hear you,” he replied flatly.

Thompson asked his name again.

“I can’t make any determinations on any of the questions you’re asking me,” Dean replied.

He rejected that his attorney, public defender Jon Scott, was representing him.

“Mr. Scott does not represent me, he’s an intervener, he has no representation at all. I’ve told him to leave me alone, and that’s harassment and stalking and enticement to slavery,” Dean said. “He should be arrested for the felonies he’s committed against me.”

“He has advised me of those things, your honor,” Scott told Thompson.

Dean continued to speak while Thompson and the attorneys made new plans to meet the next morning.

“I’m not in agreement with any proceeding that would be adverse to my best interest,” he said.

His arms were crossed on top of the table where he was sitting. He asked to be “made whole again,” for “complete restitution” and to be set free.

“Understood, sir,” Thompson said. “At this point I am respectfully declining, I guess, your request.”

Dean was in front of the judge for about seven minutes.

His bail has been set at $2 million.

In the past weeks, Dean has sent three handwritten letters to judges, each saying almost exactly the same thing about how “i alan edward cannot make any legal determiniations on any of the claims that you are making.”

“for and on The Record,” the first letter reads, “i am not a US citizen nor am i a resident of any Federal Judicial District or any Central District of The United States or The State of Washington. i Decline any and all offers to contract and do not concede to any presumption; i am not in agreement with any procedings That would be adverse to my best interest.”

In another letter, he wrote, “i am not accountable For the errors or ommissions of the offeror of the offeror’s partners known or unknown.”

The letters recite terms used by self-proclaimed sovereign citizens, a fringe movement of anti-government protestors who assert state and federal law does not apply to them. Many refer to themselves as “living, breathing, flesh-and-blood, sentient, natural” men or mortals, or variations on that phrase.

In a higher-profile example of a sovereign citizen challenging the legal system as a whole, an Arkansas man petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 while serving a 540-year prison sentence for possession of child pornography. His 44-page petition cited verses from the Old Testament, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as legal authority in an opaque legalistic dialect similar to the language found in Dean’s letters — in some cases, identical to the word.

“I am not a person regulated by the ‘state’, I do not hold any position or office where I am subject to the constitutions or legislators,” the Arkansas man wrote. “The World – of – Man constitutions and legislators do not dictate what I do or do not do, nor am I currently under oath of office, and rescind any and all prior endorsements, of such, I further decline any and all offers to contract and reserve the right to reject any and all, I do not concede to any presumptions to the contrary, whether known or unknown to me, with or without my consent.”

Last month, at his first appearance in court, Dean said he did not wish to have anybody act as his attorney. He said he was present in court under duress. He was assigned a public defender anyway.

Herald writer Stephanie Davey contributed to this report.

Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

Vehicles travel along Mukilteo Speedway on Sunday, April 21, 2024, in Mukilteo, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Mukilteo cameras go live to curb speeding on Speedway

Starting Friday, an automated traffic camera system will cover four blocks of Mukilteo Speedway. A 30-day warning period is in place.

Carli Brockman lets her daughter Carli, 2, help push her ballot into the ballot drop box on the Snohomish County Campus on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Here’s who filed for the primary election in Snohomish County

Positions with three or more candidates will go to voters Aug. 5 to determine final contenders for the Nov. 4 general election.

Students from Explorer Middle School gather Wednesday around a makeshift memorial for Emiliano “Emi” Munoz, who died Monday, May 5, after an electric bicycle accident in south Everett. (Aspen Anderson / The Herald)
Community and classmates mourn death of 13-year-old in bicycle accident

Emiliano “Emi” Munoz died from his injuries three days after colliding with a braided cable.

Danny Burgess, left, and Sandy Weakland, right, carefully pull out benthic organisms from sediment samples on Thursday, May 1, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
‘Got Mud?’ Researchers monitor the health of the Puget Sound

For the next few weeks, the state’s marine monitoring team will collect sediment and organism samples across Puget Sound

Everett postal workers gather for a portrait to advertise the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive on Wednesday, May 7, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Snohomish County letter carriers prepare for food drive this Saturday

The largest single-day food drive in the country comes at an uncertain time for federal food bank funding.

Everett
Everett considers ordinance to require more apprentice labor

It would require apprentices to work 15% of the total labor hours for construction or renovation on most city projects over $1 million.

A person walks past Laura Haddad’s “Cloud” sculpture before boarding a Link car on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024 in SeaTac, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Sound Transit seeks input on Everett bike, pedestrian improvements

The transit agency is looking for feedback about infrastructure improvements around new light rail stations.

A standard jet fuel, left, burns with extensive smoke output while a 50 percent SAF drop-in jet fuel, right, puts off less smoke during a demonstration of the difference in fuel emissions on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Sustainable aviation fuel center gets funding boost

A planned research and development center focused on sustainable aviation… Continue reading

Dani Mundell, the athletic director at Everett Public Schools, at Everett Memorial Stadium on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Will Geschke / The Herald)
Everett Public Schools to launch girls flag football as varsity sport

The first season will take place in the 2025-26 school year during the winter.

Clothing Optional performs at the Fisherman's Village Music Festival on Thursday, May 15 in Everett, Washington. (Will Geschke / The Herald)
Everett gets its fill of music at Fisherman’s Village

The annual downtown music festival began Thursday and will continue until the early hours of Sunday.

Seen here are the blue pens Gov. Bob Ferguson uses to sign bills. Companies and other interest groups are hoping he’ll opt for red veto ink on a range of tax bills. (Photo by Jacquelyn Jimenez Romero/Washington State Standard)
Tesla, Netflix, Philip Morris among those pushing WA governor for tax vetoes

Gov. Bob Ferguson is getting lots of requests to reject new taxes ahead of a Tuesday deadline for him to act on bills.

Jerry Cornfield / Washington State Standard
A new law in Washington will assure students are offered special education services until they are 22. State Sen. Adrian Cortes, D-Battle Ground, a special education teacher, was the sponsor. He spoke of the need for increased funding and support for public schools at a February rally of educators, parents and students at the Washington state Capitol.
Washington will offer special education to students longer under new law

A new law triggered by a lawsuit will ensure public school students… Continue reading

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.