‘She can rest in peace’: Jury convicts Bothell man in 1993 killing

EVERETT — It took jurors less than three hours of deliberations to find Alan Dean guilty Thursday of the first-degree murder of Melissa Lee, finally bringing an end to the case after more than three decades without justice.

The verdict, delivered at 10 a.m. Thursday, came after an eight-day trial in Snohomish County Superior Court. Lee’s family and friends testified about a 15-year-old girl gone too soon. Her ex-boyfriend withstood questions accusing him of a role in the April 1993 slaying.

A courtroom filled with Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives and the victim’s family watched in relief as the decision came down. Lee’s younger sister, Kelli Littlejohn, pumped her fists. The defendant — who wore a tan suit and sat in a wheelchair beside his public defenders, Daniel Snyder and Heather Wolfenbarger — heard the verdict with little outward emotion.

After the jury was dismissed and Dean was wheeled back to jail, deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson hugged and shook hands with detectives. Littlejohn thanked the prosecutors and detectives for their work on the case.

“I want to thank you so much for not giving up on my sister, cause she can rest in peace,” she said. “To me, I thought (my sister’s case) would never be solved.”

Now, 31 years later, Littlejohn and her mother, Sharon, know who broke into their Filbert Road home, sexually assaulted and strangled Lee and then dumped her body off the Edgewater Creek Bridge on April 13, 1993.

The swift verdict was another win for forensic genealogy. Advances in DNA technology allowed experts to create a family tree from a small amount of blood and semen on Lee’s clothes, tracing the evidence 27 years later to Dean, who Lee had gone on a couple dates with in the month before he killed her. Investigators spent months staking out Dean at his Bothell home, waiting for him to leave behind a piece of DNA to compare to the crime scene evidence.

In July 2019, undercover detectives posing as gum salespeople showed up at Dean’s home, according to court papers. In what would come to be known as the “gum ruse,” they asked him to try a new flavor as part of a survey. When he was done, they asked him to spit the gum back into a Dixie cup. He refused.

“You’re not here to collect my DNA, right?” asked Dean, who investigators believe had been watching true crime documentaries.

But when he went out to get the mail almost a year later, on April 21, 2020, he ashed a cigarette and left it on the ground outside. Authorities picked it up.

With that cigarette, a case that had sat cold for decades was cracked open.

Even after police arrested Dean in 2020, it was unclear if he would ever stand trial. Judges twice found he didn’t have the capacity to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or to help in his defense. He spent two years in treatment in a state psychiatric hospital. It wasn’t until early last year that a judge found Dean competent enough to face the charges.

The jury had a few options when they began deliberating Wednesday afternoon. They could convict him as charged of first-degree murder, convict him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder or acquit him.

Dean didn’t testify in the trial. Some of the few words he uttered in the courtroom came from a video of a police interview. Sheriff’s detectives Kendra Conley and Brad Walvatne left the room, but the camera kept rolling.

On the footage, he can be heard saying, “I’m sorry.”

Dean, now 66, worked at Boeing around the time of the murder. At the time of the murder, he was on leave from work with a severe back injury. The defense argued it would’ve been difficult for him to carry out the killing, given his condition.

Dean’s public defenders also pinned blame on Lee’s ex-boyfriend, who they accused of putting a “hit” on her life shortly before her death. He denied this on the stand this week. The defense also called DNA, the key to the case, an “evolving science” and “not perfect.”

He had no prior felony convictions. So under state sentencing guidelines, he faces 20 to 26⅔ years in prison.

Sentencing was set for April 24.

In 2008, Snohomish County cold case detectives released a deck of playing cards with 52 unsolved murder and missing person cases dating back to the 1970s. Looking for clues, they distributed the cards to inmates in prisons and the Snohomish County Jail. The cards featured a picture of the victim, a brief description of their case and a toll-free number for inmates to leave tips.

Every Sunday for a year, The Daily Herald published a story about one card in the deck.

Lee’s card was the King of Diamonds.

In 1994, her mother told The Herald: “I can’t go on with my life with this hanging over me.”

“It’s like it’s there every single day, every single night,” she continued. “I want somebody to be caught, not only so Melissa can be at rest, but so I can be at rest.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @GoldsteinStreet.