PUYALLUP — A sex offender and bomb maker who died in an apparently self-detonated explosion that destroyed a house outside Puyallup may be linked to the death of a man in Seattle.
Seattle police and Pierce County sheriff’s detectives were checking reports that Zane Dittman, 26, who was found dead following the explosion at the home where he was renting a room, once worked at a construction site where the body of Noel Lopez, 25, was found dead Monday morning of injuries to the head and torso.
Police said they had not determined who was responsible for the killing.
“We are forwarding them our investigation,” Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer said. “We will help them in any way we can.”
Late Monday night the couple that rented Dittman the room came home to find him making bombs, sheriff’s deputies said. Shortly after deputies arrived to investigate, the house was destroyed by an explosion and fire. Dittman’s body was found in the rubble the next day.
“He was trapped. He wasn’t going anywhere,” Troyer said. “We’re guessing he intentionally set it off.”
Investigators have yet to determine why he was making bombs.
“We believe he was going to do something bad,” Troyer said. “The stuff that he was making wasn’t meant to blow up the house. It was meant to hurt people.”
Dittman was required to register as a Level I sex offender, and had convictions for possessing stolen property, riot with a deadly weapon and unlawful imprisonment. In 2003 he was convicted of abducting his girlfriend’s 10-year-old son from her home in Spokane and got a one-year sentence.
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