OLYMPIA — A Washington state man accused of killing his 3-year-old son in Montana talked to investigators about a cold case in which an unrelated child went missing in 1996, according to court documents.
In a search warrant application, a detective wrote that Jeremy Cramer mentioned to authorities that he had researched the case of Katrina Nash, whose body was located in an Olympia park in 2005 in a case that remains unsolved. Olympia Police Lt. Jim Costa, who handled Katrina’s case for years, said he is aware of Cramer’s statements but has no reason to believe the man has a connection to Katrina.
“There isn’t anything at this point that is going to cause me to reopen this investigation,” Cramer said.
As part of the search of Cramer’s computer, authorities planned to retrieve any information about Cramer’s interest in Katrina’s case. Montana authorities are also looking to collect information from the computer for their homicide investigation, according to the warrant application from July 11.
Prosecutors have said in court documents that Cramer, 38, told his father during a jailhouse phone call that he killed his 3-year-old son Brody after taking pills and running out of gas on a remote road in southwestern Montana. Cramer’s wife had reported her husband and child missing from their home in Lacey, Wash., on July 8, and Cramer was later arrested in a Montana gas station washing blood off his clothes and body.
Brody’s beaten and stabbed body was found in a field. Cramer has been charged with deliberate homicide.
In 1996, Katrina slipped out of a room in the emergency section of Providence St. Peter Hospital after her mother had brought her in because she had been acting strangely. Her remains were discovered in an Olympia park in 2005, but officials were unable to determine a cause of death.
Costa said it appears that Cramer was recently attending the same church that Katrina had attended, but that he had not been going there for long. It’s not a very large church, Costa said, so Cramer may have seen a picture of Katrina or had a conversation with someone about her or found information about the case on the Internet.
Cramer’s court-appointed attorney, Sherry Staedler, said she hadn’t heard about the case of Katrina Nash and had not seen the search warrant affidavit.
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