OMAK — Twelve years after 51-year-old Sandy Bauer was raped and strangled to death in her home, police have arrested an Omak man based on a cold case review and new DNA evidence.
Kelly E. Small, 47, was booked Tuesday into the Okanogan County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder, first-degree rape and first-degree burglary. Small, who was reported missing last week by his wife after he did not return to their home from a Jan. 19 trip to a store, was also arrested on suspicion of first-degree attempted murder, first-degree rape and first-degree burglary in the rape of a 75-year-old Omak woman four years ago.
Omak police have for two years believed the two crimes were committed by the same person, based on DNA evidence collected at the crime scenes.
The arrest has been emotional for the family of Bauer, who owned the Cariboo Motor Inn in Okanogan and was well-known in the community. “We have been waiting for so long for someone to be caught,” Bauer’s daughter-in-law, Joyce Adams, said.
“We did have to relive that day over again, but it was a good day for our family. We finally get some closure,” she said.
“We are grateful for Detective (Jeff) Koplin picking up this cold case. He started making the wheels turn. He gave us hope.”
A woman who answered the phone at Small’s Omak home this morning declined to comment. A court official said they didn’t know if Small had retained a lawyer.
Omak Police Chief Larry Schreckengast said police were able to make some progress in the case, but it was not until last April that he was able to hire a detective and assign the case as a top priority.
“This case always bothered me. I knew Sandy,” Schreckengast said. He said she was once a dispatcher for the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office. He said when police first gathered evidence at Bauer’s apartment 12 years ago, they only collected a small amount of DNA — too small at the time to produce conclusive evidence.
But the DNA process has since been improved, and two years ago, police retested the DNA and found it matched DNA from a Feb. 6, 2006, rape and attempted murder of the 75-year-old Omak woman, he said.
Then, last year, Koplin began going over the case, and re-interviewing witnesses, Schreckengast said.
He said Small had been interviewed as a witness in Bauer’s murder 12 years ago because he had been hired to remodel the apartment where she lived. He was never a suspect, the police chief said.
He said Koplin noticed a small discrepancy in his statement to police, so he re-interviewed him, and Small voluntarily gave police a DNA sample.
Shortly after providing the sample, Small was reported missing on Jan. 19 by his wife, who told police he went to a building supply store in Oroville and never came home.
Police located him in Spokane on Saturday, and he returned to Omak, the police chief said. On Monday, police got results back from his DNA, matching it to DNA found both at Bauer’s crime scene and at the rape scene four years ago, he said.
Schreckengast said Small hasn’t been living in Omak continuously since 1998, but did live there when Bauer was killed, and also in 2006 when the 75-year-old woman was raped.
He said police are now looking at other cases, and developing a timeline to determine where Small lived, and whether he could have committed other unsolved crimes.
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