TACOMA – Tacoma police said Friday they were reviewing whether a man who directed investigators to the body of 12-year-old Zina Linnik may have been involved in the disappearance of other children.
Zina, abducted the night of July 4 during a neighborhood fireworks display, died from “homicidal violence,” Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum and the Pierce County medical examiner’s office said. They would provide no other details.
The girl’s body was found in a wooded area near Eatonville in rural, southern Pierce County, Fulghum said.
A lawyer for Terapon Adhahn, 42, a convicted sex offender who was seen driving away from the Linnik home, provided the information that led police and FBI agents to the body on Thursday, police said.
Adhahn, a Thai immigrant, served two months in jail and completed five years of sex offender treatment following an incest conviction after he violently raped his half-sister, court records say.
During an evaluation in August 1990, Adhahn told a therapist he’d been sexually molested countless times by an older brother when he was between the ages of 7 and 9 years old. He also said his biological father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother later married a U.S. soldier.
The therapist called Adhahn’s personality profile “extremely problematic,” noting that he had difficulty taking responsibility for his behavior, abused alcohol, felt sexually inadequate and was embarrassed about sexual matters.
However, by the time Adhahn completed treatment in 1997, his counselor wrote that he had made adequate progress and was actively involved in his weekly group therapy sessions.
“He is aware that he will need to use what he has learned through the treatment process on a daily basis in order to remain offense free,” wrote counselor Daniel DeWaelsche. “As long as Terapon chooses to use these skills and techniques on a daily basis, his potential to recidivate vastly diminishes.”
Adhahn is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and he could not have been deported for the incest conviction because it was not an aggravated felony and it was his first offense, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said Friday. However, a 1992 conviction in Tacoma Municipal Court for intimidation with a dangerous weapon could have made him deportable.
For that reason, Adhahn was being held this week for investigation of an immigration violation. He was also charged in Pierce County with failing to register as a sex offender, and Police Chief Don Ramsdell said the man eventually will be charged with Zina’s abduction and death.
Adhahn was cooperating with detectives but had yet to provide a complete statement, Ramsdell said.
The Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel, which is representing Adhahn, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Zina disappeared July 4 after being sent down an alley behind her home to bring back some of her siblings, who had wandered off to watch fireworks. Her father, Mikhail Linnik, heard her scream, found a single flip flop on the ground and saw a boxy gray van driving away. His partial recollection of the license plate number led investigators to Adhahn.
A search of the Parkland home south of Tacoma where Adhahn had been staying turned up “girl’s undergarments,” according to a search warrant return.
Adhahn initially denied any involvement in Zina’s disappearance and said he was not in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood July 4, Detective L.J. Wade wrote in an affidavit filed in Pierce County Superior Court in support of a search warrant application.
On Friday, visitors left stuffed animals, flowers and cards amid the overgrown dandelions at the front steps of the Linnik home. Several police cars were parked in front of the home, and another cruiser blocked access to the alley where she was taken.
Brenda Brown brought a class of children from a nearby summer arts program.
“This is our children’s community, so we wanted to come by and pay our condolences. I don’t want any of my kids to feel that it’s not safe to be outside. I just felt it was important for our children to reclaim their neighborhood,” Brown said.
Anatoly Kalchik, an uncle of Zina’s, stood on the concrete steps and thanked the children. “We’d like to say, ‘God bless you,’” he said.
Fulghum said Adhahn apparently made his living as a handyman. The police spokesman did not have details about any relatives Adhahn may have in the area, but said nobody else was being questioned in the case except possible witnesses. No other suspects were being sought, Fulghum said.
Fulghum said investigators were reviewing several other child homicides and two to three other disappearances for any connection to Adhahn.
Those cases include:
* Michella Welch, 12, of Tacoma, whose body was found hours after the girl disappeared from Puget Park on March 26, 1986.
* Jennifer Bastian, 13, of Tacoma, who was found dead Aug. 28, 1986, in Point Defiance Park, where she’d been last seen riding her bicycle two weeks earlier.
* Lenoria Jones, 4, of Tacoma, who disappeared July 20, 1995.
* Adre’anna Jackson, a 10-year-old Tillicum girl whose body was found April 4, 2006, four months after she disappeared.
“We’ll have to go back and review those cases,” Ramsdell said. “Obviously some of those cases are very old.”
In 1975, Adhahn’s mother married a U.S. Special Forces soldier, who brought him and two younger siblings to this country in 1977. The family initially lived in San Diego, then transferred to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. They moved to Germany in 1983. That same year Adhahn graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army.
Detectives are looking into Adhahn’s military background to see where he served and whether he might be connected to other cases of missing or murdered children.
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