Ten years ago, little Teekah Lewis vanished from a Tacoma bowling alley.

The 2 1/2-year-old girl was last seen playing near a coin-operated racing game as her family bowled nearby at New Frontier Lanes the night of Jan. 23, 1999.

Then she vanished. Teekah has not been seen or heard from since. Police investigators suspect a stranger might have snatched Teekah but have never had a suspect description to release.

Her mother says 10 years is long enough.

"My daughter has been missing for almost 10 years and its time to find my little girl," Theresa Lewis said this week. "It's time for someone to speak out."

Teekah's family will hold a candlelight vigil Friday night at 7 p.m. in the parking lot of the old bowling alley, 4702 S. Center St.

"I wish everybody would come out for this 10 years," Lewis said. "We need all the support we can get."

The investigation into Teekah's disappearance remains ongoing. Last year, the Tacoma Police Department released new photographs and video of Teekah that were taken shortly before her disappearance.

In October, Teekah became the latest missing child to be featured as part of the Homeward Bound program. The Washington State Patrol and Gordon Trucking of Pacific launched the program in 2006 to help bring missing children home.

Police investigators received a few tips from the efforts but none were substantial, Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said.

Under the program, the photo of 15 missing children have been featured on the sides of Gordon Trucks, which travel the nation's highways. Lenoria Jones, a 4-year-old girl who went missing from Tacoma in 1995, also has been featured.

Lewis said 10 years has gone by fast.

"She should be home," the mother said. "My baby is almost 13 years old. I've missed 10-11 birthdays. It's just unbelievable."

"It's just so hard to believe not one tip has come in and not lead to anything," Lewis said.

Lewis, as she's done in the past, pleaded for anyone with information to come forward. Or, just let Teekah go.

"All we want is her back," Lewis said. "Drop her off somewhere. Just drop her off."

Jackson

On the third anniversary of her disappearance, Lakewood Police are still looking for information about what happened to Adre'anna Jackson.

Jackson, who was 10 at the time, was last seen walking from her family's apartment on Portland Ave. SW to Tillicum Elementary on the morning of Dec. 2, 2005. Her remains were found on April 4 2006 in a vacant lot at the 7500 block of 146th Street SW in the Woodbrook area of Lakewood. Police suspect foul play and are looking for any information.

Tacoma/Pierce County Crime Stoppers are offering a reward of up to $60,000 for information leading to an arrest. Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at (253) 591-5959.

King County prosecutors announced today that they have filed a second-degree murder charge against a man in a 1980 Des Moines homicide case.

James Maynard Blair, 54, was linked to the unsolved crime by DNA. He is currently in prison on another charge and was scheduled for release in November -- instead he will be arraigned at the regional justice center in Kent on Aug. 26.

According to charging documents:

Authorities did a welfare check on Kirk Parker on Feb. 27, 1980. He was founded dead in his trailer. He had been strangled and beaten. Cigarette butts, beer cans and other items in the trailer were seized as evidence.

The case was reopened in January 2006. Investigators hoped that new technologies would help them close the case.

Detectives interviewed Blair in prison earlier this year. Shown a picture of the victim, he said he'd never seen him before. He said he didn't recognize the victim's truck or trailer.

He spoke to detectives again in June. At that time, he confessed to the crime, according to court records.

Blair said he had been hitchhiking from Seattle to Tacoma. Parker stopped and offered him a ride. Blair was drunk. Parker offered to take him home and let him dry his wet clothes in his dryer.

Blair fell asleep and when he awoke Parker, who had been living a secretly gay life, was giving him oral sex. Parker offered Blair a brown bottle containing an inhalant, perhaps Amyl Nitrite. They went to the bedroom. Both men were naked.

Blair said he thought Parker was making fun of him for not being able to get an erection. He said he then strangled Parker with a tie.

The Lacey Police Department’s investigation into the disappearance of Connie Vannausdle continues as the 15 year anniversary of when she was last seen by her husband and two young children approaches. And now, new forensic technology may be the key to resolving the case. Connie Vannausdle, who was 31 years old at the time of her disappearance on April 25, 1993, left behind a four year old boy and a two year old girl and she may have been pregnant with her third child. Connie’s family has described this young mother as completely devoted to her children and they are adamant she would never have left them behind for any reason.

Connie, who was born in the Philippines, came to this country in 1987 with her husband, Mark Vannausdle. They initially lived in Mountain Home, Idaho where Connie became a United States Citizen. After living in Spain and Dover, Delaware, Connie later moved with her family to Lacey, Washington in 1992. Connie had several friends and co-worker in the Lacey area and she was close to her mother and sister who lived in California as well as other family members in the Philippines. Yet she has had no contact with any of her family or friends since she disappeared.

Connie was reported missing to the Lacey Police Department by her sister on July 2, 1993. Since her disappearance, detectives have interviewed dozens of people and collected numerous items of evidence. Today, 15 years later, detectives still consider Connie’s disappearance as a likely homicide. Although Connie’s body has never been recovered the apprehension of her murderer and a successful prosecution may still occur regardless of whether or not she is ever found. There have been several successful “No-body” prosecutions in Washington State, as well as other parts of the country where the remains of the victims cannot be located, but significant evidence exists to support a homicide conviction.

During the course of this investigation, detectives have consulted with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States including the Dover Delaware Police Department, the Mountain Home Idaho Police Department, Harris County, Texas Sheriff’s Department, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and FBI. Currently detectives are consulting with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Evidence from this case is being reviewed for re-submission to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab for analysis using technology that was not available in 1993. However, investigators cannot comment on the specific types of analysis. In addition to new forensics, family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances of the victim will be re-interviewed about their recollection from 15 years ago and to develop a more complete victimology or in depth look at Connie and why she would become the victim of a homicide. At this point, investigators are saying that no one has been excluded as a suspect.

Anyone with further information on this crime is asked to contact Detective Bev Reinhold at 360 459-4333, or Crime Stoppers at 360 493-2222.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Thomas Larkin officially declared a hung jury in the case of State vs. Daniel Ralph Maples this afternoon.

The judge ruled that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked. He set a new trial date for May 5.

Here's Adam's post from two hours ago that explained what happened with the jury.

The jury deliberating the case against Daniel Ralph Maples told Superior Court Judge Thomas Larkin on Wednesday that it cannot reach a unanimous verdict.

The panel got the case last Wednesday after nearly six weeks of testimony.

Maples is charged with second-degree murder in the death of co-worker Christine Blais. The single mother disappeared in October 1988 after giving Maples a ride home from work. Her body was discovered in Northeast Tacoma three months later. Maples always was a suspect in the case but wasn't charged until 2005 when prosecutors said they developed new information in the case.

Deputy prosecutors Jim Schacht and Lisa Wagner tried to build a circumstantial case against Maples, relying on the scant physical evidence left in the case, timelines that indicated Maples was the most likely suspect and inconsistent statements the defendant gave to investigators and others in the weeks and years after Blais' death.

But they couldn't present evidence as to exactly how Blais died because medical examiners were unable to determine the cause of her death.

The jury announced it was deadlocked about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Larkin consulted with Schacht, Wagner and defense attorney Mary K. High for about half an hour before sending word to the jury that it should keep deliberating.

The 12-member panel quickly sent back word that it was hopeless.

Larkin then called the man elected by his peers to be presiding juror into court to answer some questions.

How long had they been deadlocked?

"Since Day 2, Friday," the presiding juror replied.

Is there any hope of a verdict in a reasonable amount of time?

"No," he said.

The judge then brought the entire panel into court and asked each juror if he or she thought a verdict could be achieved.

Each and every one, without hestitation, said no.

Larkin then recessed court to give prosecutors a chance to figure out what they want to do next. High said she wanted the jury to continue deliberating.

The judge will reconvene the case at 1:30 p.m.

I'll be there. Look for an update later.

Pierce County deputy prosecutor Jim Schacht projected a slide onto a courtroom screen Wednesday morning.

"The Pieces Fit," it read.

During a closing argument that spanned the next 90 minutes, the veteran prosecutor told a Superior Court jury how the little bits of evidence of a 20-year-old crime fit together to point to the killer of Christine Blais, a Tacoma mother whose badly decomposed remains were found in 1989 near a water pumphouse in Northeast Tacoma.

"There is a wealth of evidence here, a wealth of evidence that points at the defendant and no one else," Schacht said while pointing his own finger at defendant Daniel Ralph Maples, who sat quietly at the defense table in a gray turtleneck sweater.

Maples is the only person in the world who had both access to Blais on the October 1988 morning she went missing and an intimate knowledge of the wooded area where her body was found months later, Schacht said.

"He was unique in that regard," the deputy prosecutor said.

What's more, Schacht said, a watch thought to belong to Maples was found in the area where Blais' body was discovered, and the defendant gave at least a half dozen different accounts to various people of what happened after Blais agreed to give him a ride home after their shifts ended at a Tideflats shipyard where they both worked.

None of the stories he told added up, the deputy prosecutor said, least of all the one about Blais dropping Maples off in the area of Puyallup and Portland avenues, nearly four miles from his home.

"Who gives someone a ride home and drops them off four miles from home?" Schacht said. "It didn't make sense then. It doesn't make sense now."

What makes more sense, the deputy prosecutor said, is that Maples forced Blais at the point of a knife he was known to carry – a knife that disappeared after she did – to drive to Northeast Tacoma where he then killed her.

Schacht didn't address motive directly, but he hinted that it might have been sexual in nature. He pointed out that Blais was a pretty woman with "striking blue eyes" and that her money wasn't taken nor the stereo from her car.

"It shows that Christine Blais was the target," he said. "This was not a robbery."

Schacht also attempted to head off a defense argument that the exact means of Blais' death was never determined. Medical examiners ruled only that she died of homicial violence. They could not say exactly how because her body had decomposed so badly by the time it was found.

"You don't know everything that happened to Christine Blais, and you never will," Schacht told the jury. "We don't have to prove how she died. We don't have to prove where she died, other than in Washington. We don't have to prove why she died. What I have to prove is he caused her death."

The evidence, while circumstantial, does just that, Schacht concluded, and Maples is guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Christine Blais.

Defense attorney Mark K. High is scheduled to deliver her closing argument at 1:30 p.m. today.

The jury will get the case this afternoon, after more than a month of testimony from 50 witnesses.

Pierce County prosecutors have charged a 21-year-old man in the 2006 shooting death of a 27-year-old South Hill father.

Prosecutors charged Andrew Joseph Dahlquist (left) last week with second-degree murder, first-degree assault and unlawful possession of a firearm.

A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

He's been charged in the death of James Nicholas Stewart (right). The 27-year-old man was shot May 6, 2006, outside his apartment in the 12000 block of Military Road East. He had arrived minutes earlier.

After the shooting, another man put Stewart in a car and drove toward Good Samaritan for treatment. The car flipped over on 23rd Avenue Southeast.

It wasn't immediately clear what or why detectives linked Dahlquist to the homicide.

No declaration of probable cause (the document that outlines the details of a crime and how the defendant was linked to it) has been filed in the case. Deputy prosecutor Ed Murphy said the declaration will be filed once Dahlquist is in custody.

Jury selection is underway in State of Washington v. Daniel Ralph Maples.

Blais	Maples

Maples is charged with first-degree murder in the October 1988 death of Christine Blais.

The 27-year-old mother disappeared after her shift at a Tideflats ship-building plant. Her remains later were discovered in some woods in Northeast Tacoma.

Though arrested early in the investigation, Maples was released and not charged until 2005 when prosecutors said they found new evidence in the case.

Here are the charging documents.

Jury selections is expected to take at least a week. Opening arguments likely will come next Wednesday.

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of little Teekah Lewis.

The 2 1/2-year-old Tacoma girl was last seen about 10:15 p.m. Jan. 23, 1999, at New Frontier Lanes bowling alley on South Center Street.

Tacoma police believe she was abducted by a stranger. They found no trace of Teekah and have no suspects in the case.

Detectives Lindsey Wade and Brad Graham are taking a fresh look at the case in hopes of bringing the little girl home. They're releasing new pictures of Teekah and home video of the youngster at a Christmas family gathering.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the photos of Teekah. The one on the left has long been the face of Teekah associated publicly with her disapppearance. It was the picture originally released by the police. One of the newly released photos is one the right. There's a big difference.

Old	New

Watch the video (mixed in with other photos from the case) below.

Anyone with information is asked to Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers at 253-591-5959.

It's been 25 years since Wallace Guidroz was last seen alive in Point Defiance Park.

The 2 1/2-year-old Fife boy (left) disappeared from the park Jan. 10, 1983, after an outing with his father.

A Tacoma police detective has picked up the cold case and is hoping to solve the mystery.

Read my story in today's paper to learn more about the case.

The Deseret Morning News reports today that Gerald Hicker has been returned to Utah to faces charges that he killed a BYU student in 1974.

Hicker had been in Pierce County Jail since his arrest on the murder allegations in November. He had been living in the Steilacoom area.