By Seamus McGraw

July 17, 2006

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SEATTLE, Wash. (Crime Library) — With few solid leads to guide them, authorities are turning to the public for help in tracking down the killer or killers who gunned down a 56-year-old school librarian and her 27-year-old daughter last week in a remote trail in the Baker-Snoqualamie National Forest.

Mary Cooper and her daughter Susanna Stodden were found dead Tuesday along the Pinnacle Lake trail, an area where they had often hiked together and with other family members. The pair had been shot to death, authorities determined, sometime between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Authorities have ruled out murder-suicide in the case, and so far, have little evidence to suggest that the slayings were anything but a random attack.

In the days since the slayings, investigators for the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department have kept a tight lid on information. But at a press conference Friday, a sheriff's spokesman noted that the U.S. Forest Service road northeast of Everett Washington had been closed down and was expected to remain closed while investigators, backed up by police dogs, scoured the area hoping to pick up the killer's trail.

Authorities also stepped up patrols in the area near the slayings, in part to advance the probe and also to ease the fears of jittery hikers and campers in the wake of the brutal slayings. In the meantime, investigators are asking the public for help and are asking that anyone who "might have been in the area of Pinnacle Lake, Bear Lake, Boardman Lake or Ashland Lake" to call the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office tip line at 1 (425) 388-3845.

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Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

Seamus McGraw

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