By Seamus McGraw

July 21, 2006

advertisement

SEATTLE, Wash. (Crime Library) — Ten days after a mother and her grown daughter were found slain on a remote forest trail, authorities are still searching the wilderness for clues and members of a statewide group of outdoor enthusiasts are putting up their money as a reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers.

So far, the reward — funded by the Mountaineers, a group to which victim Mary Cooper and her daughter Susanna Stodden once belonged, and by CrimeStoppers — had grown to $6,000, said David Stodden, Cooper's husband and Stodden's father.

Stodden, who has largely shied away from the press in the days since his wife and daughter were found slain said he was pleased by the support from the group, which has chapters throughout the state, and by the efforts being put in place to solve the shocking crime by local authorities. "Every time I talk to the detective he assures me that they're working really hard and I have every reason to believe that's the case," Stodden told Crime Library.

But even before the reward was announced, authorities said they received more than a hundred tips on the slayings of the 57-year-old school librarian and her 27-year-old environmentalist daughter. The two women were last seen alive shortly after 10 a.m. on July 11 when they left their car at a trailhead in the Baker-Snoqualamie National Forest and headed off on one of their regular hikes near Pinnacle Lake. Four and a half hours later, their bodies were found. Both had been shot to death. 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.

Next Page

Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

Seamus McGraw

For more daily crime news