Frazier (Image: SPD)
The Seattle Police Department says DNA analysis has led to an arrest in the unsolved murder of a 14-year-old who disappeared after leaving summer school at Capitol Hill’s Meany Middle School in July 1994.
The case of Tanya Marie Frazier had stymied investigators for decades despite the discovery of DNA evidence at the scene where the girl’s body was found five days after her disappearance dumped in the bushes along Capitol Hill’s E Highland Drive naked and with her throat slashed. Investigators believed she had been killed elsewhere and her body driven to the curving Capitol Hill side street to be dumped not far from where she was last seen.
SPD announced Wednesday that 57-year-old Mark Anthony Russ has been arrested after being linked to Frazier’s murder through analysis of DNA evidence recovered 31 years ago.
(Image: King County)
Police say Russ was recently released from prison. He is now being held in King County Jail for investigation of homicide. He has not yet been charged in the case.
According to court records, Russ faced multiple felony charges in King County involving burglary, robbery, and assault in the 1990s. Russ is a registered sex offender following a 1996 conviction for attempted rape and was listed as living at a S Jackson address.
“Multiple generations of investigators and scientists have worked on this case for over three decades,” Seattle Police Det. Rolf Norton said in the announcement of the arrest. “Today is not a day for celebration; it’s a day to reflect on Tanya Frazier and her surviving family as they continue to grieve for their daughter, sister, and aunt. Our thoughts go out to them.”
Frazier had just graduated from Washington Middle School before her death.
UPDATE: Russ was ordered held without bail Wednesday afternoon.
The King County Prosecutor’s office says Russ has prior convictions including a conviction in 1987 for Assault in the Second Degree with a Deadly Weapon Enhancement, 1991 for Robbery in the Second Degree and a series of convictions from 1996 for Attempted Rape in the First Degree, Burglary in the First Degree and Robbery in the First Degree.
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