The Murder of Mandy Stavik | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[CAMERA CLICKS] MOLLY: I probably took that picture of Mandy and our younger brother Lee.
This has got to be up in Palmer, Alaska, in the wintertime, in the snow. We loved to play in the snow and ride horses.
It was neat. That wintertime in Alaska, we'd tie a sled to my horse. We'd ride around the yard, taking turns pulling
each other on the sled. It was a lot of fun. My sister loved animals, and she loved cats and horses.
It was our one thing that we really connected with was with horses. And cats. Horses and cats were our thing.
Mandy was a very confident and happy kid. She had lots of friends, and she was very active.
DOUG: Mandy's personality, I would say vivacious. She was a hard worker at everything she did.
When she committed to something, she really committed to it, and-- and succeeded at so much of what she did too.
MOLLY: The day after Thanksgiving, on November 24th, 1989, Mandy left with Kyra, our German shepherd,
for her run down to the end of the road and back, down to the river. Mandy never came home.
KEN: She would have fought off attackers, so we believe that it would have to been through force, like a weapon of some type,
to get her into the vehicle to kidnap her. Mandy's dog was very protective, but if the dog is overcome by force or weapon,
was forced away from her, I think the dog would have not been able to defend her.
MOLLY: My mom was calling everybody. She called all of her friends, and they didn't know where she was.
Mandy's not someone who would just take off. We knew there had to be foul play. DAVE: We did have leads, but they never really materialized
into any real prime suspects. BRYANNA: Typically, the victim and the offender will know each other.
There's a relationship. But when that doesn't exist, police have almost nothing to go off of.
DAVE: And it was an investigation that just went on for-- well, for 28 years. MOLLY: I mean, she was so close.
How can she disappear that close to home? We were all just broken. I mean, this shouldn't have happened.
It's a picture of Mandy and I and my older sister, Mary Alice, who had just graduated.
That was a happy day. Mary Alice is seven years older than I am, which means she's 10 years older than Mandy.
Mandy was born in Anchorage, Alaska on April 16th, 1971. Back then, we were just kind of your normal family.
Mom was home and Dad worked. In 1974, my parents divorced, and my mom moved out and took with her Mandy
and left me and Mary, Alice and Brent with our father, Glenn. In 1983, My family moved to Washington from Alaska.
DOUG: Acme is a safe place to raise a family. It's a rural community. A lot of people live on farms down in the Acme Valley.
Probably populated by what you might call hippies, a little bit back to the Earth.
MOLLY: In 1983, Bandy joined Mount Baker High School. DOUG: Mount Baker high school in the '80s definitely
had big hair. It was a close-knit school. Everyone wanted to go to the football games,
everyone wanted to go to the dances, and it was quite a community. I was Mandy Stavik's band director.
In 1983, Mandy joined band, and she played saxophone. She was really vivacious, really paying attention.
She very quickly made a lot of friends and kept those friends throughout high school.
MOLLY: Mandy was amazing. She was very active in high school. She did just about every sport she could think of.
And my mom would kind of joke with her, and she's like, you can't do softball and basketball.
She's like, oh, watch me. She was popular. She was bubbly. She was happy, very friendly.
She would make people feel comfortable. People kind of gravitated to her. In 1989, Mandy graduated from Mount Baker High School,
and then, in the fall, she went to Central Washington University. DOUG: Mandy was ready to take on the world.
She just had everything going for her, and she knew where she wanted to go, and she was ready to pursue it.
MOLLY: Mandy and her roommate came home from Central to spend the Thanksgiving holiday
with the family. I remember hearing her talk with my mom about, you know, school and how much fun she's having and, you know,
her plans. But right now, she was more focused on who she was going to get together with and reconnect
with after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving, on November 24th, Mandy had stayed at the house, and
she hung out with her friend. In the morning, we all ate leftovers, had pumpkin pie,
and her and her roommate were going to go for a walk first, and then, after their walk, Mandy
was going to go for a run. And they were going to get ready for, you know, a movie or whatever.
Mandy left with Kyra, our German shepherd, down to the end of the road and back, down to the river
Probably four to five miles total. It's kind of a straight shot to the river and back.
It was an easy, flat run, and she did it all the time. I do remember my mom calling me and
telling me that Mandy was missing, and I was just like, what? She goes, yeah, Mandy, she went for a run and didn't come home.
And Kyra the dog just returned, but she was not herself. I want to say that she might even have
been limping a little bit. My mom called the police immediately. [PHONE RINGING]
[SIREN WAILING] KEVIN: Being a police officer means to me, serving the community and just making the community safer for myself
and my family to live in. I started out as an explorer with the Bellingham Police,
and I was hired by the sheriff's office in January of '89. I also attended Mount Baker High School,
just like Mandy did. Once Mandy was reported missing, search and rescue was called out.
KEN: I was 17. We all hung out with Mandy. We all knew Mandy. I was attending the same school that she did,
Mount Baker High School, and our dads helped, I recall. Schoolmates helped. Because it was not a normal thing
that happened in that area, for a girl to go missing. KEVIN: Mandy started at her house, which is behind me,
and then ran in this direction. A lot of the times, her mom would ride her bicycle with Mandy.
She just didn't happen to be riding that day. DAVE: And they told me right away that this young woman
was missing. They were really very fearful that something had happened to her. Mandy was seen by a number of people
between 2:30 and 3 o'clock, and she was coming back to her house. A friend of hers had seen her running
and had pulled into a house and was waiting for her to run by, and she never did.
KEN: We know that her brother Lee saw her at a residence just down the road from her house.
We believe that she was abducted between the last time she was saw by her brother Lee,
and between her house. DAVE: Mandy's dog had come home alone, and the dog was covered with silt on its hind quarters
and looked like it had gone through a traumatic event. KEVIN: The neighbors and communities got together.
There was 15 or 20 people that searched the roadway, the railroad tracks, the area within the home, and the route
that Mandy normally ran. The resources to look for Mandy were citizens, family, friends, horses, helicopters, and
they had a boat in the river. DAVE: We had a human tracker that went out that night,
and he was trained to look at dirt alongside the road, and he found traces of a car stopped and
a person got in on the passenger side, and alongside the vehicle was a ditch, and it was filled with water and silt.
The family dog was cowering and wouldn't come with the tracker to go down. So we felt that she had been taken at that location.
We thought the dog had been kicked into the ditch, and that's why the dog had silt on it.
MOLLY: As a family, we didn't have any information other than you know, that she's missing and they're looking,
but they-- you know, they did keep us up to date, obviously, but-- - I seem to kind of wave between total denial
and hysteria, and-- and I haven't been able to sleep, and I just-- I mean, you know, you remember all the things
you read in the paper, the Ted Bundy and the Green River killings and all of these terrible things.
And all you can think of is, it doesn't happen to you. It doesn't happen here on Strand Road.
But it did. MOLLY: We kept hoping. You want to hope for the best. And, of course, that didn't work out well.
[SIREN WAILS] KEVIN: Mandy's body was found on November 27th of 1989 in the South Fork River.
DAVE: The officers had been searching the river, walking all up and down the banks,
and they had a patrol boat that had gone down the river, and the patrol boat spotted her body.
KEVIN: Mandy's body was found right here. She was facing down river, outstretched, face down.
She had tennis shoes and socks, and a watch on, and that was it. DAVE: We could tell by looking at the body
that she had not been carried very far down the river. So we felt that she had been deposited there
and had looked as though she had drowned, and it would have been very close to where we found her.
KEVIN: One of the hardest parts of the job is notifying family members that their loved
one has passed or died. MOLLY: I was at home with my mom, kind of waiting, and the police arrived and let us
know that they found her body. I was shattered. I was just absolutely floored and shattered.
I was mad that this was happening. I remember running out into the field behind our house
and just screaming, just guttural, as loud as I can and as long as I could. Just-- just anger, like at everything.
At God. Why? You know, how could He let something like this happen to us? DOUG: On Monday, after school, we had another staff meeting,
and we kind of knew it might be bad news. And we went to the meeting, and it was announced by our principal that Mandy's body
had been found. It was devastating to find out she had died. Such a vibrant young lady seemingly for no reason,
had died. It was a very somber moment. There were people crying, just total shock for everybody.
KEN: When Mandy's body was removed from the crime scene, she was taken to the Whatcom County Medical Examiner's
Office, where she was examined thoroughly by the medical examiner. KEVIN: They found scratches on her legs, which
indicated she had run through the brush in an attempt to get away. DAVE: We believe she was trying to escape
and was running through blackberry bushes. We also discovered a hematoma, which is bleeding under the scalp, and
it was on the top and right side of her skull. That was examined very carefully.
KEVIN: This large bruise indicated she was struck or hit, and they found water in her lungs, which indicated that she had drowned.
DAVE: And it appeared that she was just allowed to flow with the stream, and then was caught up with the branches
where we found her body. Our medical examiner also determined that Mandy had been sexually assaulted.
MOLLY: It made me feel sad that she had to endure that. Angry that it happened. She was probably terrified and running for her life.
KEN: The crime scene where Mandy's body was found was important to preserve evidence
in the form of footprints in the sand, to do canvas of the area for clothing or objects
or anything to that effect. At that time in 1989, DNA was a new testing program that the FBI was doing, mostly.
DAVE: The FBI worked with us in the laboratory and the sheriff's office and came up initially
with a couple of suspects. And I got search warrants for them, and we cleared them through DNA analysis,
and we eliminated them from the investigation. We checked all the sex offenders,
and the officers are going door to door and checking on people and looking for anyone that could possibly be a suspect.
This went on for a long time. We had a number of people that they were looking at initially.
BRYANNA: There was a lot of suspicion by police that this murder was committed by the Green River Killer, who was later
identified as Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer would prey on women running in rural areas,
on trails outside of Seattle. He would attack them, rape, and murder them. It's exactly what happened in this case.
The exact same pattern with the exact same time frame. There was a lot that would link this case to this very
infamous serial killer. This very plausible lead that the Green River Killer had
actually just moved a little bit and had actually been responsible for the murder in this case didn't end up panning out,
because the DNA found in Mandy's body and DNA found in the other victims' bodies of the Green River Killer
were not the same. KEN: I believe the case was held back by lack of evidence. You have biological evidence in the form of semen.
However, we have no way to test that or compare that against people at that time.
So it was very important to preserve that evidence for future testing. DOUG: After finding out that Mandy had died,
we were all devastated. You know, from 7th graders to 12th graders in this little tight-knit community.
DAVE: The whole community was really impacted by this murder, and to think that a beautiful young girl who was so
filled with promise could be abducted, raped, and then killed was just shocking.
MOLLY: Mandy's death destroyed my mom. Absolutely. Losing a child is just unimaginable.
And part of her was killed, too. My mom, who is 88 now, she's starting to have signs of dementia.
As far as memories of Mandy, her forgetting that is, in my opinion, maybe a good thing,
because memories of Mandy are painful, and I don't want her to be in pain. Mandy's funeral took place at the high school auditorium.
It was a packed house. There were so many people there. It was just crazy. DOUG: Mandy had been on that stage many times.
I had our jazz band, of which Mandy had been a member. The jazz band played a song at this memorial service,
and we played "Here's That Rainy Day". I remember the song real clearly. It just seemed appropriate.
KEN: The investigation turned to, who haven't we talked to in this area? They continued talking to classmates, old boyfriends,
people that lived in the area, people that committed violent crimes, and nothing was coming to the forefront of who
did this to Mandy Stavik. BRYANNA: But investigators never let it go. In fact, many detectives had pictures of Mandy
on their desks, because they didn't want to forget this victim, and remembering we
have to keep working this. And they did. In fact, investigators in this case kept writing to the FBI, asking, were there any updates?
Did they rerun the DNA and find any hits? But, unfortunately, none of those ever panned out.
KEVIN: As time progressed, it felt like this case would go unresolved. Mandy's family was kept appraised
of the status of the case, as well as letting them know that we had not given up
and that it was still assigned to somebody. MOLLY: As time went on, people started losing interest
and it wasn't quite such a big story, and I didn't think they would ever find him.
And in some ways, I kind of put it away. KEVIN: I was assigned as a primary investigator
to Mandy Stavik in 2007. I feel a case that happened 20 years ago versus just happening are equally important,
and I had the opportunity, because of my seniority, to pick which cold case I wanted to work on,
and I purposely chose the Mandy Stavi case, not only because I went to Mount Baker, but because it was in my community
and I felt that I had something to give. DAVE: By this time, we had a huge mass of reports,
7,000 pages of reports. Kevin Bowhay took all of the reports, sat down with me, and he organized those.
KEVIN: I had it spread out over my living room, and reorganized it regarding persons of interest.
There were still 20 to 30 people that needed to be contacted, as well as one person
needed to be followed up on. I visited Mandy's family on several occasions, as well as making phone calls to let
them know that I was still assigned, and that I was not going to give up. MOLLY: Every couple of years or so they
would touch base with us and say, hey, you know, we haven't forgotten. We're still looking, you know.
KEVIN: The only evidence that we were able to recover from the scene was DNA evidence found on her body, which
we were able to preserve. So we started out doing DNA sweeps of individuals that lived in this area
or were registered sex offenders. In 2010, myself and an FBI agent traveled to Cambodia to interview
a suspect in this case. His DNA was collected. However, it did not match that that was left on Mandy's body.
KEN: In 2012, I asked the lead detective, Kevin Bowhay, if I could review the case.
My belief was that it could be a local person. As far as the DNA not coming back into the system,
either the person hasn't been caught for another crime or the person hasn't been booked.
In 2013, a schoolmate of mine came to me and said she had some information to tell me of some suspicious happenings
to her that may be in aligned with what happened to Mandy Stavik. DAVE: It was during the summer, a number
of women were at a water park in Whatcom County. One of the women said, you know,
one person I thought could have been involved in this was Timothy Bass, and she described
an incident she had with Bass where he had tried to grope her. The other woman said she had a similar experience.
He had come to her house, wanted a glass of water, then refused to leave unless he had sex with her,
and so she said she finally had to throw him out and was really concerned. So they said, you know, we should
go to the sheriff's office and tell them that he is someone that should be looked at.
KEVIN: Both of the women that came forward described him as being odd, antisocial,
and sexually aggressive. DAVE: We looked at Tim Bass and found that his family lived on the same road
that Mandy always ran on. She would run by his house every day. They realized right after this murder,
he had moved out of the area to another city in Whatcom County, and had not been involved in the search for her.
KEVIN: Detective Ken Gates knew Tim. He was friends with Tim's brother. So Ken Gates and I went out to Tim Bass's house.
KEN: During that contact, it was very odd to me. He claimed he didn't remember who
Mandy Stavik was, even though it was a huge case for the community. It was odd to me that he would make that statement.
DAVE: We knew from other people that he had watched her play basketball. She was a star basketball player in high school.
So the fact that he said he didn't know her was really suspect. KEVIN: He kind of looked up at the ceiling
and repeated Mandy's name a couple of times, saying, Mandy, Mandy. Kind of like pretending to search
for who she might be, and then made the comment, oh, yeah, she's the gal that they found in the river, right?
KEN: We asked Tim ass at that time, in October of 2013, for his DNA sample. He refused.
He did mention that he watched crime shows and saw innocent people go to jail. We left his house knowing that that was his frame of mind.
BRYANNA: Now, that could be a sign that he is guilty, but it could also be a sign that this is someone who wants
their civil rights respected. KEVIN: So the next step was to see if we could get a DNA sample from his place of employment.
KEN: We went to his work and asked management, and they did not give us permission to do that.
They advised to seek a warrant. KEVIN: At this stage of the investigation, we did not have enough evidence to put Tim with Mandy,
therefore a judge would not have issued a warrant. So that was not an option. From 2013 to 2017, we kept an eye on Bass.
We even went out and followed Tim during his delivery route, waiting for him to discard an item which
would have had DNA on it. Unfortunately, he never discarded an item, and he wore a rubber gloves.
MOLLY: The impact of Mandy's murder affected our whole family. It made me more guarded, more skeptical of people.
It just made me less trusting. I worried about my daughter and wanting her to be careful.
I know that they were still working on it and they didn't have a lot to go on, but it just-- it was frustrating.
KEVIN: In August of 2017, we had followed Tim on his route, and his supervisor made the statement,
well, I know what you want. You want Tim's DNA. And she said that she could get his DNA.
She told me that she had a cup which he had drank from, as well as a Coke can that she had
collected out of the garbage, which he threw away. So I collected the can and the cup
to have it shipped down to the state crime lab. In December of 2017, I got back to the office,
and my coworker had stated that he had gotten an email from the state crime lab wanting to know
what my phone number was. I called the state crime lab, and she said, Kevin, just wanted to let you know that the DNA
matched that of Tim Bass's. KEN: And Kevin Bowhay contacted me and said, Ken, we got a match.
KEVIN: It was like winning the lottery. I was in shock and disbelief, but in the same sense,
I was relieved and-- and ecstatic. DAVE: I was extremely happy when I got that call.
We had worked for 28 years in this case, and we did everything we could possibly
think of to-- to solve it. KEN: Now the next steps were to, OK, what has he done in the last 28 years?
[SIREN WAILING] We developed a strategy to arrest Tim Bass. We did not want to have an incident at his house,
because he had children. He had his wife. So it was decided that we would take him down at his place of work.
KEVIN: We drove out to Tim's place of employment. It was about 8 o'clock in the morning.
He was walking from the warehouse to his truck. We stepped in front of him. I asked him, do you remember me?
And he said, yes. He looked at us and said, well, what's going on? What's this about?
And I said, well, I believe you know what this is about. And he was arrested. MOLLY: It was in the afternoon.
I was in the living room when I got the phone call, and he said, we found Mandy's murderer.
And the ironic thing was it was my mom's birthday. We were notified on my mom's birthday.
Her 81st birthday, December 12th, 2017. It's like, man, what a birthday present.
DOUG: I was in the band room at Mount Baker High School. I checked my email, and I saw that they had arrested
someone in Mandy's case. First thing I see as I scroll up is Mandy's picture, and I just jumped away from the computer,
because I was not expecting that. It brought so many feelings back about the time when she had disappeared
and throughout all those years when nothing was happening. And then all of a sudden, someone was arrested.
And it was a hopeful moment, but it was shocking. It was shocking to me. KEN: Tim Bass was brought into the station, where
detectives interviewed him. - And he denied everything. KEVIN: We asked him if he ever dated Mandy.
He said no, that he had never dated her, he never had any sexual relationship with her, that he just watched her basketball games.
KEN: When Tim Bass was notified that his DNA was a match to the semen, it was almost like he was trying
to think of another story. KEN: He engaged in conversation. Again, at first saying he didn't know much
about the case, didn't know Mandy at all, but ultimately ended up saying that he had some type
of relationship with her. KEN: Tim was asked about dating her, what they did on dates.
Did they come to her house? Did-- did she come to his house? Locking him into a story to try to take him back to 1989
to see where he was at the time. MOLLY: There's no way that she would even give him the time of day.
Maybe in his-- you know, his dreams. There's no way. It was just laughable that he would say that.
KEVIN: We knew this was a lie. When we pressed him on, well, do you know why Mandy was going to school?
KEVIN: He had no idea why, which proved that they had no relationship. Otherwise, they would have talked
about whether she was enjoying college, whether she wasn't. He had no idea of any part of her life.
DAVE: I knew by the evidence we had, we had probable cause, and I felt we had enough evidence to convict him.
And so it didn't matter to me at that point what he did say. KEVIN: Once we were done talking with him,
Tim was booked on charged with murder as well as rape and kidnapping. KEN: After Tim Bass was arrested,
we discovered that he didn't have much of a criminal history. He was pretty squeaky clean as far as criminal activity.
DAVE: I was going to retire at the end of 2018, but I'd worked on the case for, at that point, 29 years,
and I really wanted to see it concluded. So I came back and tried it in May of 2019.
It was an extremely important case, so I was very, very happy. In fact, I did it as a volunteer.
MOLLY: When Mandy's murder trial began., I did go to most of it, but there was a lot that I
just could not sit through. I didn't want to see autopsy photos. They showed everything.
It was horrible. I don't think my mom did either. I think when that happened, we just said,
no, we can't do this. DAVE: The focus, of course, was DNA, but we built up a lot of attended facts.
We showed where he was living. We could show the access he had to Mandy. We could show that some of the stories that he told officers
were not true. We could show by the timeline that he moved to a different city when we
were right in the middle of the investigation, and we felt that he was trying to get
out of sight, out of mind. We could show the other involvement he had with women.
So we had a variety of things that circumstantially pointed to him. And then, of course, we had the DNA, which was irrefutable.
His brother also provided some information. He showed that Tim was wanting him to lie and give him an alibi, which
his brother refused to do. MOLLY: The first time that I saw Tim at the trial, my feelings were anger, disgust
that he got to spend the last 28 years free after doing what he did. I was mad. I was angry.
DAVE: I met with Mandy's family on a number of occasions. We really tried to keep real close contact with them.
They're extremely nice people, and we really wanted them to understand what we were doing.
MOLLY: He maintained his innocence. When we were sitting in court listening to Tim Bass lie,
blatantly lie, it was-- it was infuriating. We knew he was lying. KEVIN: I was a little concerned that he may get away with it,
but in my heart of hearts, I knew that the jury would be able to put everything together and
come up with a guilty plea. KEN: On May 24th, 2019, Tim Bass was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
DAVE: The judge gave him the maximum, and we hoped that that's enough, that he would never, ever get out and see the light of
day again. KEN: After the trial, we met with the family. They were delighted, overwhelmed,
emotional about the verdict and the sentencing of Tim Bass. MOLLY: Seeing Tim being sentenced was quite a relief.
We were very appreciative to all of the juries. We said thank you to every single one of them.
I will never be able to forgive Tim Bass for what he did to my sister. Never. I hope the guy rots in jail.
DOUG: I was in the same room that I used to teach Mandy in when I found out the verdict.
I cried. I just burst into tears. KEN: This case made it more personal because I
went to school with her. Mandy was a smart person, always nice to me, always nice to people.
The last memory I have of Mandy is walking down the aisle during graduation. MOLLY: What happened to Mandy broke my mom's heart,
and I've seen her cry on several occasions. And me too. We've cried together, you know, in response to that.
It's difficult. DOUG: Over the years, the murder of Mandy meant less to the kids because they
were so young when Mandy died. The one place that we would get discussion going, in the band
room at Mount Baker, there's a plaque with Mandy's picture, and kids periodically would ask, what's this all about?
So we'd tell the story then. MOLLY: Our biggest connection was our horses. We would ride.
We would ride together, and that was really cool. That was fun. Yeah, she was a great rider.
She was definitely an All-American girl. KEVIN: I really question whether justice is ever
served when somebody's killed or murdered, but I'm glad that Mandy's story is still alive
and that her memory is-- is still in everyone's heart and on their minds. MOLLY: If I could say one last thing to Mandy,
it was just to let her know that I love her. You don't always say it. You know, it's kind of an assumed thing,
but it'd be nice to be able to tell her that I loved her. [THEME MUSIC]

19-year-old Mandy Stavik and her faithful dog Kyra depart for a jog in rural Washington. When Kyra returns home alone, it is not long before investigators discover Mandy's body floating in a local river.

Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

Mandy Stavik went missing in 1989; her case remained unsolved until Tim Bass was arrested in 2017 after DNA evidence linked him to her murder.

Key points

Mandy's Disappearance. Mandy went for a run and never returned, sparking immediate concern.
The Community's Response. The local community rallied together to search for Mandy after she went missing.
Tragic Discovery. Mandy's body was found in the South Fork River, leading to devastating news for her family.
Investigation Challenges. The investigation faced numerous challenges, including lack of evidence and leads.
DNA Evidence. Despite DNA evidence found on Mandy's body, the investigation struggled to find a match.
DNA Match Found. In December 2017, Kevin learns that the DNA matched Tim Bass's, leading to a breakthrough in the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Mandy never came home.

Molly reflects on the day Mandy went missing.

1:49WatchSep 28, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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