Couple's determination to find niece solves Marana mystery

Estranged from Deanna’s family for many years, the Florida couple had recently reconnected with Deanna’s father, who told them that he hadn’t seen his daughter since she left home in Spokane, Washington, in 1987.

Wondering what became of their then-16-year-old niece, the Criswells began searching for her.

Their determination to find Deanna or at least find out what happened to her would end with tragic news. But it would also bring closure to a mystery that would finally allow police officials in Marana to know the name of a young woman whose body was found near Interstate 10 more than 27 years ago.

The woman had been shot five times and dumped into a culvert in Marana in late 1987. She had no identification and the murder investigation would eventually go cold.

For years she remained unknown. Even when modern forensic science not available in the 1980s was able to determine in 2011 who killed her, police investigators were never able to identify her.

SEeking niece

Ellen Criswell, 65, a retired auditor, said in a telephone interview Wednesday from her Ridge Manor, Florida, home that she and her husband began searching for their missing niece after Jerry Criswell — who is Donald’s brother — reached out to them by telephone.

They searched the Internet, hoping to find her alive in the Spokane area, where her mother lives. But that did not happen.

Ellen Criswell said their search led them to a website that highlights unidentified murder victims by state. They came upon the case of “Jane Doe No. 19.”

She said she recognized Deanna from a facial reconstruction shown in a three-dimensional bust on the website, and she contacted Marana Police Department authorities. She credited her husband, Donald, 71, a retired painter for Boeing Co., who did most of the online searches, which took about three months.

Earlier this week, Marana police announced that Deanna was positively identified through DNA obtained from her parents.

“We are just glad that the mystery is solved,” said Ellen. “We know now what happened to her. I try not to think about the way she died,” said the mother of two daughters.

Tom Mooney, a crime supervisor for the Marana Police Department, never gave up on the case.

He gathered evidence to help identify the teen, including having the remains exhumed in 2010 from the Pima County cemetery for the indigent. A second autopsy was done and DNA was extracted by the county medical examiner. Using her skull, the FBI reconstructed her face in 2010.

At one point the teen’s DNA was submitted to a national database — the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System — but no match was found. The case went cold again until the Criswells called from Florida.

troubled life

Deanna’s body was found by a hitchhiker Nov. 25, 1987, in a culvert under the frontage road east of I-10, between West Tangerine Road and the Marana Road exit. Investigators believe she had been dead for about two weeks, said Sgt. Chris Warren, a police spokesman.

Prior to coming to Tucson, Deanna led an unstable life, said her father. He said she lived with her mother in Spokane, and also lived with him in Renton, near Seattle. When the teen ran away from both homes, she would live on the streets, he said. Jerry Criswell, 74, explained that he was a long-haul truck driver who worked mostly out-of-state, and was divorced from Deanna’s mother.

She also spent time in a rehabilitation center where she was treated several times for alcohol abuse, said Jerry Criswell, who now lives in Mississippi.

“In middle school, she started running around with the wrong crowd, and nothing we did could satisfy her,” the father told the Star. He said he sought mental health treatment for his daughter, but the “psychiatrist said he could not help her because she was telling him just what he wanted to hear.”

Meanwhile, he said, when Deanna was living on the streets, she called periodically to reassure him that her life was fine.

It was not.

In October 1987, Deanna received a bus ticket to Tucson that investigators believe was sent to her by William Ross Knight, the man who killed her, Warren said.

Knight, who was born in Seattle April 27, 1957, is believed to have met Deanna possibly in Spokane in 1986 or 1987. Knight was 30 then, and was committing armed robberies that began in Spokane and spread to Montana, Nevada and Arizona.

On Nov. 14, 1987, 11 days before Deanna’s body was found, Knight was arrested by Tucson Police and charged with aggravated assault against three patrons of a bar, Warren said. Investigators then linked Knight to armed robberies of hotels, fast-food restaurants and movie theaters in mostly Tucson and Phoenix.

Knight began serving a life sentence in prison for the robbery convictions in 1988, and died in 2005 of liver disease, Warren said.

In 2011, advances in technology and equipment made it possible to test semen that was recovered from Deanna’s body, Warren said.

It came back that the DNA belonged to Knight, Warren said.

He also said that Deanna was killed with a .22-caliber handgun — the same type of gun used by Knight in the armed robberies.

Jerry Criswell now knows what happened to his daughter. “I think about what I could have done different,” said Criswell, who did not file a missing person’s report after the phone calls from his daughter stopped.

He said he plans to come to Tucson next month and put a headstone on his daughter’s grave and take photographs. He said he will share the photos with Deanna’s 77-year-old mother, who is dying of lung cancer.