TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Prosecutors charged a convicted sex offender Monday with kidnapping, raping and killing Zina Linnik, a 12-year-old girl who was snatched from an alley behind her family's home during a July 4th fireworks celebration.
According to the charging documents, Terapon Dang Adhahn led investigators to the girl's body.
Zina died from a blow to the head, according to papers filed in Superior Court. Her body was found near Silver Lake in rural Pierce County, and authorities say Adhahn's DNA was found on her.
Adhahn, a Thai immigrant, was scheduled to be arraigned later Monday. Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne has not said whether he intends to seek the death penalty.
Zina was seized from behind her family's home during a Tacoma fireworks display on July 4. Investigators said her father saw a gray van, and that his partial recollection of the license plate helped them track down Adhahn at a home south of Tacoma.
During their investigation, detectives said they uncovered two other victims: one who was kidnapped on her way to school in 2000 and another who lived with Adhahn as a teen. Adhahn is charged with rape in those cases, as well as failing to register as a sex offender. He pleaded not guilty to those counts on Thursday.
Adhahn, 42, came to the U.S. in the 1970s after his mother married a U.S. soldier. He was convicted of incest in 1990 for raping a 16-year-old female relative and was sentenced to two months in jail, plus five years of counseling. He told his counselors that he had been raped by an older brother while growing up in Thailand, according to a mental evaluation filed in Pierce County Superior Court as part of that case.
Adhahn was being held in isolation at the Pierce County jail on more than $2 million bail.