Case of burned girl may be closed

YAKIMA -- It doesn't appear that the mysterious death of 14-year-old Jaleeza Lobdell will be solved anytime soon.

Her death, which was first investigated as a homicide, may now be reclassified as a noncriminal case by Yakima County authorities.

And in Tacoma, where her disappearance was initially treated as just another one of the hundreds of runaways there, the case is considered closed.

Investigators say Lobdell was a 14-year-old prostitute who was last seen Sept. 15 after getting a ride from Tacoma to Federal Way. Two days later, her body was found in a Moxee orchard. It was so badly burned that it took a DNA test to identify her months later.

Fire was first believed to have killed her, but now investigators say she may have died of a drug overdose in Pierce County before her body was dumped and burned outside Moxee.

That leaves Yakima County sheriff's deputies trying to investigate the events that led to her death on the other side of the mountains -- something they say they can't do because of a lack of resources.

"There are three people who we have identified that we would like to talk with, one of them was her pimp," said Chief of Detectives Stew Graham. "If they resurface, we'll trek back to the westside to talk to them, but we don't have the resources to look for them ourselves."

Meanwhile, the Tacoma Police Department considers the case closed.

Police there say a runaway report filed by Lobdell's mother stated that she and her cousin accepted a ride from two men to the cousin's house in Federal Way. There, the cousin got out and Lobdell rode off with the men.

"A lot of (runaways) are repeat offenders, and they'll run away today and come back tomorrow," said Tacoma police spokesman Officer Mark Fulghum. "The way she was located was not exactly the way you hope things turn out, but the case is closed."

One of the men, according to Graham, was Lobdell's pimp and at some point a third man joined the party. What happened next remains uncertain, although law enforcement agencies in both places are looking into reports that Lobdell died of a drug overdose in Pierce County.

Pierce County sheriff's officials say they haven't come into contact with the three men recently, but have been checking reports of her death there.

"The story that we heard, even before she was identified, was that this was a drug overdose and that people panicked and put her into a car and brought her here and burned her body," Graham said.

Irrigation workers found the body along a maintenance road near Desmarais and Beane roads.

For months, authorities tried to link the body to runaways and missing teenagers. Then in December, a Tacoma School District employee matched a composite picture of the burned girl to a missing persons flier for Lobdell.

The Yakima County Coroner's Office lists Lobdell's cause of death as thermal burns and pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs. Although the coroner's report still lists the case as a homicide, Graham said there was no evidence that she had been burned alive. A toxicology report showed her system contained cocaine, which when smoked can cause pulmonary edema.

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