TACOMA, Wash. — A cold case mystery played out all day in Tacoma.
Police detectives have been digging up a backyard, but refusing to say why.
Tacoma police are pretty tight-lipped about this investigation, saying only that they are following up on a cold case.
KIRO 7 has been working to find out why police won’t say more.
Tacoma police say they don’t want to raise the hopes of a family still grieving over the loss of a loved one, no matter how long ago.
All day, detectives have been hard at work on this scene.
Neighbors tell KIRO 7 they awoke at about 7:30 this Monday morning to excavation equipment staging in the backyard of a house along South Gunnison Street.
“Looked like they might have been trying to do some pipe work or something like that,” said Jared Tarabochia, a neighbor. “Got started on that. And then shortly after they started kind of going in the ground. They kind of all stopped and left and all of this started showing up.”
A swarm of police officers, including a mobile command center, showed up. All this, Tacoma police say, after getting a tip.
“And so, what we are doing out here today is we are investigating one of those tips related to a Tacoma cold case,” said Officer Shelbie Boyd.
Boyd was asked if she could confirm which cold case.
“We cannot, at this point,” Boyd replied. “We’re just out here investigating a cold case. Once there’s information available, we’ll make sure to let the public know. But at this point, it’s just another cold case tip.”
When pressed for why they won’t tell us more, Officer Boyd said it is just their “general practice” of how they do their investigations.
As one might guess, there is a lot of speculation on just which cold case they are investigating.
In fact, there were two mothers here with a connection to at least one cold case from the late 1990s, hoping this is the one Tacoma police are searching for.
But again, Tacoma police aren’t saying.
On Monday evening, Tacoma police told us they’d be continuing their investigation throughout the night and potentially into tomorrow, as well.
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