Two Girls Were Snatched From a Tiny Logging Town. Is This Man Responsible?
Cold case investigators in Washington State used a genealogy database to identify a suspect wanted for a 2003 kidnapping and rape, and now believe the man could be connected to an unsolved kidnapping and murder that has vexed authorities for more than a decade.
Paul James Bieker, 50, was arrested Tuesday for the 2003 attack, Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Brad Johansson said, adding that detectives are now probing whether Bieker might also be responsible for the 2009 disappearance and killing of 10-year-old Lindsey Baum.
“We obviously have our eyebrows raised because of the similarities,” Johansson told The Daily Beast. “We’re a pretty rural area in a small town and the fact that you have two kidnappings in the same area within a six-year period is a cause for concern. We’re looking heavily into the Lindsey Baum case to see if he could be a person of interest in that case as well.”
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In March 2003, a 17-year-old girl was abducted as she pulled into her driveway in McCleary, Washington, a small logging town of 1,600. The suspect loaded the victim, who has never been publicly identified, back into her own vehicle and took her to an undisclosed location. There, the suspect sexually assaulted the teen, drove her back toward McCleary, and left her in the car. The girl was able to get free and drive home, where she told her father what had happened. He called 911, investigators collected evidence, and collected a sample of the attacker’s DNA.
Cops entered the DNA profile into a national criminal database, but failed to identify a match. In 2010, the Grays Harbor Prosecuting Attorney’s Office used the profile to obtain what Johansson called a “John Doe warrant” for the unknown suspect.
“We did that so the statute of limitations wouldn’t expire,” Johansson explained.
In December 2020, Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Darrin Wallace submitted the alleged attacker’s DNA to a genealogy lab. New tests led to a shortlist of people who might be related to the suspect, and investigators subsequently zeroed in on Paul Bieker—who in 2003 had lived in McCleary, a short distance from the victim’s home.
Wallace and Det. Sgt. Paul Logan tailed Bieker and were able to obtain his DNA from a “discarded item,” which authorities say was linked by the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab to the suspect in the 2003 sexual assault.
Bieker was arrested on June 15 and booked into the Grays Harbor County Jail on Tuesday, according to the county jail roster.
Now, police are delving into the Lindsey Baum murder to see if Bieker could be their man.
On June 26, 2009, Baum, who was about to turn 11, disappeared in McCleary while walking home from a friend’s house. The case touched off a nationwide search for the girl, whose body would go undiscovered for another eight years.
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In September 2017, a group of hunters in remote Ellensburg, Washington found human remains in an unpopulated area and called police. The FBI was brought in to assist, and the bureau’s crime lab identified the remains as Baum’s.
Police followed a number of leads, and at one point had three elderly Seattle brothers in their sights as suspects, but none ultimately panned out. With Bieker’s arrest, they have a new trail to follow, said Johansson.
“Investigators are going to be poring through the Lindsey Baum case—it’s huge, it's just a gigantic case, there’s a ton of information they have to sort through, compare notes, follow up on where [Bieker] could have been and if he was involved,” Johansson said.
“We’re also hoping this might spark some interest from the community in sharing some information with us about what they might know. Somebody knows something about the Lindsey Baum case. So we’re just looking for that one person it may ring a bell to, whether that’s in relation to Mr. Bieker or somebody else.”
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