When two Washington state investigators visited Klickitat County to help examine a woman’s suspicious drowning, they left a slate of recommendations for their local counterparts.
The case closed five weeks later with no criminal charges filed. The Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office investigators followed some, but not all, of the state’s recommendations. The woman’s family continues to question the quality of the policework.
“There are some really valid questions still,” said Aia Walker, whose 31-year-old daughter Hannah was found dead in a shallow creek near Trout Lake, on the bucolic county’s west end, under suspicious circumstances.
In closing the case, the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office iterated that they believe Hannah Walker accidentally drowned that October 2022 evening. Her body had some abrasions and unidentified DNA under her fingernails.
“Though foul play cannot be ruled out completely, there (is) no probable cause to believe that a crime was committed,” Sheriff Bob Songer wrote to the family Jan. 24, notifying them the case had been closed.
In an interview Wednesday, Songer dismissed concerns that his department didn’t investigate the case thoroughly.
“It wasn’t like we just pooh-pooh’ed it off,” said Songer, who is currently in Las Vegas at a national convention for conservative sheriffs and other law enforcement figures.
OPB this week obtained a copy of the recommendations that two investigators from the Washington Attorney General’s Office had given to the local squad.
When Hannah Walker’s death became public, community members and some of Walker’s family raised questions. They pressed why DNA went untested and asked questions about bootprints found near the scene, for example.
The sheriff’s office initially had not reported the death to local news outlets, which Songer later said was unintentional.
Detectives also did not interview the married couple Walker had been staying with. Walker was last seen with the husband. OPB is not naming the couple because they have not been charged with a crime.
Songer, amid criticism, requested the state justice department to assist. That included visiting the scene and conducting interviews, according to the sheriff.
In that report, the attorney general’s investigators issued several recommendations to the sheriff’s office. Their ideas included: Do background checks on the husband, get search warrants for cellphone data, talk to a drowning expert, and interview the married couple with whom Hannah Walker had been staying.
“We provided them a list of recommendations that should be considered/conducted prior to concluding this case,” wrote Investigator Phillip Erickson in a four-page report.
Klickitat County Sheriff’s Sgt. Erik Anderson, who oversaw the case when the state arrived, said his team followed only some of the recommendations.
“We did what we felt was reasonable,” Anderson told OPB. “It’s our responsibility as an agency to decide what’s the best use of our time for the case at hand and what the evidence suggests.”
Anderson said detectives did not get search warrants for cellphone data and GPS locations because there was no probable cause a crime had been committed. He said they didn’t canvas for witnesses near the death scene because the residences “are not really in a position to see anything.”
After state investigators recommended conducting a DNA swab on the man Walker was last seen with, Anderson said he declined. The local investigators never asked a question that state investigators recommended asking: If the husband and Hannah Walker had sex prior to going to the creek.
The conclusion that Walker drowned by accident mostly came from a conversation that a detective had with the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office, which examined her body. The detective wrote that he was told Walker’s injuries were consistent with “stumbling around in the water.”
The state recommended they contact a drowning examiner. They did not, Anderson said.
“Again, if there was something to suggest this was not an accidental drowning, then we might try to locate such an expert,” he said.
The Washington Attorney General’s Office could not be reached for comment.
Aia Walker, in a brief phone interview, said she felt discouraged the state assistance wasn’t more thorough.
“The Justice Department just has no justice available,” she said.