Three men were arrested more than 16 years after a woman was decapitated. Her body was found in the Puget Sound. The Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) said they worked with law enforcement across the country this week to take the three men into custody. A fourth suspect in the case has since died.
Shanan Lynn Read’s decomposed body was found floating in a plastic container in Puget Sound on Jan. 15, 2006. She was identified using fingerprint analysis. More than 16 years after a 33-year-old woman’s body was found decapitated, three people have been arrested.
The investigation found that Read was killed in August 2005, five months before her body was found, when she was struck in the head with a metal baton. Assisting agencies included, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, the U.S. Marshall Service, and the Philadelphia, Sarasota and Riverside police departments.
A 39-year-old man was arrested on Monday in Philadelphia. Last Tuesday, a 42-year-old was taken into custody in Sarasota, Florida and a 34-year-old was arrested in Riverside, California. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife turned the case over to the sheriff’s office after responding to a suspicious object floating between Manchester and Blake Island and discovering the body.
She was injured at an apartment in Seattle, investigators found, then was taken to a cabin in Port Orchard where she died. For weeks, the suspects returned to the cabin owned by a family member and poured chemicals over her body to speed up decomposition, before disposing of her body. No details were released about Read’s relationship with the men or what lead to her death.
Detectives identified four suspects in the murder, as they pursued leads and interviewed witnesses over the years. Over the past 10 months, investigators were finally able to confirm the participation of the four suspects.
KCSO and the Coast Guard special agent partnered with multiple federal and state agencies to find and arrest the three men. All three face first-degree murder charges and are being held on $10 million bail. They are awaiting extradition to Washington state, where they will be booked into Kitsap County Jail.
