Hikers murdered: Husband, father posts newspaper ad seeking leads in killing of wife, daughter over 9 years ago

SEATTLE -- It’s not an ad you would expect to see in a newspaper. It reads, "Nine years no justice." The man behind the ad is hoping to find the person who killed his wife and daughter. “When it first happened I thought about it every tenth of a second; now maybe I think about it every few minutes,” David Stodden said. Stodden is consumed by the grief of losing his daughter Susanna Stodden and mother Mary Cooper went on a hike and never came back. “Both shot in the head, pretty horrendous,” Stodden said.

Hikers found Mary and Susanna dead two miles up the Pinnacle Lake Trail off of Mountain Loop Highway, just outside Granite Falls, on July 11, 2006. “They had no enemies at all. No one really knew where they were going; they changed their destination en route,” Stodden said. Nine years later, their murders remain a mystery to detectives. “With the evidence we have, it appears to be random,” Snohomish County sheriff's spokeswoman Shari Ireton said. The random backcountry murder rattled nerves with avid hikers. At first, detectives received hundreds of tips but, with the passing years, leads are hard to come by. “That is why I put the ad in. I am sure somebody must know something or have heard of something by now,” Stodden said. Stodden added that he will spend the rest of his life seeking justice for his daughter and wife of 30 years. He still lives in the house he shared with his wife Mary. “Tend to the same garden, the same hikes, do a lot of the same things,” Stodden said Those routines are painful, especially with another Christmas ahead without his wife and daughter. “When I see little girls playing with their fathers, it can be grueling,” Stodden said. If you have any information about this case, call the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office at (425) 388-3845. Stodden is also sharing his phone number (206) 280-8748 in the hopes of generating leads.