The victims: Is Colacurcio the common link in 5 deaths?

Everett "Fritz" Fretland, 43

Bar owner was found shot to death in the Wagon Wheel Restaurant and Bar in Yakima County on Sept. 6, 1975.

In the summer of 1975, a Yakima-area nightclub owner and business partner of Frank Colacurcio Sr. offered Fretland $35,000 for his Yakima bar, the Strand Cafe. Fretland turned him down.

In August, an explosion and fire occurred at the bar. Arson was suspected.

One month later, Fretland was found shot five times in the back inside another business he owned, the Wagon Wheel restaurant. After his death, a man who had once worked as a doorman at a Colacurcio nightclub in Seattle took over management of the Wagon Wheel, the Yakima Herald-Republic later reported.

Investigators reopened the case in 2006.

The nightclub owner who tried to buy Fretland's Yakima bar had since died. But investigators re-interviewed others and found a new witness, a person who had overheard the plans for Fretland's murder, according to court records.

In November, investigators arrested an ex-convict from Everett, Gary Isaacs. He was charged with first-degree murder in what investigators described as a contract hit disguised as a robbery.

Witnesses told investigators Isaacs was to be paid $30,000, according to court records.

Isaacs, 56, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Frank "Sharkey" Hinkley, 45, and Barbara Rosenfield, 42

Strip-club owner and fiancée were found shot to death in the Bear Cave strip club near Boeing Field on Nov. 3, 1975.

Colacurcio was nearing the end of a prison term for a 1971 racketeering conviction and planned to expand his strip clubs.

But he feared he wouldn't get licenses because of problems with Hinkley's clubs, the Bear Cave and the Lucky Lady, according to investigators. Liquor inspectors had cited both clubs for lewd activity nearly 200 times.

In 1974, the Lucky Lady in North Seattle exploded, destroyed by an arsonist.

Later, an associate of Colacurcio approached Hinkley and asked him to "clean up his act," informants told police.

Hinkley refused, law-enforcement officials said.

It wasn't long after that he and Rosenfield were killed.

Last year, as the result of new information in the case, detectives arrested James Braman Jr., 56, and he was charged with the killings. The investigators hoped he would provide information about possible links to Colacurcio.

But Braman refused to cooperate, cryptically telling detectives "they'll kill me," according to court records.

He was released on bail about two weeks after his arrest and four days later killed himself with an overdose of methadone, a painkiller he had been taking for his untreatable liver cancer.

Leroy Grant, 36

Mechanic was found shot to death on a Maple Valley road on Jan. 26, 1978.

Grant was left dead at the foot of an embankment along a Maple Valley road. His car was found outside a Renton restaurant, where he had expected to meet a woman to look at her Corvette.

About a year later, a woman named Karen L. Martin approached federal prosecutors in Seattle, claiming to have details about contract killings and organized crime. She said she had information about Colacurcio Sr., said Daryll Whitehead, a retired Internal Revenue Service agent then investigating him.

Federal prosecutors offered Martin immunity from charges in exchange for her cooperation — then were shocked when she revealed she had shot Grant, Whitehead said.

Martin told them she was hired by a man acting on behalf of someone in organized crime, according to court records. She was to be paid $10,000 to kill Grant but never received the money.

She believed she was hired to kill the victim because he had obtained money "he was not supposed to have gotten," according to the court documents.

Prosecutors never sought formal immunity for Martin, and they never interviewed her again. But because they had made the offer of immunity, they never shared her confession with local detectives who could have pursued murder charges.

For nearly 25 years, that information remained hidden in federal files.

When investigators took a look at the case as part of the new investigation, they learned of the deal between Martin and the federal prosecutors. They concluded the old immunity offer was not binding on them. One investigator persuaded Martin to talk last year by suggesting her DNA had been found at the scene. She then said she had shot Grant, according to court records.

In December, detectives arrested Martin, now 52. She was charged with first-degree murder.

Investigators would like Martin to provide more information, but she has pleaded not guilty and isn't talking.

Rex Parsons, 49

Informant disappeared in August 1984; body found near Snoqualmie on April 1, 1985.

In the spring of 1985, a retired police officer walking his dog in the woods stumbled across the skeletal remains of a police informant who had been shot in the head.

That informant was Parsons, a con man from Arizona last seen with a Colacurcio associate.

Parsons had a long history of fraud — including a conviction for bilking Colorado banks. In the early 1980s, after he was arrested in Phoenix on a felony warrant, he agreed to become a police informant. For weeks, he answered the questions of an FBI agent and former Phoenix detective John Berentz.

"Many cases were made off his testimony," Berentz said recently.

In August 1984, Parsons flew to Seattle to pursue a construction loan with a savings and loan. A loan officer dropped Parsons off at Seattle's Sorrento Hotel, where he met with James F. McQuade, a Colacurcio associate.

A large sum of cash was found with Parsons' remains, ruling out robbery. Detectives suspected Parsons was killed because of his role as an informant.

After Parsons' death, McQuade, then living in Missoula, Mont., told a local newspaper that he had met with Parsons to discuss business and that he had no idea who killed him.

McQuade told the newspaper he became a friend of Colacurcio while working at one of his Seattle nightspots. He visited Colacurcio in prison seven times in the 1980s, the newspaper reported.

McQuade, 69, now living in Spokane, declined requests to be interviewed.

"He used to work for me years ago," Colacurcio said in a recent interview. "I don't know anything else about him."

Investigators still hope someone will come forward with information about Parsons' death, said King County Detective Scott Tompkins.

"Somebody knows," he said.

— Steve Miletich and Jim Brunner