Guilty plea in July 4th abduction, killing of Tacoma girl

A former handyman and tow-truck driver pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping a 12-year-old girl last July Fourth, raping her, killing her and leaving her body in a patch of thick brush.

The plea in Pierce County Superior Court to an aggravated first-degree murder charge means that Terapon Adhahn will spend the rest of his life in prison, without the chance of parole. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against the Thai immigrant, and he led them to her body.

In a hearing before Judge Rosanne Buckner, Adhahn admitted he kidnapped Zina Linnik from an alley behind her home at twilight and dumped her body in a wooded area near Silver Lake in eastern Pierce County. Linnik and her siblings had been watching a neighborhood fireworks display.

Investigators said her father saw a gray van leave the scene, and that his partial recollection of the license plate helped them track down Adhahn at a home south of Tacoma.

Adhahn also pleaded guilty Monday to a dozen other charges in the rapes of two girls from the Tacoma area, ages 11 and 12. He remains a person of interest in the late 2005 abduction and killing of Adre'Anna Jackson, a 10-year-old girl whose remains were found in a Pierce County field.

Linnik's abduction and death prompted state lawmakers to pass one law that will let police collect DNA samples from a wider array of sex offenders, and another to let authorities publish the names of offenders on a statewide Web site if the offenders fail to tell police where they are living. Gov. Chris Gregoire signed both bills into law last month.

Adhahn came to the U.S. in the 1970s after his mother married a U.S. soldier. He was convicted of incest in 1990 for violently raping a 16-year-old female relative and sentenced to two months in jail, plus five years of counseling. He told his counselors that he had been raped countless times by an older brother while growing up in Thailand, according to a mental evaluation filed in Pierce County Superior Court as part of that case.

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Information from: The News Tribune, http://www.thenewstribune.com