It was September 1982. A Tuesday. Linda Strait was just 15 years old when she walked to a local store in Spokane, Washington, to buy a soda and some candy. She never made it home. For decades, the question of who killed Linda Strait hung over the Pacific Northwest like a permanent fog. It wasn't just another cold case; it was a wound that refused to heal for her family and a community that watched safety evaporate in real-time.
The details were haunting. Her body was found the next day along the Spokane River. She had been raped and strangled. Police at the time did what they could, collecting evidence that, in 1982, was basically a time capsule. They didn't have the tools to read it yet. They had a suspect—a man named Terry L. Nichols—but they couldn't prove a thing. He died in 2021, taking his secrets to the grave. Or so it seemed.
The Long Silence and the DNA Breakthrough
For almost 40 years, the file sat. Detectives retired. New ones took their place. The "who killed Linda Strait" mystery became one of those legendary cases spoken about in hushed tones at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.
Science eventually caught up to the crime.
In 2019, investigators decided to utilize Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG). If you've followed the Golden State Killer case, you know the drill. It’s about taking degraded DNA from a crime scene, uploading it to public databases like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA, and building a massive family tree backward until you find the branch where the killer sits. It's tedious work. It’s basically digital archeology.
Who Killed Linda Strait? Identifying Arbie Dean Wagoner
In early 2024, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office finally gave the public an answer. The man responsible wasn't the initial suspect, Terry Nichols. It was Arbie Dean Wagoner.
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Wagoner lived in the same neighborhood as Linda. He was 28 at the time of the murder. Think about that for a second. While the community was looking for a monster in the woods, the killer was likely a familiar face on the sidewalk. He lived a full life, grew old, and died in 2016 at the age of 62. He never faced a judge. He never wore handcuffs for what he did to that 15-year-old girl.
Detectives confirmed the match by testing DNA from Wagoner's surviving biological daughter. The results were undeniable. The "who killed Linda Strait" investigation was officially closed, providing a bittersweet resolution to a family that had spent 41 years wondering if they’d ever know the truth.
Why the Initial Investigation Failed
Honestly, it’s easy to judge 1980s police work through a modern lens, but the reality is they were flying blind. In 1982, DNA profiling didn't exist in forensic science. They relied on blood typing and hair analysis—both of which are notoriously "fuzzy" sciences.
Wagoner wasn't even a primary person of interest back then. He had a criminal record, sure, but he wasn't the guy everyone was pointing at. The focus on Nichols was a classic case of tunnel vision, a common pitfall in high-pressure homicide investigations. While police were trying to pin it on one guy, the actual killer was just living his life a few blocks away. It’s chilling.
The Role of Othram and Modern Forensics
The technical heavy lifting was done by Othram, a private lab that specializes in "unsolvable" cases. They don't just look at standard CODIS markers; they look at hundreds of thousands of genetic markers to build a profile.
Spokane detectives sent the skeletal remains of the DNA evidence to Othram's lab in Texas. They built the profile, and then the Sheriff’s Office’s genealogy team spent months chasing leads through census records, obituaries, and social media. This is how cold cases die now. It isn't about a "gotcha" moment in an interrogation room anymore. It’s about spreadsheets and distant cousins who took a DNA test for Christmas.
Misconceptions About the Case
You'll often hear people say that cold cases are "forgotten." That’s rarely true. In Linda’s case, her mother, Beverly, never stopped calling. Every time a new detective was assigned to the cold case unit, they got a call from the Strait family.
Another misconception is that DNA "solves" the case instantly. It doesn't. Even after Othram found a match, detectives had to go back and verify Wagoner’s whereabouts in 1982. They had to confirm he lived in the area. They had to rule out any possibility of consensual contact—which, given Linda was 15 and the crime was a brutal murder, was a formality, but a necessary one for legal closure.
The Impact on Spokane
When the announcement came out in February 2024, the reaction was a mix of relief and anger. Anger because Arbie Dean Wagoner escaped justice. He died a free man. There’s something fundamentally unfair about a killer getting to live to old age while their victim's life was snuffed out before it even really started.
But for the family, it was the end of the "not knowing." The monster finally had a name.
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Moving Forward: Actionable Steps for Cold Case Advocacy
If you are following a cold case or have a personal connection to one, the Linda Strait case proves that "unsolvable" is a temporary status. Here is what you can do to keep the momentum going for other cases:
- Support Public DNA Databases: If you’ve taken a DNA test through a commercial site, consider uploading your raw data to GEDmatch and opting into "law enforcement matching." This is the primary tool used to identify suspects like Wagoner.
- Fund Forensic Testing: Labs like Othram often work with DNASolves, a platform where the public can crowdfund the cost of DNA sequencing for specific cold cases. Many agencies simply don't have the budget for these $5,000 to $10,000 tests.
- Keep the Story Alive: Share articles, listen to podcasts that focus on factual reporting, and keep the victim's name in the public consciousness. Pressure from the public often encourages departments to allocate resources to stagnant files.
- Check Local Case Status: Most Sheriff’s offices have a cold case page. Look at it. See if there are cases from your neighborhood or era that might benefit from a fresh look or a new witness statement.
The resolution of who killed Linda Strait is a testament to the fact that time does not protect a killer as much as it used to. The technology has arrived. The secrets are being unearthed. Even if the perpetrator is dead, the truth remains, and for the families left behind, the truth is the only thing that actually matters.
The investigation into Linda's death is now permanently closed. Arbie Dean Wagoner's name is now synonymous with the crime he thought he got away with. While he never saw a prison cell, his legacy is now defined by the 1982 murder of a teenage girl, ensuring he will be remembered not as a neighbor or a father, but as the man who was finally caught by a strand of his own code.