Body found of teen missing since 1996

05:28 PM PST on Thursday, March 3, 2005

Associated Press and KING 5 Staff Reports

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Bones found in Watershed Park have been identified as those of a teenager who ran away from a hospital where she had been taken for a mental health check nearly nine years ago.

Investigators now face a daunting task in trying to determine the cause of death of Katrina Nash, 15, of Olympia, police Cmdr. Tor Bjornstad said Wednesday.

"It's going to be a very difficult task to determine what happened, but we're certainly going to give it a shot,” said Bjornstad.

A forensics team completed its examination Thursday, but they still don't know the cause of death.

Nash's skull was spotted Sunday by a man walking in the northern part of the park, leg bones were found Monday about 40 feet away and more bones were uncovered Tuesday in the same marshy area near an Interstate 5 access ramp, police said.

On June 18, 1996, Nash, the youngest of nine children, slipped out of a room in the emergency section of Providence St. Peter Hospital, where her mother had brought her because she was acting strangely and the family doctor thought she might be manic-depressive.

Police soon received many reports of someone matching the girl's description, including one at a truck stop in Hawk's Prairie in neighboring Lacey and another along the freeway onramp by the park.

Nash was listed on a national register through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, generating scores of tips from around the country, but none amounted to much and no specific individual was ever linked to her disappearance, Bjornstad said.

Early on, the family searched tirelessly. They even called KING 5’s Evening Magazine to help.

"For the first couple of years I wasn't functioning, so the only thing I could do was scrap(book),” said Dottie Nash, the victim’s mother.

She finally has some closure to the scrapbook of memories she opened right after her Katrina disappeared.

"We'd still like some answers, but at least at this point we've gotten some closure on it,” said Nash.