Thai man to escape death penalty in the US

Eight days after Zina Linnik, the Tacoma girl's July 4 abduction, Terapon Adhahn, a handyman who once served in the elite Army Rangers, agreed to take searchers to a forest near Silver Lake where Zina's lifeless body lay.

Seattle Post Intelligencer.com reported Tuesday that in exchange for his cooperation, Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne, a long-time capital punishment proponent, agreed to take the death penalty off the table.

Adhahn, a convicted sex offender already charged with raping two other local girls, was charged Monday with aggravated murder, first-degree rape and first-degree kidnapping. If convicted, the 42-year-old Thai immigrant will spend the rest of his life in prison -- the only other option under state law.

Calling the deal "a decision made in urgent circumstances," Horne said Monday that investigators were holding on to the hope that Adhahn would lead them to Zina while she was still alive.

Adhahn was identified as a suspect in Zina's disappearance four days after the girl was taken from an alley behind her family's Hilltop neighborhood home.

But, Horne said, Adhahn refused to cooperate with investigators without a promise that the death penalty wouldn't be pursued. On July 12, he led detectives to a wooded lot near Silver Lake in eastern Pierce County. There, they found the girl's body dumped in the underbrush.

Seattle PI said quoted Horne as saying a medical examiner determined Zina died of blunt force trauma to the head before being moved to Silver Lake.

Tests showed Adhahn's DNA on Linnik's body, which was apparently present because of sexual contact, according to court documents.

The defendant pleaded not guilty last week to 11 felony counts related to sexual assaults on two other girls, and to failing to register as a sex offender. He pleaded guilty in 1990 to incest for sexually assaulting a grown family member.

The day after Zina disappeared, Adhahn told co-workers that he needed to return to Thailand, according to charging papers.

Adhahn had also cleaned the inside of his gray van, the one police believe Zina's father, Mikhail Linnik, spotted moments after hearing his daughter scream the night she disappeared.