Saturday, August 10, 1985: 27-year-old Steve Harkins and his 42-year-old girlfriend, Ruth Cooper, leave their East Tacoma home for a weekend camping trip to South Pierce County.

Before heading out to a remote area near Roy, the pair of them attends a friend’s wedding reception. Witnesses say, shortly after the pair left, a man came to the party looking for Steve. He told guests he wanted to settle a dispute over damage that occurred to Steve’s Harley Davidson motorcycle.

August 14, 1985: A passerby finds Harkin’s body in his sleeping bag at a makeshift campsite at Tule Lake. Harkins appeared to have been shot in the forehead while he slept with a .22 caliber bullet. The couple’s dog was also found shot dead. Police search the area, but do not locate Ruth Cooper.

October 26, 1985: Hunters, walking at the end of 8^th Avenue South, find Cooper’s remains. She was several hundred yards from where Harkins was killed in thick brush. Her skull was found 50 feet from her body and purse. A tube sock was tied around her neck. Medical examiners attributed death to “homicidal violence.”

December 12, 1985: 36-year-old Michael Riemer, his 21-year-old girlfriend, Diana Robertson, and their 2-year-old daughter, Crystal go from their home in Puyallup to the Nisqually River near Elbe in Lewis County.

Reimer went to check on his fur traps, but took camping gear in his red pick-up truck with a topper. Later that same day, Crystal was found wandering around a K-Mart in Spanaway. She was too young to help police locate her mother, saying only that ‘mommy’s in the trees’.

February 18, 1986: A man walking his dog finds Robertson’s remains, buried in the snow along a logging road between Elbe and Mineral. She was left near Reimer’s truck, which was parked just off Highway 7, west of Mineral Lake. Robertson had been stabbed several times and had a tub sock tied around her neck. Riemer was nowhere to be found. On the truck’s windshield was a note that said ‘I love you Diana’. Police said at the time, the handwriting was inconclusive when compared to Reimer’s writing. There was blood on the passenger seat of the truck. Reimer’s father, a retired game warden, said Riemer never went into the woods without his .22 caliber pistol.

March 26, 2011: Reimer’s skull was discovered in an area near Mineral, approximately a half mile from where Robertson’s body was discovered 25 years earlier. Witnesses say the skull had a large hole in the side of it. During an excavation of the area, police later discovered a lower jawbone with teeth, a rubber boot, and some pieces of clothing. The teeth helped detectives determine the skull belonged to Michael Riemer.

November, 2011: Original detectives on the four homicide cases have retired or are deceased. The Pierce and Lewis County Sheriff’s departments have established a new task force to study these cold cases. They have submitted some new DNA evidence to the Washington State Patrol crime lab for analysis. For the first time, detectives have released a detailed description of the tube sock found at the Lewis County crime scene. They hope to generate new leads on the cold case.

Description of the tube sock is as follows: White, stretch, knee-high basketball sock, about 3 feet in length, with dark, navy-blue rings of color around the top. Detectives say it appeared a “little dingy”. When found around Robertson’s neck, it was tied in multiple knots.