Submitted by Mark & Jeanna Spawn.
A fun family night out turned to tragedy on January 23, 1999 at the New Frontier Lanes bowling alley on Center Street in Tacoma, WA. when 2-year-old Teekah Lewis vanished from the bowling alley’s arcade area and was never seen again.
Teekah is multi-racial: African American, Caucasian and Native American with ancestry from the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa Nation; she has black hair with a silver streak along the right side and brown eyes.
The investigation is a genuine whodunnit, with several theories and multiple possibilities, each posing a degree of plausibility – but only one scenario can be true. Which one is it?
Police have explored a woman who was asking to hold patron’s babies at the bowling alley the same evening. And after Teekah disappeared, the same woman had brazenly taken Teekah’s baby sister outside to her own car and refused to give her back to Teekah’s mother. Police intervened and placed the woman in a squad car where she attempted suicide with a seat belt. But there was also a witness who saw a car speeding away from the parking lot of the bowling alley at about the same time Teekah went missing, and a similar car was described earlier in the day attempting to abduct 2 children from a park about a mile from the bowling alley. There were also reports of a white man with a pock-marked face who was seen ushering a mixed-race little girl toward a bathroom at the Frontier Lanes; and a woman who called police concerned about a statement her son made about getting out of town quickly that same night – he was described as having a pock-marked face. Listeners will also hear of other strange incidents and eerie encounters lending to suspicions of possible involvement in Teekah’s disappearance.
In this week’s episode of APB Cold Case, host, former police chief Mark Spawn interviews the current detective in charge of the case as well as Teekah’s heartbroken mother who is begging for answers. Details of the investigation are included in the episode along with key take-aways that might jog the memory of listeners – a man with a pock-marked face; someone with a Pontiac Grand Am; or a person with knowledge of the other suspicious incidents in the Tacoma area. Listen to the episode and check out detailed show notes including photographs, map, timeline, who’s who, and blog at www.apbcoldcase.com.
