OLYMPIA — A Washington man accused of killing his 3-year-old son in Montana talked to investigators about a cold case in which an unrelated child went missing in 1996, according to court documents.
In a search-warrant application, a detective wrote that Jeremy Cramer mentioned to authorities that he had researched the case of Katrina Nash, 15, whose body was found in an Olympia park in 2005 in a case that remains unsolved. Olympia Police Lt. Jim Costa, who handled the Nash case for years, said he is aware of Cramer’s statements but has no reason to believe the man has a connection to Nash.
“There isn’t anything at this point that is going to cause me to reopen this investigation,” Costa said.
As part of the search of Cramer’s computer, authorities planned to retrieve any information about Cramer’s interest in the Nash case. Montana authorities also are looking to collect information from the computer for their homicide investigation, according to the warrant application from July 11.
Prosecutors have said in court documents that Cramer, 38, told his father in a jailhouse phone call that he killed his 3-year-old son, Brody, after taking pills and running out of gas on a remote road in southwestern Montana.
Cramer’s wife had reported her husband and child missing from their Lacey home July 8. Cramer was later arrested in a Montana gas station washing blood off his clothes and body.
Brody’s beaten and stabbed body was later found in a field. Cramer has since been charged with deliberate homicide.
In 1996, Nash slipped out of a room in the emergency section of Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia after her mother had taken her there because she had reportedly been acting strangely. Her remains were discovered in an Olympia park in 2005, but officials were unable to determine a cause of death.
Costa said it appears that Cramer was recently attending the same church that Katrina Nash had attended, but that he had not been going there for long. It’s not a very large church, Costa said, so Cramer might have seen a picture of Nash, had a conversation with someone about her or found information about the case on the Internet.
Cramer’s court-appointed attorney, Sherry Staedler, said she hadn’t heard about the Nash case and had not seen the search-warrant affidavit.
