Early in the summer of 1987, the body of a 4-year-old boy was found in an apple orchard near Sunnyside.
Alfonso Chavez was beaten to death, the Yakima County Coroner’s office said. His body was found on June 4, 1987, in an orchard off Factory Road near Sunnyside, about five miles from the apartment complex where he was last seen the evening before. Alfonso had left his grandmother’s apartment there around 5 p.m. to walk to an aunt’s apartment in the same complex, according to newspaper reports.
His homicide is among 52 cases highlighted in decks of cold case playing cards, Yakima County’s first. Authorities distribute them in correctional institutions. They hope the lure of reward money will encourage information leading to an arrest and conviction in a homicide, finding a long-missing person or helping identifying an unknown woman – and potentially her killer.
Mark Peterson, the president of Yakima County Crime Stoppers, likes to say there’s no honor among thieves. Crime Stoppers partnered with law enforcement agencies and funded the cards, a yearlong project initiated and coordinated by the Yakima Police Department.
Each playing card has a photo with key facts about an unsolved homicide or long-term missing person case and how to submit anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers. The cards are already in some Yakima County correctional facilities, with plans for broader distribution beyond the Yakima Valley as Crime Stoppers’ funding allows.
“Crime Stoppers represents all of the people out there, the people who want to see law enforcement do well,” Peterson said during a Tuesday news conference explaining the project. “We are anonymous. Not everyone wants to call into the police and say this is my name … for so many different reasons.
“But we have a track record of almost 90 murderers have been picked up in Yakima County, from the Lower Valley to the Upper Valley, and almost 2,000 felons. So this is a program that works,” he added. “I just think that the public in Yakima County is very lucky to have people like this that are very proactive; they want to work; they want to get the job done.”
The news conference took place at the Union Gap Police Department, which has three of the homicide cases. They are deaths of Roger Harrington, 66, and Tyler Aalbu, 32, in an intentionally set house fire on March 28, 2021, and Paul Evans, 43. He died of a gunshot on Oct. 23, 2019.
The cards feature 26 Yakima Police Department cases, 17 Yakima County Sheriff’s Office cases, three Sunnyside Police Department cases, three Union Gap Police Department cases and three FBI investigations. The FBI has jurisdiction in major crimes such as homicides, kidnappings and drug trafficking that involve Native Americans on tribal lands.
FBI cases highlighted in the cards include the June 12, 2021, fire that destroyed the Brownstown Tavern; unidentified human remains were found in the fire. There are also two homicides: the March 30, 2021, shooting death of Tiana Lee Rain Cloud, 20, at 3120 South Wapato Road in Wapato; and the Aug. 29, 2022 shooting death of Raymond Bending Jr., 62, in his home in the 3000 block of Lateral B near Wapato.
Yakima County Sheriff Robert Udell was among law enforcement agency leaders at the news conference. As he noted, every agency has cold cases that deserve attention. And with advances in DNA technology, “there are lots of opportunities to solve these cases,” he said.
“I think this is a fantastic project, and probably long overdue for our area,” Udell said.
How did they choose cases?
The cold case playing cards project began in summer 2023, not long after Yakima police Detective Kevin Cays was assigned to focus solely on cold cases. Earlier this year, he and others created a cold case team of retired law enforcement investigators, along with a retired judge. They meet every Wednesday to go over cases.
Yakima police officials reached out to homicide investigators throughout the county; collectively they came up with 52 cold cases. Cays said some cases were chose because of the challenges in solving them; others because they were well-known cases.
“The playing card idea was brought to us from (Cays), who found it. We thought it was a great idea, but with that, it was going to be a significant amount of work,” said interim Yakima Police Chief Shawn Boyle. “They had to review 52 cases, create a small synopsis, add a picture to each playing card for distribution.”
Once the idea was approved and Cays had a mockup, police officials approached Crime Stoppers, which “very enthusiastically” wanted to help, Boyle said.
“We appreciate them being able to help bring this to where we are today,” Boyle said of the nonprofit.
Decks of the cards may be released to the public eventually, but the goal is to distribute them in correctional facilities at this point, said Yakima police Lt. Chad Janis, who has worked with Cays and others on the project.
“At this point we want to get them into all of our regional correctional facilities and expand that even outside Yakima County, if we can,” he said. “Depending on the size of the facility, we are giving them a certain amount.”
Not a new idea
Though this is the first deck of cards of Yakima County cold cases, the idea isn’t new. Law enforcement agencies throughout the United States have used the idea with success.
The cold case unit of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office was the first law enforcement agency in Washington to create a deck of cold case playing cards. Snohomish County has every single cold case card on its website with a note if authorities have made an arrest.
One card featured a missing woman who was found alive 18 years after she disappeared.
Union Gap Police Chief Greg Cobb appreciated the opportunity to provide some leads and bring justice to the victims.
“The importance of constantly bringing these cases back around to people’s attention does provide leads and subsequently, some solved cases,” he said. “We had a … case where a detective had some spare time and was able to go out and work the case. It was about 20 years old and we were able to figure out who did that.”
Sometimes cases have no leads to go on at all, Cobb said. But people talk.
“One of the cases that is represented in the deck of cards – we have one witness to the homicide,” he said. “They couldn’t recall seeing or recognizing who it was, but we know that there (were) four people in this car that drove away. Those people talk to other people.
“And maybe somebody sees this deck of cards and they’re in a different circumstance now than they used to be,” Cobb added. “They may be willing to come forward with some information now that they’ve been reminded of this case, where previously they wouldn’t normally come forward and cooperate with the police.”
Sunnyside Police Chief Robert Layman is hopeful the cards jog memories. Someone may remember something, or they saw something, or they overheard something, he said. Especially in correctional facilities.
“People are talking all the time in correctional facilities,” he said. “Maybe their little tip or their little direction for a detective to go down could be what makes a difference in a case.”
The deck includes two long-term missing persons, both Yakima Police Department cases. They are Susan Libby Marable, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances on April 23, 1991; and Lawrence “Larry” Riegel, who was reported missing in early January 2010 after not being heard from since Christmas Day. Riegel is believed to have been the victim of a homicide, according to his cold case card.
Robyn Peery has spoken out for Marable, her sister, ever since she disappeared. She has worked closely with Cays and spoke in a cold-case video the department created about Marable. The department features a cold case in a video every month.
Peery had suggested the cold case playing cards idea to Yakima police several years ago, she said. She is pleased it’s happened, and that her sister’s case was included.
“I’m so thankful for the detective on my sister’s case for making it happen,” Peery said. “It means so much to me.”