In the fall of 1986, 16-year-old Kimberly Ann Payne was trying to find her way. A runaway living in the Parkland area of Pierce County, Washington, she was known to frequent the Paradise Village Bowl, a local bowling alley. Her life, full of potential yet to be realized, was cut tragically short before she had the chance to find her path. On October 6, 1986, her body was discovered by three children playing in a gravel pit near Parkland.
The young girl's life had been stolen, leaving a void in her family and a mystery that would haunt the community for decades.
Kimberly, born on June 4, 1970, was the second youngest of eight children. In the initial investigation into her death, police received a promising tip that she had been seen with a man named "Kim Burkhard." However, with no further leads to follow, the trail went cold. For a time, investigators considered the possibility that her murder might be connected to the Green River Killer, who was active in the region, but she was eventually ruled out as a victim of that prolific serial killer. With no new information, Kimberly's case was relegated to the files of unsolved homicides, one of many that detectives hoped to one day close.
The case remained dormant for more than two decades. Then, in April 2009, a dedicated detective from the Tacoma Police Department, Gene Miller, began the arduous task of organizing the county's cold cases. As he reviewed the files of Kimberly Payne and another murdered teenager, 17-year-old Denise Sallee, who had also been killed in 1986, he noticed a recurring detail. Denise, like Kimberly, had last been seen at the Paradise Village Bowl. In the original reports for both cases, a name kept appearing, though it was spelled differently each time.
Intrigued by this connection, Detective Miller used a software program to search for similar-sounding names. This led him to a man named Timothy Ray Burkhart. Digging into Burkhart's past, Miller discovered a disturbing history. Burkhart had been a suspect in an attempted kidnapping in 1984, though he was never charged. More significantly, he was the confirmed killer of two women in 2001: 72-year-old Kathryn Coates, who was bludgeoned in her home, and 48-year-old Rebecca Nash, who was strangled during a burglary.
The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit. Burkhart, who went by the name Kim, was a serial killer who had been active in the same area and at the same time as the murders of Kimberly and Denise. In 2001, while under investigation for the murders of Coates and Nash, Timothy Burkhart had taken his own life. On July 2, 2001, as police closed in, he died of a drug overdose, leaving behind a suicide note whose contents have never been made public. Evidence found in a storage locker, including blood-stained clothes and items stolen from Rebecca Nash's apartment, solidified his guilt in the 2001 killings.
With Burkhart identified as a strong suspect in the 1986 murders, Detective Miller sought to definitively link him to the crimes. He submitted DNA evidence that had been preserved from the cold cases to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) for comparison against Burkhart's profile. The results came back as a positive match. After 23 years of uncertainty, Timothy Ray Burkhart was officially identified as the killer of both Kimberly Ann Payne and Denise Sallee.
Though justice could not be served in a courtroom, the identification of her killer finally brought answers to Kimberly's family. The case is now considered solved, with the primary suspect deceased. Timothy Ray Burkhart, a serial killer who evaded capture for his earliest crimes for over two decades, was ultimately held accountable through the persistence of cold-case detectives and the advancement of forensic science. Investigators believe Burkhart may be responsible for other unsolved murders, leaving open the possibility that the full scope of his violent history is not yet known.
