In the early morning hours of July 24, 1997, Hector Lopez Partida, a 29-year-old Hispanic man, was sleeping under a blanket near a grain silo in Wenatchee, Washington. A transient man, he had found what seemed to be a safe place to rest behind a store on South Wenatchee Avenue. But in an act of sudden and unprovoked brutality, he was attacked as he slept, stabbed seven times and stomped.
The vicious assault was the work of a man who would later be identified as a serial killer with ties to white supremacist organizations.
Despite his catastrophic injuries, Hector managed to stumble to a nearby parking lot where he collapsed. Someone saw him and called 911. When Wenatchee Police officers arrived, they found him clinging to life. Before he succumbed to his wounds just a few minutes later, an officer asked who had done this to him. His last words were reported to be, "Gavachos (white guys)." The coroner later confirmed his death was a homicide caused by the stabbing. Investigators searched the area and found a crucial piece of evidence about 100 yards from the attack: a blood-spattered T-shirt. The blood on the outside of the shirt belonged to Hector Lopez Partida, but for years, the killer's identity remained a mystery.
The case went cold for nearly a decade. In 2005, detectives with the Wenatchee Police Department resubmitted the T-shirt to the state crime lab, hoping that advances in forensic technology could reveal new leads. Their persistence paid off. In January 2009, the lab reported a stunning break in the case: DNA extracted from sweat in the armpit area of the shirt was a match to a convicted felon named Jason Eugene Bush. At the time of Hector's murder, Bush was 22 years old and had not been on the police's radar for the crime.
The DNA match suddenly cast a bright light on a dark and violent history. Bush, known as "Gunny," had long-standing ties to the Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups. Following the DNA discovery, confidential informants came forward, telling detectives that Bush had bragged about killing people in Wenatchee. One informant recounted how, in the summer or fall of 1997, Bush boasted that he and another man had killed "a Mexican" behind a store, saying they "stomped him, stabbed him, and left him to bleed out."
By the time Wenatchee police officially charged him with second-degree murder for Hector’s death in June 2009, Jason Bush was already in custody in Arizona for other horrific crimes. On May 30, 2009, Bush had participated in a home invasion in Arivaca, Arizona, where he shot and killed 29-year-old Raul Flores Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia. The attack was part of a plan to steal money and drugs to fund a vigilante border-watch group. Bush was arrested for those murders, and during questioning, he eventually confessed to being the gunman.
Investigators also linked Bush to the September 1997 execution-style murder of an 18-year-old associate, Jonathan Bumstead, who Bush allegedly killed for being a "traitor to the race." Bush was a serial killer, responsible for at least three murders and suspected in others. For his crimes in Arizona, which included two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and armed robbery, Jason Eugene Bush was convicted and sentenced to death, with an additional 78 years in prison.
Given the severity of his sentence in Arizona, prosecutors in Washington decided not to extradite Bush to stand trial for the murder of Hector Lopez Partida. While he was never tried specifically for Hector's death, the DNA evidence and his own chilling admissions left no doubt about his guilt. The cold-blooded, racially motivated killing of a homeless man sleeping by a grain silo was finally solved, bringing a name and a measure of justice to the tragic end of Hector Lopez Partida's life.
