2022 WCSO Annual Report - Report - Page 12
INVESTIGATIONS
OVERVIEW
Washington County provides public safety services
to all city and urban unincorporated neighborhoods
and rural communities, including prosecution, jail,
and other incarceration services, probation and parole
supervision, juvenile crime prevention, special law enforcement teams and other law enforcement services,
such as forensics and investigations.
Each part of the public safety system is essential in
protecting our community. WCSO detectives investigate the most complex crimes. Their findings support
the Washington County District Attorney’s Office in
seeking justice and protecting the community by
prosecuting crimes like homicide, domestic violence,
child abuse, and child pornography.
Working together, these two agencies oversee different parts of the public safety system, but ultimately
both work toward safety and justice for victims.
COLD CASE SOLVED: Man Arrested for 1974 Murders of Two Teenagers
On October 3, 1974, 16-year-old Donald Bartron and 18-year-old Peter Zito, Jr., were
murdered in the Oak Hills Recreation Center parking lot. Bartron and Zito Jr. had
been shot multiple times in the head with a .22 caliber gun.
On Wednesday, November 2, 2022, just over 48 years later, detectives arrested
65-year-old Steven Paul Criss for those murders. Criss lived in Aloha, where
detectives arrested him near his home. Detectives assigned to the Violent Crimes
Unit also handle cold case investigations, and they developed multiple new leads
in this case during 2022.
Even then, deputies identified Criss as a potential suspect shortly after the
murders. In December 1974, then-Deputy Jim Spinden arrested Criss for theft.
Spinden, who later became the 31st Sheriff of Washington County, also found
Criss had an illegally concealed .22 caliber handgun in his car. At the time, no
ballistic match could be made between that gun and the murders in Oak Hills,
so the gun was returned to Criss after the theft case was concluded.
Criss joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to Ft. Lewis in Washington. In
1976, he used that same gun to murder his sergeant, Jacob “Kim” Brown. Criss shot Sgt.
Brown multiple times in the head. That murder was investigated first by the Pierce County
(WA) Sheriff’s Department and then by the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation
Division (CID). Criss ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 35 years in Fort
Leavenworth, although he was paroled and released in 1988.
In 2022, detectives submitted ballistic evidence to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF). The ATF reported a presumptive match between evidence from the
10 | 2022 WCSO Annual Report
