Nina Culver: Favorite stories of 2015

Technically I’m called the night police reporter, but really I’m the night breaking news and occasional feature reporter. While it sometimes seems - even to me - that the only thing I write about is death and mayhem, I am able to cover a wide variety of topics. Sometimes, I even get the chance to do a heartwarming story that restores my somewhat battered faith in humanity.

In my job I usually don’t know what I’m going to be doing that day when I walk in the door. Most days I like that. But sometimes things can become a little too regular. In the summer of 2015 I often said that I wasn’t the police reporter, I was the wildfire reporter.

The stories listed below are among my favorites from 2015. Only one of them has to do with fire.

1. “Aunt, uncle unlocked cold case mystery”

Ellen Criswell never met the girl in the mid-1980s photo who had a big smile, thick glasses and feathered, brown hair.

She and her husband, Donald Criswell, saw their niece in person only as a baby.

Last year, Criswell discovered that her niece Deanna Criswell, of Spokane, had not been heard from for decades and had never even been reported as missing.

Though the rest of the family hadn’t bothered to look, the aunt and uncle went on a quest to find their forgotten niece.

I paired up with editor Jonathan Brunt for this story about a couple who searched doggedly for their niece, who was never reported missing after vanishing in 1987. I was touched by their efforts on behalf of a girl they really never knew.

Their dogged determination turned up her body and her likely killer, a man who had died in prison on other charges.

2. “Nothing but questions: Lacking motive and evidence, police search for killer of Zachary Lamb”

Zachary Lamb was living his dream.

He had a job he liked and had recently gotten a promotion. He and his fiancee were planning a wedding and had just learned they were expecting a baby.

It all ended abruptly when he was gunned down in the street outside his apartment near 10th Avenue and Elm Street just before midnight Nov. 7 as his fiancee sat in their car.

Police have little evidence, few clues and no suspects, despite months of investigation.

Losing a child, especially losing one to what seems to be random, senseless violence, is every mother’s worst nightmare. The mother of Zachary Lamb is still living that nightmare. She spoke to me about her love for her son, the child he never got to see and the fear that her son’s killer is still on the streets.

Everyone spoke highly of Lamb, who loved to cook and was working in a restaurant. His murder remains unsolved despite a reward for information.

3. “Scammer targets careful couple, robbing them of entire life savings in a sophisticated con”

Marv and Penny Wasser were careful with their money. They saved for their retirement and had only one credit card, which they paid off in full every month.

But that meant little - and they have little left - after they were targeted by a sophisticated con.

The couple, who were wary of potential scammers when contacted by strangers, listened to the man who claimed he was a Los Angeles Police Department detective and asked for their help in an investigation designed to arrest identity thieves. In the end, they lost their entire life savings, nearly $500,000, and were once left unable to buy groceries.

It wasn’t a simple fraud case. The so-called detective was frequently in phone contact with the couple over several months, grooming them to trust him.

Scammers count on the fact that their victims are embarrassed about being taken in, sometimes so much so that they don’t report the crimes to police. Marv and Penny Wasser struggled with those feelings as well. Penny had to convince her husband to get over his embarrassment about being scammed before he would agree to talk to me.

A photographer and I spent a lot of time with the Wassers as they detailed the elaborate scam that drew them in. It was sometimes painful to listen to, because we knew how it ended. But it all sounded so plausible to them at the time, which is why the couple wanted to tell their story as a warning to others.

4. “Surrounded by flames, county crew saves home”

There was no time to take photos off the walls or pack any family mementos.

With flames rushing toward them, Davy Caven and his son-in-law, Chuck Kelley, grabbed their dogs and miniature goats, put them in their cars and made a run for it.

“I saw 100-foot flames,” said Caven. “It was just a wall of flames.”

Just before Caven left his home on Wednesday afternoon a crew of three Spokane County Fire District 3 firefighters arrived. They told him it was time to go.

After he drove down his lengthy driveway, Caven stopped and looked back. He saw only fire. The flames had overrun the driveway.

So sure the home was about to be devoured by flames, he called his wife and told her it was gone.

When I arrived at the Caven house the day after the Fish Lake fire, I stopped to ask a firefighter if it was okay to go down the driveway. Smoke was rising from both sides of the road and I was somewhat astonished to be told to go right ahead. There was still a firefighting crew putting out hot spots next to the home’s deck.

The Cavens told me of their gratitude toward a crew of firefighters who, cut off by flames, hunkered down with a fire engine and saved their home. The blackened remnants of a forest completely surrounded the home.

5. “Higher education has lost a giant: Influential WSU president Elson Floyd dies of cancer at 59”

Elson S. Floyd, whose love for education took him from writing math problems in the sand as a boy when his family could not afford paper to the leader of major university systems, died Saturday.

Floyd, 59, led Washington State University since 2007. His work at WSU culminated earlier this year in the state Legislature’s decision to allow WSU to start its own medical school after a hard-fought and public battle - first with the University of Washington and then with some lawmakers.

“Higher education has lost a giant, and the world has lost one of its kindest human beings,” Ryan Durkan, chair of the WSU board of regents, said in an email sent to WSU faculty and staff Saturday morning. “His tenure was unprecedented.”

Word of Elson Floyd’s death came out on a Saturday morning, which made it difficult to reach friends and colleagues that knew him. But a day of phone calls and emails turned into a good story about Floyd and his lasting impact on WSU and everyone who knew him.

I never got the chance to meet Floyd while he was alive. By the time I finished writing the story, I wished I had.

6. “Charges added against suspect: Murry waited for wife after killing family”

Triple-murder suspect Roy Murry shot three relatives and then waited 90 minutes in the hope of killing his estranged wife, too, according to new court documents that paint a chilling picture of an unfinished plot.

Murry’s sister Laura Murry told investigators that she was so afraid of her brother in the period leading up to the killings that she hid his guns.

He got them back, including a Walther .22-caliber pistol that he stands accused of using to kill his mother-in-law, Lisa Canfield, her husband, Terry Canfield, and Lisa Canfield’s son, John Constable.

Prosecutors say Murry then waited at the home along Chattaroy Road north of Spokane for his wife to return from an evening nursing shift at a local hospital.

This was an incident that started as a fire with three bodies found inside the home. It quickly turned disturbing and even frightening as new details continued to emerge about the murder suspect, Roy Murry, and his alleged actions. A family friend told police that Lisa Canfield was concerned that Murry might try to hurt them.

This story has not finished unfolding. Murry is still awaiting trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and arson.

7. “Harvest boon: Friends, neighbors bring in ailing farmer’s crop”

The farmers surrounding this small Whitman County town all know each other. They went to school together, played on the same football team and rode the same school bus home.

So when Steve Swannack landed in the hospital with a severe case of pancreatitis two months ago, his neighbors and friends immediately banded together to help out. They cut and baled his hay and moved his herd of nearly 100 cows. On Saturday, they hopped in their combines and drove down the highway to harvest all 1,000 acres of Swannack’s fields.

This is one of those stories that warms your heart. It was somewhat awe inspiring to see a row of half a dozen combines churning through a wheat field in record time. The farmers were there even though they still had their own fields to finish harvesting, but they thought nothing of setting aside their work to help a friend in need.

I had often seen lonely combines making their way though fields as I drove down narrow highways in wheat country and wondered what it would be like to ride in one. Thanks to this story, I was able to find out. And since it was around 100 degrees that day, I was grateful they had air conditioning.