Victim’s daughter a ‘person of interest’ in 1998 murder

Post Falls police have named two missing women as persons of interest in the 1998 murder of a 52-year-old woman. One of them is the victim’s daughter.

Barbara Loesch was found floating in her hot tub with an unplugged TV set in the water.

Though a former Clarkston, Wash., man was sentenced in 2004 to life in prison for Loesch’s death, Post Falls police now say 34-year-old Tina Rose Loesch and her partner, 41-year-old Skye Hanson, are persons of interest in the case.

When Bradley Steckman confessed to Barbara Loesch’s murder, he gave police information that led them to believe the women may be involved, Post Falls police Lt. Greg McLean said.

Both women were friends with Steckman.

He told authorities an accomplice salted the water in the hot tub to improve its conductivity, and Steckman was promised $10,000 to murder Barbara Loesch.

He said the murder was part of a scheme to cash in on her $500,000 life insurance policy.

Tina Loesch, the beneficiary of her mother’s policy, signed the entire amount over to Hanson, McLean said. She and Hanson disappeared in October 1999.

There are rumors the women left the country, McLean said.

Also missing is Tina Loesch’s son, Kristopher Loesch, who would be 15 now.

At one time, McLean said he feared Tina Loesch and Kristopher Loesch were dead. He said this week that Post Falls police were trying to keep the case quiet in hopes the trio wouldn’t go deeper into hiding.

Post Falls police named the women as persons of interest in the case after Steve Cassell, a 55-year-old Spokane Valley man who is acquainted with the women, was indicted last week on unrelated charges.

McLean said Cassell and his wife, Spokane defense attorney Julie Twyford, had Kristopher Loesch living with them from 1999 to 2000.

The boy was reportedly enrolled at Spokane’s Shiloh Hills Elementary School under the alias Christopher Robinson.

“He just didn’t show up for school one day, and his transcripts have never been forwarded,” McLean said.

McLean went to Spokane on Thursday and interviewed Steve Cassell, who was booked on federal charges of illegal money transactions.

He was released Thursday on $5,000 bail.

“At the time, an 11-year-old child just basically vanished,” McLean said.

“No one seems to want to tell me where he went.”

Cassell and Twyford didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment Tuesday. Twyford gained prominence in Spokane in the 1980s, when she was co-counsel for South Hill rapist Kevin Coe.

Before his sentencing for Barbara Loesch’s death, Steckman was sentenced to 18 years in Washington prison for the 1996 suffocation death of an 89-year-old Pullman woman, Dorothy Martin.

Pullman police previously said they believed Hanson and Tina Loesch had information in that case.

They had searched the women’s home in Clarkston and found evidence buried in the basement.

Kootenai County sheriff’s detectives are still investigating another homicide in the Loesch family – the November 1995 shooting death of Barbara Loesch’s husband, Gary.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper carrier was shot in the head and killed as he delivered newspapers.

No arrests have been made in his killing.