Women charged in 1998 Idaho hot tub murder found dead
Suicide pact ends 10-year-old slaying case
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:35 AM PST
POST FALLS (AP) — Two women recently charged in a decade-old north Idaho murder have been found dead in Arizona with a suicide note expressing remorse over the 1998 killing. The bodies of Tina Loesch, 37, and Skye Hanson, 44, were found Saturday in a sport utility vehicle near Tucson, Ariz., hours after the case was aired on national television in an episode of ‘‘America’s Most Wanted.’’
‘‘It appears both entered into a suicide pact to have Tina kill Skye and then Tina kill herself,’’ Post Falls police Capt. Scot Haug told the Coeur d’Alene Press.
Police found a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol in the vehicle and the women had gunshot wounds to the head, Haug said. A letter signed by Tina Loesch was left in the vehicle, along with a will from Hanson. Authorities are now looking for Loesch’s 18-year-old son, Kristopher. In October, the Kootenai County prosecutor issued first-degree murder warrants for Tina Loesch and Hanson in the death of Loesch’s mother, Barbara Loesch, a Post Falls woman who was electrocuted in a hot tub in her back yard. Tina Loesch had purchased a $500,000 life insurance policy in her mother’s name and listed herself as the beneficiary. She was awarded the money after police ruled the death an accident.
Police previously suspected Tina Loesch in the 1995 murder of her father, Gary Loesch, who was shot to death while delivering newspapers in Kootenai County. Police say the woman had motive to kill her father because of a rift between the two.
That case remains unsolved.
In her suicide note, Loesch wrote of her sorrow over the death of her father, ‘‘but said she didn’t have anything to do with it,’’ Haug said. In the letter, Loesch also wrote that she had watched Bradley Steckman kill her mother.
Steckman has confessed to the murder, telling police in 2004 that Loesch and Hanson promised him $10,000 to do it.
Steckman is serving a life sentence in a Washington state prison after his conviction in the 1996 murder of an 89-year-old woman from Pullman, Wash.
