Girl slain in Tacoma 'could have been me'

By Casey McNerthney, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 2, 2007

Blinded and silenced by duct tape, her hands bound, Sabrina Rasmussen feared what would happen next.

Minutes earlier, a stranger had forced the 11-year-old girl into his Dodge Ram pickup about a block from her Tacoma middle school. He threatened to stab her, muffled her screams with a nicotine-stained hand.

Rasmussen pleaded for her life, when he briefly allowed her to talk. She pried for any details that might lead police to her abductor -- if she survived.
She asked his name. He wouldn't say. She asked if he had kids, hoping to strike an emotional chord. He wouldn't say.

"Don't scream," he told her. "I'm not going to kill you."

Terrified, Rasmussen never believed that as they drove to a remote wooded spot that serves as a training area for Fort Lewis soldiers. There, he stripped off her clothes, taped her to a tree and raped her for more than an hour.

Now 19 years old, Rasmussen is still haunted by the May 31, 2000, attack. But knowing that the man accused of the attack -- Terapon Adhahn -- is also facing aggravated murder charges put her own nightmare in grisly perspective.

That fact hit her when she recently returned from a trip to Eastern Washington and watched the TV news one morning. A 12-year-old Tacoma girl named Zina Linnik had been abducted from behind her home during a July 4 neighborhood fireworks display. Adhahn had guided detectives to the body.

"That could have been me at 11 years old," Rasmussen said in an interview at her mother's Tacoma-area home. "I'm pretty lucky to be alive today."

That's why, when a friend got a tattoo earlier this year and offered to pay for Rasmussen's, she picked a Japanese symbol for luck.

Rasmussen said she didn't cry as the needle repeatedly pierced her neck, just like she didn't shed tears earlier this year when she broke her collarbone falling from a four-wheel ATV. The petite blonde with a voice like her idol LeAnn Rimes said she hasn't cried since her dog died about four months ago -- even though the news media has bombarded her with the face that makes her check the backseat of cars after dark, just in case.

"It's not going to change anything crying about it," she said.

A couple of weeks after authorities insisted she get counseling, she stopped going, not trusting anyone outside her family and immediate friends.

Rasmussen's own case was unsolved until police, searching for Zina, tracked down Adhahn. Detectives said a DNA sample taken from him matched evidence found on the underwear Rasmussen wore seven years earlier.

She said that knowing that her attacker was behind bars, and likely to stay there forever, brought long-awaited relief. In the year following the rape, she kept wondering, "What if he comes back for me? What if he gets me again and I don't survive?"

Today, she reads that Adhahn, a 42-year-old handyman and former soldier, claimed to have been himself a child victim of sexual abuse -- raped by an older brother. That doesn't sway Rasmussen, who said she hopes her attacker suffers behind prison walls for the rest of his days.

"Don't bring your childhood into somebody else's childhood," she said. "That's your life. Don't mess up somebody else's life."

Rasmussen, who agreed to share her story so other victims can draw strength from it, is convinced police will link other missing girls to Adhahn.

"He knew exactly what he was doing with me," she said.

Emotional tornado

Normally, her mom would have given her a ride to school. But the family car had been stolen days earlier, so Rasmussen set out to walk the six blocks from her home to Gault Middle School in Tacoma.

She started walking with a friend, but when the friend took a shortcut, Rasmussen was left alone.

That's when her abductor swooped in. Rasmussen sprinted from the man who jumped out of the pickup, but with her black-and-pink backpack weighing down her 4-foot-3 frame, she could hear the sound of his jingling keys growing louder. She screamed and he gagged her with his hand.

Police say Adhahn pushed Rasmussen against the truck's gray interior.

About 8 a.m., the two arrived at the Fort Lewis woods. He told her he wouldn't kill her.

"I was like, 'OK, whatever,'" Rasmussen recalled thinking. "Just hurry up. Do it. Get it over with."

When her attacker finished, she heard a lighter spark his cigarette. She asked if he was going to set her on fire. As his truck started, she pleaded for him not to run her over, though Rasmussen was sure he would.

Then he drove away.

"It was silent," she said. "That was it."

Rasmussen forced enough of the duct tape off to see, then armed herself with a stick. Swollen and bleeding, she followed a dirt road to a highway where she watched four to five cars go by before a military woman offered a ride to safety. She was too terrified to trust her.

The woman drove alongside until Rasmussen saw her uniform and relented.

"I was like, 'All right, if I get in, this will probably save me.'"

Her mom, Nancy Rasmussen, thought the Tacoma policeman who came to her home had information about her stolen car. But the officer had dire information about one of her three daughters. Sabrina had been rushed to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, where she was undergoing surgery.

"All I remember is letting out a big huge scream, and I dropped to my knees," Nancy Rasmussen recalled.

Rasmussen, a customer-service representative for a wireless provider, said she still cries when thinking about the attack on her daughter. It's an emotional tornado that's still spinning through the family.

'I knew it was him'

Sabrina Rasmussen now sees every day as a gift -- a chance to forge herself into a singing sensation, or more pragmatically, a real estate agent. She didn't look at her vacation last week in California as a chance to escape the media storm but rather as a chance to see the "Desperate Housewives" TV show set with her sisters and spend time with her grandfather.

She graduated from Fife High School and recently moved in with her boyfriend. She hopes to land a job this summer as a traffic flagger.

On July 19, Rasmussen went to the Pierce County Courthouse to see Adhahn arraigned on her rape and kidnap charges. When she saw his face as he was led away in handcuffs, she began breathing heavily. Her hands were coated in sweat.

"I knew it was him," she said. "Absolutely."

She's not ready yet, but Rasmussen knows she'll be able to testify against her attacker. If given the chance, she'll look him in the eyes and let him know "I'm the winner in this game."

She's glad he won't face a possible death sentence if convicted of Zina's murder, because that means he'll suffer longer.

"It's going to hurt and he's not going to like it," she said. "And he's going to get his turn."