Where are Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman now? Details explored ahead of Dateline on NBC
Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman are both serving long sentences in Washington State prisons. Their convictions, resulting from separate DNA investigations, stemmed from the 1986 Tacoma bike path murders that haunted the city for decades.
As per The News Tribune report dated January 25, 2019, Robert Washburn, who pleaded guilty to killing 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian, received a 27-year term. Gary Hartman, found guilty in March 2022 of murdering 12-year-old Michella Welch, was sentenced to 26 years and six months. Both men remain in undisclosed Washington Department of Corrections facilities.
Their cases form the backbone of Dateline’s upcoming episode, Evil Was Watching, premiering Saturday, June 14, 2025, at 10/9c. The broadcast, reported by Keith Morrison, revisits how modern forensic genealogy separated the investigations that identified Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman.
Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman: Where the Tacoma bike-path killers of Jennifer Bastian and Michella Welch are now, ahead of Dateline
Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman are both locked in Washington State prisons with release dates so distant they are unlikely to leave alive. Robert Washburn, now 68, is serving a 27-year sentence for murdering 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian in 1986.
DOC records show his earliest possible exit in the mid-2040s. Gary Hartman, 73, is finishing a 26-year-six-month term for killing 12-year-old Michella Welch. His projected release window falls around 2048. Their convictions were secured decades after the crimes through forensic genealogy.
Brutal daylight abductions and DNA that split one mystery into two
Welch vanished from Puget Park on March 26, 1986, while fetching lunch for her sisters, as per an Oxygen article dated April 6, 2022. Search teams found her that night; she had been s*xually assaulted, beaten, and her throat was cut. Five months later, Jennifer Bastian disappeared while test-riding a new Schwinn in Point Defiance Park.
Her strangled body was located three weeks later, hidden beneath brush with the bicycle carefully concealed nearby. For nearly thirty years, detectives hunted a presumed single predator. That theory collapsed in 2013 when DNA from Bastian’s swimsuit failed to match the profile collected from Welch’s body.
Cold-case investigators Gene Miller and Lindsey Wade built a list of 2,300 male names and, with help from public genealogy sites, whittled it down by collecting 160 voluntary swabs. A 2018 sample matched Robert Washburn, an Illinois resident who had once called police with a tip about Welch’s case.
He pleaded guilty in 2019 and received 27 years. Shortly afterwards, Parabon NanoLabs traced Welch’s killer to two brothers. Detectives tailed Hartman, retrieved DNA from a discarded napkin, and confirmed the crime-scene match. In 2022, a Pierce County judge found him guilty in a bench trial and imposed the maximum sentence.
As per the NBC News report dated April 6, 2019, Detective Wade stated:
“I just remember that it was really scary to me as a young girl,...There would be certain times where if I was out riding my bike or if I was walking, you know, through — a little trail to shortcut to get to school or something like that”
As per the KOMO News report dated March 24, 2022, Hartman told the courtroom:
“I’m so sorry. God knows I’m so sorry. That doesn’t help. I’m just sorry.”
Keith Morrison’s upcoming broadcast will reconstruct the investigative timeline, spotlight the split-case revelation that identified Robert Washburn and Gary Hartman, and revisit the families’ long wait for justice. Viewers will also see how Wade and Bastian’s mother pushed for “Jennifer and Michella’s Law,” which expands DNA collection for future cases.
To learn more about the case, watch Dateline’s episode Evil Was Watching, airing Saturday, June 14, 2025, at 10/9c.
