Lindsey served as a Tacoma Police Officer for twenty-one years. She has an impressive track record of utilizing her investigative instincts to solve violent crimes. During her fourteen years as a detective, she investigated sexual assaults, child abuse, missing persons, and homicides. In 2010, Lindsey first became aware of the issue known today as
Lawfully Owed DNA when she discovered that serial killer Ted Bundy was not in CODIS. She worked with authorities in Florida to track down a sample of
Bundy’s DNA and it was finally entered into the national DNA database in 2011.
In 2012, Lindsey’s work on collecting DNA from convicted sexual predators in Washington state who’d
slipped through the cracks, led to an arrest in the 1980 homicide of a teenaged girl. Lindsey helped to create the Tacoma Police Department’s Child Abduction Response Team
(CART) which was the first CART certified by DOJ in the state of Washington in 2013. Lindsey was the lead investigator on several child abduction cases and was also asked to assist with child abduction cases in other jurisdictions. In 2018, Lindsey, along with Tacoma Police Detectives and the FBI, solved two 32-year-old
cold case child homicides thanks to advances in DNA technology, Forensic Genetic Genealogy, and good old fashioned police work. Lindsey retired in 2018 as the Tacoma Police Department’s cold case detective.
After retiring from the Tacoma Police Department, Lindsey joined the Washington State Attorney General’s Office as a Senior Investigator assigned to the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to pursue her passion—using DNA to solve cold cases.
Lindsey worked on Purpose Area 1 (SAK Backlog) and Purpose Area 3 (Lawfully Owed DNA). In 2019, Lindsey worked with state legislators to pass a new DNA law in Washington known as
Jennifer & Michella’s Law. Lindsey co-authored an article on Forensic Genetic Genealogy for
Officer.com Magazine. Lindsey provided her knowledge and expertise as a contributor to the National Institute of Justice
National Best Practices for Implementing and Sustaining a Cold Case Investigation Unit. She was also a contributor to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s
Long-term missing child guide for law enforcement.
Lindsey was a member of the National Institute of Justice Cold Case Working Group, the International Homicide Investigators Association, and in 2017, she created the Washington State Cold Case Working Group. She is a former member of the FBI ViCAP National Advisory Board and taught child abduction response and cold case investigations for the National Criminal Justice Training Center at Fox Valley Technical College.
In 2023, Lindsey’s efforts to get an
executed killer’s DNA into CODIS led to the resolution of a 49-year-old cold case in Seattle. The investigation received Gordon Thomas Honeywell’s
DNA Hit of the Year Award for 2025.As a subject matter expert, Lindsey has been a speaker at numerous law enforcement conferences around the country, lecturing on cold cases, sex crimes, DNA, and child abduction response. She currently works as an investigator with the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office.
