SEATTLE – A week and a day after his wife and daughter were found slain along a popular hiking trail on Mount Pilchuck, David Stodden is wrestling with his emotions.
On Tuesday, anger gnawed at him. But his two surviving daughters, Elisa and Joanna, encouraged him to remember their mother, Mary Cooper, and sister, Susanna Stodden.
They asked him to think about the positive impact the pair had on the community and people around them, David Stodden said Wednesday.
“I can’t bring back Mary and Susanna, but I can bring back their memories and the positive things they did,” he said.
Cooper, 56, and Susanna Stodden, 27, were found shot to death July 11 along the hiking trail to Pinnacle Lake.
No one has been arrested. Police have declined to say if they have a suspect in the slayings.
David Stodden said he has talked with Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office investigators every day and feels confident in their work. He said he’s received little information on the status of the investigation, but has learned robbery does not appear to have been a motive for whoever killed his wife and daughter.
The car the women were driving has been returned by police, he said, but investigators have yet to bring back the family’s computer.
On Wednesday, Stodden said he wanted to continue to talk about the case in the hope that people will come forward and share additional details with police.
In the shade of a plum tree in the family garden, Stodden recalled the day of the killings.
His wife and daughter had planned to climb up Mount Pilchuck, but David Stodden worried that the summit would still be covered in snow.
He told his wife as she was getting ready to pick their daughter up at the nearby apartment she shared with roommates.
But his daughter had checked trail reports on a Web site that morning. The trail was clear.
As he set about his day, David Stodden believed the women were headed up the mountain on the popular route leading to the summit lookout.
For some reason, the two women decided instead to hike up the Pinnacle Lake trail. Above the lake is an off-trail route to Mount Pilchuck’s 5,324-foot summit.
Stodden said he believes the pair told no one of their change in plans.
Stodden said he became concerned about 9 p.m. after returning from a bike ride.
His wife and daughter were expected back five hours earlier, he said. He couldn’t reach them by cell phone.
Stodden worried they might have slipped on ice high on the mountain.
He said he called the Granite Falls Fire Department, the Washington State Patrol and Snohomish County Sheriff Office before finally calling 911 to report the hikers missing.
No one told him about the bodies that had been discovered on the trail earlier in the afternoon.
David Stodden was packing his car with an ice ax, flashlights and other climbing gear, when a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy pulled up in front of the house.
“I figured out at that point this was pretty serious,” he said.
Since then, he said the community has rallied around him and his daughters.
Often referring to his wife and daughter in the present tense, David Stodden talked about them as quiet people who said little but had an enormous impact.
In August, his daughter was scheduled to start work at a teaching program at the University Child Development School, a private elementary school in Seattle.
An environmentalist, she was excited that she could ride her bike to work, he said.
She had a small circle of close friends and had been dating a man seriously for the last year-and-a-half, he said.
The couple met through their shared interest in voluntary simplicity, a movement where people focus less on material goods and more on doing what they believe is meaningful.
For Susanna Stodden, her father said, that meant an intense interest in hiking and protecting the environment.
“You better not be using Comet to clean your toilet when she came by,” he said.
He remembered once suggesting that she wax her car. After reading the car wax ingredients, she refused, saying she thought the materials might come off the car and pollute the earth.
Mary Cooper, who worked as a librarian at Alternative Elementary II in Seattle had boundless energy, he said.
During the summer months she often made runs around Green Lake; one in the morning, the other in the evening.
On Sundays, she would go for a run and he would ride his bike. They’d meet at a coffee shop to read the New York Times and talk about politics for hours, he said.
For Sunday dinner, Susanna Stodden often would join her parents for a vegetarian meal prepared by her mother.
David Stodden said his wife often helped him in his businessby picking out paint colors and tile. He’s a contractor who renovates homes.
In the family’s sunny yard, David Stodden grew everything edible, while Cooper grew flowers and kept chickens for eggs.
During the interview, Stodden reached into the coop, took out a few eggs and gave them to a reporter.
He said Mary Cooper would make wonderful salads from the garden. The garden is a place where he’s now finding strength, he said.
Since last week, he’s been hugging people and crying a lot, David Stodden said.
“I have a lot of faith in other people,” he said.
Whoever took his wife and daughter is sick and depraved, David Stodden said.
“I wouldn’t really consider them in that category as other people,” he said. “I don’t know what category I’d put them in.”
Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@ heraldnet.com.
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