Five months after Seth Frankel’s death, the Auburn Police investigation to solve his murder remains at a standstill.
Frankel, 41, who worked for the city of Kent, was found dead May 22 lying on the floor of his Auburn home. He died May 21 from stab wounds to the arms and neck, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“There is no update; there is no movement at all,” said Auburn Police Sgt. David Colglazier during an Oct. 19 phone interview.
Despite the lack of new leads over the last five months, Colglazier said detectives remain active on the case.
“It’s still a priority,” Colglazier said. “It’s an active investigation. Because of the seriousness of the situation, we will not back off on it.”
Detectives tracked down a Portland, Ore., man in late June as a person of interest in connection with the killing. That man remains a person of interest, but progress has stalled to connect him to incident.
“It’s the same status,” Colglazier said. “There still is not enough evidence for (King County) prosecutors to feel comfortable with moving forward on that person (to make an arrest).”
Cell-phone records show the Portland man in the area of Frankel’s home on the day he was killed, Colglazier said. Detectives removed several items during a June search of the Oregon man’s home to send to the Washington State Patrol crime lab.
“Some has trickled in,” Colglazier said about forensic results from the crime lab. “But there are no developments from anything that’s come back. There is just no real change right now.”
Further evidence about the case remains tied up at the state crime lab, which processes numerous cases from many agencies.
“There is evidence at the lab and still items we are waiting on,” Colglazier said. “We’re just waiting for results.”
Colglazier said it’s difficult to put any exact timeline on how long it takes for crime lab results to come back to detectives.
“There’s just a pace you go through to wait for results,” he said.
Detectives continue to look for a break in the case.
“The detectives have angles they are working,” Colglazier said. “They follow new leads as they arrive. But we are waiting for lab results to confirm any other leads.”
Auburn Police have not released any information about whether Frankel knew his killer or not.
“I can’t speculate on anything,” Colglazier said when asked if detectives are looking for someone who knew Frankel.
Frankel was a video program coordinator for the city. He joined the city of Kent in 2007 after 11 years as a director of production at a PBS station in Eureka, Calif. He was the employee behind many of the city meetings and events shown on Kent TV21.
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