Updated 10:26 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office revealed this morning yet another set of human remains were found in east Lewis County; on Thursday morning in Randle.
Detectives say its possible it could be a 57-year-old woman who disappeared from her home about a mile and a half away in April, but positive identification has not been made, according to the sheriff’s office.
Trisha McKenzie-Fire, who lived on Silverbrook Road with her boyfriend, left home about 3 a.m. on April 2, without her purse or car and hasn’t been seen since.
The sheriff’s office says the remains were found in a dry creek bed in a field by a property owner on the 100 block of Joerk Road.
It’s the third time human remains have been found in east Lewis County this year.
In early April, skeletal remains belonging to a female were discovered near Morton on the side of a logging road off U.S. Highway 12. At the end of March, a partial skull was found in a wooded area near Mineral which turned out to belong to a Pierce County man missing since 1985.
In the Randle case, there was some clothing found as well, but the sheriff’s office isn’t saying if it matched that said to be worn by McKenzie-Fire when she went missing.
Part of the reason detectives think it could be her is the creek runs past McKenzie-Fire’s home and onto the Joerk Road property, Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said.
The creek is dry now, but it wouldn’t have been in April, Brown said.
The remains will be sent to an expert at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in hopes of determining who it is and how they died, according to the sheriff’s office.
McKenzie-Fire’s boyfriend, Kent Anderson, said in April he had gone to bed and when he woke up, she was gone. At about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., a friend, who was sleeping on the couch, saw her go outside with a cigarette, according to Anderson. The trio had been drinking whiskey that night, Anderson said.
He reported her missing that day.
Brown called it just a “death investigation” when asked if if there was any indication of foul play.
“(S)he walked off after the party, but what happened after that, we don’t know,” Brown said.
Brown said the boyfriend, Anderson, has since died of natural causes.
Last week, the sheriff’s office had a potential promising lead in learning the identity of the Morton remains, but a comparison of the dental records with a missing Pierce County female didn’t pan out, according to Brown.
The skeletal remains belong to a younger adult female of small stature and an examination by a specialist could not find a cause of death.
The sheriff’s office has released little information about that find, but have said it was doubtful the remains had been where they were found for very long, because it was a well-used logging road.
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Read “Randle woman missing for more than three weeks” from Monday April 25, 2011, here