Double murder goes national
Brian Walker | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 years, 5 months AGO
POST FALLS - A Post Falls double-murder case involving lesbian lovers as suspects and a son who remains missing will be profiled on national TV on Sunday night.
"Snapped: Killer Couples" featuring suspects Skye Hanson and Tina Loesch, the daughter of Gary and Barbara Loesch who were found dead in separate local incidents in the mid-1990s, will air on Oxygen (cable channel 64, DISH 127, DirecTV 251) at 6 p.m.
"What made the case intriguing is that (the suspects) were very calculating people who were very patient," said Fred Gabourie, a retired attorney who wrote a will for the Loesch family and was a business associate of Gary's.
Gabourie is among the sources who was interviewed last spring for the TV program.
Other sources include Kootenai County Detective Brad Maskell, Post Falls investigators Paul Farina and Marc Anderson, Coeur d'Alene Press staff writer Brian Walker, Tina's brother Charles Loesch, and reporters Meghann Cuniff and Robert Brown.
Tina was disinherited from her father's will in 1992 after she began dating Skye.
"At the interview (when the will was drafted), I expected him to say, 'half and half' (the amounts for Tina and Charles if Barbara were to die)," Gabourie said. "But he gave Tina $1 and Charles the rest. I thought that was odd, but I didn't question it. It's not my province to pry.
"But they got a copy of the will and hatched a plan to get even."
Gary was shot to death while delivering newspapers in Kootenai County in 1995.
"There were no forensics, so, at the time, I figured Gary had come up on some tweekers doing a deal in the early morning and somebody panicked," Gabourie said.
Three years later, Barbara was found dead in a hot tub in her Post Falls backyard. It was originally ruled an accidental death due to a plugged-in TV in the water, but it was later revealed that it was a staged electrocution.
Bradley Steckman, a friend of Tina's, admitted to his involvement in Barbara's death in 2003 while serving time in a Washington prison for murdering a woman in Pullman, Wash.
"By the time he spilled the beans, Tina and Skye had a five-year head start (on running from police) with $500,000 (a life insurance policy Tina had taken out on Barbara)," Gabourie said. "But, if it wasn't for (Steckman), nobody would have known the difference."
Investigators believe Tina promised to pay Steckman $10,000 for his role in Barbara's death.
In an effort to find Tina and Skye, "America's Most Wanted" profiled the case in 2008.
About an hour after the show, the bodies of Tina, 37, and Skye, 44, were found in a vehicle outside Tucson, Ariz.
Evidence indicates that both entered into a suicide pact to have Tina kill Skye and then kill herself. The pact ended the two being on the run for 10 years.
Kris Loesch, Tina's son who would be 22, remains missing after 11 years.
"I believe he either got pawned off to someone who raised him under a different name or he's dead," Gabourie said. "It's still a mystery."
The "Snapped" program will be shown again at times to be determined.
The bizarre nature, longevity and unsolved parts of the case have kept it in the national murder/greed case spotlight.
"Deadly Sins" on Investigation Discovery profiled the case last year.
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