Arrest eases friend's mind

Former Cd'A resident was murdered in 1998 in Omak, Wash.

Joyce Bruns never forgot her friend, Sandy Bauer, who was murdered in Omak, Wash., nearly a dozen years ago.

The Rathdrum woman was afraid that Bauer's unsolved 1998 strangulation had faded from Omak police detectives' memory.

It didn't.

Bruns, 62, was relieved to learn this week that after 12 years, the man who might be Bauer's killer is behind bars in Okanogan County.

"I'm so thankful this is coming to an end," Bruns said.

Kelly Small, 47, was arrested Tuesday after Omak police detectives matched Small's DNA to blood and semen samples taken from Bauer's apartment after the murder.

The break in the case came after police linked Small to the 2006 rape of a 75-year-old Omak woman. Small faces being charged in that case also.

He is being held in jail on suspicion of first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, two counts of first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree burglary. An Okanogan County judge set bail at $1 million.

"Back in 1998, when Sandy's mom called and told me she was murdered, it just broke my heart," Bruns said.

Bruns and Bauer go way back.

Bauer graduated from Coeur d'Alene High School in 1964, and Bruns followed her the next year.

Bruns said her friend, an alto, sang in the choir in high school, and with the Coeur d'Aleers.

"We sang together a lot because I'm a soprano," Bruns said.

They each married and raised their children together in the Coeur d'Alene area, remaining in close contact after Bauer's family moved to Omak, in north central Washington, sometime in the 1980s.

The last time Bruns saw Bauer was just months before her friend's death.

Bruns had traveled to Omak for a visit, spending the night at Bauer's home.

It was a sleepover tradition the pair had continued for decades, from the time they were girls.

"She lived right down the hill from me. I was raised up on Canfield Mountain," Bruns said. "I spent the night at her house so many times growing up. We were like best girlfriends. You couldn't separate us."

Bruns still has the business card an Omak police detective gave her years ago after the murder. Having recently resigned from her job, Bruns was planning to head to Okanogan County to do a little sleuthing of her own.

"I got angry because I thought they back-burnered the case," Bruns said. "I thought, I've got to resolve this in my heart."

She said friends and family members long suspected an ex-boyfriend of Bauer's.

"I have a photo album with a picture of Sandy with him. I couldn't stand looking at it," Bruns said.

She doesn't think anyone suspected the man police arrested this week.

At the time of the murder, Small, a carpenter, was remodeling a basement apartment in a home Bauer was living in with her elderly parents.

"Everyone in the family knew him," Bruns said.

It was the parents who found their 51-year-old daughter's body.

With Small's arrest, Bruns said she's moving toward closure.

"It will be more so after this guy is put away," she said.