Tawni Mazzone's family finally has closure, nine years after she disappeared

Lancaster had uncovered Walker's real name after tracking down the other person in the Cadillac that night in January 1999: Spokane, Washington resident Lindsey DeJong, who hadn't been charged.

DeJong repeated a story similar to what she'd told police in 1999 — that the young girl, whose name she allegedly couldn't remember — had leapt from the Cadillac on the freeway after Walker wouldn't pull over and let her out.

"Based on what [DeJong] told me, I believe that Walker was trying to turn Tawni into a prostitute and that they were on their way to a truck stop in Eloy or someplace near there," Lancaster told New Times on Sunday. "Lindsay said she tried to grab her by her feet, but she just went out the window, and William wouldn't stop to help her. It was a very cold-blooded act on his part. She was just a piece of meat to him."

(Police had stopped the Cadillac on I-10 about 20 miles east of the tragic scene after passersby called in.)

William Walker waived extradition from California to Arizona, to await disposition of his 1999 probation-violation case. He did so just days before the dizzying series of events that was about to end with the formal identification of 99-305.

Walker is being held without bond in the Pinal County Jail.

Last Thursday afternoon, authorities at the Medical Examiner's Office confirmed that dental and fingerprint records of Tawni Mazzone matched those of the girl long known as 99-305.

The news was bittersweet to the "many good souls," as Detective Lancaster puts it, involved in trying to identify her, including the websleuthers, the detective himself, and, of course, her family.

"I have no explanation for how things just came together almost overnight after so many years," Lancaster says. "I'm not even going to try to figure that out. It's pretty amazing."

Several of Tawni's family members flew to Arizona over the weekend. Her brother Mike and her father installed a shrine at I-10 milepost 173 as a tribute to her memory.

Suzi Dodt is trying to learn where Tawni was buried, though it probably was at the county potter's field, at White Tanks Cemetery in the West Valley.

Without Dodt's Web site, which she created a few years ago, the odds of Tawni Mazzone ever having been identified would have been very long.

"I am so relieved that she has finally been given back her name," Dodt says. "Now I know a bit about her life, I have met her family, and I know that she was very loved."