A teen girl was murdered in Spokane in 1982. Her family is trying to prevent her killer’s release

Sept. 26, 1982: It is a day John Strait has to relive again and again .

He was 18 and playing hockey in Canada when he got the call that his little sister Linda had been killed. A fisherman found her body in the Spokane River at Plantes Ferry Park.

Linda Strait, just 15 years old, had gone for a gallon of milk and at-home perm supplies from the Safeway at Monroe Street and Francis Avenue. It was just a quarter-mile from her home.

The search for Linda’s murderer took more than 20 years, when investigators figured out that it was Arbie Dean Williams, an inmate serving a life sentence for raping two 8-year-old girls. He attacked those girls a year after killing Linda by suffocating her with a pillowcase.

Armed with DNA evidence, prosecutors secured a guilty plea in 2006 that folded a 20-