During quarantine, TikTok has become a source of entertainment for many. Dance videos, cooking tutorials, and sleepy animals amusing thousands around the world. Of course, this brought along challenges and games for people to film – getting a ping pong ball into a cup by bouncing it off of various surfaces, for example. Randonautica is an app which sends you to a completely random location near your home – the idea is to explore your local area whilst getting some exercise. Some people have found interesting or eerie things at their destination and participants filming/posting their adventures on TikTok has helped make this app popular.

On June 19^th 2020, a group of teenagers were on a randonautica adventure when something unexpected happened. From a walkway they spotted a suitcase abandoned on Alki Beach, Seattle and joking it could be full of money, one of the party climbed down the rocks to the suitcase, unzipped it, and pushed open the lid with a stick. Immediately they described of an overwhelming bad smell and decided to call the police fearing it wasn’t just bad food. When the police arrived over an hour later, they set up the area as a crime scene and establish that the teenagers had in fact found a dead body wrapped in bin bags inside the washed up suitcase. The police later found another bag in the sea containing a second body.

The bodies were later identified as Jessica Lewis (35) and Austin Wenner (27) (insider.com) who had been shot before being left in the suitcases, roughly ten days prior to being found. The couple had been in a relationship for eight years, and Lewis was a mother of four.

Randonautica have released a statement saying that the discovery “was an unfortunate coincidence” whilst Police Detective Mark Jamieson has said “We’ve interviewed them and we’re actually glad that the video is out because it helps corroborate some of the information” (eonline.com). The FBI have weighed in and said “the killer(s) may have been trying to make a statement by how they disposed of the bodies” (heavy.com)

At the time of writing, no one has been arrested for the murderers. Lewis’ aunt is appealing the public for information into the couple’s deaths whom she describes as “good-hearted people”. She has also set up a GoFundMe page, the profits will serve as a reward for any information leading to answers, link here.  Randonautica have also donated to the cause. Hopefully their killer(s) will be apprehended and justice will be served for their families and children.

I will not be sharing a link to the TikTok video as the family have asked that it be taken down. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been.

All this information is correct at the time of writing, as this is an ongoing case developments will hopefully be made and so some of this information may go out of date.

References: heavy.com – eonline.com – insider.com