SPOKANE — Homicide detectives arrested a Spokane man who said he rescued his teen daughter from sex trafficking in Seattle and later killed her boyfriend in Airway Heights last year, according to court records.
John B. Eisenman, 60, is now charged with first-degree murder.
The case broke in mid-October when residents of East Everett Avenue noticed an abandoned car on their street. Police said people began rummaging through the unlocked 1991 green Honda Accord, taking some items and noticing a foul odor.
When they popped the trunk, they found a body and called police.
One of the first police officers on scene said the interior of the car was covered in mold. Before he opened the trunk, the officer tried to contact the registered owner of the vehicle, Brenda Kross, but her phone wasn’t accepting calls, according to court documents.
That’s when the officer opened the trunk to confirm a body, later identified as Andrew Sorensen, 20, was inside.
Sorensen’s ankles and hands were bound with zip ties, according to court documents. There was tape over his mouth as well. Sorensen’s clothing had puncture marks suggesting he had been stabbed several times, according to court documents. Sorensen’s cause and manner of death are listed as pending by the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Police again tried to contact Kross before going to her home. Her fiance, Eisenman, answered the door and told police the car had been stolen about a year prior, according to court documents.
A few days later, police spoke with Kross, who said the couple’s underage daughter had been sex trafficked in Seattle in October 2020 by her boyfriend, Sorensen. Kross and Eisenman drove to Seattle and rescued their daughter that same month, they told police.
Sorensen had no significant adult criminal history in Washington state, according to police.
A few days after police spoke with Kross and Eisenman, a neighbor called in to Crime Check that Eisenman had disclosed killing someone and putting the body into the truck of a car, according to court documents.
Eisenman had told the neighbor details about the way Sorensen was placed in the trunk that only someone involved would know, according to court documents.
Police arrested Eisenman on Friday.
Once in custody, police said he confessed to killing Sorensen.
Eisenman told detectives that shortly after he rescued his daughter from forced prostitution in Seattle, he learned Sorensen would be at a specific place in Airway Heights, according to court documents. Eisenman said he confronted Sorensen in November 2020 before tying him up and putting him in his car trunk.
Eisenman told police that’s when he threw a cinder block at Sorensen’s head and stabbed him multiple times before driving the car to a remote area in North Spokane County and abandoning it with the body still inside the trunk , according to court documents.
Sorensen was reported missing that month, according to the Washington State Patrol.
Police say the car remained at the remote location for almost a year until someone took it and drove to Spokane, leaving it on Everett Avenue. Police do not believe the person who took the car after a year was aware of a body in the trunk.
Eisenman is jailed on a $1 million bond.
