Sunday, February 08, 2026

February 8, 1967: New Information Adds to the Mystery of Raisa's Death

Born in Russia and brought to America as an infant, [Raisa Trytiak] grew up in Seattle, graduated from Ballard High School and briefly attended the University of Washington. A year before her death she took a job as a key punch operator with Seattle First-National Bank. Why she sought help from Jack Blight, a 61-year-old construction worker and avid fisherman, is not known. He was a neighbor and family friend. She was almost six months pregnant and the abortion attempt caused an an air embolism that killed her. Why there were marks on her neck that led the coroner to suspect that she had been strangled was not explained in any of the news coverage that followed. Nor was the curious fate of Jack Blight who pled guilty to a charge of manslaughter and took responsibility for dumping the body. Blight was sentenced to probation instead of a long prison term typical in such cases. An article in the Everett Herald suggests that the Snohomish County prosecutor accepted Blight's claim that someone else had been primarily responsible for the abortion.
-- "When Abortion was Illegal (and Deadly): Seattle's Maternal Death Toll," Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project

Raisa Trytiak
Unlike most abortion-rights sources, the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History project cites sources for its assertions and thus wins my admiration.  In the case of 24-year-old  Raisa Trytiak, they cite the Seattle Times (February 8 & 9, 1967, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (February 9 & 10, 1967), and the Everett Herald (May 23, 1967). They even include a clipping from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's February 10, 1967 issue, which noted that Black was held after failing to post $10,000 bail on charges of manslaughter for both Raisa and her unborn child. 

The story fits the narrative: Since abortion was illegal, a young woman had no choice but to seek out a high-risk abortion at the hands of an amateur.

Is This the Real Story?

I received a comment to an older posting of this story that raises some very troubling possibilities and sent me digging for more source materials:

Again this story of Raisa Trytiak is wrong and she did not turn to this man for an abortion, she was excited about having her baby, and my mom has been haunted by identifying her beloved older sister since her parents did not speak English, and my mom was 14, and my mom to this day still get so emotional over memory of seeing the finger marks on her sisters neck, the abortion part was just a cover up, to say she went to this man and wanted kill her baby at 6 months is not true, he was a neighbor hood creep, please remove that, if u care to know more my name is [N] and my email is [redacted], my mother, [V] would like to have her story told. And to make matters worse they even spelled Raisa name wrong on her tombstone but again since they didn't speak English so it was never corrected.

I have reached out to N, and hope to have clarification soon that can explain how this tragedy came to pass. In the mean time, let's look at what source documents have to say and start the story from scratch.

Who was Raisa?

Raisa's death certificate gives her place of birth as Kharkov, Ukraine. During Raisa's entire lifetime, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. People in the West often referred to the Soviet Union as "Russia," so this explains why some coverage said that Raisa was born in Russia rather than Ukraine. 

According to immigration records, Raisa's father had become a citizen on July 17, 1958 in Chicago and applied for citizenship for his daughter in Chicago on an unspecified date. Raisa had come into the United States under the surname Waszczenko in New York City on May 18, 1949, when she was six years old. 

The family somehow made their way to Seattle, where Raisa attended Ballard High School.

Raisa found work as a key punch operator at the Eastlake Branch of Seattle First National Bank in March of 1968. 

A Grisly Discovery and a Shifting Story Line

At around 3:00 the next morning the body of a young woman clad in a two-piece blue suit, a yellow coat, and high-heeled shoes was found by someone scavenging in the Snohomish County dump in Bryant, Washington. 

At around 11:00 that morning, Raisa's parents reported her missing. She had last seen alive at around 7:10 on the evening of Monday, February 6, 1967 when she left work, dressed in a two-piece blue suit, a yellow coat, and high-heeled shoes. The authorities brought Raisa's parents to the morgue that evening, where they identified their daughter's body.

By February 8, an autopsy had been done and an arrest had been made. Here is where things start to get weird.

Under "Describe how injury occurred," the Coroner wrote "Attempted abortion which resulted in air embolism followed by strangulation." News coverage the day after Raisa's body was discovered also indicates that she died of "strangulation, blows over the head or a combination of both."

Why would somebody who was only attempting an abortion at a woman's request strangle her as she was dying from complications? It makes no sense.

The news coverage also started shifting. Early stories say that 61-year-old Jack Blight was arrested for manslaughter in the strangulation deaths of both Raisa and her 6-month unborn baby. This alone makes no sense, since strangling somebody is not typically considered mere manslaughter. As days and weeks pass, the story shifts. Raisa's death gets attributed to an attempted abortion, with the strangulation the the death of the baby mentioned tangentially or not at all. There was no change in the autopsy report and none on the death certificate, so why did the news story shift?

Who Was Jack Blight and What Was His Actual Involvement?

Blight, age 61, was identified as a retired construction worker who lived near Raisa's family. A few articles also describe him as a close friend of Raisa's family. But news coverage never reveals how he was connected to the discovery of the dead woman at the dump.

Blight was arrested in his home on Wednesday, February 9. In late May, he entered a guilty plea to aiding and abetting manslaughter. This would mean that he wasn't considered the primary party responsible for killing Raisa. The May 23, 1967 Everett Herald said that at Blight's sentencing hearing, his attorneys said that he would "cooperate with investigating authorities to determine if others were involved in the crime."

Where does the "if" come from? How could Blight be aiding and abetting people who might or might not have actually been involved? The Everett Herald  article does sat that Chief Criminal Deputy Henry S. Chapman said that "investigation has revealed a second party was involved in the death."

So who was this second party? And why did the narrative shift from strangulation and blows to the head to abortion with marks on the neck?

Blight was sentenced to 20 years deferred for five years, during which Blight was to be on probation. He would serve the sentence if he got into further criminal activity during those five years.

Raisa's decision to turn to a lay abortionist -- if indeed that was what she had done -- would have been unusual. Two independent sources -- Nancy Howell Lee and Planned Parenthood -- concluded that prior to legalization, 90% of women found doctors to do their abortions. Lee further found that even when women resorted to non-physicians, they more often than not went to a nurse, midwife, or other person with medical training. More typical of criminal abortions is the one that took the life of 19-year-old Nancy Ward in Kansas City the very same day Raisa Trytiak died.

Other sources:
at 12:00 AM

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