A Missing Man, a Stolen Card, and a Body on Army-Base Land.
Caelick Bradley, a 28-year-old Army veteran, was supposed to leave Tacoma on June 10 for a cross-country move. He never made it. When he stopped answering, his mother — calling from across the country — asked police for a welfare check. The missing-person case that followed might have gone cold, except for one thread investigators could pull: someone was still spending money on Bradley’s bank card.
That trail of purchases led Tacoma detectives to a man using the card, and the man led them to a gravel turnout on Joint Base Lewis-McChord — where, according to Pierce County prosecutors, they found human remains wrapped in blankets and secured with ratchet straps. On July 2, prosecutors charged two 21-year-olds with second-degree murder. Both have pleaded not guilty.
This is a pending case. What follows is the record as charged — and a plain look at how a financial-fraud trail, not a body or a witness, is what cracked a homicide open.
- 2chargedwith second-degree murder — Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney's Office
- 7counts eachof second-degree identity theft, plus unlawful disposal of remains — charging documents
- $1,000,000bailset for each defendant in Pierce County Superior Court — FOX 13 Seattle
- June 30remains foundat a gravel turnout on JBLM property, south of SR 507 — KOMO News
On July 2, 2026, the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office charged Aydee Jaqueline Casado-Dominguez, 21, and Humberto Rodriguez Hernandez, 21, both of Lakewood, each with one count of second-degree murder, seven counts of second-degree identity theft, and one count of unlawful disposal of human remains. Casado-Dominguez’s murder count carries a domestic-violence designation because, prosecutors say, the victim was her intimate partner. Both defendants entered not-guilty pleas and were ordered held in the Pierce County Jail on $1,000,000 bail each, according to FOX 13 Seattle.
The victim is Caelick Bradley, 28, of Tacoma — an Army veteran who, according to KOMO News, served at Joint Base Lewis-McChord from 2017 to 2023. The two defendants were an engaged couple, and Casado-Dominguez had been in a relationship with Bradley, court records indicate. None of the allegations have been proven; both defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted at trial, which the court has set for mid- to late August, with the two to be tried separately.
Bradley was last heard from on June 8. He had told people he planned to leave Tacoma around June 10 for a cross-country move. When he went silent and failed to arrive, his mother contacted Tacoma police on June 12 and asked officers to check on him, KIRO 7 reported. That welfare check opened the missing-person investigation.
Investigators later concluded, per the charging documents, that Bradley’s phone pinged at the Lakewood apartment tied to the defendants on June 10 and 11 — around the time prosecutors allege he was killed. According to the account Rodriguez Hernandez gave detectives, he came home on June 10 and found Bradley dead on a couch inside the apartment, and Casado-Dominguez told him she had shot Bradley after an argument turned physical. That account is Rodriguez Hernandez’s statement to police, not a proven finding; Casado-Dominguez has pleaded not guilty and, through the process, is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
“During the investigation into Bradley's disappearance, detectives learned that someone was using his credit card.”
Tacoma Police Department account, as reported by KIRO 7 News · July 2026
Here is the detail that separates this case from an unsolved disappearance. As Tacoma detectives worked the missing-person report, they discovered that Bradley’s bank card was still being used — days after he had vanished. Prosecutors say the fraudulent transactions ran from roughly June 9 through June 25, and that surveillance video captured Rodriguez Hernandez using the card at a Lakewood Walmart and other stores, ringing up about $749.65 in charges, some of which were declined. According to court records, the card was used at least a dozen times.
That paper trail is what let police put a name and a face to a suspect. Detectives obtained a bank warrant on June 25, and on June 30 they located and arrested Rodriguez Hernandez on identity-theft allegations. Under questioning, prosecutors say, he told officers that Bradley was dead and that Casado-Dominguez was responsible — and then directed detectives to the body. In other words: the seven identity-theft counts are not a footnote to the murder charge. The identity theft is the reason there is a murder charge at all.
Detectives investigating a missing-person report determined that the missing man's bank card was still being used and tracked those transactions to a suspect — a reminder of how financial-crime evidence can drive a homicide investigation.
Missing person, no body: a disappearance with no remains and no witness is one of the hardest cases to move. Absent evidence, it can stall for months.
The card kept talking: every swipe of a stolen bank card creates a timestamped, geolocated record — a Walmart register, a camera, a transaction the bank can subpoena. Prosecutors say those records placed a suspect with the victim’s card, on video, again and again.
Identity theft as evidence, not just a crime: the seven second-degree identity-theft counts describe the same conduct that generated the trail detectives followed to an arrest — and, they say, to the remains on federal land.
After his arrest, Rodriguez Hernandez led detectives to a gravel turnout south of State Route 507 on Joint Base Lewis-McChord property, where investigators found what appeared to be human remains — including a skull — wrapped in blankets and secured with ratchet straps, KOMO News reported. Prosecutors say the pair borrowed a truck from a coworker to move the body, and afterward discarded couch cushions and Bradley’s clothing in a dumpster.
One of the defendants, Rodriguez Hernandez, is an active-duty soldier stationed at JBLM, according to KING 5, MyNorthwest, and The Seattle Times. That the alleged body site sits on the same installation where the accused soldier is stationed — and where the victim once served — is a grim coincidence of geography, not a proven element of the crime. Because the remains were on federal land, the discovery drew notice from base authorities, but the criminal case was filed by Pierce County prosecutors in state Superior Court.
Court records reviewed by KIRO 7 add a disturbing detail: a young child — described as roughly two years old — appears in the surveillance footage of the card purchases and, prosecutors allege, was left alone at the apartment during the shooting and while the body was disposed of. That allegation is drawn from the charging documents and has not been tested at trial.
An active-duty JBLM servicemember and a Lakewood woman were booked into the Pierce County Jail in the murder of a missing Army veteran whose remains were found on base property.
Second-degree murder in Washington carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Each defendant also faces seven counts of second-degree identity theft and one count of unlawful disposal of human remains; Casado-Dominguez’s murder count is enhanced with a domestic-violence designation. Both were ordered held on $1,000,000 bail and entered not-guilty pleas at their July 2 hearing in Pierce County Superior Court. The court set trial for mid- to late August and ordered the two tried separately.
The case is being prosecuted by the office of Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett, who was first elected in 2018. Washington county prosecutor is a nonpartisan office; Robnett ran as a nonpartisan candidate and was endorsed by local Democratic organizations, per The Seattle Times’ campaign coverage. Naming the officials responsible for carrying a case is part of the record — not a verdict on how they will handle it. What the office does with these charges through trial is the accountability question that remains open.
Two people have been charged with murder and identity theft after a missing Tacoma man's body was found on Joint Base Lewis-McChord land, Pierce County prosecutors say.
One human note runs through the coverage. When she was first contacted, KOMO reported, Casado-Dominguez described Bradley as her “best friend” and said she did not know what had happened to him. Prosecutors now allege she fired the shot that killed him. Between those two accounts sits the job of a jury — which has not yet heard the case.
Strip away the geography and the courtroom procedure and the takeaway is simple: a man vanished, and the thing that would not let his disappearance disappear was money. The defendants are presumed innocent, and the trial will decide whether the state can prove what it has charged. But the mechanics of how this got from a mother’s welfare-check call to two murder charges are worth understanding — because they are the same mechanics that solve, or fail to solve, cases like it every day.
A stolen card leaves a trail. A body on federal land does not have to stay hidden. And a case that could have stalled instead moved — because detectives followed the receipts. Pierce County prosecutors now have to prove it in court. We will follow the trial to verdict.
