Vancouver police have arrested a man and charged him with the murder of Nikki Kuhnhausen, a teenager who had been missing since June.

Police said David Bogdanov, 25, is lodged in the Clark County Jail and is charged with second-degree murder. He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

Kuhnhausen, a transgender girl who was 17 when she went missing, was last in contact with her family on June 5. On June 10, Vancouver police began investigating Kuhnhausen’s disappearance. Investigators found that Kuhnhausen was staying with friends on the night of June 5 and left to meet up with an unknown man.

Detectives accessed Kuhnhausen’s Snapchat account and found that in the early hours of June 6, she had been in contact with Bogdanov and that he had picked her up in his car.

Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said police don’t know how the two met or how long they had known each other. She said they believe Bogdanov asked Kuhnhausen to get out of his car after he found out that she was transgender. Bogdanov admitted to the conversation and said he asked Kuhnhausen to get out of his car — but said she walked away and he never saw her after that.

Kapp said Bogdanov’s phone records tell a different story about where he was after their conversation.

In July, detectives got a search warrant for Bogdanov’s cell phone call and location data. The analysis took several months, but police eventually found that in the early morning of June 6, Bogdanov was near Larch Mountain in east Clark County.

On Dec. 7, a passerby picking bear grass found a human skull in the woods around Larch Mountain. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office responded and found other human remains and evidence. Forensic analysis confirmed that the remains belonged to Kuhnhausen. Kapp said medical examiners have not yet released Kuhnhausen’s cause of death.

Kapp said investigators had pinged Bogdanov’s phone and found that it had been in that area around the time Kuhnhausen went missing. But she said the area is so vast and rugged that it would have been difficult to narrow the search to one area from that ping. She said even after the passerby found Kuhnhausen’s skull, search and rescue crews spent hours in the area trying to find Kuhnhausen’s remains.

Police arrested Bogdanov on Tuesday. Kapp said the case is still open and police are still looking for people who may have information about Kuhnhausen’s disappearance. The Vancouver Police tip line number is 360-487-7399.

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—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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