Woman found dead outside Seattle frat house

A 20-year-old woman was found dead in a stairwell outside a University of Washington fraternity house in Seattle, police and fraternity officials told msnbc.com on Thursday.



Mark Jamieson, a spokesman for Seattle police, told msnbc.com Thursday that "our detectives do believe it appears to be suicide and that's kind of the end of it for us at this point."

"The medical examiner's office came out and took custody of the body," he said. "They will do their investigation. I believe they have already been in contact with the family and made the proper notifications. It's tragic, but it's not a criminal investigation."

Alison Myrabo, an investigator at the King County Medical Examiner's office, said the autopsy to establish the cause of death would take place Thursday morning.

The UW chapter of the men-only Phi Delta Theta fraternity had been preparing for a recruitment barbecue on Wednesday evening when the body was found at about 4:30 p.m.

"A woman was found dead outside of our property. It was an outside stairwell, a stairwell below a fire escape ... (which) leads to a closed-off entrance to the basement of the house, and was almost never used," Joseph Newland, an alumnus and the resident advisor in the fraternity house, said.