slabtown chronicle

Rose Festival Death

2007-06-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

My neighborhood in downtown Portland is packed to the gills with people, parking prices have tripled and quadrupled over night and the sidewalks are lined with folding chairs. Must be Rose Festival time again in Portland.

I’m not really a Grinch, I appreciate the parades and the fireworks and the crowds of people, as much as I can. I know this is the defining time of the year for the Rose City. The weather is great and the roses are in bloom. The U.S. Navy has ships docked along the Willamette River. All of the High Schools in town have elected a court of Rose princesses. It’s a hundred year old festival this year and it’s worth celebrating.

Washington Mutual’s Waterfront Village, the carnival that used to be known as the Fun Center, has tight security and a “family-friendly” focus this year. I wonder if anyone remembers how it got that way? Oddly, enough it started ten years ago this week. June 7, 1997, to be exact.

On that balmy Portland evening Kenneth Shanafelt, 39, of Vancouver, and his wife, Robin attended a performance of the musical Beauty and the Beast at the Civic Auditorium. The play let out at about 10pm. The night was young and the parents with three small children at home with a babysitter, decided to enjoy the Rose Festival that would still be open for another two hours.

Miraculously finding a parking space near the corner of SW Salmon and 2nd Ave, the couple walked through Waterfront Park to the Fun Center. The Oregonian described it as a romantic evening and I’m sure it was. Portland is pretty this time of year and the Willamette is always a beautiful river.

The Shanafelts walked along the river looking at the imposing Naval ships, munching Portland’s trademark fry-bread treat “Elephant Ears” and sipping lemonade. Shortly before 11:30pm, they headed back toward their car for the short drive into Washington that would take them home.

Five blocks away Daniel DeJesus, 19, and his friend George Garcia were leaving a nightclub and heading for Garcia’s car to drive home to Washington County. In front of the Hilton Hotel at SW Salmon and Broadway DeJesus and Garcia ran into a group of about eight young men who didn’t like the shirt that DeJesus was wearing, an NFL jersey with the number 13 on it.

The two groups of young men traded insults and possibly some gang signs. Soon they were throwing punches and a general melee broke out. DeJesus grabbed a .357 magnum pistol from Garcia’s pocket and began firing at their opponents. Garcia, told the Oregonian, that he heard four shots as he ran for his car and sped back to pick up his friend.

One bullet hit a bus shelter at SW Fifth and Salmon, spraying 20-year-old Mercedes Munden’s face with broken glass and injuring her severely.

Robin Shanafelt heard the gunshots as she and Kenneth approached their car. She said they sounded like firecrackers. Then Kenneth dropped to the ground. She didn’t know what happened at first, but then she saw the blood and his head wound. Two passing women helped her stop the bleeding and perform CPR, but it was too late. Kenneth Bryan Shanafelt, father of four and teacher of Truck Driving Safety was dead.

Shanafelt’s death didn’t really have anything to do with the Rose Festival or the Pepsi Fun Center, but it was such a shocking crime that it drew major attention to the festival. The next year security was tightened, but a stabbing incident in a parking lot near the Fun Center increased the pressure. [I’ll tell you about Anthony Nnoli and Andy Borlande another time.]

In 1999 they fenced in the fun center for the first time. Then came WTO, and May Day and then 9/11. And that children, is why we can’t even drive on Naito Parkway at this time of year.

Daniel DeJesus plead no contest to charges of manslaughter and was sentenced to 23 years. Prosecutors wanted to charge him with murder and were sure they could convict him, but Robin Shanfelt said that she did not see the young man as a murderer and wanted to spare her family the trauma of a trial. She urged them to accept the manslaughter plea.

Not all of Shanafelt’s family were so forgiving. Bill McGinty, Shanafelt’s step-father, told the Oregonian, “I’m 54 years old and I have never been so full of hate and anger as I am now.”

Amber Shanafelt, Kenneth’s oldest daughter who was 17 when he died, was badly traumatized by her father’s death. She suffered nightmares, panic attacks, fits of shaking and paralysis as a result of post-traumatic stress. Those are all normal symptoms and I’m sure over the last ten years they have abated, but I bet they haven’t gone away completely. I also bet that Amber’s startle reflex can be exaggerated, especially when she hears loud bangs.

None of this, of course has made Portland any safer. Random bullets still fly, lethally in May, 2005 when a 41-year old transient was killed by a gun fired at someone else a block away. That happened at SW 2nd and Yamhill , about a block from where Kenneth Shanafelt died.

I think Judge Kimberly Frankel said it best when she was sentencing DeJesus: “I can stop Mr. DeJesus by imprisoning him for a time. What I don’t understand is how to stop the next person and the next person. I’m disgusted.”

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs #77

2007-05-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

Once again it is my pleasure to present the best of the True Crime Blogs this week. I have to say that submissions were very light this week. That means more work for me, so if you’re a true crime blogger, get your submissions in. If you’re not a true crime blogger then you’re excused.

Only two of this week’s entries are about actual crimes, so I’ll start with those:

Bonnie of My Life of Crime brings us the lonely death of volunteer Police Constable Robert Lee Bailey in Lincolnville, S.C. Bailey made a traffic stop that turned into every cop’s nightmare. Missing Cop’s Body Found and Identified.

jd chandler of the slabtown chronicle brings us more of an enigma than a story in Z on the Run.

That’s it for the crime stories submitted this week. But wait, there’s more…

Harding of TO Crime seems to be taking a break from crime writing at the moment, fortunately he’s still writing and this week he brings us an interesting story about keeping the peace at a soccer game – Policing the Trenches. Personally I’m not much of a sport’s fan, but what’s up with these Canadians anyway. It’s like they’re from a different country or something.

From Britain we are proud to welcome Gracchi from Westminster Wisdom. This is a blog about politics, but with a broad scope. The submission this week deals with a pet issue of our own Laura James of Clews – True Crime Writing; Is it Worth It? OK, I know that this is a British blog from academia, but does that mean you have to use such long paragraphs, Gracchi?

That’s it for the submissions this week. Come on guys, where are you? I don’t think it’s enough, so here are jd chandler’s picks of the week:

Laura James of CLEWS is one of my favorite crime bloggers and I love the focus she has on historical crime. She seems to be focusing her writing more on book reviews and author interviews than historical crimes these days (tsk, tsk), but I have two picks from her blog:

First the post that inspired our British friend Gracchi -- Who Makes Money Off Murder?

Second a guest blog by Kevin Sullivan which is a historical true crime story and it's creepy – The Valley Drive-in Murders

From the Netherlands, Nene Adams of The Year Round brings us an interesting look at drug addiction in the Victorian Era – The Demon From the Orient: An American's Palace-joint.

Last, but not least, Steve Huff of Crimeblog.us brings us an interview with the Mother of all True Crime Writers Ann Rule -- Ann Rule on Too Late to Say Goodbye

That’s it for this week’s carnival. I had fun and I hope you did too. If you would like to find older carnivals or submit a story for the next one then go here.

Z on the Run

2007-05-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the most interesting stories start with a tiny little newspaper article that leaves more questions than answers. That happened to me last week. I ran across a five paragraph news brief in the Oregonian that left me wondering.

The headline said, Police seek man in Roommate’s slaying. It is the story of the death of 51 year-old Frank Clarence Johnson in his north Portland apartment. Johnson was killed by a blow to the head, probably during a fight with his roommate David Wayne French, 48.

Simple story. Not unusual, it seems. So why are there so many questions? Johnson was killed on May 4, but a warrant wasn’t issued for French’s arrest for nearly two weeks. The police say that French probably jumped out of a three story window as they were coming in the front door of the apartment, immediately after the killing. Why did it take them so long to issue a warrant for his arrest?

Here’s a quote from the Oregonian: “Police said that Johnson was trying to change his living situation with French.” The only thing I could think when I read this was, what are they not saying? The next paragraph tells us that David French is known to use the alias Zalia Crizta, or just the initial Z. He is 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds and has long brown hair.

First thing I thought was, no wonder the Police can’t find him. I bet he could pass for a woman. Well, I didn’t learn it from the Oregonian, but French is a transgender “performer”. Here’s a good question: why didn’t I learn it from the Oregonian?

The next line raises even more questions: “Until recently, French had an Internet business and contacts across the West.” First question is what does this mean? Second question is why is the Oregonian being so cryptic? I haven’t been able to figure out the second question. All of the other media is reporting on the transgender angle, why does the Oregonian ignore it?

I can make a guess at what Z’s internet business was, but so far I haven’t found a trace of it. I’m still looking and I am hoping some of my more web savvy readers might give me a little help on that.

A man is dead. A killer is on the run. The police seem to be at a loss. Detective Molly Daul (503-823-0991) and Detective Barry Renna (503-823-0255) are asking for anyone who knows anything to call them. The Oregonian is writing the story in code. Somewhere there is an interesting story in this. I’m still working on it.

Happy Mother's Day

2007-05-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

You might have heard the big news out of Portland this weekend is the “random” hammer attack at the Beaverton Fred Meyer. Sharon Weil, 56, of Cedar Mill was struck in the head with a hammer while buying groceries. The Oregonian tells us all about her plans to prepare a Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday. Her attacker Eric Osterholme is turning out to be a real piece of work.

Osterholme, who fractured Weil’s skull in Aisle 10 of the grocery store, turns out to have a violent past. Big surprise, huh? In 2002 he cursed at a 6-year-old boy in the parking lot of his apartment complex and then judo chopped the child in the throat. The little boy had been playing nearby and approached the neighbor to say, “Hi.” He should have listened when mom told him not to talk to strangers.

Osterholme proved himself to be a selfish and mean person during his arraignment on attempted murder charges. Asked by Judge Timothy Alexander if he had seen the charges against him, Osterholme complained about the food at the Washington County jail, saying, “I’m being force-fed meals that will cause a heart attack. I’m pre-diabetic.”

I can understand his health concerns. I probably wouldn’t want to eat the food in the Washington County Jail either, but then I wouldn’t hit anyone in the head with a hammer either.

The arraignment degenerated from there as Osterholme refused to respond or even listen until he was given better food. His next hearing will be on Monday when he will probably be indicted on charges of attempted murder, first degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon. Osterholme deserves to have the book thrown at him. In the 2002 case he was convicted of harassment and fined $300. He obviously didn’t take that very seriously.

Maybe he’s crazy, but it seems to me that he might just be a very selfish and mean man who needs to be locked up to keep his neighbors safe.

According to KGW-TV Fred Meyer officials say that nothing like this has ever happened before, but that’s not exactly true. There has been at least one murder in a Fred Meyer over the past few years. Even the random attack is not unprecedented. In fact it reminds me of an attack that took place in 1946.

On August 26, 1946 22-year-old Marine veteran William Kilpock was struck in the head with a hatchet while standing on the sidewalk in front of the Orpheum Theater on SW Park Ave. His attacker, Lenny Lloyd Brown, 40, was an ex-mental patient who was convicted of attempted murder. Kilpock was quoted in the Oregonian, “War is safer than standing in a Portland street.”

I feel safer knowing that “customer service remains [Fred Meyer’s] number one concern,” according to spokesperson Melinda Merrill. Fortunately Sharon Weil, a partner in a well-know property management firm with a reputation as a good cook, is recovering well. Her mother is still looking forward to having “a fabulous strawberry French toast brunch” with her daughter soon.

What Happened to Matthew Cantrell?

2007-04-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

It’s been over a year since Matthew Cantrell was found dead, floating in the Willamette River. Before that was an agonizing month of searching for the 25-year old Portland newcomer. That month, Matthew’s father Tim drove in from Casper, WY to search for his son. Tim spent two weeks putting up fliers and talking to people who might know something about what happened to his son.

Tim Cantrell found out that his son, who had recently moved to Portland from Eugene, had worked a shift at the Delta Park Shari’s restaurant and then taken the MAX to downtown Portland. Matthew bought a gift for his girlfriend in Pioneer Courthouse Square and then stopped in at the H2O Martini Bar.

Matthew told the bartender at H2O that he would be back, before returning to the room he rented from a friend on N. Winchell St. Matthew had been in Portland for two weeks, planning to work and earn money to complete his education at the University of Oregon. Portland seemed like a big city to the young man and he wanted to go out exploring downtown.

About 10pm he called a friend from a payphone on N. Lombard St. He asked his friend to go downtown for a drink. His friend declined and that was the last anyone heard from Matthew until his body was found by a tugboat operator in the Willamette near NW Front and Kittridge more than a month later.

Tim Cantrell stayed in Portland as long as he could. The night before he had to leave someone broke into his pickup truck and stole his missing son’s snowboard. Portland has been very hard on the Cantrell family.

A year later Portland Crimestoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information on this death, which police say is suspicious. No one believes that Matthew killed himself, but police said there were no signs of trauma on the body and they refuse to release the cause of death.

It’s a classic tale: the “clean-cut, All American boy” lonely and curious in a new city went out to explore and found more than he bargained for. Some one knows what happened to Matthew Cantrell.

No, I'm Not Okay

2007-04-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

No-one really knows what happened to Fouad Kaady, 27, a Lebanese-American resident of Gresham, OR before he was shot to death by a Clackamas County Sheriff’s Deputy and a Sandy Police Officer on September 8, 2005. What we do know is that he is dead and the circumstances of his death raise serious questions about how police handle confrontations with injured and angry people.

The Clackamas County Shooting Review Board found that Deputy Dave Willard, one of the officers who fired shots at the naked, bleeding young man, had “acted within existing rules and regulations and according to current training.” If this is true, there should probably be some changes made to current training and existing rules and regulations.

Kaady’s death has become such a polarizing political issue that it is difficult to separate fact from opinion. The Sandy Post, a local paper in the Portland suburb, won an award for its reporting on this case and their website provides the clearest information. From their reporting of the police files released in October, 2005 it is clear that police acted in fear and created as much danger for the community as Kaady did. It is also clear that the officers distorted the facts in their version of the story.

Officers say that they feared the young man, who was bleeding severely from injuries and burns suffered during a car accident, “possessed chemically enhanced strength.” They are trying to imply that Kaady was under the influence of hard narcotics. There is no evidence of this at all. The evidence that might be able to prove the officers’ allegations, a Toxicolgy report, has not been released.

Most of Kaady’s friends said that he never used drugs, other than tobacco. There is some evidence that he may have been smoking marijuana earlier in the day, but it seems more likely that Kaady was under severe emotional stress, aggravated by a serious head injury and repeated Tasering by the officers.

Why did the officers Taser Kaady, a naked, injured man with a severe head wound and second and third degree burns over much of his body? Because he refused to lie down on his burned skin and they were afraid to touch him because he was covered with blood.

How did 27-year-old Foaud Kaady end up injured and burned and then shot to death by the police? That’s a harder story to tell.

Foaud Kaady was a graduate of Gresham High School and was well known around Gresham and Sandy. He was a painter and always willing to lend a helping hand to his neighbors. He had recently become a licensed real estate agent and was reportedly excited about joining his mother in the real estate business. The day of his death Kaady had planned to pick his mother up at the airport after a trip.

Friends said that Kaady had not been acting like himself for days, or even weeks, before his death, but no-one knew exactly what had happened. Sarah Maness, who knew Kaady for two years, said that he had been depressed and angry for a few weeks. “He’s been pissed at everything,” she told the Sandy Post.

Kaady’s father said that Kaady had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Other family members agree that he was under financial pressure, stressed about his break-up and some other unnamed problem. Other family members argued that he was not depressed and that he was very happy with his life.

Whatever Kaady’s state of mind, his actions on September 8, 2005 were odd. At 6:30am Kaady was spotted driving erratically in the parking lot of Mount Hood Community College. He was doing “donuts” and “burn-outs” in his pickup truck, some people do that for fun and the lot was probably empty at 6:30, but when a campus security officer approached Kaady acted strangely.

Security Officer Jefferson Potts said that as he approached the vehicle, Kaady accelerated the pickup and hopped over a three-foot embankment and onto Stark Street, bottoming out on the pavement. It is unclear how close Potts got to the vehicle, but he reported that it had a “strong smell of marijuana.”

Kaady was next seen at his father’s home wearing a suit. Rashid Kaady said that his son’s behavior was not unusual in any way.

At about 9:45am Kaady stopped at his usual drive through tobacco shop on Stark St. and bought two packs of cigarettes. Rudd McGarity, a clerk at Hilton Haven who had sold tobacco to Kaady before, told the Sandy Post that Kaady was not acting like himself. He over paid for his purchase, with change out of a big jar, and would not let the clerk return the extra change.

McGarity said that Kaady looked “frazzled” and he asked the young man if he was OK. Kaady replied, “No, I’m not okay.” McGarity said that Kaady looked “like he had the worst news of his life and had to go deal with it.”

Early that afternoon Kaady was seen parked in his pickup truck in the lot at Rick’s Custom Fencing on Stark about ten blocks from the tobacco shop. Kaady had run out of gas. Employees at Rick’s said the young man was acting “weird.” He “fooled around” in his truck for about ten minutes and then took off running in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Kaady’s sister said that wearing only shorts was Kaady’s “trademark” and that he ran to his father’s house to get a gas can for his truck. She said he returned to Rick’s in his mother’s car with a can of gas, but found that his pickup had been towed. Here’s where things really get weird.

According to the Sandy Post Kaady’s car was not towed from the lot at Rick’s until Saturday September 10, two days after Kaady was killed. For some reason Kaady drove in his mother’s car toward Sandy, a neighboring community.

Kaady’ sister says that a spark from Kaady’s cigarette ignited the gasoline can as he drove and Kaady crashed his car into two other cars while trying to put out the flames. The Buick LeSabre that Kaady was driving crashed into the vehicle of Tiffany Stanko, forcing her off the road.

Kaady then hit the car of Greg Elwell of Boring. Elwell, believing that the driver of the LeSabre was unconscious tried to slow both vehicles with his brakes, but then the LeSabre pulled away and the driver game him a “thumbs up” sign as he passed. Elwell said that Kaady was driving “completely crazy.”

Kaady’s body was severely burned on his upper torso, face and into his scalp, but the Oregon State Police Arson Investigating Team said there was no evidence that the fire started inside the vehicle. They said they found no evidence of a gas can inside the car.

Finally Kaady crashed the LeSabre into the woods, starting several fires in the dry brush. Read the story of this accident at the Sandy Post, you won’t believe it.

Kaady reportedly fought off would-be rescuers and wandered away from the accident before being confronted by the police on SE 362nd Ave. During the confrontation with the injured and distraught young man, Deputy Willard left a shotgun unattended on the hood of his vehicle. Later he said that he feared that Kaady would go for the shotgun and that’s why he fired three shots into the young man’s chest.

Willard also said that Kaady threatened to kill him and Police Officer William Bergin, who fired five shots at the young man. None of the witnesses on the scene heard death threats, but most agreed that Kaady “went crazy” after being Tasered three times and climbed onto the police car. None of them saw him go for the shotgun or lunge at the officers, as they both claimed at different times.

Witnesses on the scene said that Kaady was “docile” and sitting on the ground when the police arrived. He would not lie down at their command and so they Tasered him. Willard reported that Kaady was “kind of catatonic” when he arrived, but that he was afraid to approach him because of the blood that covered most of his badly burned body.

If this is the way Clackamas County Sheriff’s Deputies are trained to deal with accident victims then we need to rethink that training. Regardless of Kaady’s erratic behavior I wonder how threatening he would have been if he wasn’t walking naked, after losing his shorts in the accident, and if he didn’t look like an Arab.

Kaady’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against Clackamas County and the officers involved. Portland’s flamboyant attorney Gerry Spence is representing the family so there should be a good story to tell there eventually.

No Remorse

2007-04-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

Beatrice Ward, 81, became Oregon’s second oldest prisoner last week when she was sentenced to 18 months for criminally negligent homicide in the death of Robert Carr, 89. Ward and Carr were described by a neighbor as a “loving couple,” but Carr’s family says that he was bruised on at least three occasions after fights with Ward.

Robert Carr was an ex-jockey and at 5’7" and 140 pounds he was about the same size as his girlfriend. They had been seeing each other for more than a decade. Friends say they saw each other nearly every day and often went for walks together in the neighborhood.

Last September Carr had had enough and he stopped seeing his abusive girlfriend. Beatrice Ward was not willing to take “no” for an answer. On September 13, Ward, angry that he did not come over, went to Carr’s house. She saw him drive away and followed him to a nearby Target store at Jantzen Beach.

In the parking lot Beatrice Ward charged Robert Carr and began hitting him and screaming at him. The older man fell to the pavement and received a fatal head injury.

Ward’s attorney, Scott Raivio, said that considering her advanced age and lack of a criminal record that a jail sentence was excessive. Deputy District Attorney Greg Moawad told the Oregonian, “There is no joy in sending an 81-year old woman to prison…. But I am confident that prison is the right outcome.”

Lynn Reinecker, daughter of the World War II veteran Carr said, “I hope through all of this she learns you can’t push people around.” Ward doesn’t seem to have learned any lessons, though. She was sullen and silent throughout the trial. After sentencing while she was being escorted out of the courtroom past Carr’s son and daughter all she would say is, “I’ve got my handcuffs.”

Reinecker, weeping had only one question, “What could he have said or done that he had to pay with his life.” It doesn’t look like she’ll get an answer. Beatrice Ward starts her short sentence this week.

A Quick Update and a Request for Help

2007-04-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

Things are finally starting to move in the legal proceedings concerning the death of Gary George last year. Bobby Donald Barnes, AKA Michael Tucker, a registered sex offender, is charged with murder in George’s death. The circumstances around his arrest are troubling. He was arrested the same day as the murder, before the police discovered George’s body. He was several blocks away from the murder site and he was being held on a parole violation when George’s murder was discovered.

Barnes is charged with two counts of aggravated murder and felon in possession of a hand-gun. Oddly enough, George was beaten to death, according to reports and no gun was used in his death. Maybe he took the gun from George?

The case against Barnes is set for motions in Judge Jean Kerr Maurer’s court on April 23 and 24th. This hearing is supposed to include a deposition from a witness named Strazi. Here’s where I need some help. I am not able to be in court on those days and I could really use some information that will be available there. I need to know who this witness Strazi is and what he or she has to say. I need to know what the motions that day involve and what decisions get made. I also need to know who is representing Bobby Barnes, and if possible how to get in touch with them.

I am asking for one of my readers in Portland to attend the hearing on those days and report to me. Is anyone available and up to it?

Another interesting development is coming up a few days before these court hearings. Treva Richardson is scheduled for release from jail on April 19. She is the ex-girlfriend of Gary George and the ex-wife of David Hughes. It was her fight with George over a car and a dog that lead to the violent confrontation between David Hughes and Gary George just a few days before George’s death. This confrontation led to Hughes' shooting by Portland Police in November.

Treva if you are reading, please get in touch. I would love to hear your side of the story. You can email me at jdchandler2002@yahoo.com.

That’s all there is for now.

Here's a list of my posts on this case (all links are in the above text).

Unanswered Questions May 14, 2006

Updates June 11, 2006

Something Weird is Going on Here December 12, 2006

Too Many Questions Still Unanswered March 5, 2007

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs #70...Uh, I Mean 69.

2007-03-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

By Installments:

Installment #1: Denial

No problem. Carnival of the True Crime Blogs. I can handle that. It’ll be fun. I haven’t done it in a while. Just means I have to post to my blog on Monday. I can handle that.

Monday. Work from 7:30am to 6pm. Usually I get a few minutes to see what’s good on the blogs. That’ll give me a head start on the carnival. What’s everyone talking about at work? The guy who shot the high school kid, because his wife, a teacher was having an affair with him, what? Their names are really Eric and Erin??

Power blogger Anne-Marie Nichols has the scoop at Teacher Smackdown, exposing teachers who betray the public trust, one student at a time: Eric McLean Appears on the TODAY Show. Why haven’t I heard of this lady before?

Installment #2: Avoidance

Monday. Is it 5:30 already? If I miss the 5:57 bus it will be really late by the time I get home. Well, I just have to take care of a few last minute calls. Maybe I can check out another blog before my bus. What’s Harding up to this week? He’s always good for a read. Not only short, but powerful. Go read it: Longing for Justice of the Gods.

Installment #3: More Avoidance

Monday night. Drag back into my wonderful apartment. Boy I’m happy that I moved into this place. I have windows now and the park is just coming into bloom. Good to have something to eat, you know I’m not sure I had lunch today. Every had one of those days? Well I would sure love to work on my movies that I am now featuring at live video. I do enjoy working on my Old Time Radio Collection which is now featured on my podcast. My novel is gathering dust in the corner. I’ve barely even broken 70,000 words.

No, I’ve got to post to Slabtown tonight. Tomorrow night's the Carnival. Wait, what’s this DVD. The Swimming Pool with Charlotte Rampling. I’ve never seen that. By the way, it’s great if you haven’t seen it. One of those movies that you think you get, but the last shot leaves you in doubt. Maybe I’ll have to see that one again.

Thank God! The first submission to the carnival has arrived. It’s a ripping yarn from Great Britain. Aren’t we international this week? True Crime Blog UK is doing a great job across the pond. This week a tale of savagery Hyenas in Human Form.

Installment #4: Pain

Monday night late. Well, I have to post to Slabtown tonight, but what will I write? Haven’t heard of any interesting recent crimes. The whole Dave Hughes/Gary George case is still bubbling, but I don’t want to beat a dead horse. I’d love to dip into the files and write up a juicy old crime, but it’s almost midnight. I’ve got to be back at work at 8:30. There was something in yesterday’s paper, though… Forgotten Man Remembered.

Installment #5: Embarrassment

Tuesday morning, back at work. A cup of coffee and fifteen minutes before my first appointment. What’s going on at the True Crime Bloggers Group? OH, no! I got the number wrong for the blog carnival. How did I get Carnival #70? Harding can prove it’s #69. Love those graphics, Harding.

Home, only two more entries in by deadline. Did I confuse everyone too much? It must be early dementia, if it gets worse please let my Doctor know. Maybe they’re all mad at me and they’re boycotting the Carnival this week because I’m the host.

Sorry everybody. Here is the cream from the contributors last week who didn’t submit this week.

Trench is providing continuing thorough coverage of the Platte Canyon High School shooting.

Lilo continues to cover the crimes of pedophiles and child abusers. I know why she gets so angry, but sometimes it’s hard to read about. This one breaks my heart: Three Years.

Trish blogs about missing and murdered children usually. She strays slightly from her turf this week with the story of Holden Gothia. You won’t believe this one.

Imahologram continues the horrifying story of Chloe Davis. Nice sneaky historical work, Ima.

Bonny at My Life of Crime brings us a sad update out of Georgia. Christopher Barrios

A week at the Carnival would not be complete with a visit Home, Sweet Home. This week Sweet brings us a brutal tale of a children’s slumber party, isn’t that nice?

Installment #6: Exhaustion

JD Chandler’s Picks of the Week. You guys is drafted.

Laura James Clews

The Year ‘Round

Crime Scene Blog

Crime Rant

Huff’s Crime Blog (Now with History!)

We're running a little late, so good night everybody. See you next week.

A Forgotten Man Remembered

2007-03-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

Robert “R.J.” Anheier, 63, collapsed and died on the sidewalk a few blocks from his home in downtown Portland back in January. Assuming he was homeless, State officials made a half-hearted attempt to identify his next of kin. They contacted someone in California who had the same last name. Although the Californian denied being related to RJ, the Medical Examiner’s office felt they had fulfilled their legal obligation.

RJ was declared “unclaimed” and scheduled for cremation. State law says that unclaimed bodies must first be offered to Oregon Health Sciences University for research before they can be disposed of. OHSU paid $37.50 for RJ’s body.

Little did the Medical Examiner know, because he didn’t go to the address that was in RJ’s wallet, Anheier had an apartment about four blocks from where he died. At the apartment they would have found the name of RJ’s best friend, in Aloha (a Portland suburb) and his sister in Florida. Anheier had lived at the Biltmore in Northwest Portland for eight years. He was a well-known figure in the neighborhood and worked as a waiter at the nearby Sisters of the Road Café.

Diane Anheier, of Florida, didn’t know her brother very well. They had seen each other only once, since he left home as a teenager. Two years ago, RJ, tracked down his sister and visited her. She found out about his death last week and had his dissected body retrieved from the Medical School. They are having a memorial Friday in Old Town for RJ.

Sad story. Not really a crime, though, because nobody broke any laws. Maybe some laws need to change. I read this story yesterday and I hadn’t really intended to write about it here. When I looked a little deeper, I knew that this story belongs in Slabtown. Robert “RJ” Anheier was a victim of murder.

No. No one killed RJ, but he was a victim of murder none the less. RJ Anheier’s father was murdered in Buffalo, New York in 1951, when RJ was seven. RJ’s life illustrates clearly how violent death echoes in the life of its survivors. None of us are ever the same after a loved one is murdered.

RJ’s life was affected in an extreme way. RJ was still grieving for his father when his mother remarried. According to the Oregonian, his stepfather beat him regularly and RJ ran away the first time when he was 10. At the age of 18 he left home for good and started the life of a hobo.

Traveling by freight train RJ traveled the country living the best he could. In 1981 Anheier befriended a young homeless man in Saint Louis. Anheier was an experienced “professional” hobo at the age of 42. Matthew Barrett was a teenager new to life on the street. RJ taught the young man to survive as a hobo and the two became fast friends.

“We didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, but we had a lot to leave behind,” Barrett told the Oregonian. The two hobos traveled the country for nearly a decade, finally landing in Portland in 1994. Barrett was the first to get off the street. Because of ill health he was able to get an apartment in Old Town. Anheier remained on the street until he was able to get an apartment at the Biltmore in 1999. The Biltmore is an old hotel that has been remodeled for low income housing.

Anheier paid his rent by waiting tables at Sisters of the Road, a non-profit restaurant in Old Town designed to be the one safe place in Portland for anyone. He also eked out his living by collecting cans and bottles and sold Street Roots, an alternative newspaper. He earned extra money holding places in line for people who wanted to buy concert tickets at the popular nightclubs in Old Town.

“RJ spent his life trying to find his place in the world,” Matthew Barrett told the Oregonian, “He had found that place. He had people who loved him. Yet people assumed he didn’t.” I just hope I don’t look like I’m homeless when I die.

Sin of the Father

2007-03-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Asia Bell was 23 when she died in a volley of gunfire that blinded her 26-year old husband, Tyrone James, on the front porch of her house in North Portland. The shooting took place on November 20, 2002 three days after the fatal shooting of Demingo “Bingo” Lee Gonzales in front of an “after-hours” club on NE Lombard and 22nd.

Police have believed since Bell’s shooting that there were witnesses who could come forward and identify the killer. Nearly five years after the shooting, Portland Police Bureau’s Cold Case Unit made four arrests this weekend. The suspects, Alexander Daniel Klein, 28, Deprince Romey Hale, 29, Sonja Hutchins and Rico Gonzales, are considered to be members or associates of the Rolling 60 Crips, just like Demingo Gonzales.

Klein and Rico Gonzales are brothers of Demingo Gonzales. While Rico has not been charged in the killings yet, he is being held on federal drug distribution charges and police believe they will soon have evidence that he was part of a murder conspiracy.

Asia Bell, the mother of four small children, was not affiliated with any gang. She and her husband Tyrone were health care workers trying to build a better life for themselves and get away from the violence that swirled around their family. They had recently bought there first home on North Mississippi Ave. It was the house that brought about Asia’s death.

Police now believe that the shooting that killed Bell was in retaliation for the shooting of Demingo Gonzales. Gonzales’ murder, which seems to still be unsolved, may have been over a dog fight and trouble between the Rolling 60s Crips and an older set known as the Hoover Crips.

Asia Bell’s father, who remains mysteriously unnamed in the Oregonian’s reporting, raised pit bulls in Washington and had a cousin who was a member of the Hoover Crips. Bell’s father supplied dogs for an illegal dogfight organized between the Hoover Crips and the Rolling 60s. A meeting to organize the dog fight took place at the Bell’s house. Asia was most likely not at the meeting and was probably not even aware of it.

The dogfight broke up over allegations of cheating and foul play. This started a feud between the Rolling 60s and the Hoovers. A few days later Demingo Gonzales was shot down in front of the after hours club.

Three nights later as Asia Bell, her husband Tyrone and a guest celebrated Tyrone’s birthday on the front porch of their home. Two men walked by the house and sprayed at least 17 shots at the small gathering. Bell was killed immediately. Tyrone was blinded and their friend was slightly wounded.

Police believe the gunmen, allegedly Alexander Klein and Deprince Hale, targeted the home because the meeting with the Hoover Crips took place there. In the most real sense Asia Bell was an innocent bystander.

Asia Bell’s family has been a focus of violence and drug addiction for at least three generations (see my earlier post It’s a Family Affair). Her mother Perlia Bell, has become an outspoken activist against the violence of North Portland and she is credited by Portland Police for keeping her daughter’s case alive and helping them finally solve it.

Bell and Tyrone James are both active in Families Affected By Violence, a community organizing group. They have been outspoken against the G-code (for Gangsta) that keeps most witnesses of gang murders silent. While they can hardly be celebrating the latest development, they must at least be feeling that there is a chance for justice.

Good job Cold Case Squad! Since being formed nearly three years ago the detectives of the Cold Case Unit have solved several old killings. Investigators said that they had made Asia Bell’s murder a priority since last summer and it took cooperation from more than 50 officers in several police divisions to bring about the arrests this weekend. Keep up the good work there are only about 270 unsolved cold cases to go.

Too Many Questions Still Unanswered

2007-03-05T23:49:00.000-08:00

David Earl Hughes was shot to death by the police in November of 2006 in southwest Portland. Hughes pled no contest to burglary, possession of an illegal firearm and arson and was scheduled to be sentenced on November 7. Out on bail in the days before his sentencing, Hughes told his neighbors that he would run rather than face up to five years in prison. He said he would rather die.

2006 was a year with several high-profile police shootings in Portland and the surrounding area. Several times this year we have had major press coverage and public review hearings on police shootings. In the case of David Hughes we had two Oregonian articles and mostly silence from official sources.

The charges that Hughes was to be sentenced on stemmed from an argument involving his ex-wife Treva Richardson and Gary George. The argument involved a car and a dog. Some new information that has come to light makes the argument even more bizarre – the car that Treva and George were fighting over belonged to David Hughes.

According to an old friend of David’s, who spoke with him shortly after the confrontation in March 2006, Treva had been out of David’s life for several years, but somehow they met up again at a vulnerable time for David. He had recently been divorced and then his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Drug abuse seems to be the main thread running through this whole story. David had been a drug user before marrying his second wife in the 1980s. After getting clean from drugs David continued to abuse alcohol. During their separation Treva had become addicted to methamphetamine and both of their children had become addicts as well. David and Mary Hughes saw David’s son through rehab in 2002.

Treva also seems to have gotten herself into a dangerous situation. She was now living in a “biker compound” on NE 42nd. This was the house of Gary George. The Oregonian says that Treva was George’s girlfriend.

Treva allegedly stole the car from David. Gary George put his own name on the title and David stole it back. The only other crime that David was accused of was a forgery charge, for putting his name back onto the title of his own car. This started the fight over the car.

David began using methamphetamine and isolated himself into a small group of drug addicts that called themselves the “happy family.” One rumor says that David had suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with congestive heart-failure. The rumor is that he decided at that point he would live his life as he wanted to, regardless of who he hurt.

David’s ex-wife says that he was always fascinated by weapons. One rumor is that he began buying drugs and weapons from the Russian mafia in Vancouver. I’m pretty sure that the Russian mafia has a presence in both Vancouver and Portland, I’m not so sure that David was involved with them. I think there was a dangerous crime organization that was much more convenient.

This brings us back to Gary George. Who was he? And who killed him?

I guess we have an answer to the second question. Bobby Donald Barnes is in jail charged with aggravated murder and associated crimes. Barnes, a registered sex offender on parole for prostitution and rape, was arrested on April 24, 2006 on a warrant for a parole violation. He was picked up at a house in northeast Portland a couple of miles from George’s home.

While Barnes was in custody detectives were called to George’s home. They found Gary George in a pool of blood, beaten to death. Guns, a laptop computer and knives were stolen from the home. Two unnamed people claim to have driven Barnes to George’s house before the killing. Police also say they have DNA evidence linking Barnes to the killing. If they have all this evidence, why has Barnes not been convicted?

Because he hasn’t been brought to trial. Chief Deputy District Attorney Norm Frink says it is “unclear if there will be a trial.” He said that in December. Since then he hasn’t said anything. The only way I know about the information in the last paragraph is from a tiny little story in the Oregonian that I managed to find because I have become obsessed with this case.

So that’s what the police want us to think is the answer to who killed Gary George. Maybe they’re right. The only way we’ll know is when a jury decides. Until then, let’s see what we can do with the first question: Who was Gary George?

His family is quiet. One relative, a niece I think, was married on the same day Gary died. She has her grief to deal with and she is not saying anything about her uncle or his activities. The detectives told her that Gary was killed because of a “drug deal gone bad.” I was almost ready to believe that, until I found the story in the wrap-up of Portland murders in 2006. The police give a whole list of things stolen from George’s home, but drugs are not mentioned.

Some people think David Hughes was getting drugs and weapons from Gary, but David Hughes apparently believed that Gary George was a cop. Could Gary George have been working undercover?

I don’t know the answer to that and maybe I don’t really want to know. There are some suspicious circumstances though. Gary George had a minor record, a charge of 4th degree assault that was dropped in 1998. George was armed and he was not shy about defending himself, evidenced by the confrontation between Gary, David and Treva in March. Eight times between 1998 and 2005 police were called to Gary’s house because he had been the victim of some kind of crime.

After the confrontation in March, David and Treva were able to drive only two or three blocks before being apprehended by the police. Gary lived in an industrial district that is pretty empty day or night. His house was the only residence within blocks. Gary George got very fast and efficient police response in a pretty isolated area.

This certainly isn’t evidence that Gary George was an undercover cop. David Hughes had become very paranoid from isolation and drug use, so what he believed is highly questionable. Yet a cloud of mystery still hangs over the whole story. Things are not happening in the usual way and everyone is very reluctant to talk about it. Too many questions are still unanswered.

His Hands Were Cold As Ice

2007-02-27T19:29:00.001-08:00

It was a cold January evening in 1958 when Julia Anetta Voris, walking home along Columbia St near the south Park Blocks, felt cold hands on her neck. A man had stepped out of the shadows of a parking garage and he now had her by the neck.

Years later she told Margie Boule of the Portland Oregonian that she should have screamed for help. Instead she got angry and said, “Get your damn cold hands off my neck.” It probably saved her life. Her attacker, Ernest Taylor, was surprised by her reaction and he backed off.

“What’s the matter with you? Do you need money?” Voris demanded. The startled and ashamed man stammered that he did need money. Voris acted annoyed as she shuffled through her purse. “I can’t seem to find a $10 bill and I’m not going to give you more than that,” she snapped. Inside she was scared to death.

Finally she found a ten and thrust it at Taylor, he stuffed it in his pocket. All at once it hit her. She realized how scared she was and her knees went weak. “Get a hold of me. I’m going to fall,” she said.

Ernest Taylor, the confused attacker, caught Julia Voris as she fell. “What do I do?” he said.

“Help me walk, we’ll go have coffee.” She was afraid that if she left he would follow and pounce on her again.

They walked to an all-night “greasy spoon” on First Ave where the frightened woman bought two cups of coffee. The light and the coffee, being close to other people, strengthened her and she felt angry at her attacker again.

“That’s a foolish thing to do, you know, grabbing people in the dark.” Her attacker looked sheepish, but he didn’t say anything. Then he did start talking…About architecture in Portland.

He knew all the old churches in the neighborhood and knew the architectural styles. Portland has some great examples of 19th and 20th century architecture. He seemed nice, really nice. Ernie Taylor was known as a “movie star handsome” man.

When they finished their coffee he was concerned about her. “I should walk you home. It’s not safe walking alone after dark.”

“That’s awfully funny coming from you,” she said. But she couldn’t see any alternative. If she didn’t let him walk with her, he would follow. She agreed to let him walk her home.

“I can’t turn my back on this man,” she thought, “He could sneak up on me anywhere.” As they passed a dark alley, Taylor said, “Come in here. I want to talk with you.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not afraid of you, but I am afraid of the dark.” She said her husband would be off work now and was probably driving around looking for her.

“Give me your address and I’ll mail you back the ten dollars,” he said smiling. With a shiver of fear she scribbled her address on a scrap of paper. Taylor put it in his shirt pocket and disappeared into the night.

Julia Voris felt a fear that would never leave her as she ran to her home on Market St. Portland’s beautiful south Park Blocks would never be the same for her.

That was Friday night. On Monday morning Bessie Hammonds, 36, wasn’t so lucky. Hammonds was the manager of an apartment building at 1905 SW Park, where the gym now stands on PSU campus.

Bessie and her common-law husband, Alvin Martin, lived in the basement apartment. Bessie rented and cleaned apartments and collected rent. Alvin did the handyman work. He also worked mornings at a downtown hotel. Bessie and Alvin were known as a hard working couple and were often seen together walking in the Park Blocks.

Monday, January 20, 1958 was a freezing day. Alvin hurried through the Park toward home. He hoped that Bessie would have a hot lunch ready when he got there. Instead he found her dead on the floor of their apartment. She was still wearing her bathrobe, but part of it had been torn away and tied tightly around her neck.

Alma Stanfield, a tenant in the building, lived right above Hammond’s apartment. Just weeks before, she had moved from the third floor to the first floor because she was tired of carrying her groceries and her little girls up so many stairs. She had always felt safe in the building and was shocked to find police all over when she returned from work that evening.

News of her landlady’s death frightened Alma Stanfield. Years later she said, “We were all so shocked when it happened. No one suspected Mr. Taylor. He was so handsome.” Mr. Taylor was Ernie Taylor, who had moved into Stanfield’s old apartment on the third floor. After the killing he was nowhere to be found and the police suspected him right away.

“I remember Bessie Hammonds told me she wondered about Mr. Taylor,” Alma said. “He had come in to rent the place, and he had no credit, no car, and he paid with a $100 bill. That was all he had.”

On the floor near Bessie Hammond’s body police found a pocket that the victim had apparently torn from the shirt of her killer. Inside was a scrap of paper with the name and address of Julia Voris scrawled on it.

Voris told the police the story of her frightening encounter. A few days later, Taylor was picked up by police in Boise, ID and returned to Portland on Voris’ identification. Taylor confessed the killing and acted out his crime for the police at the murder scene.

Taylor was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and found not guilty by reason of insanity. Since that time Oregon’s law has changed and this verdict is now “guilty, but insane.” Taylor was committed to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem to be held indefinitely.

One day in 1962, Taylor walked away from the State Hospital. His disappearance was not reported for several days and Taylor was no where to be found. He wandered to Idaho, Denver and San Diego, working as a short order cook, before marrying and settling down in Sacramento under the name of Ernest Allen.

Back in Portland the women who lived on the Park Blocks were still frightened of the handsome young man who stalked women. Julia Voris, who was never told of Taylor’s escape thought it was a nightmare when she saw him on the streets of Portland one day. “We just looked at each other, and then I hurried on. I didn't want to even believe he was loose. It still scares me.”

Litka Rubin, a sruvivor of a Nazi concentration camp who lived in Hammond’s building said, “Like those Nazis who killed so many people, you look at them, you don't see a killer. Killers don't look like killers. People don't see the inside. I was very, very frightened when the murder happened.”

Taylor lived a quiet life with his wife in California. Neighbors often saw the couple walking in a local park and Taylor was well known in the neighborhood as the “grandfatherly” type. In 1991 he filed for social security benefits and his true identity was discovered.

Ernest Taylor returned to Portland in October, 1991 and was held in the Multnomah County jail for nearly a year. Finally it was determined that he had regained his sanity and was no longer a danger. A deal was reached where Taylor submitted to supervision by a California psychiatrist and was allowed to return to Sacramento to live out his life.

Not much was known about these kinds of crimes in the fifties. Today we know that it is rare for a sexual psycopath to recover spontaneously. We also know that killers who get away with murder tend to kill again.

There is at least one unsolved strangling of a middle aged woman in Portland in 1958. Early in January Dorothy Balfour was found strangled to death with a piece of her clothing in her bedroom behind the gas station she ran at 815 SE Division. Police never identified her killer. Are there others, before 1958 or after 1962?

Thanks to Margie Boule of the Portland Oregonian for the quotations. Her column was instrumental in the development of this case and the main source of my information.

Ha Ha Crimes

2007-01-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

It’s been a bloody New Year so far. On January 1st, just two hours after midnight, Jermaine Davis, 23, became the first murder victim of the year. One week later Davonte Lightfoot, 14, was shot to death at the corner of North Albina Ave and Killingsworth.

Rev. Robert Richardson, of Emmanuel Community Services, who presided at Davis’ funeral, told the Oregonian these are not hate crimes; they are Ha Ha Crimes. “Ha ha, I dare you to do it.”

Richardson is a high profile activist in northeast Portland who works with several programs to reach out to criminals and convicts and help them transform their lives. Both victims had criminal records and their past crimes may or may not have had anything to do with their deaths.

Davis, a father of twins, worked at Portland International Airport and had been arrested in March 2006 for possession and delivery of a controlled substance. His father, David Moaning told the Portland Mercury, “He was just a good kid, and a father of two twins himself. He was the type of person whose heart went out to everyone, he always thought of others before himself.”

Davis had just finished ringing in the New Year and was presumably on his way home when he encountered a 4-door Sedan with several white or Hispanic men and women riding in it. There was some kind of exchange between Davis and the car’s occupants and then shots rang out.

Police are offering a reward of $1,000 for information that leads them to a thin, pale, white man, aged between 20 and 25, with dark brown spiked hair and a moustache, who is a suspect in Davis’ death.

Davonte Lightfoot, 14, was a freshman at Benson High school, who had been flirting with a dangerous life on the street for some time. Arrested earlier in 2006, near the same corner where he was shot, for carrying a .22 pistol, Davonte was on juvenile probation at the time of his death.

Although he had a record, his teachers at Benson told the Oregonian that Davonte was a respectful, humble kid. He wanted to be a rapper, but he did not glorify gang life. Whether he glorified it or not, he felt the draw of gang life. The corner where he was shot is well known for drug dealers, prostitutes and sudden death.

Police are looking for a black male around 20 years old, thin and between 5 feet 5 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall. They believe he was wearing a three-quarter length grey jacket. The shooting took place at 4:30 in the afternoon and their were several witnesses. Police have not been getting a lot of cooperation from witnesses in the neighborhood. People in that neighborhood have good reasons to be afraid.

Rev. Richardson told the Portland Mercury that he began his organization, Emmanuel Community Services in 1988, “When Los Angeles had moved across the street. Shootings were at an all-time high. One hundred and seven shots were fired within a week," he recalls. "Our pastor decided we'd rather do more than funerals."

Almost twenty years later Richardson is doing more than just funerals, but he’s still doing the funerals too.

Portland Murder: Year End Wrap Up

2007-01-09T21:24:00.000-08:00

The statistics are in for 2006 and the number of murders in Portland held steady, with violent crime in general down by 15%. This bucks a national trend with violent crime in most major cities rising this year. Portland had 27 murders in 2006 compared to 26 in 2005 and 28 in 2004. This is less than half of the record year for Portland murders, 1987 when there were 70.

An interesting development this year is that there were no murders in Portland in 2006 that were considered to be gang related, but more than a third were related to domestic violence.

One case of domestic murder illustrates last year’s trend;

On May 3, 2006, Claudia Rhone was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend Gilberto Pedroso, 63. Rhone had taken out a restraining order against Pedroso in 2004, because of physical abuse. By 2006 the restraining order had lapsed, but Pedroso’s probation for harassment charges banned him from contacting Rhone.

On May 3 Pedroso showed up at Rhone’s apartment with a butcher knife and made threatening gestures outside her window. Police arrived quickly, but Pedroso was nowhere to be found. At 7:22pm one of Rhone’s neighbors called police because Pedroso had returned.

Police again arrived quickly, but Pedroso had once again disappeared. At 10:53pm Rhone called 911 and dispatchers could hear her screaming. Then the phone went dead. When police arrived they found Rhone stabbed over a dozen times with the tip of a butcher knife lodged in her skull.

Pedroso was arrested a short time later. According to the Oregonian, he told officers, “I don’t like that she was always calling the police on me.” He also said that he suspected that another man was sleeping in the bed he had bought for her.

This case will be part of a Multnomah County domestic fatality review, under a new state law, with the goal of identifying county policies that might be able to prevent future murders of this kind. Chiquita Rollins, a Multnomah County domestic violence coordinator told the Oregonian, “If there’s [sic] official response changes that can be made, we want to be making them.”

One domestic violence related killing, hardly a murder, stood out in Portland; the self defense killing of Edward Dalton Haffey by Susan Kuhnhausen. What was originally thought to be a burglary turned out to be a bumbling killer hired by Kuhnhausen’s ex-husband. No charges were brought against Susan Kuhnhausen, but her husband, Michael Kuhnhausen Sr. faces charges of attempted murder and conspiracy.

In a development right after Christmas Angela Kuhnhausen paid $100,000 of her father’s million dollar bail and he came within a whisker of release, under electronic monitoring. He had intended to stay with his son while he waited for his trial, until his son’s landlord heard about it. The landlord refused to allow Kuhnhausen to stay with his son. Kuhnhausen’s daughter, Angela, offered to let her dad stay with her, but since she is a prosecution witness the judge said no.

Kuhnhausen is sitting in jail now waiting for his trail to start. The only thing he will say is, ‘I didn’t do it.”

Two killers, Shawn Womack, 21, and Cevelino Capuia, 20, did their best to run up Portland’s murder rate. These two young men killed two men in Portland to steal their cars. Before Womack was arrested he also killed Capuia’s girlfriend Marissa Manwarren.

Sgt. George Burke, who supervises Portland’s homicide detectives, told the Oregonian, “If we hadn’t stopped them, I’d hate to think of the damage that could’ve been done.” Personally I hate to think of the damage that was done.

Portland police solved 92% of the murders here last year. Unsolved killings still linger, including the murder of Douglas Adamson who’s dismembered body parts were found floating in the Columbia River. Police now believe this murder may have occurred in Washington.

Another case that lingers is the killing of Gary George who was found beaten to death in his northeast Portland home. Police have Bobby Barnes in custody for this killing but recent developments leave more questions than answers. The district attorney’s office has clammed up on this one and there is no word of the status in this case, except that Bobby Barnes did it.

2007 has started with a bang. The first murder of the year occurred at 2:10am on January 1st . Jermaine Nyron Davis, 23, was gunned down on SW 4th avenue just as the bars closed. Davis had a record for manufacture and delivery of drugs. His shooting has caused a stir among Portland bloggers, but so far the police have not arrested a suspect.

And so it goes.

Carnival 54 Where Are You?

2006-12-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Carnival of the True Crime Blogs endures. This week, as usual, we bring you the best in True Crime blogging. Without further ado, here are the picks of the week:

I haven’t seen Laura Young’s blog before, but I’m glad to welcome her to the carnival this week. The Dragon Slayer’s Guide to Life doesn’t specialize in True Crime, it looks like she focuses on tales of courage, this week her guest blogger Jason gives us a cop’s eye view on the most dangerous kind of call, the domestic disturbance: War Story.

Wyatt Earp is a police detective from Philadelphia. His blog Support Your Local Gunfighter brings us another cop’s eye view of the street. This one kind of reminds me of the old Adam-12 show, one of my favorites: Locked, Loaded and … Zilch.

Laura James of CLEWS says she’s been slacking lately. I know how you feel, Laura. This week she offers us a tale from Old New York about the disappearance of a young girl and How the Feminine Sherlock Holmes Solved the Disappearance of Ruth Cruger. If that’s slacking, Laura, keep it up.

Home Sweet Home is a blog of domestic crime. This week Sweet brings us an all too common story about “eternal” love in Love Is Not Always Eternal.

Trench Reynolds is one of the hardest working Crime Bloggers out there. His blog The Trenchcoat Chronicles is one of the oldest True Crime Blogs and it focuses on violence at school. This week Trench brings us an update on a brutal case out of Pennsylvania Patrick Armstrong Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter.

HOTT stands for Hot On The Trail. It is a blog focusing on unsolved cases, is actively involved in investigations and provides resources for victims and their families. This week The Carnival brings you two entries from HOTT

Where is Coreen Weise? Gives us the sad story of a missing 15-year-old. The other question is Did she jump?

IRS & SSA As Missing Persons Locator Tools: When & How informs us of an important resource in the search for missing people.

My Life of Crime is a fairly new member of our True Crime Blog community. This week Bonnie offers more on the horrible case of the microwaved baby Paris Talley.

Lilo of Lost in Lima Ohio likes to deal with tough issues. This week is no different. She offers us Fireman Wants His Job Back.

The Crime Scene Blog is one of my favorites, not only for its crisp writing, but also for the sensibility Stephen McCaskill brings to his work. This week he offers We Have the Baseline Killer. Is Phoenix’s nightmare over? At least one of Stephen’s readers thinks it’s not.

Harding of T.O. Crime did not offer a submission to the carnival this week, but I won’t let him get away with that. Harding brings us cold tales from the north and my week is complete without a visit to his site. This week I choose T.O. Crimes article The Pig Farmer on Trial.

Last but not least slabtown chronicle looks into the mysterious death of David Hughes in Something Weird is Going On Here.

Well, that’s it for this week’s Carnival of the True Crime Blogs. If you would like to find out more about the carnival or submit an article for an upcoming edition please go here.

Something Weird is Going on Here

2006-12-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

By the time David Earl Hughes checked into the Hospitality Inn on SW Capitol Highway in November 2006, his life had spiraled far out of control. According to some evidence on the internet, Hughes life had been going that way for the last two years.

A reader of the Portland Tribune, who identified himself as “a Neighbor”, speaks of how Hughes’ neighbors and the police had tried to save him from the dangerous people who had been hanging out at his Northeast Portland house. The neighbor claims that Hughes’ drug addiction had caused personality changes in Hughes and that he had started hanging out with a dangerous group of car thieves and strippers.

In two years Hughes had gone from being a “normal” neighbor to being a wanted fugitive. His legal troubles began in March when Hughes accompanied his 1st ex-wife, Treva Richardson, to the home of Gary George on NE 42nd in Portland. Richardson had recently ended a relationship with George and was fighting with him over custody of a dog.

Hughes and Richardson were armed when they confronted George at his home. They threatened George’s life if he didn’t return the dog. They broke the window of George’s home. Hughes poured gasoline in through the broken window and threatened to burn the house down.

“I’m going to burn your house,” Hughes said, according to court documents, “You really screwed up, Gary.” Hughes fired his shotgun and George returned fire. Hughes and Richardson fled the scene but were arrested a few blocks away with an illegal sawed-off shotgun.

Hughes was charged with attempted murder, but that charge was dropped when he plead guilty to first degree burglary with a firearm, possession of a short barrel shotgun and arson. He was scheduled to appear in court for sentencing on Tuesday November 7, 2006. Instead Hughes disappeared.

Hughes is reported to have told friends and neighbors that he would run or die rather than go to jail. Portland Police and U.S. marshals spent a week searching for Hughes in the Portland area. They visited the Hospitality Inn on SW Capitol Highway more than once looking for him. On Sunday November 12, they arrived at the motel about 10am and found Hughes.

That morning Hughes sent text messages that some are seeing as his suicide note. At 7:00am Hughes sent to his daughter, “they are here I love you clear my name.” An hour later he sent “to murdock and hoe god bless you” this message was evidently for two North Portland police officers. A few minutes later he sent “I forgive whoever gets me tell them I wish them well.”

After sending the messages Hughes called KGW TV and told them that he was wanted on a weapons charge, “but had never been in any real trouble with the police.” He told TV reporters that the police were going to kill him.

Hughes reportedly called the front desk a little after 10am to say that police were looking for him and someone was pounding on his door. While motel employees were calling the police they saw Hughes jumping from the window of his room with his luggage.

After jumping from the window Hughes found himself in an alley surrounded by high chain link fences. Police had soon cut off Hughes’ escape. Hughes refused to give up and yelled at the police to shoot him. Hughes reached into his jacket. Police fired a “less than lethal” bean-bag round at Hughes, but the chain link fence blocked it. Hughes continued to yell at officers to shoot him and reached for his waist-band as if he were going for a weapon.

Three police officers opened fire at Hughes and he was hit several times. He died on the way to the hospital and police found no weapons on him. This is the fourth police shooting in this city in just a few months. Unlike the other shootings there has been almost no attention paid to the death of David Hughes.

Could it be because of the investigation into the murder of Gary George? George, the man Hughes had threatened in the March assault, was found beaten to death in his home a few weeks after the confrontation with Hughes and Richardson. Police discounted Hughes as a suspect in the murder and have charged Bobby Donald Barnes with the murder.

Barnes, who has a long criminal record for prostitution and rape and who is a registered sex offender, is awaiting trial on charges of aggravated murder and “associated crimes.” Chief Deputy District Attorney Norman Frink said, in an email, that it is “unclear if there will be a trial.” More on Barnes in a later post.

Every time I read or hear something about this case, it leaves me with an uneasy feeling. More is going on here than meets the eye. This case nags at me. I am aware that some of my readers are acquainted with the people involved. If you are I would like to hear from you. Please contact me through the comments on this page (I will keep your contact information confidential) or email me at jdchandler2002@yahoo.com and please let me know how to get in touch.

Coming Attractions

2006-12-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

National Novel Writing Month is now over and I completed 50,000 words of my second novel during the month. The problem is that only finishes about half of the story, so I have a lot more to write. I am missing my crime blogging, though and want to get back to it. there is a lot going on in Portland and I will be writing about it here soon. If anyone is interested my first novel is here.

Balance is the issue, because I also am enjoying fiction writing and I plan to finish the novel I started (go ahead and check it out). Here are the things I am planning for Slabtown in the upcoming weeks:

Something Weird is Going on Here -- The murder of Gary Douglas George in April 2006 left a lot of unanswered questions. In June Portland Police arrested Bobby Donald Barnes for the murder. Barnes, a registered predatory sex-offender, has disappeared from the news so I am looking into what is happening with him. A few weeks ago there was a very puzzling development when David Hughes was shot to death by police in what is being called a "suicide by cop." Hughes is the boyfriend of George's ex-wife who assaulted George and threatened to burn down his house shortly before George was killed. I will have more to say about this very odd case soon.

His Hands Were Cold as Ice -- This is about a strangler who stalked Portland in the 1950s and a woman who survived an encounter with him.

Missing Families -- The recent disappearance and (Thank God) rescue of the Kim family reminds us of another family that was not so lucky. In 1958 Ken Martin took his family down the Columbia Gorge to cut a Christmas tree. The family was never seen again. This case is one of Portland's most enduring mysteries.

The Akin Case -- My research into this famous unsolved murder continues and I will have a follow up to my two previous posts soon. Akins Murder Was Never Solved and The Port Commision

Sudafed Murder -- In 1992 there was a series of killings in the Olympia, Wa. area involving Sudafed that had been poisoned with cyanide. One victim survived and Joe Meling is in Federal Prison for the crime. I will take an in depth look at this case and I will present exclusive information.

See you again soon and thanks for reading.

Send in the Clowns: An Alternative True Crime Carnival

2006-11-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

Sometime between being assigned the next edition of the Carnival of the True Crime blogs and the deadline, the whole world changed. What happened to the True Crime Blogroll? Where is the Carnival of the true Crime Blogs? Lilo’s email let me know about a new group forming here but it doesn’t say what happened. She does answer an interesting question on child abuse though: The Answer is No

They say you can’t keep a good blog down, and there are some good blogs out there, so here are jd chandler’s picks of the week:

Corporate crime is pervasive and it can kill. Imahologram at Postcards From Hell gives us one example here in the states. You think it’s any different in Iraq or Afghanistan? Exclusive: Nextel Puts Law Enforcement Lives at Risk

Stephen McCaskill at Crime Scene Blog sheds some light on the community changes. He also announces another crime blog group forming. In crime Stephen gives a nice update on the Serial Sniper Case: Malvo Gets another Life Sentence

Laura James, Esquire at CLEWS gets two listings this week because I like them both: Old Clipping of the Week tells of a Cold Case from the Old Days. Her True Crime Book News, with Fiction Flavoring is inimitable Laura. Who would have thought Henry James liked blood and guts?

The mysterious Shadowraiths brings a fascinating and scholarly look at how our current system of dealing with juvenile sex offenders might be creating the adult sexual predators that plague us. Lock-a-by Baby

Trench of MyCrimeSpace and other blogs brings a story about a frightening trend in DeathRowSpace. Now that’s really a place for fiends.

Home Sweet Home focuses on what some people call “cozy” domestic crime. This week it’s the story of a very messy divorce He Needed Help. Isn’t that cozy?

Toronto is a cold city this time of year. Our friend Harding of T.O. Crime tells stories that chill any time of the year. This week is no exception: Sex Slave Keepers Sentenced in the Peg.

Nene Adams at the Year Round writes in the plush style of the magazines she uses for her research and in doing so transports us to another age. An age of innocence and privilege… An age of Meaningless Massacre.

Steve Huff, of course, keeps it coming with Crimeblog.us This week it’s a weird story about Phillip Daggett, a survivor of a hate crime in Massachusettes who seems to attract strange situations. I’m sure there’s a crime in there somewhere too, I’m just not sure who the criminal is: Phillip Daggett’s Taco Run.

As most of you know I'm in the middle of a big fiction writing project but slabtown chronicle lives. This week it’s a longer piece about a brutal crime from 1949, I call it Cold Blooded.

That wraps it up for this week’s carnival. Our community is changing, but I hope we will be able to continue this valuable forum in some way. The Carnival must go on!

Cold Blooded

2006-11-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

Thelma Taylor was born in the house where she still lived in August 1949, the summer before her sophomore year at Roosevelt High School. On the last day of her life she was up early. There was an extra spring of excitement in her step that morning, because the workmen were almost finished with adding a room to her family’s small house. She would finally have her own room.

As she walked through the pre-dawn she might have been thinking of the strange lights that had flashed across the sky earlier in the week. Some people said it was a meteor, but there were others who said they were “flying saucers” from another planet. The northwest had been abuzz over UFO sightings for nearly two years since the sightings at Mount Rainier. Maybe she glanced at the sky from time to time as she walked toward her friend Janet’s house on N. Tayler.

At 5 a.m. a truck would pick up Janet and Thelma and several other kids from her class and carry them to the green bean fields near Hillsboro where they worked summer jobs picking beans. She carried her lunch in a green metal lunch box with a thermos inside.

Maybe she thought of the upcoming weekend. Tomorrow was Saturday and she probably enjoyed going to the movies or out for a soda with friends. Did she swoon over the latest Frank Sinatra record or did she prefer the mellower sound of Bing Crosby? We may never know, but these were the burning questions of teens at the end of the forties. According to her mother, Thelma had not shown any interest in boys yet, but maybe she was starting to have her first ideas in this direction.

It was 4:15 when the strange car pulled to the curb. The door swung open and the driver offered Thelma a ride. She didn’t need a ride, it was only a few blocks more and she had plenty of time, but the driver was kind of cute. He looked a little like the actor John Ireland. For whatever reason, Thelma got into the car.

He seemed nice and he had dreamy dark eyes. He had that dark brooding look that Thelma thought of as wild and dangerous. Wild and dangerous seemed interesting and exciting to the young, sheltered girl. She had never known real danger, but soon she would.

You could just make out the lightening of the sky before the sun’s rising on another beautiful Portland summer day as the car carrying Thelma Taylor passed her turn. Did she start to be afraid?

“That’s my turn, Mr.”

“Call me Morris.” His smile seemed sincere.

“That was my turn, Morris. Two blocks back now.”

“I want to show you something first.”

Morris stepped on the gas and the car, a post-War sedan picked up speed.

“But I’ve got to meet the truck. I can’t be late for work.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t be late.”

The car was approaching the entrance to the St Johns Bridge.

“No. Let me out. I’m not crossing the bridge with you.”

Thelma was angry, her voice wasn’t showing any fear, yet.

Where did it come from? Before she knew it Morris had a seven inch knife in his hand. Its blade was pressing into the denim of her jeans over her thigh.

“I think you’ll go wherever I want you to. What do you think of that?”

“Yes, sir.” Now her voice showed fear. Now she really knew what fear was.

The man driving the car was Leland Morris, 22, recently released from the Rocky Butte jail. He had slept the night in the stolen car and decided to take a drive before the sun came up. He was on the prowl for what he could get and he had got himself a young girl.

Morris had a criminal record that went back to the age of 13 for car theft, burglary, assaulting and robbing women and a few men. At the age of 16 he raped a 29-year old woman in Pier Park, then he stole a car and abducted her, holding her prisoner all day and raping her several times. That wasn’t his first rape either.

The police in Portland knew Morris. In 1945 he led them on a wild car chase that ended with his car in a Victory garden. When police pulled him from the wreck they found he was carrying a seven-inch hunting knife, just like the one that was now pressing into the thigh of 15-year old Thelma Taylor.

Since his release from the Rocky Butte jail two weeks before, Morris had been living in the bushes along the river and prowling unlocked cars in the surrounding neighborhoods. Now he crossed to the east side of the St Johns Bridge looking for a secluded spot he knew by the river.

Thelma’s heart was pounding as the car pulled to the side of the road. She measured her chances for running. She was afraid to even be on this side of the river. Her mother had told her never to go near the railroad tracks and there they were. The sun was starting to rise now and she could hear the birds waking up, but still there was no one around to call for help and she saw nowhere to run.

Morris opened the door on her side and pointed the knife right at her face.

“Get out of the car and walk into the bushes right there.” He pointed with the knife and she allowed herself to breath. “If you make any noise or try to run I will cut your throat. I won’t even mind doing it.”

She walked into the bushes and he was right behind. He guided her to a clearing right on the bank of the river. The railroad track was just up the hill and the other side of the river was Cathedral Park.

He made her sit on a fallen tree. She clutched her green lunch box. She looked at her captor with eyes full of fear.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Whatever I want.” Now Thelma knew what was really dangerous.

Somehow her innocence touched him. Suddenly he didn’t want to rape her. Having her in his power was enough. Now he didn’t know what to do.

They sat like that for hours. He hardly said anything. Eventually she couldn’t help talking. It helped with the anxiety she felt, so she chattered about anything and nothing.

She thought maybe if she could get through to him he would take her home and not hurt her. Every once in a while she would say something that made him smile and then he seemed nice again, but it didn’t last. Mostly he brooded.

After a while it started to get warm as the sun reflected off the river. She had Kool-Aid in her Thermos and she asked if it would be all right if she had a drink. He just waved the knife at her and didn’t say anything.

It took courage to open the lunch box, but he didn’t do anything about it. She decided she should eat her lunch. She offered to share the food with him, but again he just waved the knife at her.

They sat like that all day. She couldn’t believe how bored she felt; even though she knew her life was in danger. If he would only let her get up and move around.

Morris suddenly moved to the girl and put his hands on her, touching her body. Thelma tried to scream loud enough for her mother to hear on the other side of the river. The noise seemed to panic Morris. He dropped the knife and slapped his hand over her mouth. He held her. Tight.

Thelma went limp and Morris realized that she wasn’t able to breath. He took his hand off her mouth. Air rattled into her throat. She wasn’t screaming any more.

“Please, don’t touch me, Morris,” she pleaded, trying to get him to see that she was a real person, “Don’t hurt me.”

He punched her in the face. A red cloud obscured his vision. There was nothing for him but the hitting. He wasn’t sure how many times he hit her, but when the red cleared she was unconscious. Shadows were deepening all around them. He didn’t want her anymore, but he didn’t know what to do with her.

It was dark by the time she woke up. Morris regarded Thelma with cold eyes. There was a little blood crusted around her nostrils and she had a black eye, but she was quiet.

He knelt beside the shivering girl and put his hand on her breast. Her body jerked away from his touch as if it were red hot. When he began to unbutton her shirt she started to cry, quietly. Tears rolled down her cheeks. As his hard fingers reached her bare flesh, Thelma felt her skin crawl.

Morris was disgusted with the crying. He felt as if the girl in his arms had suddenly turned into a corpse and pushed her away.

“I don’t want you anyway. Nobody wants you.”

That wasn’t quite true, because it was probably around this time that her parents began their frantic search for Thelma. When she didn’t return from the bean fields with the other kids they got worried. By nightfall, when Thelma was nowhere to be found, they were desperate.

On the dusty bare ground by the side of the Willamette, Thelma Taylor cried for the normal world she was afraid she would never see again. After a while she fell asleep.

Leland Morris sat in the dark watching her. He felt himself split, part of him wanted to rape the girl, to feel her scream in pain and fear. Another part of him knew it was wrong. That second part felt scared and puny against the beast that raged inside.

How long did he wrestle with himself there beside the river and the sleeping girl? Eventually his eyes grew heavy and he fell into sleep.

When he next opened his eyes the sun was up and the girl was gone. He grabbed his knife and started back toward the road. He couldn’t believe his luck when he caught up with her. She hadn’t got very far yet.

“Come back here.” The girl jumped at the sound of his voice and started to run, Morris was taller and faster on his feet. Soon she felt the knife against her throat and his arm around her shoulders. A whimper escaped her lips as he pushed her back into the bushes, back toward the river.

She could smell blackberries in the air as they struggled through the overgrown bushes. It would be fun to go berry picking, she thought. Her whimper turned to a giggle as she thought how silly it was to think of berry picking now. Maybe she was getting delirious.

She stumbled over a piece of iron rebar on the ground. The area where they were staying was littered with odd and ends that Morris had picked up in his wandering. If she could only get her hands on that bar…

Morris pushed her hard in the middle of her back and she stumbled forward. She felt a sharp pain in her wrist as she kept herself from falling on her face. Morris picked up the piece of rebar and spanked her hard across the butt.

“Get up. I want you to sit back down on that tree and don’t move. I’ve got to make up my mind.”

Hysteria rose inside Thelma like the dark water that would rise in the Willamette only a few weeks later. The Willamette destroyed the town of Vanport, the hysteria destroyed Thelma’s sanity. She felt as if her body was being jabbed with pins and needles everywhere. It took every ounce of self control she could muster to sit still.

Leland Morris looked at her with frozen eyes. He saw nothing but a problem that had to be solved. The 15-year old girl sitting on a fallen tree trying desperately to stay sane had become a job of unpleasant work that had to be done. The girl had to die.

A screech of metal wheels on steel rails announced that a switch engine was coming down the railroad tracks. The screech startled Thelma and a scream escaped her lips. The sound of her own voice and the freeing rush of air through her throat cleared the girl’s mind. She realized there might be someone close enough to hear. She screamed again, louder.

The sound that cleared Thelma’s mind had an opposite effect on Morris. He felt a tearing sensation through his brain. Thelma’s shrieks tore into his ears. He had to stop the sound. He couldn’t get caught again. Before he knew what he was doing he was swinging the rebar and hitting the small girl in the face. He hit her again.

She fell backwards into a sitting position on the ground, but she was still screaming and now she was trying to get up. He raised the bar above his head and brought it down with full force on her forehead. That stopped the screaming.

Morris was in control of the situation. Everything was all right, now he just had to stay cool. The metal bar felt heavy. He looked at it and it was thick with blood and other things. He threw it toward the river as if he would throw it all the way to the other side. It landed just a few feet out in about three feet of water.

He fell to his knees beside Thelma’s body. She seemed very small and helpless, he had never had anyone so thoroughly in his power and he liked it. He felt an erection growing in his pants. His hand found his hunting knife on the ground nearby. There was a sexual thrill as he slid the blade into the flesh of her stomach and pushed it deep inside.

Again and again he plunged the knife into her body, feeling the sexual thrill he got from possessing a woman with each thrust. He rolled her onto her back and tore at the button of her jeans. He wanted her now, more than ever.

The cold touch of her skin brought Morris back to reality. The girl was dead. He was disgusted with himself and was disgusted with what he was about to do. A deep shame washed over the killer’s soul. He knew what he was and he knew that he could not let himself get caught.

He half lifted and half rolled the surprisingly heavy dead girl over a log which partially hid the body from view. He scanned the river bank for something to cover her with.

The sun was blazing on the Willamette nearby. It was another startlingly beautiful day. Morris picked up the knife that he had dropped and shuddered a bit at the sticky feel of the blood on its handle. He gagged at the thought of what he had done with the knife. He flung it toward the water and it landed near the rebar.

Someone had cut some branches from a tree nearby and then sawed them into logs, only a little longer than convenient fire logs. Some of the logs still had leafy branches that had turned brown in the heat. He dragged a few of these logs over and laid them over Thelma Taylor’s body.

Did Leland Morris feel remorse for what he had done? He said he did. He said his conscience was bothering him for days after the crime.

On Thursday, nearly a week later, he was driving another stolen car when he was stopped by police. How surprised would a veteran cop be to find Leland Morris at the wheel of a stolen car? Not very, but what he said next was a surprise.

“I want to talk to a homicide detective.”

“What about?”

“A murder I did.”

Leland Morris was executed in the gas chamber at the Oregon State Prison in Salem on January 9, 1953.

To My Readers

2006-11-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

I hope you have noticed that I haven't posted here in a few weeks. If you have then you will be happy to know that I will continue the slabtown chronicle soon. Writing opportunities have grown while I have been writing this and I thought I should share a little of what has been happening with you, my valued readers.

Keep your fingers crossed. I just completed a short piece that I hope will soon be appearing in a print anthology. I won't jinx it anymore.

My latest project came by way of a challenge from my friend Ken Goldstein, who also happens to be a very talented writer. Use the link above to read his stuff. Ken challenged me to write a novel (okay 50,000 words is really novella length, but its a start) in just 30 days from November 1st to november 30th as part of National Write a Novel Month. You can see what my project is here.

I will try to post here at least a couple of times in November, but most of my writing will be going into this project for at least the next 30 days. Happy reading and I will see you all again real soon.

Torso Murders

2006-10-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

If the police have any leads into the killing of Douglas Adamson, whose torso was found floating in the Columbia inside a gym bag in September, they’re not talking. Adamson’s limbs were found later, also floating in the river. His head and one leg are still missing.

Last information available is that the police were still trying to verify Adamson’s where-abouts on September 7, which presumably is the day he died. So far there seems to be no motive or suspect in the killing of the southeast Portland auto mechanic and son of a former Estacada police officer.

“You definitely don't see this too often . . . which is a good thing,” said Detective Bryan Steed, the lead investigator of Adamason’s murder. Steed is right. The last time something like this happened was in the spring of 1946. My mentions of this earlier murder has stirred up some interest, so I thought I should tell you what is known now.

On the evening of Friday April 12, 1946 three people walking on the bank of the Willamette river near the Wisdom Island Moorage in Milwaukie discovered a burlap package floating in the river. H.C. Foster of Portland and James and Mary Rader of Milwaukie first thought the package might be a bag of drowned kittens.

They fished the package to shore and were shocked to find that it contained the torso of a white woman. The body had been sawed off at the neck, elbows and hips and was wrapped in brown pants, a dark blue sweater, long underwear and a grayish-black tweed topcoat. Over the clothing the body was wrapped in burlap and tied with tape, rope and telephone wire.

The sleeves of the sweater and the topcoat were missing and burns in the underwear led the police to speculate that the woman may have been tortured. There was no obvious sign of violence against the body, other than dismemberment.

The discovery of the torse led workmen on a tugboat working upstream from the Willamette Locks to investigate a floating package that had been sited a couple of weeks earlier. Inside they found the woman’s arms and one thigh.

Oregon State Police and Clackamas County Deputies believed that the body came from either Milwaukie or Lake Oswego, or that it had been thrown from the Oak Grove Bridge. They investigated sites on the river where footprints and scraps of burlap made them think that the packages may have been thrown into the river from more than one spot.

On July 27 another thigh was found floating in the Clackamas River below the McLoughlin Bridge. By this time public interest had waned and few people noticed the grisly discovery.

The Torso Murder Case received another spate of headlines in October, 1946, when the head was found on October 13. It was wrapped in newspaper and green cloth, weighted with 21 pounds of window sash weights and had apparently been thrown from the Oak Grove Bridge.

The newspapers proved to be from the Oregonian dated October 14, 1944 with another page dated September 16, but with no year. The woman was in her fifties, about 5 foot 8 inches tall and 140 pounds. She had medium brown hair, mostly gray and a partial dental plate with extensive dental work.

Police thought that the dental work would lead to identification, since her hands and feet were still missing. They were pursuing several leads on missing women, but did not release an identity for the victim.

That’s where the trail has gone cold. So far I have found no other mention of this murder in the Oregonian or any where else. No identity for the victim. No suspects. No motive. No leads. The coldest a case can get after 60 years.

I’m writng this now in hope of stimulating a new search into this case. Something more must be known about it. At least one local reporter has shown some interest in this case and I’m hoping we’ll have some news soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Images Are Back?

2006-10-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe I can post images here again.

So I am celebrating by posting these shots of

King Tower.

On February 2, 1965 William A. Howell, 51, an ex-employee of the defunct Portland Register was found dead in his apartment under mysterious circumstances.

The fact that he was found lying face up and his skull had been fractured by two seperate blows, made the coroner rule that accidental death was unlikely.

The police had no clues as to the killer and seemed to have no leads to follow. The killing made headlines for two or three days and then faded away in news of Vietnam, civil rights marches and new crimes.

This killing has always haunted me and I like the look of the building.

At least I can use pictures again. Now I have to figure out how to put them where I want them.

Nothing Personal

2006-10-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

Tony Forillo had been drifting for years when he finally hit Portland. A rough divorce in his native Illinois sent him on a six year journey that took him from working oil rigs in Louisiana to the crab boats of Alaska. He worked in Seattle for a while as a carpenter and then drifted on to Portland.

While waiting to get his union card, so he could begin working as a carpenter, a case of appendicitis, complicated by alcoholism left him incapacitated. During his recovery he lived at the Monticello Motel on North Interstate Ave.

In September, 1995 Tony still lived at the Monticello, but things were picking up. His health was back and he had moderated his drinking. He was working for Western Wood Structures in Troutdale and trying to save enough money to move from the motel to his own place.

Through all his travels and his troubles, there was one thing that made Tony, Tony. That was chess. It was probably a chess game that cost Tony his life.

On Sunday September 24, 1995 Tony was found beaten to death with his own hammer in his motel room. In the bloody mess, police found a chess board, but no chess pieces, and some cigarette butts. No money was found in the room, all though Tony had recently been paid and he was known to have cash in his room that he was saving for his apartment.

Forensic scientists were able to extract DNA from the cigarette butts, but DNA science was in its infancy in the 90s and the evidence led nowhere. Soon the case grew cold.

Patricia Forillo of Minooka, IL Tony’s mom was not willing to leave it there. She came to Portland shortly after her son’s murder and searched pawn shops for her son’s chess set and his high school class ring. She found nothing, but she stayed in touch with Portland Detective Mike Hefley, keeping the case in his mind, not letting him forget about her son’s murder.

In 1999 Patricia arranged for a $5000 reward for information about her son’s death. The reward was offered by the Carole Sund/Carrington Reward Foundation, which provides money to help families solve unsolved murders. Patricia, a MacDonald’s manager who had raised three children by herself, was not wealthy.

Two years later the reward offer had expired, but by then police had a suspect. A DNA match had come back for the cigarette butts. The DNA found in Forillo’s motel room belonged to Richard Ramon Aponte.

Aponte was a wandering day laborer with a record of violence going back to 1986 that included arrests for aggravated assault, weapons and drug charges in New York, Seattle, Miami and Boise ID. In 2001 Aponte was in jail for a beating murder in Florida.

In May 1999 a Key West man was found beaten to death with a pickaxe handle in his home. A few days later Richard Aponte was arrested for hitchhiking in Louisiana. While in jail he cried as he confessed to police that he had beaten the Florida man to death because he had paid him only $40 for 16 hours work.

Aponte was convicted of the murder and during his move to State prison he gave a routine DNA sample. The DNA was eventually matched to the sample Detective Hefley had from the cigarette butts in Forillo’s motel room.

Hefley and Detective Tom Nelson flew to Florida to interview their suspect. Aponte played it cagey. He said he didn’t know anything about a murder in Portland. Hefley and his partner were stymied. The DNA alone was not enough evidence to convict Aponte, but at least they knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

Hefley let Patricia Forillo know that they had a good suspect and that he was in jail for another killing. That was about all of the news that Patricia would get, she had already been diagnosed with breast cancer and she died a short while later.

By 2003 Detective Lynn Courtney had taken over the case and he got word from Florida that Aponte would be willing to talk about Forillo’s murder, but only if they would promise that he could serve the rest of his life sentence in Oregon. Courtney let the convict know that he could not make any promises like that and Aponte held his tongue.

In 2005 Aponte’s appeal of his Florida murder conviction failed. He called Detective Courtney and citing a religious conversion agreed to talk about Tony Forillo. Courtney flew to Florida and got the killer’s confession.

“I just wanted the family to know that it was nothing personal,” said Aponte. He said that on that Saturday he had gone to Forillo’s room to play chess for money. Aponte claimed that he won the game, but Forillo refused to pay. Aponte beat him to death with his hammer. Courtney asked what happened to the chess pieces. Aponte said they had his fingerprints on them so he took them away after the killing and disposed of them.

Last Monday, 11 years and one day after the murder, Richard Aponte was arraigned in Multnomah County court on agravated murder and first-degree robbery charges.

Portland Round Up

2006-09-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

The summer doldrums seem to be over. There are some new developments in old crimes and some interesting new ones have occurred. Let’s see if I can bring you up to date.

The Other Shoe

When I wrote the original story on Susan Kuhnhausen, the emergency room nurse who strangled a burglar in her home, I suspected there was more to the story than we knew. While I was on vacation the other shoe dropped.

Kuhnhausen returned home from work on the evening of September 6 to be confronted by an apparent burglar armed with a hammer. During what she called “the fight of her life” Kuhnhausen was struck with the hammer and bitten in several places. Finally she was able to get ex-convict Edward Dalton Haffey into a choke hold and she hung on until he was dead.

Kuhnhausen told the police she suspected that her husband had been involved in the attack, because he was the only one, besides her, who knew the security system code to the house. There was no sign of forced entry and Michael Kuhnhausen, 58, had left a note on the kitchen table saying he was going to the beach, and proving he had been in the house on the 6th.

Haffey was identified quickly because he was carrying his wallet and it was soon determined that he had been working as a janitor at Fantasy Video, where Michael Kuhnhausen worked as a supervisor of janitors. Haffey also had a backpack with him. Inside the backpack police found Michael Kuhnhausen’s cell phone number and a calendar entry saying “Call Mike, Get Letter” scribbled on the week of Sept 4th.

Security alarm records showed that someone had entered the house twice on the afternoon of September 6. Michael Kuhnhausen admitted that he had entered the house that he owned with his estranged wife, but claimed that he had nothing to do with the plot. Records also showed that Michael had used Susan’s credit card to buy a .357 magnum from a local pawn shop. The couple’s daughter, Angela, told police that her father had left a suicide note at her home on September 7 and disappeared.

Clackamas County deputies took the armed Michael Kuhnhausen into custody on September 13 and he now faces charges of conspiracy to commit murder and domestic-violence related attempted murder.

Wheels Grind Slowly

Anna Svidersky was a high school senior stabbed to death while working at McDonald’s in Vancouver, WA last spring. Her killer, David Sullivan, has a long history of mental illness and this has created a lot of complication in the legal case.

Sullivan has been deemed competent to stand trial for the murder. On Friday, September 22, Sullivan plead not guilty by reason of insanity. The fact that Sullivan is competent to stand trial means that he understands the first degree murder charge against him and that he can assist in his own defense.

Now Sullivan must undergo independent evaluation to determine diminished capacity and insanity. No telling how long this process will take.

Body Parts in the River

A gruesome case has been developing over the last week involving the dismembered body of Douglas Adamson, parts of which have been turning up in the Columbia River. On Sunday, September 17, a couple fishing on Government Island spotted an athletic bag wrapped in duct tape floating in the river. They dragged the bag to shore and the smell made them suspect something dead was inside.

Police recovered the bag later in the day and found the torso of a middle aged man inside. On Wednesday a woman walking her dog by the river in Vancouver discovered an arm and the next day a maintenance worker at a Vancouver park found a leg floating in the river.

Police were able to lift fingerprints from the severed arm and have identified the body as that of Douglas Adamson, 52, a Portland auto mechanic who was reported missing on September 12.

Adamson, who had been off work for several weeks with a knee injury, was last seen by his roommate on September 9. The next day his pick up truck was found abandoned on Interstate 205 near North Killingsworth Avenue. On the 12th he was reported missing.

Adamson has a criminal record going back to the mid 90s with convictions for assault and possession of a controlled substance. In 2001 and again in 2003 a woman had filed domestic violence related restraining orders against Adamson.

So far police are baffled by the crime. Detective Commander Cliff Madison, of the Portland Police who is investigating the crime, said “This is unusual and the motive behind this will definitely be interesting.”

Unusual is right. The last time dismembered body parts were found floating in the river was in 1946. All summer brown-paper parcels containing parts of the body of a middle-aged woman were found floating at various spots on the Willamette. As far as I can tell the police were never able to identify the victim in that case. At least this time they know who the victim is.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this case. Last but not least…

Northwest Contender for the Shortest Time of Freedom

Autrey J. Lewis, 37, of Vancouver is vying for the record for the shortest freedom from prison. Lewis, convicted twice of second-degree robbery in 1987 and 2002, was released from his latest prison term at 10:22am on April 20th. By 8am on April 21st he was back in custody, this time for first-degree kidnapping, first-degree burglary with sexual motivation and second-degree robbery.

Less than 12 hours after being released from jail, Lewis broke into the home of a 68-year-old Vancouver woman, forced her into her car and drove her to a Hazel Dell area bank were she withdrew $200 using her debit card.

This week Lewis plead guilty to all three charges and under Washington’s “most serious offenses” law was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. We’re probably all better off with him put away.

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs XLI

2006-09-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Forty-First edition of the Carnival of the True Crime Blogs. I enjoy the carnival every week as a way to know what is interesting in True Crime Blogs. It's an international carnival of love and crime this week and there’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get to it.

First up is the talented Nene Adams from the Netherlands. Adams is a prolific, and very good, writer who’s blog The Year Round presents interesting stories from 19th century newspapers. This week Nene offers us two interesting Victorian crime stories:

MURDER IN THE NAME OF LOVE is the story of a troubled young woman in 1892 and a ghastly crime, committed in the name of love.

THE VEILED MURDERESS the tale of the enigmatic, and dangerous woman in 1853 who managed to be convicted of two murders, serve 18 years in prison and end her life in an insane asylum without every revealing her true identity.

From Down under, the unnamed Doctor from Melbourne, Australia presents the blog Ironic Fist. The Ironic Fist comments with a cynical voice on the irony that is everywhere around us. This week the Ironic Fist brings us an audio submission:

Ladderman Police Interview is an 8 minute sound file that must be downloaded, but it is certainly worth the trouble. Purportedly a police interview of a man accused of stealing a ladder, it is hilarious. The accused man is nasty and profane (there is heavily accented graphic language) and hilarious. The policemen interviewing him break out laughing at his antics more than once. Have fun.

From the Great White North Harding of T.O. Crime brings us the best crime stories from his beloved city Toronto. This week he brings us a hotel mystery:

A Bloody Mess is the story of a massacre at Toronto’s Delta Chelsea Hotel. At this point the crime is a mystery, but this is the second Toronto hotel murder this summer. As Harding says, “It’s not like there is a serial killer on the loose, stalking foreign visitors…”

Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home. This week our friend “Sweet” of Home Sweet Home brings us a tale with all the “family” values – children, marriage and church.

On the Way to Church is another crime committed in the name of love. Why did he kill his wife? Because he didn’t want to get a divorce.

Our friend Trench of MyCrimeSpace: A Place for Fiends has a great sense of humor. This week he brings us a MySpace related story that is his nominee for the worst newspaper story ever written. It’s got my vote.

Eric Roscoe is charged with Computer Aided Solicitation. Say no more.

And coming in with two minutes to deadline Shadowraiths has two entries this week:

Ingredients for Murder is a compelling analysis of John Mark Karr’s phone conversations and emails with Wendy Hutchens and Michael Tracey. Frightening.

Walking the Talk sticking with the story of John Mark Karr shadowraiths analyses the role of Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy. Lacey is taking a lot of heat for all the money it took to bring Karr back to the U.S. only to clear him as a suspect in the Ramsey case. I guess I’m not the only one who thinks she did the right thing,

Your host at slabtown chronicle offers a Portland story of self-defense that has got quite a bit of national attention:

Any Means Necessary Nursing is a dangerous job, but it shouldn’t still be dangerous when you get home.

Well, that’s it for the official entries. Just because I like to, here are my draftees:

Laura James of my favorite historical crime blog CLEWS takes time off from raging at the media (I agree with her completely) to tell us the tale of another crime committed for love.

An Unwritten Law is the story of a bloody love triangle from the fifties. Just look at the picture of the killer upon hearing the verdict at his trial. A very nicely written tale.

This week I think it is important to remember the anniversary of an important crime. Stephen McCaskill of Crime Scene Blog offers an introspective look at 9/11:

September 11, 2001: The Second Day of Infamy regardless of politics there are some things we can all agree on when we think about this tragedy.

Stephen also brings us a last minute entry (past deadline, Steve tsk tsk) which is so well written I couldn't pass it by: Details Released About Molestation Claim

The enigmatic Imaholagram at Postcards From Hell is writing again and I think that is worth celebrating. Her entry this week is my nominee for most cynical title of the month:

Band Director Busted Blowing Student's Flute It’s an old story, but it just doesn’t go away.

Well that’s it for the Carnival of the True Crime Blogs this week. Hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to submit a story for the next carnival or track down the old carnivals, you can do that here:
The Carnival of the True Crime Blogs

Any Means Necessary

2006-09-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

Lost in historical research and late summer lethargy I have hardly noticed that more than two weeks have passed since I posted to Slabtown, but I was jolted out my reverie this week by the story of Susan Kuhnhausen, 51. She is an emergency room nurse at Providence Hospital. Coming home from work on Wednesday evening, she found a burglar armed with a hammer in her home.

It’s a story we hear about all the time. Someone confronts a burglar in their home and they are killed. The burglar ends up being a wayward teenager, or a hard core loser who ends up on Death Row. Not this time, though. Susan Kuhnhausen defended herself and Edward Dalton Haffey, a hard core loser, was strangled to death.

Haffey had a long record for violent and drug related crime, which included a conviction for conspiracy to commit murder. Everyone in Portland is glad that Susan Kuhnhausen was the one who survived the confrontation.

Kuhnhausen has been an emergency room nurse for more than thirty years, as well as an activist for democracy in the workplace and safety for nurses. She has been very outspoken about the danger of her job. Nurses are twelve times more likely to be assaulted at work than the average person.

“I've been assaulted twice and bit, hit, kicked and punched by patients . . . who know better . . .,” Kuhnhausen wrote for the Emergency Nurses Association Newsletter, “The potential for violence at the hospital always exists and we need to send a message that it's not okay to assault any public servant whether it be a police officer, firefighter or nurse.”

The neighborhood where Kuhnhausen lives, near SE 82nd and Alder, has seen a lot of crime recently. Neighbors have been reporting a wave of car prowls and burglaries for several weeks. In one case a woman with small children in the house used a kitchen knife to chase away an armed intruder. Kuhnhausen’s neighbors say she is a “brave and courageous woman.”

Neighbors Kuhnhausen went to for help after the confrontation said that she was fairly calm. She is used to working in crisis mode and she handles stress well, or she wouldn’t have lasted 30 years in emergency room nursing. She suffered only slight injuries and bruises in the fight.

State law allows a person to use a “reasonable amount of deadly force” to protect themselves in their homes. No charges will be brought against Kuhnhausen in this case. It is unusual, though, because usually in these cases a firearm or a knife is involved. Kuhnhausen strangled the man, who was considerably smaller than she, with her bare hands.

“When you're fighting for your life, you will use whatever means is necessary,” said Portland Officer Cathe Kent, a police spokeswoman. “In this case, the homeowner did what she had to do to get out safely.”

Kuhnhausen is a grandmother and has been helping to raise her grandchild in her home. Thank god the child was not there on Wednesday night. All I can say is, “Go Grandma.”

Confessions of a Crime Blogger

2006-08-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have been writing about crime for years, but never have I had a larger or more immediate audience. Recently I have found myself in a couple of situations where I have been introduced as a “Crime Blogger” and treated as an expert on murder. Of course my ego loves it, but my experience has taught me that anyone is an expert if they know a little more than you do about something. But then murder is my hobby and I love to be able to talk with people about it.

This is my real confession; I like to talk about murder. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable and rightfully so. Over the years I have learned to keep quiet and not let everyone know who got killed in the building we are passing and when. But I still want to and I am glad to have the opportunity.

Anyone who writes about crime knows the discrimination it can engender. Some people think that crime is not a serious subject and not worthy of a “true” writer. These people don’t bother me. They remind me of a woman who attended one of my poetry readings in the early 90s. I asked for questions from the audience and she rose, saying, “Are those real poems, or did you just make those up?” I just make all of my stuff up, sometimes after careful research and I do not claim to be a “true” writer.

The others are the ones that get to me. These are the ones who say, “Why do you want to concentrate on such horrible things?” This gets to me, because I am a positive person and I believe in concentrating on the positive in any given situation. I know that we attract the things we think about into our lives and I want to attract love and happiness into my life, not violence and death.

Yet the violence and death is compelling. I am compelled to witness the darkest things that the human soul has to offer. I believe that these horrible things grow in the dark and when no one is looking. A wise man once said, “He who has eyes, let him see.” I have eyes. I have a voice. As long as I am here someone will be looking and witnessing and telling anyone who wants to read.

Hatchet Job Part Two

2006-08-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

The Port Investigation

1933 was a watershed year. Nationally the Republican Party, which had dominated government for more than a decade, was being replaced in power by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. In Oregon the Republican Party did not intend to give up power so easily.

For most of its history Oregon has been known as a “Rock-Ribbed” Republican state. This was never truer than in the 1920s. With strong support from the Ku Klux Klan, which was enjoying wide popularity throughout the country, a group of unscrupulous Republicans had kept a hammerlock on the state for years. The election of 1932 started the process of their collapse.

Oregon has always had a liking for progressive Republicanism embodied by such figures as Senator Mark Hatfield. In 1930 the progressive wing of the Republican Party got ahead of the New Deal band wagon by advocating publicly owned hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River. George W. Joseph, a prominent Portland attorney was nominated for Governor.

Shortly after his nomination Joseph died and the conservative wing, which controlled the Republican State Central Committee, passed over the primary candidates and nominated Phil Metschan Jr.

Metschan was the son of a Canyon City merchant, from the gold country of Eastern Oregon, who served as Oregon State Treasurer in the 1890s. He was brother in law of Representative K.K. Kubli, who relied on the KKK for his politics as well as his initials, and he was against publicly owned power. Metschan was also a long time Portland Port Commissioner.

Julius Meier, son of the founder of Portland’s most famous department store Meier and Frank and the law partner of George Joseph, took up the mantel of his fallen friend and offered himself as an independent candidate for Governor. Meier was elected by a landslide.

Julius Meier was an energetic and somewhat ruthless leader. His personality seems to have fit the rough and tumble world of the 1930s. He made it a priority of his administration to clean up corruption in government, wherever he found it, as long as it was being practiced by his political enemies.

Portland had plenty of corruption. Portland’s city government has usually been dominated by business owners, but never more than during the 1920s. The national economic policy was laissez faire and in Portland that was taken to extremes. The Port of Portland Commission was a perfect example of the cozy relationship that can develop between business and a government body managing publically owned property. It is also a good example of the casual corruption that can ensue.

Portland is a transportation city. The Columbia River drains one of the richest mining regions in the country. The Willamette waters one of the most fertile agricultural valleys in the world. The products of these two areas are poured through Portland as if through a funnel. By the time of World War I, Portland geographically dominated shipping on these two rivers, but there was no locally owned shipping company.

A group of business men and Portland boosters, led by John C. Ainsworth, the founder of U.S. Bank, organized to promote locally owned shipping. When the war ended in 1918, the Liberty Fleet of quickly made transport ships was the largest merchant fleet on earth. The U.S. government decided to sell these ships off to private owners.

Ainsworth and his partners first leased and then purchased these ships as the States Steamship Company. Soon Portland was once-again a bustling Port giving strong competition to both San Francisco and Seattle. Management of the docks and dry-docks, as well as dredging of the river channels became a pressing need.

The Port Commission of Portland was created to fill this need. The State was responsible for dredging the river channels, so the governor made appointments to the Commission. These positions were usually reserved for members of prominent Portland families and executives of the shipping companies that used the Port facilities. In 1925, the Legislature took over the appointments.

Frank Warren, president of the Port Commission, Phil Metschan and James Polhemus, the manager of the Port saw it as their duty to provide special treatment for their “preferred” customers, especially the States Steamship Company. Kenneth Dawson, Vice President of States, actually served as a Port Commissioner for several years.

States was given special rates on dock usage. States also managed to pull off several purchases of newly purchased dredging equipment at sharply depreciated prices. Coincidentally States then often leased the equipment back to the Port at inflated prices.

The Depression hit Portland hard, but the States Steamship Company came through in good shape and kept business going as much as possible. The Port, on the other hand found itself deeply in debt and heading for serious financial problems. In 1932 the Commission charter was changed to allow Commissioners to be publicly elected. Governor Meier saw his chance to take on the Port.

Bert Haney, a Portland attorney and long time Portland Port booster, ran for president of the Port Commission. Strongly backed by Governor Meier, Haney ran a “Clean up the Port” campaign. Haney won handily and created a subcommittee, consisting of himself, Frank Warren and newly elected Commissioner Paul Bates, to investigate charges of mismanagement.

Frank Akin, an accountant who specialized in auditing, was appointed by Meier to investigate the committee and present his findings to Haney’s subcommittee. Akin had been handed the hottest potato in town and many believed that his real mission was to do a “hatchet job” on the Port. Akin began to receive death threats before he even started investigating.

In March 1933 Akin was assaulted in his southwest Portland apartment. Akin was nothing if not a fighter; he knocked his attacker to the ground and chased him from the room. He would have pressed charges, but he was not able to identify the right man. After the assault, Aiken began to carry a loaded revolver in his pocket. He also kept at least two other handguns and two rifles in his apartment.

Akin’s wife, Imo E. Akin a teacher at Shattuck School, was not surprised to hear of her husband’s death. When told of his murder on November 20, 1933 she said, “Oh Frank, why did you let them do it?” She was convinced from the start that it was her husband’s political enemies that had killed him.

Coming Soon: Part Three Portland Gangland
Part One: Akin's Murder Was Never Solved

Don't Do It

2006-08-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

They got away with murder, almost. In December, 1999 the death of Edward C. Gregory, 62, was believed to be natural. Gregory’s health had been bad and when he was found dead in the home he shared with Norman E. Schlunt and Angela Soon He Kim, his relatives assumed he had died naturally and had his body cremated. The police never investigated Gregory’s death because they had no reason to suspect foul play.

Schlunt and Kim, not only housemates but business partners of Gregory, attended his funeral and were among the most prominent mourners. Schlunt and Kim collected $150,000 from Gregory’s life insurance. They used the proceeds to pay off their credit card bills and to start a courier business, Mercury PDX. They moved to Woodland, WA and put the past behind them. They might have got away with it completely if they hadn’t had a falling out of their own.

In March, 2006 during an argument at their home, Schlunt threatened to throw Kim out. She went to a friend, Wendy Murray and said she was afraid of her husband. She said she knew what Schlunt was capable of because he had killed his former business partner.

Murray, frightened, went to the police with the story, but she was missing some important details, like who had been killed and when. Detective Paul Weatheroy, of Portland’s newly created Cold Case Squad, got Murray to agree to talk with Kim on the phone and allow the police to record the calls. Over several phone calls Kim revealed details of the murder including the name of the victim.

The next day Weatheroy arrested Kim. Because she was still married to Schlunt, Police could not use Kim’s evidence against him. Murray agreed to set up a meeting at the Kenton Station Pub in North Portland.

Murray wore a wire. She told Schlunt that she knew everything, but she wanted to know details. Schlunt played dumb for a while, but soon opened up.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I am not proud of,” he said.

“Is this one of them?” Murray asked.

“Of course it is, you know that.”

Police got enough from the Kenton Station conversation that they arrested Schlunt at the scene. Later after being confronted with the recordings of Kim’s phone calls, Schlunt confessed in detail to the crime.

Weatheroy asked Schlunt: “You did know that Edward had an insurance policy for $150,000?”

“Yes,” Schlunt replied. “I tell you without a doubt, I would not have done it without the money. We were running out of options.”

Kim and Schlunt were both charged with aggravated murder. Recently during a court hearing on these charges details of the crime from their confessions were released.

Edward Gregory had a reputation as a cheerful and friendly man. After a long career as an accountant and business owner in California, Gregory returned to his home state of Oregon. While working part-time as a document courier, Gregory befriended Schlunt in 1994. Gregory provided the down payment on the home that Schlunt and Kim bought in south east Portland and was allowed to live with the couple rent free.

Gregory and Schlunt had more than one business deal together including buying investment property and starting an Internet Service provider, Ethergate. Because of their business partnership Gregory and Schlunt took out life insurance policies for $150,000, each naming the other as beneficiary.

Schlunt and Kim lived far beyond their means, each running up large credit card bills. The Ethergate enterprise turned out to be not as successful as planned. It is possible that Schlunt was going through a divorce from his previous wife in Michigan during this time and that may have added to his money worries.

Finally Schlunt, feeling he had “no option” came up with the plan to kill Gregory and collect his insurance. Kim said she went along with the plan “like a stupid wife.” Together they planned Gregory’s death. Schlunt ordered 100 Ativan tablets on the internet. Ativan is an anti-anxiety drug that is also used to ease insomnia.

Schlunt and Kim experimented with Tylenol to find the best way to hide the powder and the bitter taste. They finally decided that chili was the best medium to deliver the drug, because it could be strongly spiced so the flavor could be hidden.

On December 1, 1999 Kim ground up 25 Ativan tablets in a bowl and filled the bowl with chili, then she served it to Gregory. Schlunt sat with an increasingly sleepy Gregory, telling him how much he and Kim liked Gregory. He told him how much he meant to the two of them and that they appreciated all the help he had been.

Gregory became nauseated, but was too weak to throw up. Schlunt and Kim put him to bed. Shortly after midnight the couple entered Gregory’s room. The man was sleeping heavily. Kim sat on his legs and Schlunt straddled the man’s chest, holding his arms down, but being careful not to leave bruises.

Schlunt placed a plastic bag over Gregory’s head and tied it off around his neck. Schlunt said that as he was tying off the plastic bag, Gregory awoke and said, “Don’t do it.” Schlunt held the bag in place for about five minutes and Gregory finally expired.

Schlunt and Kim face aggravated murder charges, but first they have a nasty divorce to finish. They have a dissolution hearing on August 25.

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs XXXVI

2006-08-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

This week the ladies at Southern Sass on Criminal Activity Today are the carnival hosts. You can go there by clicking here.

Underground Portland

2006-08-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

Funny after Harding’s mention of my going underground, I actually did just that this weekend. My new friend David Schargel invited me to come down and join him on the Underground Portland Tour one of several Portland walking tours that can be found at www.portlandwalkingtours.com. Sunday was a beautiful day for a walk and one of my favorite hobbies is walking to historical Portland addresses.

We started near the oldest building in Portland, on the corner of SW Naito and Oak, built in 1857. It’s now covered in stucco, but the Dielschneider Building next door, has exposed brickwork and was built only two years later.

From there we walked along the waterfront, through the Memorial to the Japanese Internment. One thing I really appreciated was that our tour guide, David, did a great job of bringing details in to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the sites we visited.

I have been to the Memorial twice before and it is always moving, but the research David had done on the Japanese Community in Portland, what was known as Little Tokyo in 1940, brought home the magnitude of what was done to them. From the Memorial we walked up through what had been Little Tokyo and is now Chinatown.

For a couple of hours we walked through Old Town/Chinatown seeing old buildings and talking about such things as: the only state-sponsored and organized Rock Festival in history (Vortex I); firemen fighting over a burning building, back when Portland’s fire companies competed for business; men “crimped” into service on the clippers to China; and Portland’s Three Sirens Liverpool Liz, Nancy Boggs and Mary Cook.

We ended up in the basement at Old Town Pizza in what some say are Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels. This is a fun little argument that people have been quarreling over for years. Rumors of the Shanghai Tunnels go back a lot further than anyone can remember. The oldest that I know about, I just found out, goes back to the Fifties.

I don’t care how the argument comes out, but we know there are tunnels in the Old Town area. Some of those tunnels were used for loading goods onto ships. In fact anyone who grew up in Portland will tell you, most stores do their loading through tunnels in the sidewalks. Portland has very few alleys. We also know that people were impressed against their will into service on ships in Portland’s harbor.

Did they ever get “Shanghaied” through tunnels? Probably. Does it really matter? Who cares? It’s fun to poke around in the basements of old buildings and out under the sidewalks. At one point we turned off our flashlights and heard Stewart Holbrook’s wonderful story of “Bunco” Kelly crimping the dead guys. This is history as legend and history as fun.

David also carried a magic portfolio emblazoned “Keep Portland Weird” that contained photographs and historical documents of all kinds to back up the “legends”. The thing that intrigues me is that there are 12 tour guides and each does their own tour, based on their own interests. I’m thinking I might need to do this tour a few times. In fact I hear that at least one tour guide has an interest in Portland crime and has found stories on this blog helpful. All I can say to that is, “Thanks for reading and helping to keep these stories alive.”

My ideas for improvement: If I managed the Old Town Pizza where the tour ended I would have a bucket of iced beers, sodas and waters available at the end. I would have gladly paid for a cold drink after the hot basement. Make a deal with the Oyster Bar, it’s a great old building and a good stop on the tour, but it would have been nice to get a discount there like at Old Town Pizza. My partner and I went to the Oyster Bar after the tour and it was very nice.

For Halloween, how about a Murder Tour around dusk? If you need a guest “scare”-guide, let me know.

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs XXXV

2006-08-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

This week Harding is the host at T.O. Crime.

Hatchet Job Part One

2006-08-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

Akin’s Murder Was Never Solved

On November 20, 1933 W. Frank Akin, special investigator for Governor Julius Meier appointed to expose corruption in Portland’s Port Commission, was shot to death in his apartment in southwest Portland. His murder occurred a day before he was supposed to present his report on the Port Commission to the State Legislature. This is probably the most famous case of murder in Portland’s history. But the story somehow has been lost in the retelling.

Jewel Lansing, in her otherwise brilliant Portland: People, Power and Politics 1851-2001 gives the story one short inset, ending with this claim: Akin’s murder was never solved. It’s probably not fair to blame Jewel too much, because she relied very heavily on the work of Portland’s “official” historian E. Kimbark MacColl.

MacColl, in Growth of a City goes into great detail on the Port scandal and the politics that lay behind the murder, but gives Akin’s death itself only a passing wink:

“The timing and mysteriousness of the murder, which was never solved, generated numerous conspiracy theories to which the local press gave maximum coverage…. In February, 1936, two unknown and unlikely characters were indicted by the grand jury, but they escaped conviction. The evidence was strictly circumstantial.”

Investigation of the local press of that time shows that MacColl was not exactly right. Although the crime was sensational and generated a lot of interest the press coverage was, for the most part, straight forward. Rumors were reported, especially about Akin’s alleged philandering, but very little in the way of conspiracy theory can be found, except possible on the part of Kimbark MacColl.

The two “unlikely characters” that were charged with murder in Akin’s death turn out to be Leo Hall and Jack Bernard Justice. Hall was later hung by the state of Washington for another crime. Justice was convicted of hiring Hall to murder Akin for the benefit of “parties unknown.” Justice would serve nearly 9 years of a life sentence for 1st degree murder.

In one sense this crime hasn’t been solved, we still don’t know who Justice was working for, but we do know who pulled the trigger and why. Kimbark MacColl says that Governor Meier had ordered Akin to do a “hatchet job” on the Port Commission. I believe him, but I want to see if we can repair this “hatchet job” on history.

I have a pile of documents still to work through, but over the next few days I will share what I find with you. Together maybe we can finish putting the pieces of this puzzle together. Maybe we can start to make a guess about who was really responsible for this death.

Coming Soon:
Hatchet Job part two: The Port Investigation

An Odd One

2006-07-31T21:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve just started the research for my next big post looking into a famous unsolved murder from the 1930s. For seventy years people have believed that it went unsolved. I will remind us of the forgotten story of the people who committed the crime and what happened to them. But I’m not ready to tell that story yet.

The world seems a little too desperate and depressed for me to finish the story on Ray DeFord and the Oakwood Park fire, but I will tell the end of that story soon. Nothing in current crimes is catching my attention. So I am going to tell a little story that I came across while researching something else.

It’s not bloody, but it does involve a crime. It’s just an odd little bit of Portland’s history that I am willing to bet no one has thought of in more than seventy years. I found it in an Oregonian article from December 16, 1930 with the headline Mystery Shrouds Loss and Recovery of Strange Idol.

It was right before Christmas in one of the hardest winters to hit Portland. It was cold, but that wasn’t what was so hard. This was the depth of the depression, things would get worse, but they’d never been this bad before, not even in 1893.

Hundreds suffered from hunger and cold in Portland. The lumber industry was in decline a mill worker was lucky to get two days work a week. Try feeding a family on that. The part time job could keep you from getting relief, too.

Some people were lucky to be working on the St. Johns Bridge that was being built. But it was dangerous work, and cold.

Archie Moore was lucky to be working at the Boyd Tea Co. store on NW 5th. His job wasn’t dangerous and he made nearly $2 a day, a good wage. He even had time to take a walk on his lunch break.

On Saturday, December 13, 1930 Archie was taking his walk along NW Couch St. As he neared the corner of NW 4th he nearly ran into a dark skinned man running down the street with a heavy burden wrapped in a burlap sack. The man unwrapped the object just enough so Moore could see that it was shiny black and seemed to be encrusted with jewels.

“Two dollars,” said the dark man. Archie bought the object, which weighed nearly 40 pounds, and lugged it back to the Tea Shop where he worked. Removing the burlap bag, Moore realized that he had an idol from some Asian cult.

It was a seated figure with four arms its mouth was filled with cruel teeth of inlaid ivory. It was made from a shiny black glass that was very hard. For eyes it had large zircons and parts of the figure were encrusted with rubies.

“I thought it must be an idol from some cult,” Moore told the Oregonian, “It was not a Buddha, I knew. It was valuable to someone and I felt it was stolen because the man who sold it to me was in such haste and it was evidently worth a lot more than I had paid for it.”

On Sunday Archie Moore ran the following ad in the Oregonian classifieds: “Stolen idol of secret cult in my possession. Will return on proper identification.” That same day a Hindu gentleman appeared at Moore’s home and identified the idol, although he would not identify himself or the cult to which the idol belonged.

Moore asked if they knew who had stolen the idol. The other man said, “We think we know.” He then paid Moore $2 plus the cost of the ad, took the idol and departed.

Carnival of the True Crime Blogs XXXIV

2006-07-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

I am proud to be hosting the Carnival of the True Crime Blogs for the first time. I love to read true crime and I look forward to the carnival each week to let me know what is interesting. So here goes.

Harding from T.O. Crime brings us tales of true crime from the true north. I like a geographic focus to my crime and Harding provides just that, focusing on crime in Toronto, Ont. This week Harding fills us in on a spate of night club shootings in Toronto.
Harding presents Clubland T.O. posted at T.O. Crime.

From the true north we go true south for Greg’s blog Rhymes with Right. The title tells you what you need to know about Greg’s politics and his blog doesn’t focus just on crime, but he brings us news of a terrible problem in Houston, TX. Greg presents Serial Killer In Houston posted at Rhymes With Right.

ShortSighted is one of the original founders of Southern Sass on Criminal Activity. Now she brings us a new blog that is devoted to the WTF stories we see every day. This week she calls our attention to the shocking conditions in the Federal Minimum Security Prison Camps. Short, haven’t you seen Good Fellas?
ShortSighted presents All Prisoners Safe in their Beds posted at Sharing the Shame.

Trench of the Trenchcoat Chronicle amazes me. Not only does he maintain three separate blogs, but he is an organizer of the True Crime Blogroll and the Carnvial of the True Crime Blogs and now he is pioneering the True Crime podcast with his Trenchcast. Trench, when do you sleep? This week he writes about the love letters of Dylan Klebold.
Trench presents Love Letter from Hell posted at Trenchcoat Chronicle.

Home Sweet Home is a blog about domestic crimes. In the murder mystery genre these stories are often called “cozies”. This week Home Sweet Home gives us a not-so-cozy tale of domestic violence and revenge.
Home Sweet Home presents They had a history of domestic violence posted at Home Sweet Home.

MagZ of Southern Sass on Crime Activity Today brings us a horrifying story about the death of a 17-month old boy. I personally don’t agree with her conclusion, but read it and judge for yourself.
MagZ presents Jaydon Hoberg (Hilleary) at Southern Sass on Criminal Activity Today.

Here at the slabtown chronicle I focus on crime from the present and past in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. This week I got a little personal and wrote about how a crime from nearly 30 years ago effects me today.
jd chandler presents Michele Gates Haunts My Dreams posted at slabtown chronicle.

That’s it for the official entries for this week’s carnival, but since I like to consider myself a criminal historian I’m not above a little theft from time to time, so here are my picks for this week’s carnival:

Laura James at CLEWS is one of my favorite crime writers. She focuses on historical crimes and she seems to love old-fashioned journalism as much as I do. This week she brings us the 1924 tale of the Bobbed Hair Bandit.
Laura James presents Jesse James in a Flapper Dress posted at CLEWS.

The mysterious and beautiful ShadoWraiths brings us an in-depth look at Satanic Ritual Abuse and Murder in Sins of Our Fathers. There is always something interesting to read at this site and I think it looks great.
ShadoWraiths presents Sins of Our Fathers at ShadoWraiths.

Stephen McCaskill at the Crime Scene Blog consistently gives us well written pieces about interesting crimes. This week he gives us a a chilling look into the mind of David Crespi who stabbed his twin daughters to death. Read it if you dare.
Stephen McCaskill presents Crime and Confession at Crime Scene Blog.

Last, but not least, I would like to remind you that our friends at the 1947 Project have finished their day-by-day chronicle of Los Angeles in 1947, but they continue their work with the year 1907. This week Larry contributes a tale of a burglary gone wrong.
Larry presents Belated Tribute to Heroic Officer posted at 1947 Project.

Well, that’s it for this week’s carnival. Keep coming back.

Submit a story for an upcoming Carnival of the True Crime Blogs with the submission form.

Past posts and future hosts may be found at the Blog Carnival Index.

[NOTE: Blogspot still seems to be having serious problems with image hosting and they just will not do javascript. Can anyone recommend a good free blog host?]

Technorati tags:

carnival of the true crime blogs, blog carnival.

Mamie Walsh Concluded

2006-07-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

Again in the Toils

On June 22, 1892 Mamie Walsh, 14, was beaten and strangled to death near the Willamette River while picking berries. The crime caused hysteria all over the area as several suspects were arrested. Finally Charles Wilson, a neighbor of the family Mamie had been visiting, confessed to the crime.

Violent mobs forced Clackamas County Sheriff W.H. Samson to move Wilson to Portland for his protection. In Portland a crowd of 4000 threatened to tear the Multnomah County jail to pieces if Sheriff Penumbra Kelly didn’t turn over Wilson so they could burn him alive.

Wilson was moved repeatedly to disguise his location from the mob. Finally Governor Sylvester Pennoyer agreed to hold Wilson in the State Penitentiary in Salem until he could be tried. While being transported Wilson escaped near the small town of Wheatland.

On July 8 Charles Wilson was captured near Chehalem, by John T. Carter, the newly elected constable of Chehalem and Newberg. By the time he was captured Wilson was ragged and hungry. He fought back with a razor, but Carter broke Wilson’s arm with a club. The beaten fugitive said, “Well, boys, I give up. I am the man who killed the girl and I wish you would kill me at the jail here.” He was transported to the State Prison right away.

Wilson seems to have lost touch with reality somewhere along the way, because after his capture he began to alternate between boasting over his crimes and begging for the chance to kill himself. Twice he tried to hang himself in his cell and once he beat his head against his cell door so severely that it damaged the frontal part of his brain. Doctors who performed Wilson’s autopsy at first thought he had brain damage that made him kill, until someone pointed out that the damage had probably been caused by the suicide attempt.

Wilson became known as a biter. During the scuffle with Constable Carter, Wilson had bitten Carter’s little finger very badly. He was also reported to have bitten one of his guards who wasn’t paying close enough attention. Finally Wilson bit his own wrists, in another apparent suicide attempt, so badly he had to be placed in a straight jacket.

At the State Prison Wilson claimed that he knew “all about” the Scott Murder. William Scott, a “gray-haired old man”, was serving a life sentence for killing his wife near Wheatland, where Wilson had escaped from custody. Although Scott was convicted, he denied the crime, saying he had seen a man run into the woods after hearing the shot that killed his wife. Wilson said that in a few days he would tell what he knew and clear Scott.

Wilson did not finally confess to the Scott murder, and since he had been in Iowa at the time of the Scott killing (February 1890) his confession would have been worthless. He confessed several more killings, some in Iowa and one of a contortionist in a traveling carnival in which Wilson had performed as an acrobat (Will Rennie). Investigation with Iowa authorities showed that there were no unsolved crimes to correspond with Wilson’s stories. His family had a good reputation and Wilson had been known as a “good boy.”

After a week of Wilson’s increasingly odd and disruptive behavior, authorities decided that the public had cooled down enough and Wilson was moved back to the Clackamas County jail. A few days after returning to Oregon City, Wilson finally succeeded in killing himself. He unwrapped the bandages on his broken arm, tied his neck to the bars of his cell and threw his body in such a way that his neck was broken.

It was an unsatisfying end to a troubling case. The public hysteria, inept police work and Wilson’s odd confessions cast serious doubt on his guilt. Either he really was the “Milwaukie Monster” and put on a crazy act after getting caught or he was an innocent man driven insane by horrible circumstances.

Maybe he was covering up for someone else. The fact that the body was washed tends to argue that the killer knew the victim. Charles Wilson did not know her. The fact that he did not mention washing the body in his confession makes me wonder. The fact that he knew where the girl’s hat was buried makes me think he was guilty. Could a jury have done any better in 1892? Maybe not. Maybe we can never know.

The cell in the Clackamas County jail in which Wilson died got the reputation for being haunted. This reputation was enhanced in 1916 when Toni Carboni, an Italian laborer on the Bull Run Construction project, hung himself in the same cell. Carboni was being held for killing a co-worker in a knife fight. The building was finally destroyed in 1935.

Hysteria did not end with Charles Wilson’s death. After his death, Sheriff Samson announced that he would be buried in the Oregon City Cemetery in what was known as the “suicide’s corner.” Somehow Wilson’s body was buried instead in the main part of the cemetery, between the family plots of two prominent families, the LaTourettes and the Nobles; near the grave of Dr. McLaughlin the Hudson Bay Trader who founded Oregon City and one of the most cherished figures of Oregon history.

The LaTourettes and the Nobles sued to have Wilson’s body disinterred and reburied away from their family graves. I haven’t researched the verdict, but precedent was against them.

Mamie Walsh Part One: Work of a Fiend
Mamie Walsh Part Two: Lynching In Sight
Mamie Walsh part Three: The Fiend Captured
Mamie Walsh Part Four: He Has Confessed

Michele Gates Haunts My Dreams

2006-07-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I came across a front page article in the Oregonian about a 13-year-old girl who had drowned her 4 year-old neighbor. The story scared me and I must admit, thrilled me a little. The idea of a cold blooded killer who is also a 13 year-old girl was hard to believe. There is no doubt she was cold-blooded. While talking with police she admitted killing her 3 year-old cousin nearly two years before. She is said to have bragged of the killings to other inmates at the children’s home she spent far too little time in.

Michele Gates was good at covering her trail, fighting to expunge her juvenile record and then changing her name to Shorthouse. Even the changing spelling of her first name – originally she was referred to as Michelle, later it was Michele. The obsession never seemed to go away, though.

Volunteering as a swim instructor for children at the YMCA pool, how scary is that? Even the murder plot she was finally convicted of had children involved. She was trying to get custody of her boyfriend’s five-year-old son, by killing the boy’s mother.

I wrote We All Scream For Ice Cream six years ago. I like to use it as a writing example, because I am proud of it as a story. And it scares the hell out of me. In essence that’s what all crime writers do. They scare the hell out of us. We’re worse than horror writers that way.

Since 2000 I have dreaded the day that Michele Gates Shorthouse would be released from prison. I had no luck in finding information about her in the prison system, (thanks to Steve Huff and Imahologram for teaching me more about these arcane arts) but I could count. I knew that someday soon she would be free.

Imagine how I felt last April when I got an email from a stranger asking me about We All Scream…. He said he was interested in my story and that he had recently met a woman. She had recently been released from prison… Could she be….

Well, yes. Could be and she is. My email friend said “…in all honesty, you would never think this woman is capable of any of the things that she has been found guilty of… I am also curious about your opinion on whether someone who commits such heinous crimes can ever be truly rehabilitated?”

It took me a while to respond to that email. Just to be that close to being in touch with Michele Gates scared me. He told her he found out about her on the internet. A Google search on her name brought up my blog first. She would definitely know that I have written about her.

Then there’s the question of rehabilitation. My basic belief is that people can change. It’s almost an article of faith for me, if people can’t change then there is really no hope for any of us. Yet my experience tells me that killers who get away with it tend to kill again. You see it over and over. Whether the motive is money or sex or power, if they get away with it, they’ll do it again.

I believe that in the wrong circumstance every one of us is capable of killing. I believe that in the case of Michele Gates, there but for the grace of God go I and you, everyone. I believe that through God’s grace even Michele Gates can be saved and transformed.

But would I trust her with children? Absolutely not. Would I trust her in any way? Probably not. This woman has been presenting us with a terrible challenge for nearly 30 years, what do you do with children who kill?

The Gates case changed the law here in Oregon. No longer can juvenile records be expunged when they involve violence or sex crimes. Under Measure 11, children who kill go to jail. But still Michele Gates Shorthouse is out there. Is she still drawn to children and water?

I hope we never know the answer. I hope we never hear of Michele Gates Shorthouse again.

Mamie Walsh Part Four

2006-07-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

He Has Confessed

Mamie Walsh, 14, was raped and strangled to death near the Willamette River north of Milwaukie on June 22, 1892. Her murder caused great hysteria in Clackamas County as well as Multnomah and Washington Counties. A lynch mob of about 300 surrounded the Oregon City jail where Charles Wilson was being held as the main suspect in her death.

Early on the morning of July 2, after a tense and sleepless night, Charles Wilson was taken from his cell, at his request, to talk with his brother Frank Wilson and Sheriff William W.H. Samson, of Clackamas County. Wilson said he was ready to confess to the murder of Mamie Walsh.

He talked for hours with his brother and the Sheriff, later he summed it up for an Oregonian reporter:

“I was working that Wednesday afternoon, digging post holes a short distance from my brother’s house. I saw Mamie picking berries and when she approached within a short distance of me, an uncontrollable desire to kill her overcame me. I thought how easily I could kill her. Like a hound after a rabbit, I sprang at her. It took me just three bounds. I grasped her by the throat before she knew my intention. She was a pretty little thing and so innocent. She struggled hard, but could make no outcry, for I had a firm hold on her throat.”

Wilson described strangling and beating her to unconsciousness. Thinking she was dead, Wilson said he “mutilated her somewhat”. He then “examined” her body and realized that she was still breathing. He put his hand over her mouth and smothered her to death.

Wilson went on to explain how he carried her body into the woods and left her behind the stumps. He explained that one injury to the girl’s head had occurred when he dropped her corpse. He also described how her leg had been scratched on the barbed wire fence. Having “never had any experience at carrying bodies” he was nearly exhausted by the time he hid the girl.

He said that the girl’s hat and bucket were left in plain sight along the trail he had taken into the woods. He was very surprised that the searchers had not found them. He was worried that people suspected him of the girl’s death and when he heard about Rafes’ arrest he moved the bucket to throw more suspicion on Rafes. He tried to burn her hat, but it had become wet, so he buried it along the trail.

There were two glaring omissions in Wilson’s story of the crime. First he did not tell of washing the body after Mamie was killed. No one ever seemed to have noticed this omission. The second was noticed. Wilson not only did not confess to rape, he denied it vehemently.

After Wilson finished his story the Oregonian reporter questioned him on this issue.

“Did you not outrage the girl?”

“No, I did not. I have told everything and expect to be hung for the crime.”

“But the physicians say that an examination shows that she was outraged.”

“Then I did not do it and it could not have been done.”

“What possessed you to kill her?”

“I can’t tell. When I saw her there I became like a wild beast and I leapt upon my prey.”

“Now confess to me, was not your purpose in seizing her to outrage her?”

“Yes (after some hesitation) it was. That was my purpose in going after her. But after I had choked her and dragged her into the bushes, my desire had left and I only thought of the dead body. Yet I did not touch her. I think you should believe me in this respect, after all I have told.”

Later that morning the Oregonian reporter, accompanied by Mike Walsh and Frank Wilson, searched the area where Wilson said he buried Mamie’s hat. After a long search they found the hat buried about six inches. Mike Walsh immediately recognized it as the hat his daughter wore.

The mob around the Clackamas County jail now changed its plans. They no longer were calling for a rope. The plan now was to burn Charles Wilson alive.

Sheriff Samson knew that he would not be able to protect Wilson from a determined mob. After consultations with Multnomah County Sheriff Penumbra Kelly and Portland Detective Joe Day (who seems to have been very effective at self-publicity), Samson decided to move the suspect to the Multnomah County jail in Portland.

Wilson was moved to Portland about 2pm. By 5, the crowds around the Multnomah County jail numbered around 4000. An organization was formed under W.H. Hooper, a Milwaukie farmer and neighbor of Frank Wilson, for the purpose of rushing the jail and seizing Wilson. Sheriff Kelly stood at the front door and demanded that the mob disperse.

Hooper and his men persisted in their assault on the jail until they were finally arrested at gunpoint. Kelly then announced that Wilson was not in the jail and was being held elsewhere.

When the crowd still failed to disperse, Kelly took the unprecedented step of allowing an elected delegation to inspect the jail to see that Wilson was not there. Three separate inspection committees were elected, inspected the jail and then were denounced by the crowd. By 1am the crowd had dwindled to about 150 and Sheriff Kelly felt the danger had passed. Wilson spent the night in the Albina jail.

The next day Governor Sylvester Pennoyer agreed to hold Wilson in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem until he could be tried for Mamie Walsh’s murder. That afternoon, with 40 burly armed Portland policemen inside the building, 50 specially deputized “Deputy Sheriffs” patrolling the streets outside, and a noisy crowd of around 300 hurling abuse, Sheriff Kelly and Deputy Billy Morgan took Wilson to the train station.

While waiting for their connection at the McMinnville station, Wilson was recognized and a crowd began to form. Kelly and Morgan obtained a closed carriage and continued on to Salem. Kelly drove and Morgan sat inside with the prisoner.

Wilson showed no remorse for the crimes he said he committed, but he did show extreme fear of the crowds who threatened to burn him. He was trembling visibly for most of the trip. The policemen who accompanied him, were alternately disgusted by the prisoner, or were consumed with fear themselves.

Passing through the small town of Wheatland, about halfway between McMinnville and Salem, where the infamous Scott murder had taken place in 1890, the men saw a crowd gathering around the local schoolhouse. The crowd was gathering for an unrelated community meeting, but the three men in the carriage were in a state of extreme paranoia.

Kelly said he could see a crowd gathering in the road. At that moment Wilson yelled, “Look out!” and leaped from the carriage, dashing into the woods. Morgan, tripping over a lap blanket, soon lost the prisoner.

Wilson remained at large for five days wandering through Dayton and finally being captured at Chehalem on July 8. While he was loose the fury of the public became even more intense. A public indignation meeting in Oregon City unanimously passed a resolution saying in part:

“Whereas, Sheriff Kelly, suffering even greater cowardice and stupidity than that of Sheriff Samson … permitted said Wilson to escape from him… Resolved…that Sheriffs Samson and Kelly are absolutely unfit and unqualified in courage, discretion and intelligence to hold any position of trust or responsibility, and that both of said sheriffs should be compelled…to resign the positions they now hold, and retire to the well-earned obscurity of private life…”

Sheriff Samson, who was still in Portland, decided it was not safe to go back to Clackamas County, so he joined Sheriff Kelly and the search parties near McMinnville.

Coming Soon: Part Five Again in the Toils
Part One: Work of a Fiend
Part Two: Lynching in Sight
Part Three: The Fiend Captured

Playing With Fire Part Two

2006-07-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ray

When Raymond Martin DeFord was one and a half years old, his father hit him over the head with a clipboard because he would not stop crying. Doctors later testified that this injury caused the brain damage that caused DeFord’s learning disabilities and agravated his behavioral problems. Ray’s problems started with his father Tom Martin aka DeFord.

Tom Martin was a self-proclaimed “drifter” and drug user with a needle and spoon tattooed on his arm. In 1969 he was arrested for robbery in New Mexico. Martin blamed the crime, stealing a car from someone who stopped to pick up a hitchhiker, on a friend. He claimed he was only riding in the car and didn’t know about the crime. New Mexico didn’t believe him and sentenced him to ten years for robbery. Two years later Martin escaped from the New Mexico State Penitentiary.

A Texas native, Martin said he was “tired of the desert” so he made his way to Oregon where it was green. Martin worked as a short order cook. He worked under several different names and used at least three different birthdates to hide his identity. In 1980 a bloody riot at the New Mexico Penitentiary destroyed the records of Martin’s crimes, further covering his trail. Eventually Martin married Carolyn DeFord, a mentally retarded woman and on February 13, 1985 Ray was born.

Abuse started early for Ray. Tom Martin was partially paralyzed by a stroke and collected disability for himself and Carolyn. No longer able to drive a car, Martin tooled around the neighborhood on a three-wheeled bicycle collecting cans and bottles for recycling. In his spare time Martin liked to watch pornography and smoke pot with his son and older teenage boys from the neighborhood. When he got bored or angry Martin would shoot Ray’s legs with a BB gun. Witnesses saw Martin shoot Ray with BBs when the boy was as young as 6.

“Look at his parents, and you'll get the whole story,” said Jed Dairy, a teenage neighbor at Oakwood Park. “He needed better love and care; I don't think they know what he needed.” The DeFords were not well-liked at Oakwood Park, where they moved in 1991. That year Carolyn DeFord was convicted of harrassing a neighbor. It is possible that Carolyn’s conviction prompted the move to Oakwood Park.

At 11 Ray DeFord was known as a bully. He owned a python named Satan and regularly chased and beat up kids as young as 5. He carried a knife “for protection” and often threatened children with a BB gun. Ray had learned to blame others for his problems from his father. His parents were always there for him when he got in trouble, too.

“One time he punched my son badly,” said Rafaela Contreras Vargas, whose children were 5 and 9. “I complained to his mother. She wouldn't say anything. She laughed.” Tom Martin taught his son important lessons, like how to make cyanide gas from bleach, detergent and Coca-Cola.

Teachers and other adults that came into contact with Ray away from home found him to be a caring boy eager to please. Lisa Mentesana, a reading coordinator at Barnes Elementary School who worked durign the third grade with Ray and the Aguilar twins, who died in the fire, said, “I never saw the child that they are saying that he is. I never saw anything that would make me say this child is mean. I think he was a little boy who needed lots of hugs and support. I just feel so sad. ”

Carol Pullen, the owner of Pet Circus, a pet store on Tualatin Valley Highway, said that DeFord was an “exuberant little kid” who seemed to have a great interest in animals and who cared about them very much. She said that when Ray was shown respect he gave respect and was very eager to please.

Ray was ostracized at school because he was a slow learner who dressed in raggedy, dirty clothes. Kids would run from him yelling “Ray germs” when he approached. Academically and socially Ray, 11, functioned on the level of a 7 year old.

Fire was a problem. Ray set fires on the counter in the kitchen of his home. His parents didn’t punish him or even make him stop. At least five times Ray set fires that could have got as badly out of control as his fatal fire.

In 1994 Ray set a fire in the recycling bin at Oakwood Park. His neighbor Raliegh Houk said that his son came running into their apartment yelling “Fire.” Houk used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. Thinking that his son set the fire the boy was punished. Houk said that DeFord admitted to setting the fire.

Houk told the police about this incident right away, but he was not a credible witness. By the time DeFord went on trial Houk was in prison for kidnapping. He had a previous record for burglary and possession of a controlled substance. Nice neighborhood Ray grew up in.

After the fatal fire at Oakwood Park on June 28, 1996 Tom Martin(DeFord) and Carolyn DeFord were interviewed on TV and they talked about how their son “the hero” rescued them from the flames. Police investigating the fire soon heard rumors that Martin had been overheard bragging that he had escaped from a prison in the southwest. Soon “the hero” Ray was the main suspect.

Ray said he thought the fire had been set by three kids from the neighborhood that were trying to pressure him into joining their gang. When Ray was arrested for arson and murder, Martin said, “What we need now is Perry Mason to find out who's done this thing.”

It didn’t take Perry Mason, just Detective Michael O’Connell of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. Ray confessed to setting the fire to O’Connell. The detective said that Ray was “pretty flat” emotionally while talking about the fire. He seemed to be able to understand that eight people had died, but he didn’t seem to understand what it meant.

Tom and Carolyn DeFord claimed that O’Connell had coerced their son into his confession. Carolyn believed it until she died of cancer at 51 in 2000. About nine months after the fire, Michael O’Connell had the duty of arresting Tom Martin and sending him back to New Mexico. Martin served a little over two years and was released in 1999. He returned to Oregon and now lives in the Hillsboro area.

Ray DeFord faced trial for murder and arson, the youngest person ever charged with murder in Oregon. Ray was so young that he caused all kinds of problems for the system. Oregon’s juvenile justice system was set up for children 12 and over. DeFord’s parents had to waive Ray’s right to a verdict and sentence in 56 days so that he could be tried as a juvenile after his 12th birthday.

Coming Soon: Part three: Aftermath
Part one: Oakwood Park Apartments

Mamie Walsh Part Three

2006-07-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

The Fiend Captured

On June 22, 1892 14 year old Mamie Walsh was raped and strangled to death near the Willamette River north of Milwaukie. Three men, vagrants and recent immigrants, were being held in various jails in the area as suspects, but the Police’s best suspect remained at large.

Charles Wilson had arrived in Oregon three weeks before from Iowa, to work on his brother, Frank’s, farm. Frank Wilson was the nearest relative of the Luellings, the family Mamie Walsh was visiting at the time of her disappearance. On the day of the killing, Charles Wilson was working on a fence on his brother’s property. The young girl had gone to pick berries by the river.

Wilson said he had seen the girl that day. She was picking berries and there were three Chinese men also picking berries nearby. He said he had gone for a drink of water and when he came back the girl and the Chinese were gone. He said he thought nothing more of it until he heard that the girl was missing. He also claimed to have seen a strange man with a satchel walking near where the Police believed that Mamie was killed.

Wilson was not only the last person to see young Mamie alive, but his story kept changing. After Mamie’s bucket and a hook she used to carry it were found near the campsite of Ernest Rafes, a German immigrant and radical political activist, who was being held as a suspect in the girl’s death, Wilson began to blame Rafes for Mamie’s death.

He told a bizarre story of seeing Rafes crawling through the bushes with a very guilty “hangdog” expression on the day before the killing. When Police asked how this strange behavior before the killing reflected on Rafes’ guilt, Wilson said that it was self-evident but did not elaborate.

Wilson’s strange tales inflamed suspicion, but there was not enough evidence to hold him for the crime. Since he was a white English speaker related to a prominent landowner, Wilson was not subjected to imprisonment with no charges, as the other suspects were.

Dr. J. H. Hickman, an amateur investigator who had discovered the evidence at the campsite and then become a part of the official investigation, confronted Wilson with the evidence, a broken bucket and a metal hook. Hickman told Wilson that he suspected the evidence had been planted to make Rafes look guilty.

Wilson complained that the Police had not followed up on identifying the Chinamen he had seen and then repeated his story of Rafes strange behavior. Police were frustrated at not being able to arrest Wilson, but investigators, both amateur and official continued to search the area of the killing. Looking through the weed covered ground and heavy undergrowth for anything that could shed light on the case.

On Thursday June 30, searchers found a hammer in the weeds not far from where Wilson had been working, less than 60 feet from the spot where the girl had been killed. On examination the shape of the hammer matched the crush marks found on the girl’s forehead. At first doctors had assumed that the marks had been left by the heel of a boot, but now they knew that they had been left by Charles Wilson’s hammer.

That day Wilson was arrested at the water-works in Riverside, where he was working as a laborer. Riverside was in Multnomah County, so Wilson was first held in Portland. The crowds that had gathered when Tim Sullivan was arrested came back to Oregon City and talk of lynching began to be heard again.

Friday, July 1, Police Chief Joseph Purdom went to Milwaukie with two deputies. They met up with Mike Walsh, Mamie’s father and her brother Richard. Richard and Mike Walsh went along with Purdom as they retraced the girl’s steps on the last day of her life.

When they reached the site near the river, where the girl had been killed, they met two detectives. The six men began an intensive search looking for the missing button from Mamie’s underwear. The feeling was that if they could find the button, proving the girl had been killed where they believed she was, they would have enough evidence to convict Wilson.

After three hours of searching, Mike Walsh, the girl’s father, found the small pearl button less than 30 feet from where the hammer was found. That afternoon Wilson was moved to Oregon City. About 3:00 pm crowds began to gather around the courthouse calling, “Get a rope! Lynch Him!”

Wilson was nearly in a panic as he was moved from the steamer that had brought him from Portland to the jail. He begged his jailers, “Please don’t let them hurt me.” His whole body trembled with fear and he was hardly able to talk.

Once in the jail, still trembling with fear, Wilson proclaimed his innocence. He said that if the mob did anything to him he should be buried in the same cemetery with Mamie, because he was as innocent as she was.

Confronted with the button found near where he was working. Wilson said, “So help me God, I am innocent.” On being returned to his cell, jailers heard glass breaking and searched Wilson. They found a piece of broken glass in Wilson’s pocket and thought he planned to kill himself with it. During the search of his clothes, guards found that he had a key tied to his suspender. This seemed to explain the impression of a key found on the girl’s abdomen.

Wilson was subjected to “stiff” interrogation, but still refused to confess. Interrogation lasted for hours at a time and he was interrogated several times that evening. At about 1:00 a.m. Police allowed Wilson to be visited by a clergyman. Wilson, who had been making proclamations of his innocence and his faith in God, spoke with the minister, Rev. E. Githens for about an hour.

The intrepid Oregonian reporter, who had a couple of exclusive interviews with the prisoner, sent a dramatic dispatch early that morning. He reported that Wilson was in fear that the mob outside would torture him horribly before they killed him. He vowed to kill himself before he would let them get there hands on him. The dispatch ended with this line “It is at this writing 3 A.M., almost certain that all danger for the night has passed.”

Shortly after 3 a.m. Wilson began to knock on the door of his cell. When a guard appeared he said he was ready to talk. He said he would talk to his brother, Frank and to the Sheriff. He was finally ready to tell what happened to Mamie Walsh.

[NOTE: I thought you might be interested to know that the titles for the chapters of this story are also headlines from the Oregonian stories about the case.]

Coming Soon: Mamie Walsh part four: He Has Confessed
Mamie Walsh part one: Work of a Fiend
Mamie Walsh part two: Lynching in Sight

Playing With Fire Part One

2006-07-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

Oakwood Park Apartments

Washington County is the home of Beaverton, one of the largest cities in Oregon. It is also one of the largest agricultural counties in the state. Many Mexican immigrants settle in Washington County, because of the agricultural jobs that are available. Natives of the Mexican state Michoacan are particularly attracted to Oregon. Michoacanos stick together and often cluster together in neighborhoods and apartment complexes.

One such apartment building was the Oakwood Park Apartments; many of the tenants were Mexican immigrants from Michoacan. Oakwood Park was the type of building that catered to working (or unemployed) families and immigrants. In June, 1996 at the height of the agricultural season, many of the apartments in Oakwood Park were overcrowded with visiting friends and family members.

On the night of June 28, 1996 the residents of Oakwood Park were awakened by cries of “Fire! Fuego!” Crystal Hopper, 22, had just gone to sleep and was awakened because her room was so hot shortly after 1 a.m. “My boyfriend looked out the window and said, ‘Who the hell is barbecuing at one in the morning?’” Hopper said. “Then he screamed, ‘Fire! Fire!’”

The building had no sprinkler system, although building codes in Aloha, where it was located required that multifamily dwellings of three or more stories had to have a fire sprinkler installed. Many builders got around this law, like they did with Oakwood Park. The three-story apartment building had an earthen berm erected around the first floor, which was renamed the basement. The building was then described as a two story building and was not required to have a spriknkler system.

Fire investigators found that only one of the 12 apartments in the building had working smoke alarms. The hand-pull fire alarms, located in the stairwell, were impossible for tenants to reach, because the fire was started in the stairwell. Afterward investigators found that nothing happened when the alarms were pulled. Vinicio Luna, 25, found out about the fire alarms the hard way. Running from the third floor apartment of his friends, the Aguilars, he pulled the fire alarm. Nothing happened.

A dozen people were injured with burns and broken bones from jumping out of windows and off of balconies. The fire started on the second floor and engulfed the stairwell in flames in seconds. “Leaving the apartments on that upper level would have been like going down a chimney, like opening the door on the side of a chimney and trying to go in,” said Tim Birr, spokesman for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue.

Patricio Aquilar, who lived in apartment 36, on the third floor, awoke to a smoke filled bedroom. His 16-year-old wife, Francisca, clutched their 3 month-old baby and ran in panicked circles, screaming, “We’re going to die.” Aguilar ran to his front door, but when he opened it flames threatened his apartment. He slammed the door and ran back to the bedroom.

Araceli and Nicolas Chavez, friends staying with Aguilar jumped from the bedroom window. Both were injured and their 3 month old daughter, Selena died from her injuries. Patricio took his little girl from his wife and stood at the window, trying to decide what to do. Patricio’s childhood friend, Alberto Gaona, who had just escaped from his own apartment stood below the window and yelled that he would catch the child.

Patricio looked behind him, but could not see his wife in the smoke filled room. With a prayer he threw his daughter from the window. His friend, also with a prayer, caught the infant who survived. Patricio went back for his wife, but was unable to find her before jumping from the third floor with third degree burns on his hands and arms. Francisca Aguilar died in the blaze. Later in the hospital, Patricio Aguilar said, “I don't feel any physical pain. I just want to die.”

Next door in apartment 34, Jeremais Aguilar, 37, and his wife Virginia, 26, did not awaken in time. Although three guests were able to escape from this apartment, Jeremais, Virginia and their four children, Jacqueline, 8, Karen, 8, Augustin, 7, and Patricia, 5, were killed in the fire.

Firefighters from Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue(TVFR), the largest fire district in the state, described a hellish scene. Doug Snader, a firefighter who arrived on the scene with the first two firetrucks, said, “You couldn’t stand up because the heat was so intense.” He said that he had to keep moving as the fire burned through his shoes and the sleeves of his coat. When the protective mask he wore began to warp from the heat he was forced back.

The neighborhood was low income working class. It had suffered damage in February 1996 during flooding as the ice from a winter storm melted. The fire hydrants had not been inspected since 1991. One hydrant burst as firefighters tried to connect hoses to it. Spokesmen for TVFR said that lack of water was never a problem so the burst fire hydrant was irrelevant.

The burst fire hydrant, intense flames and people jumping from the building made the fire extremely traumatic, especially for the children who lived in the building. The death of four elementary school age children increased the traumatic impact.

Fire investigators said that the fire was arson, they found accelerant at one spot in the stairwell. They also said it was the worst possible kind of arson, because it was positioned perfectly to turn the stairwell into a firestorm and the timing was sure to catch people asleep in the building. They offered a $5,000 reward for information on the arsonist.

Rumors swirled around the community. Some said that a man was seen fleeing the scene in tears right before the fire broke out. They speculated that he was getting revenge for some slight and the fire had gotten out of control. Sometimes tenants, evicted from the building, had slashed tires or sprayed graffitti. It was not unthinkable that someone like that might have set a fire. Some of the young mothers in the building said that the dryer in the laundry room on the first floor had been smoking for days and may have caught fire.

Michael Eastlick, the manager of the Oakwood Park Apartments, was too overcome with emotion to talk about the fire. He said that the Aguilars were good people. Jeremais was the building’s mechanic. Anyone with car problems went to Jeremais, he would help. Virginia ran a day care center in her apartment and was the substitute mother for most of the children who lived there.

Eastlick didn’t think of it right away, but soon he would remember that there had been problems with fire in the building. In the last year an 11 year old boy, Ray DeFord, who lived with his mother and father in apartment 25, had been caught setting fires at least four times. None of these incidents was ever reported to the police.

Ray DeFord had a reputation as a bully and an outcast at Oakwood Park. His parents, Tom Martin, 46, and Carolyn DeFord, 49, were disabled and eaked out their social security checks by collecting cans and bottles from the garbage. They were looked down on by other tenants in the building and Ray was thought to be a trouble-maker.

DeFord, considered a hero by his family because he woke them and guided them out of their bedroom window during the fire, soon called attention to himself. First he bragged to the police that he knew about the fire. Then he pulled the fire alarm in the hallway of the Ramada Inn where survivors of the fire were staying.

On July 2, 1996 Ray Martin DeFord, 11, confessed to starting the fire. He said he was “experimenting” with matches and alcohol in the stairwell, when he accidentally set some newspapers on fire. When he lost control of the flames he woke his parents and guided them to safety. Ray DeFord would be charged with negligent homicide. He would become Oregon’s youngest convicted murderer.

Coming Soon: Playing with Fire part two: Ray

Mamie Walsh Part Two

2006-07-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

Lynching in Sight

Mamie Walsh, 14, had been found raped and strangled to death while picking berries near the Willamette River just north of Milwaukie on June 23, 1892. Within two days police had two suspects in custody. Tim Sullivan, a homeless vagrant arrested in Hillsboro with blood in his beard, was in custody in Oregon City. The jail was surrounded by irate citizens, ready to lynch Mamie’s killer. The only thing that saved Sullivan’s life was the fact that no-one really thought he was the killer.

Ernest Rafes, aka Richards, was in jail in Multnomah County. Rafes was a German immigrant and political activist who lived in a wigwam made of tree bark about 125 yards from where the young girl’s body had been found. Rafes was an organizer with the radical People’s Party/Farmer’s Alliance. He had retreated to the wilderness along the Willamette to write political tracts and prepare for the upcoming Presidential election.

Late on Thursday, June 23rd the day after the killing, A.A. Demules, 35, a piano tuner well known in Milwaukie, was arrested in Sellwood. He had been arrested for exposing himself to two little girls about an hour after Mamie Walsh was killed. He admitted that he was in Milwaukie on Wednesday and he had been returning to Sellwood at about the time of the killing.

Dr. J.W. Powell examined Demules and declared that he could not be the killer. 19th century journalism was so Victorian in outlook that much of the reporting of this case was pointedly not said. The implication from the story about Powell’s examination of Demules was that Demules was not capable of rape.

Powell’s examination of Mamie’s body revealed that she had been washed after her death. He found a large bruise and scratches on her thigh, and an impression, shaped like a key on her abdomen. Crush marks on her forehead were believed to have been made by a boot heel.

Oregon did not follow scientific detection procedures in the 1890s. Police tended to arrest suspects and hold them for days without charges. They also seem to have used the hostile crowds surrounding the Clackamas County jail in Oregon City to pressure suspects into confessions. Hordes of sight-seers trampled the area around the crime scene. It also appears that some of the best investigation was conducted by amateurs, such as Dr. J. H. Hickman, who took a great interest in the case and apparently spent several days tramping the woods along the river looking for clues.

Mamie’s body had been placed deep in the woods behind a fallen tree and partly covered with broken branches. Her killer had taken great pains to hide the body, but in his haste he had left some clues. For one, the collar of her dress had caught on some branches and ripped loose from the dress. The hanging collar had led searchers to the hidden body.

A broken barbed wire fence seemed to explain the scratches on the girl’s thigh and a piece of her stocking was found stuck on one of the barbs. Police believed that the girl had been killed, then washed and then carried to the woods where she was hidden. An Oregonian reporter retraced the girl’s path through the woods and explained that the spot where she was probably killed would have been visible to someone working on a fence in the yard of Frank Wilson, the Luellings nearest neighbor.

Police found that the Wilson family was away from home on the day of the murder, except for Frank’s brother from Iowa, Charles. Charles Wilson had come to his brother’s farm to work around the beginning of June. On the day of Mamie Walsh’s death he had been working on the fence near where the girl was killed.

Charles Wilson said he had seen Mamie on the day of her death. She was picking berries. He said he saw three Chinese men also picking berries near where the girl was. He said that shortly after seeing the girl he had gone back to his house for a drink of water. When he returned the girl and the Chinese were gone.

Police did not believe Wilson’s story, and some said that he was the first and the best suspect, but he was not arrested right away. Wilson was an English speaker and related to a prominent land owner. The suspects who were being held without charges were recent immigrants and/or transients.

On Saturday, June 25, Dr. Hickman discovered Mamie’s bucket. It had been crushed by someone’s foot and hidden under a pile of tree bark near the front door of Ernest Rafes’ lean-to. Submerged in a nearby hollow tree stump made into a water cistern, the doctor found a hook that Mamie had used to carry the bucket. The doctor theorized that Mamie’s body may have been washed in the cistern as well.

Hickman now became a part of the official investigation, as he confronted Rafes in his jail cell with the evidence found at his place. Rafes was unconcerned about the evidence. He asked why an intelligent person would hide evidence of a murder he committed so near his campsite. He said he had never seen the girl and was innocent of any crime.

Rafes was a radical vegetarian and a pacifist and found his incarceration, especially for such a violent crime, a very painful experience. Rafes, whose native language was German, passed a note to an Oregonian reporter from his prison cell. In this note Rafes said (with idiosyncratic spelling), “I have a strong hope in truth, justes and rightousness. If I did rong by camping and trying to be alone one week I am willing to suffer for the amount of injustice I thar by did to god and men. Please let me be free as soon as possible. Consider yourself in my place.”

Things looked bad for Rafes, but many pointed out that Rafes had been in custody since the time of the killing and had not been at his lean-to. Anyone could have come there and planted evidence against him.

Tim Sullivan was soon released from jail. He was definitely in Portland at the time of the killing. Tim Sullivan’s life is lost to history. Did he continue his alcoholic, self-destructive wandering or did this experience change him?

Soon Demules was ruled out as a suspect in Mamie’s death, although he faced charges on a sex offense for indecent exposure. More questions. What did they do with men who exposed themselves to children in the 1890s?

Ernest Rafes remained in jail with strong circumstantial evidence against him. Many believed that the real killer was still loose. They looked at Charles Wilson as the main suspect.

Coming Soon: Mamie Walsh Part Three: The Fiend Captured
Mamie Walsh Part One: Work of a Fiend
Mamie Walsh Part Four: He Has Confessed

Portland Confidential

2006-06-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to reading Phil Stanford’s excellent book Portland Confidential, and boy am I glad I did. Stanford has been one of my favorite Portland writers since I stumbled on his old Oregonian column years ago. In this book he uses his breezy style to tell the fascinating story of Jim Elkins and the corruption in Portland that brought national attention to the Rose City in 1957.

Stanford calls this Portland’s dirtiest little secret. It has been mostly unmentioned for half a century. Stanford has exposed the secret once and for all and tells the dirt on some of the larger than life figures of Portland history, such as Terry Schrunk, Jim Purcell and Jim Elkins himself.

Portland was embarrassed in 1957 during televised Senate Racketeering Committee hearings Senator Karl Mundt said, “It is embarrassing to me to think of the people of Portland, Oregon, with a mayor (Terry Schrunk) who flunks a lie-detector test and a district attorney (William Langley) hiding behind the Fifth Amendment. If I lived there I would suggest they pull the flags down to half-mast in public shame.”

Stanford gives us the story of the massive racketeering and political corruption that flourished in Portland in the 20th century. He tells his story mostly through the life of Jim Elkins, a dope-addict, pimp and armed robber, who came to Portland in 1937 and started a small whorehouse.

In just a few years Elkins was challenging the possibly mob-connected boss of Portland vice, Al Winter. Within a few more years Winter retired to Las Vegas and Elkins was the main controller of prostitution, drugs and stolen goods in Portland.

The early Fifties saw a struggle between rival powers over gambling revenue in the Rose City. What brought Senate staffer Robert Kennedy to town was the possible Teamster role in this struggle. Blubber Maloney, one of the Seattle mobsters who tried to horn in on Elkins' empire, claimed that he had contacts with the Teamsters, but when push came to shove the Teamsters backed someone else, Stan Terry and the slot machine question was settled.

This book is full of great historical color and Stanford’s interviews with people like Little Rusty, a former prostitute who had an affair with a high ranking Portland Vice cop, and the mysterious Old Vice Cop add a personal touch that goes down well.

Stanford shines a light on some of the more interesting visitors to Portland during this time: the notorious – Ben “Bugsy” Segal, Mickey Cohen; the prominent – William O. Douglas, Robert Kennedy; the famous – Sammy Davis Jr. Not many people know he got his start in show business singing with the Will Mastin Trio in Portland.

Stanford’s book puts a couple of interesting Portland murder cases into context: The Tatum murder of 1947 and the Hank Case of 1954. I will write more about these in a later post. He also tantalizes us with hints of more obscure killings like Nippy Constantino who was gunned down on October 23, 1944. I will have to look into this one.

He also added a couple of obscure locations for my Crime Map: Jim Elkins' last home in Portland, the Pago Pago Room and the Clover Club, where Sammy Davis Jr. sang.

Thanks, Phil for a great read. I loved it and will read it again. Everyone else should too.

When Criminals are Victims

2006-06-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Clackamas County Sheriff’s dispatch received a strange phone call at about 7:00 pm on Friday, June 16. An anonymous caller said that someone was being held against their will in a house on SE 25th in Milwaukie. The caller said the received a call from someone at that location who said “if they didn’t get their stuff back” they would kill their hostage.

The hostage was Paul Abelino Canul, 18. Canul was a burglar who broke into the house on SE 25th, probably for the second time. The owner of the home, Bradley John Poppino, 43, was a grower for a medical marijuana club with as many as 50 marijuana plants in his house. Burglars had stolen at least a pound of drying marijuana from Poppino’s home while he was away on a camping trip.

Poppino returned home on Thursday and discovered the break-in. He hid his car and made the house look as if no one was home and enlisted the help of his next door neighbor, Andrew Paul Kester, 27. A group of young men arrived as expected and Poppino and Kester were able to capture Canul, even though his accomplices escaped.

Canul said he pulled a gun, but the two men disarmed him and dragged him to the garage where they duct-taped his wrists and ankles and kicked him to the floor. According to Canul the two men berated him and threatened him for hours, threatening to hurt his family if their marijuana was not returned.

Threatening to cut off one of his toes for each hour until their marijuana was returned, Poppino and Kester forced Canul to make calls to his friends telling them to bring the merchandise back. During the calls Canul was able to let someone know where he was and they finally called the police.

At one point Canul’s eyes were covered with tape and a third man threatened to dispose of his body by cutting it into bits with a chain saw. Canul said, “I’m not a very religious guy, but I prayed.” Photographs of Canul show evidence that he was threatened with a knife on his throat and face. (I wish blogspot would let me put pictures up. Anybody have any advice?)

Canul says he passed out after the chainsaw threat and when he woke up the men seemed to be running out of steam. They were talking about ordering a pizza when a car pulled up in front of the house. Canul hoped that his friends had arrived to save him. It wasn’t the crooks and it wasn’t Domino’s, it was the Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies.

After a brief conversation with Poppino and Kester in the front yard it became apparent that the anonymous caller was correct. Police arrested and charged all parties in the case. “It’s a bit unusual when everyone involved is a victim and a defendant,” said Chris Owen, the prosecutor on the case.

Paul Canul remains in custody in the Clackamas County Jail for the charge of Robbery 1, Attempted Burglary 1, and the unlawful possession of a weapon with the intent to use. The total bail is set at $100,000, in addition to the measure eleven offenses of Robbery 1; with no bail amount.

Bradley Poppino remains in custody in the Clackamas County Jail for the charges of Kidnapping 1 and manufacturing marijuana. This bail is set at $250,000. A preliminary hearing for this matter is scheduled for June 26th, at 3:00 p.m.

Andrew Kester remains in custody in the Clackamas County Jail for the charge of Kidnapping 1, with an associated bail of $250,000. A preliminary hearing for this matter is scheduled for June 26th, at 3:00 p.m.

The marijuana charges for Poppino stem from the fact that he was growing more than the legal amount covered by his permit. This is what Prohibition does; it creates a group of criminals who control the source of the product. So as marijuana becomes legal, the criminals who produce it still think like criminals. They break the rules and take the law into their own hands.

Paul Canul, the only party in the case talking with the press yet, says he thinks he had it coming. “I’d be pretty mad if someone stole my pot,” he said, “I’d probably have done the same thing.”

A Lot of Blood

2006-06-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

“Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening,” Marissa Manwarren, 17, said to one of her roommates, when she heard of her boyfriend Cevelino Capuia’s arrest in Beaverton on June 11, 2006. Manwarren and Capuia were hiding out at a house in Hillsboro. Capuia had gone into Beaverton to rob a Plaid Pantry.

“That car is stolen, and they killed someone to get it,” said Manwarren. Capuia was driving the car of Chai Taphom who was shot to death on May 13 in northeast Portland.

Later that day Shawn Womack, 21, and his girlfriend, Jasmine Lesniak, showed up in Hillsboro looking for Manwarren. She told her roommates that she was going to Corvallis with Womack and Lesniak. Womack drove to North Portland and gave Manwarren $200 to buy drugs for him from a drug house.

Womack is a cold-blooded killer who has confessed to gunning down Chai Taphom and Michael Burchett for their cars. When Manwarren returned with no drugs and no money, Womack forced her into Burchett’s car and started driving south.

Somewhere south of Portland, Womack forced Manwarren out of the car, shot her twice in the head and put her in the trunk. He then drove to Beverly Beach, near Newport and dumped her body on an isolated road. Womack told police he “had a lot of blood” on him after the killing. He returned to Corvallis and threw his bloody clothes into a dumpster on 25th and Harrison.

Womack and Lesniak were arrested in Corvallis on June 13 driving Michael Burchett’s car. Police found a 9mm handgun in the car that they believe is the weapon used in all three shootings. They found blood on the back bumper and “a large amount” of blood in the trunk.

Capuia admitted his part in the crimes. He had been present at the shootings of Taphom and Burchett and had driven the cars away after the crime. He received Taphom’s silver 2005 Honda as his payment.

On June 20 Police searched the Corvallis apartment where Womack and Lesniak had lived. They found car seats used by Taphom’s twin daughters, mail to the two dead men, extra keys for both cars, identification and credit cards in the dead men’s names and a baseball cap.

Portland Homicide Detective Brian Grose recognized the baseball cap. He had seen it in surveillance videos from the Blue Spot Video Store. Michael Burchett was wearing it when he entered the building shortly before he was killed.

Mamie Walsh Part One

2006-06-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

Work of a Fiend

1892 was a boom year for Portland. Portland consolidated with East Portland and Albina (North Portland) in 1891 tripling the city’s acreage and increasing its population by half to over 70,000. In 1892 Portland was the largest city in the northwest and business was booming. The depression that would hit the city in the spring of 1893 was still over the horizon.

On June 22, 1892, school was out and Mamie Walsh, 14, the daughter of a prominent Milwaukie farmer, was staying with family friends, the Luellings, near the Willamette River just south of Sellwood. That day she went out to pick berries by the river at about 4:00pm. She didn’t come back that night.

Alfred Luelling enlisted neighbors to search for the missing girl. Shortly after dawn Mamie’s body was found. She had been raped and strangled. Her underwear, hat and bucket were missing. The search party turned into a posse, determined to find and lynch the killer.

It wasn’t just Clackamas County that went wild looking for the killer. Friday morning, the day after the body was found, Ernest Richards, a German immigrant, was arrested in Portland on suspicion of being the killer.

The Clackamas County posse was pursuing a vagrant who had been seen in the Milwaukie area for the last couple of months. He disappeared the night of the murder. The posse traced him to Oregon City and then to Clackamas Heights, where they lost his trail about 5:00am on Friday.

That afternoon the Clackamas County sheriff offered a reward of $375 for the suspect and published this description: Height 5’11”; complexion dark; light mustache, high cheek bones, slightly stooped shoulders, upper front teeth uneven; eyes gray and restless; weight about 170 pounds; large prominent nose.

Shortly after the reward was offered a telegram arrived from Hillsboro. Marshall Lohman said he had Mamie Walsh’s killer in custody. Further dispatches claimed that the suspect had confessed both the rape and murder.

The man arrested in Hillsboro was Tim Sullivan and he was dead drunk. He was found walking the streets of Hillsboro with blood in his beard. He roughly matched the description of the suspect wanted in Clackamas County.

Sullivan had two wounds on his temple. One was just a scratch; the other was deep and had bled profusely. Sullivan’s clothes were stained with blood. In his pocket’s Sullivan had a Southern Pacific Rail ticket from Cornelius to Portland dated June 23. Election cards in his pocket indicated that he had been in Portland on Monday.

Sullivan claimed that he had been in Milwaukie on Wednesday and said he had “done up that Luelling family.” Under interrogation he confessed to raping and killing Mamie Walsh. He said that after killing the girl he had crossed the river and walked a half-mile on Farmington Rd, where he discarded Mamie’s bucket and hat. He didn’t know what had become of her underwear.

The next day Sullivan, now sober, proved that he was a homeless man who had spent most of the last year in the Multnomah County jail. He could prove his whereabouts for the last week and he had not been in Milwaukie on Wednesday. It was clear that Sullivan was not the killer.

As the best suspect he was held in the Clackamas County jail, which was surrounded by a large crowd of citizens ready to take justice into their own hands.

Coming Soon: Mamie Walsh part two: Lynching in Sight
Mamie Walsh Part Three: The Fiend Captured
Mamie Walsh Part Four: He Has Confessed

Killer Thieves in Portland

2006-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

It started with a shooting in a quiet residential neighborhood early on a Sunday morning. May 13, 2006 Chai Taphom, 28, was shot several times and his silver 2005 Honda Civic was stolen. The murder drew very little attention and police seemed to have no leads.

Two weeks later, May 28th, Michael Burchett, 38, from Vancouver was gunned down in the parking lot behind Blue Spot Video on NE 82nd Ave. The Blue Spot is a 24-hour video peepshow. Burchett had spent the day doing yard work in Vancouver. He spent the evening at a friend’s house in Gresham watching a boxing match.

News reports of Burchett’s death mentioned Taphom’s murder as another violent crime in the area, but police did not believe the killings were related. It was interesting that Burchett’s black 2000 Honda Civic was stolen from the scene of the murder.

Two weeks later on a Monday night Beaverton police responded to a robbery at a Plaid Pantry. Suspects fled the scene in a silver Honda Civic. After a short chase the Honda crashed and Cevelino Capuia, 19, a student at Portland Community College was arrested.

Police noticed something odd about the car, the license plate didn’t go with the vehicle. It soon became apparent that Capuia had been driving the car stolen from Chai Taphom. By this time police had already connected the two killings. Ballistics showed that the same gun had been used in both attacks. The investigation also showed that Taphom had visited Blue Spot video about 2:00am on the Sunday he was killed a few blocks away.

Police believed that the killers had waited in the dark parking lot and they may have picked their victims because of the cars they drove. Tophom was probably taken away from the parking lot before being killed, because the killers intended to come back for another car. Capuia led the police to his accomplice Shawn Womack, 21, a Linn-Benton Community College student from Corvallis.

By the time police caught up with Womack, who was arrested in Corvallis after a chase in Michael Burchett’s car, on May 14th, Marissa Manwarren, 17, was also dead. Manwarren was Capuia’s girlfriend. The adopted granddaughter of an Oregon State Senator, Manwarren had run away from home in April. She was shot to death near Beverly Beach in Newport, OR sometime between May 12 and May 14.

After Capuia was arrested, comments left on his Myspace.com account led police to believe that there was a third victim in the Newport area. Together with officers of the Lincoln County sheriff’s department they found Manwarren’s body on a secluded road.

Capuia and Manwarren both had myspace.com accounts. From comments she left Manwarren was worried about Capuia’s “actions”. Her website shows that she was very attached to Capuia, under occupation in her profile she wrote: CAPUIA.

Capuia portrayed himself as a devout Christian on his website, quoting extensively from the bible. He also was very active at PCC, where he participated in an African-American literature event in February.

Shawn Womack ran for student body President at LBCC. Police said that neither of the young men had extensive police records. Capuia was arrested for second-degree burglary in 2005. Womack has a conviction for reckless driving the same year. Both were bright, well-liked young men. Capuia’s bible-quoting has led to some speculation that the two targeted men visiting the pornography store because they disapproved of pornography.

There has been a lot of speculation and rumor in this case. At one point it was reported that Manwarren had been pregnant by Capuia. Autopsy showed that she was not pregnant at the time of her death. Much of the early reporting, and web discussion, made it seem as if Capuia had killed Manwarren.

Capuia may have been the source of the pregnancy rumor; he may have told the Police Manwarren was two months pregnant. It is pretty clear now that he was in custody when she died. He was said to have burst into tears when told of her death. Maybe now he knows how the Burchett and Taphom families feel.

Womack and Capuia are both charged with the murders of Taphom and Burchett. No charges have been brought in Manwarren’s death yet, but police say they are confident that her killer is in custody.

Running Trouble

2006-06-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

Eric Walter Running was trouble waiting to happen. Given up at birth by his mother, Running was raised by an alcoholic couple who physically abused him from an early age. His adopted mother abandoned him at the age of four.

Running began drinking when he was 11 and before he left high school he was injecting heroin regularly. He worked on and off as a long-haul truck driver and somewhere along the way he moved from San Francisco to Portland.

The earliest example of violently acting out on record is an armed robbery Running committed in San Francisco in 1975. Running was 24. That wasn’t the last time, but after this his violence became more and more directed at women.

His wife took a lot of abuse. She testified later that he had beat her “too many times to count” before she finally entered a woman’s shelter. Eric Running commemorated their marriage with a tattoo. On his left wrist he had tattooed a portrait of his wife with her throat slit and blood oozing out of her mouth.

Girlfriends, a step-daughter and women he had never met were abused or threatened by Running. In one road rage incident he threatened two women in a car on a Portland Bridge with a gun. He violated parole in that case and spent a little time in jail.

In 1991 Running was charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of a transient in O’Bryant Square. Charges were dropped in that case. For such a violent guy, Running spent a surprisingly small amount of time in jail.

For five years in the 1980s Eric Running achieved sobriety. He attended college with the intention of becoming an addiction counselor. This is often a powerful goal for people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. It worked for Running, for a while.

By 1996 Running was a heavy daily drinker and heroin addict. It was that year that Running met Octavia Anderson. Anderson was an unusual Portland artist and poet who worked part time as an accountant on NE Sandy Blvd. Octavia liked to play pool and watch soap operas at a local bar, the Ambassador Lounge.

Eric Running fell “madly in love” with Octavia. Friends of his later testified that Running seemed to be obsessed with Octavia. Anderson, who’s legal name was Jacqueline, was a lesbian who had been in a long term relationship with another woman, Barbara Gilpin.

Gilpin and Anderson had been romantically involved for more than a decade and owned forty acres of land near the Oregon coast in Clatsop County. Their relationship was described by some as “on again, off again.” When Octavia met Running, the relationship was off. Gilpin and Anderson remained friends, though and often contacted each other.

It is hard to tell what relationship there was between Anderson and Running. Court papers say that they lived together from shortly after their meeting until Anderson’s death. Stacey Speidel, a bartender at the Ambassador, who had served Running for years and who considered Octavia a friend, said she didn’t think they had a “romantic relationship.” “They'd laugh. They'd dance,” she said, “I think they were just good friends.”

At least in Eric Running’s mind there was more to the relationship. 1997 was a bad year for Running. In February during a heated argument with his father, Harry Running finally confirmed Eric’s suspicions that he was adopted. He may not have experienced a sober moment from this meeting until his arrest one year later.

At least five times in that year Running was admitted to the Hooper Detoxification Center, a rescue center for people who are found in an extremely intoxicated condition in public. It takes a life threatening situation to get into this exclusive club.

Running’s relationship with Anderson was deteriorating. Surprising, huh? Meanwhile Octavia was making her mind up to go back to Barbara. It all came together on February 24, 1998.

That Tuesday Eric and Octavia had lunch together. They met again in the evening and after drinking and smoking together they “ended up at the Ambassador.” The purpose of the meeting was for Octavia to break the news to Eric that she was going back to her lover Barbara. Witnesses saw them arguing in the pool room and about 8:00pm Running went to the bar and sat alone.

Running only stayed a little while and then left the bar. Octavia spent about twenty minutes on the phone, then ordered another drink and spent a while leafing through the karaoke list. Around 10:00pm Barbara Gilpin arrived.

Anderson and Gilpin had dinner and went in to play pool. About 11:15pm Anderson came to the bar to order drinks. Running had returned to the bar. Running said, “[c]ome outside right now, you fucking bitch. I'm going to kill you.” Octavia rolled her eyes at him and he drew his finger across his throat, echoing the tattoo on his wrist with his actions.

Running left the bar and Anderson told the bartender, “I don’t like him very much anymore.” She took her drinks back into the pool room. Almost immediately Gilpin came out with a pool cue headed for the front door. Octavia had probably told her of Running’s threat.

Before she got to the door Running reentered the bar with a shotgun and fired at Gilpin. Barbara Gilpin was killed instantly. Running then walked into the pool room and cronfronted Octavia Anderson.

She felt at home at the Ambassador. Witnesses say she showed no fear as Running advanced on her with a shotgun. “Are you gonna shoot me like you did her?” Anderson asked.

Running answered with his weapon, wounding Anderson in the hip. While she was on the floor he put the gun next to her cheek and fired once more, destroying her head. As he left the building he took out his rage on Barbara Gilpin’s corpse. He kicked her as he passed by and then put the muzzle of the shotgun next to her head and fired again.

Witnesses heard Running say, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.” As he escaped through the parking lot the gun discharged accidentally. He hid it in a nearby back yard behind a woodpile.

The next day Running got rid of the leather jacket he wore during the crime. He cut his hair and started wearing glasses. He bought some heroin and hung out with friends the rest of the day. When one friend went to get cigarettes he saw Running’s picture in the paper as wanted for questioning.

Running spent a few hours with his friends watching news coverage of his crime. His friends advised him that he had three choices; he could turn himself in, he could go on the run or he could kill himself.

The next day Running was found inside a downtown construction site with a large gash in his throat. When he was rescued by paramedics he said he wished that he had saved the shotgun and used the last round on himself. He gave a false name to police, but they were not fooled.

In 2000 Running was convicted of one count of aggravated murder and one count of intentional murder. He was sentenced to death for Octavia Anderson’s murder, but he got life without parole for Barbara Gilpin’s. The jury justified the unusual split verdict, because they believed “he wasn't intending to go back to the bar and kill Gilpin -- he asked Octavia to go outside so he could kill her.”

Running’s death penalty was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court in 2004 and he remains on death row in Salem. Oregon rarely executes prisoners, although it is not unheard of, but finally Eric Running is put away where he can’t hurt anyone else.

Updates

2006-06-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

There have been some new developments in a couple of the cases that I have been following, so I thought I would pass the info on to bring everyone up to date.

Betrayed Trust

The Academy of Alternative’s School has had their business license reinstated after they completed background checks of the rest of their staff. This is the school that hired Daniel Alcazar, a convicted murderer, as a teacher’s aid without performing the required background check. Alcazar was arrested on May 1, for having sex with a 15-year-old student.

Susan Castillo, Superintendent of Schools said that the investigation will continue to see if there is any activity that can be prosecuted in this case. “This is not a simple matter of missing paperwork,” Castillo said. “These requirements are in place to protect students, and I take the violation by the Academy of Alternatives very seriously.”

Castillo is calling for changes to state law to allow her to revoke the license of a school in similar circumstances. Jay Scalise, director of the Academy, who hired Alcazar less than a month after he was released from prison, said, “They should do anything they need to do to make sure everybody is secure. This has been a horrifying experience for all of us.”

Some more than others Mr. Scalise. Some school districts are sending students back to the Academy on a temporary basis. Others will not send students to the Academy again. Last week Alcazar was indicted for third degree rape and sodomy and faces up to ten years in prison.

Unanswered Questions

Some questions are being answered in the murder of Gary Douglas George, 51, who was found beaten to death in his North East Portland home. Bobby Donald Barnes, 51, (aka Michael Tucker) has been charged with aggravated murder in this case.

Barnes, a transient, was an acquaintance of George and is believed to have killed George while burglarizing his run-down home. Police are not saying what Barnes was trying to steal.

Barnes was arrested on the day of the murder, April 24, 2006, on an unrelated parole violation, at a house where he occasionally stayed near the murder site. Police now say that the gunfight that George had with an ex-girlfriend and her ex-husband at his home seven weeks before his death is unrelated.

It seems to be quite a coincidence that George shot it out with one group of people and then was killed by someone else, but George did have a history of violence. He also seemed to attract violence. Police had been called to his home eight times between 1994 and George’s death for various crimes.

Some questions still need answers.

It's a Family Affair

2006-06-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

Crimes will often focus on certain neighborhoods in Portland. Sometimes they will cluster in families. Northeast Portland and North Portland are both neighborhoods where certain types of crime flourish. Gang activity is sometimes pretty intense in these two areas.

We have already seen how violent crime and drug addiction have taken a huge toll on the Mandley family, in my earlier posting A Tragic Story Gets Weird. The extended family that unites Perlia Bell, 43, and her cousin Areba Strickland, 50, has six murder victims since 1979. Four of these murders are still unsolved, although in some cases police believe they know who committed the crime. Three other members of the Bell-Strickland family are in jail for violent crimes.

Bell and Strickland have reacted to the violence and pain in their lives by activating their community against violence and working to end the G-code (for Gangsta) of silence that keeps the killers of their family members from facing justice. Bell has organized an annual September 11 march in memory of her daughter Asia Bell who was killed by gunfire outside her home. She also organizes anti-violence events through her church.

Strickland is active in Project Hope, a youth employment program, and is the founder of the Isaiah Strickland Foundation against Violence, named for her son who was gunned down in Northeast Portland. They are both active in Families Affected by Violence.

Less than a week before Bell’s Stop the Violence Worship Service, two of her cousins Willie Bell and Wilando Bell became the latest victims of violence in her family. On February 7, 2005, Willie Bell, 24, and his girlfriend were robbed at gunpoint allegedly by Domenicke Sanders who had just robbed a nearby convenience store.

Wilando came to his brother’s aid and was shot to death. Willie was wounded. Fortunately the G-code didn’t play into this case and Sanders was arrested a few days later in Vancouver, WA. Sander’s is awaiting trial on murder charges.

Reba Strickland’s son Isaiah, 17, was shot and killed near the corner of NE Fremont and 7th on the night on November 2, 2003. Reba knows her son wasn’t perfect. According to a questionnaire he filled out shortly before his death, Isaiah had begun using alcohol and marijuana at the age of 14 and had been arrested twice for truancy before dropping out of school. She also knows that the argument that led to Isaiah’s death may have begun with his hitting a young woman at a party.

Reba Strickland also knows that her son did not deserve to be brutally shot down in the street. She knows that his killer must be brought to justice, but he never will be until witnesses come forward. Reba knows that a dozen of her son’s lifelong friends stood on a corner a block away from her son when he was shot. Some admitted at first that they knew the shooter, now none of them know who did it.

Police believe that Donnie Crawford Jr., 20, and Charles Crockett, 21, are responsible for Strickland’s shooting. Crawford is the brother of the woman that Strickland reportedly hit. You can read more about Crockett here and here. Crockett has been pretty good at intimidating witnesses and enforcing the G-code.

Asia Bell, 23, Perlia’s daughter, was shot to death and her husband Tyrone James, 26, was blinded in a shooting at their home in North Portland on November 20, 2002. They were celebrating Tyrone’s 26th birthday and stepped onto their front porch for a cigarette, when 17 shots were fired.

Asia was killed instantly. Tyrone was badly wounded in the face and both of his eyes were damaged. A friend who was visiting was also slightly wounded in the shooting. Asia and Tyrone, parents of five children, were working hard to get away from the drug abuse and violence that has plagued their families. They were both employed in the health care industry and had recently purchased their first home.

The North Mississippi neighborhood, where they lived, is one of the most vibrant and interesting neighborhoods in the city. It is also a neighborhood that has been plagued by gun violence and drug dealing. It is a neighborhood of beautiful old homes that are still affordable, because of the problems in the area. The police have no suspects or leads in this case and it is one of the featured cases of Portland’s Cold Case unit.

On January 19, 1996 Perlia Bell’s brother, Kern McClure, 34, was beaten and stomped to death in a house near NE Fremont and Rodney. Not only is this murder still unsolved. It seems to have been forgotten. There is very little information available about this crime.

Perlia herself had a personal brush with violence in 1993. At the time she had been addicted to cocaine for more than a decade and was in an abusive relationship with another drug addict, Andre Favre. Neighbors of Favre and Bell said that the couple kept to themselves, but seemed to fight all the time. Many believed that Favre was beating Bell on a regular basis.

On August 21, 1993 during a fight with Favre, Bell stabbed him in the chest, killing him. She went to jail for eighteen months, kicked her addiction and began to organize for the end of violence in her community.

Wilbert Menafee Sr., 48, Perlia’s uncle, was shot and killed in another unsolved murder on April 7, 1979. Menafee’s son, Wilbert Jr., 27, was shot to death on November 29, 1986. Menafee Jr.’s death was one of Portland’s earliest gang-related shootings. Carl Lee Rucker was convicted of his killing and was paroled in 1998.

Wew. Murder takes a terrible toll on the people it leaves behind. In some way the victims themselves are the lucky ones. They don’t have to deal with the fear, guilt, anxiety, loss and depression that plague the survivors. Perlia Bell, Reba Strickland and Tyrone James have taken an active part in changing the community that has damaged their family so badly. They are an example to all of us.

Betrayed Trust

2006-06-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Privatization of public school programs creates its own problems, but does it get worse than this? On May 18, 2006, Daniel Alcazar, 27, a teacher’s aide for the Academy of Alternatives School, was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old student. When Alcazar was arrested it became clear that Alcazar was in violation of his parole as well. In October 2005 Alcazar was released after more than ten years in jail for murder.

The Academy of Alternatives was a private school that contracted to several school districts in the region to conduct special education classes for students with special needs due to alcoholism, drug abuse and other social and academic problems -- the most vulnerable students in our schools.

Jay Scalise, Director of the Academy, discovered the sexual abuse (which he called “consensual”) during a regular meeting with the student, parents and staff. “I am horrified. It is just devastating,” said Scalise. “We all feel violated. It is a betrayal of the student, the population here, this entire school of people who trusted him.” Scalise seems to be most upset because Alcazar violated a policy that teachers are never to be alone with students.

If anyone violated the trust of the “entire school”, not to mention the community, it was Scalise. Scalise, aware of Alcazar’s past after speaking with his “mentor” at the Going Home program which helps ex-convicts re-enter society, failed to do an official background check.

“The background check is when I talked to the people at the Going Home program,” Scalise said. “They told me what his background was. Would a formal background check have shown anything different? I don't know.”

That’s right. Scalise didn’t know because he didn’t check. One thing that a real background check would have done would have been keeping the Academy in compliance with its contract with the Multnomah County Education District. Another would have been alerting state authorities who could have informed Mr. Scalise that it is not a good idea to give convicted murderers access to the most vulnerable children in our schools. Something that Scalise still doesn’t seem to get.

In August 1994 Daniel Alcazar, then 16, shot and killed Joan Ann Borisch, 42, an oncology nurse at Providence Hospital, while burglarizing her home in southeast Portland. Borisch’s body was discovered by her 18 year old son. She also left behind a 16 year old daughter.

Daniel Alcazar now faces up to ten years in jail for his latest crime, as well as the revocation of his parole. The Academy of Alternatives no longer has a license and will not be allowed to conduct classes until they perform required background checks on all current employees. Jay Scalise, I’m sure, is very sorry.

Green River Gary: The Portland Connection

2006-05-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

Anne Rule’s book Green River Running Red is a remarkable piece of work. Rule tells the story of one of America’s worst series of killings in two ways, from the point of view of the victims and from the point of view of the killer. It is a story that Rule was involved in from the beginning and that she followed all the way through. Rule will not write about a crime until it has been solved and gone to the jury. In this case she waited more than twenty years to tell the story of Green River Gary Ridgeway.

Anne Rule has a knack for telling a frightening story in a frightening way. She does this very well here. Maybe the scariest part of the story is about Ridgeway’s third wife, a woman he was married to for nearly twenty years. Ridgeway married his third wife in 1985, after the worst of his killing frenzy had ended. He did kill while they were married, but not at the frenetic pace he had kept in 1982 – 1984. His wife knew nothing of his crimes and was shocked to hear that her husband was the Green River Killer.

Ridgeway did most of his killing in Seattle and in south King County, but it is clear that he traveled to Oregon and he may have killed at least one victim here.

On June 13, 1985 human bones were found near Bull Mountain Rd in Tigard, just south of Portland. Police came to investigate the discovery and soon realized they had another cluster of Green River victims.

Soon they had identified the bodies of two women; Denise Darcel Bush, 23, and Shirley Marie Sherrill, 19. Ironically Denise Bush was originally from Portland, she had last been seen in Seattle, though. Bush disappeared on October 8, 1982 near the corner of Pacific Highway and S. 144th. Sherrill had spent considerable time in Portland, working The Camp, a prostitution area that flourished in downtown Portland in the 1980s. Sherrill too had disappeared from Seattle in the International District on October 18, 1982.

Bush was identified by the effects of an earlier brain surgery on her skull. In a macabre twist, Ridgeway had split her skull into three parts and it was found in three separate areas hundreds of miles apart. Ridgeway was playing games with the police.

The Tigard cluster yielded two more bodies before police were through searching; Tammy Liles, 16, who disappeared sometime in the summer of 1983 from downtown Seattle, the other was never identified and is listed as “Oregon 1”. Sadly Tammy Liles had become so estranged from family and friends that no one ever reported her missing and very little is known about her.

Although all of the identified victims found in Oregon had disappeared from, and probably been killed in, Washington, Police in Oregon feared that the Green River Killer had moved south. Seven prostitutes had disappeared in Portland in the last year and at least four were likely Green River victims.

In September, 1985 a 15-year-old girl working as a prostitute in Portland’s Camp was abducted, raped and brutally attacked off of Bull Mountain Rd near Tualatin. She survived and was able to describe her attacker. Many people thought it looked like composite drawings of the Green River Killer. Since Ridgeway’s arrest some people believe this woman’s attacker was Ridgeway, but he has not confessed to that crime.

The September, 1985 attack seems to be much different than Ridgeway’s usual M.O. In this attack the victim was punched, kicked and strangled with panty-hose and a bandana. Ridgeway liked to use his forearm to strangle his victims and he liked to do it while having sex with them.

William Stevens II, one of the main suspects in the Green River Killings, lived in the Tigard area for a while and may have been responsible for some attacks against prostitutes and may have killed. Stevens died of cancer in 1991. He was a main suspect in the killings in 1988 after several people called into a TV show about the killings and said they suspected Stevens.

Stevens was cleared after credit card records seemed to prove that he had been out of the area in 1982 at the height of the killings. His adoptive brother, who had helped to clear him during the 1988 investigation, later became convinced that Stevens was the Green River Killer and for years he had a website that claimed to prove his brother was the killer.

The one victim that Ridgeway may have killed in Portland was Bobby Jo Hayes, 21. The last time anyone remembers seeing Hayes was on February 7, 1987 in Portland. She had just been released from jail on a prostitution charge and she had said that she was headed for Seattle. No one heard from Bobby Jo for another sixteen years, when Gary Ridgeway confessed to killing her.

Gary Ridgeway says that he killed 71 women. He is very precise about the number. He has confessed to and been convicted of 48 killings. Ridgeway says that the police are not smart enough to find his other victims. He has also admitted that he is not smart enough to find them either.

Ridgeway lived most of his life in Renton, WA and he worked for over 30 years at the Kenworth Truck Plant. He never missed a day at work, until he was arrested in 2001. Although he did some traveling during that time, he was pretty much tied to the south Seattle area. There is no telling where the bodies of the rest of his victims are.

Like Talking to a Reptile

2006-05-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Sebastian Alexander Shaw may be the coldest most devious serial killer yet. A man filled with rage who often felt the urge to kill people in his life, decided it was safer to select his victims at random. Convicted of three killings and two rapes in Portland, Shaw admitted at one point that he has killed 10-12 people, including at least one case in California.

In 1994, while working as grocery clerk at the Hawthorne Safeway, Shaw was arrested in a stolen car. It turns out now that the car was stolen in San Ramon, CA early in June, just days after 14 year old Jenny Lin was murdered in her Castro Valley, CA home nearby.

Police found a handgun in the front seat and a rifle in the trunk. They also found a “murder kit” which included a blindfold, plastic ties, pepper mace, a throwing knife, a roll of duct tape, a lead weight tied in the end of a sock, two ski masks, six packages of surgical gloves and three sexually explicit magazines. San Ramon was not interested in extradicting Shaw for car theft and other charges were dropped.

The Alameda County Sherrif’s Department has now named Shaw as the main suspect in the death of Jenny Lin. He has been a suspect for years, but Alameda County officials had to put their case on hold until Multnomah County was finished with him. Now with Shaw serving three life sentences, the California authorities are proceeding with their investigation.

Larry Findling, a retired Portland cop who worked the Shaw case, says, “He’s a cold customer, who won’t tell you a thing. I hope the police in California have DNA on him, because I don’t think Shaw will talk.”

Alameda County is not telling what they have on Shaw yet. They say they would have preferred not to name Shaw publically as a suspect, but a TV reporter contacted Lin’s family and let them know.

Jenny Lin was found on June 27, 1994, naked on a bathroom floor stabbed in the abdomen. Police believe that her killer planned to rape the young girl, but was frightened away; possibly by her father returning from work. Was she another random victim that Shaw acted out his rage-filled homicidal fantasies on?

Shaw once agreed to confess to as many as a dozen murders in exchange for a guarantee that he would not receive the death penalty and that he would be allowed to serve his sentences in Federal Prison where he would be allowed to smoke – Oregon prisons are non-smoking. Authorities were willing to negotiate, but would not give Shaw the guarantees he wanted.

Michael Stahlman, another retired Portland cop who interrogated Shaw about the killing of Donna Ferguson and Todd Rudiger, said that talking with Shaw was “unnerving.” “I was a cop for 30 years, and he left a real impression on me. He had no sense of the suffering and horror that he was causing. It was like talking to a reptile.”

For now the reptile is in the Oregon State Prison and California authorities are working to bring charges against him in Lin’s murder. Who are the other victims? There may be as many as eight more. I might have missed the Lin case if it wasn’t for a reader of this blog.

So tell me, are there any unsolved stabbings in your area that might be Shaw’s work? His preferred method seems to be stabbing, but he is known to also have carried a gun and he tried to smother one of his rape victims. He grew up in Redondo Beach, CA, so I would be interested in unsolved killings along I-5. That seems to be a likely route that Shaw would have traveled. I would also be interested in cases in Eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho and maybe Northern Nevada. Those are all reasonable, if long, drives from Portland.

Rock n Roll Homicide Part Four

2006-05-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

Facing the Music

A few days before Christmas 1997 Larry Hurwitz returned to Portland in custody. He was charged with four counts of tax evasion. He appeared in U.S Circuit Court in Portland on December 23. Mike and Penny Moreau, Tim’s parents came from New Orleans for the hearing.

The Moreaus were desperate for any news of their son. They not only opposed the death penalty they had urged the Multnomah County Prosecutor, Norm Frink, to offer Hurwitz immunity if he would lead them to Tim’s body. Frink offered Hurwitz a plea bargain on murder charges, but all he would say is, “I have nothing to say.”

Just a year before Larry Hurwitz had been at the top, promoting a major concert for Sting in Vietnam. Now he felt the tightness of his situation and was in a surly mood. On seeing the Moreaus when he entered the court, Hurwitz was seen to utter something that no one heard. The Moreaus later said they felt he was trying to intimidate them.

Hurwitz plead innocent to the tax charges and was released on bail until his trial. Detective Steve Baumgarte, who had been investigating Moreau’s murder for nearly eight years was encouraged that Hurwitz was in court. He said every time there was publicity on the murder new information came out. So far his evidence hadn’t been good enough for the Grand Jury to indict Hurwitz.

The noose was tightening around Larry Hurwitz, though. As the Federal Prosecutor revealed evidence that Hurwitz had not only hidden over $400,000 in income, he had used an elaborate scheme involving cash purchases of rare metals to cover up his crime. There was also evidence that he had tampered with a Grand Jury witness to keep from being indicted.

In April Hurwitz plead guilty to one count of tax evasion and agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes, penalties and fines. He thought he would get no more than 10 months in jail, but the judge tacked on an extra two months because of Hurwitz’s deviousness.

“We haven't given up hope yet. There's a certain degree of satisfaction that someone has forced Mr. Hurwitz to plead guilty to something,” said Mike Moreau. In July Hurwitz was sentenced to a year in jail with three years of supervised probation to follow. He was ordered to report to the Federal Correction Facility at Sheridan, OR in September.

Did Larry Hurwitz make a plan to skip bail and flee the country? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. At one point the government believed it enough to have Federal Marshals detain him. The pressure became so great that Hurwitz asked the court to allow him to report to prison early. He began serving a year in Federal custody in August 1998.

“We know there's (sic) more people out there that know about the murder case, but they were afraid of him,” Mike Moreau said from his home in New Orleans. “We just hope and pray someone who knows what happened to Tim will come forward now because it's safe.” Moreau was right about people being afraid of Larry. Among his colleagues in the music business Hurwitz was known as “Scary Larry.”

And the information did come out. Late in October, 1998 George Castagnola, a local stage hand who had worked at Starry Night in 1990, was indicted for the aggravated murder of Tim Moreau. Facing a possible death sentence, Castagnola plead guilty and agreed to cooperate in the case against Hurwitz.

Castagnola said that when the counterfeit ticket scam came out, Hurwitz asked Moreau to take the blame. Moreau demanded money to keep Hurwitz’s part in the scam secret. On January 21 Castagnola and Hurwitz met and agreed to kill Hurwitz. They drove out the Columbia Gorge and dug a grave for Moreau on the Washington side.

Two days later, in a hallway at Starry Night, Hurwitz wrapped a wire garrote around Moreau’s throat and Castagnola wrapped his face in duct tape. They buried Moreau that night.

Castagnola tried to lead Police to Moreau’s body, but was not able to find the location of the grave. In August 1999 Castagnola was sentenced to 10 years. “I'm happy to get it over with,” he told Circuit Judge Joseph F. Ceniceros. “I'm happy to get into the prison system and have this behind my back.”

Mike and Penny Moreau were not surprised by Castagnola’s lack of remorse. “After you consider the brutal nature of the murder and how premeditated it was, we weren't expecting an apology because of what we know about him and how he did it,” Mike said outside the courtroom. “Regardless of whether it was sincere or not, he is going to be in jail for 10 years.”

By that time Larry Hurwitz was facing 5 counts of aggravated murder and was facing a death sentence himself. Hurwitz agreed to cooperate. He plead no contest to murder charges, still denying his guilt, and made a “good faith effort” to help Police locate Moreau’s body in Skamania County. Hurwitz was not able to locate the grave, but he tried hard enough to get only 12 years for murder.

Mike and Penny Moreau were not ready to quit yet. In 2001 they brought suit for wrongful death in their son’s case. Hurwitz, still refusing to take responsibility for his crime, was forced to pay $3 million to the Moreau’s and stipulate that a civil jury would have found him guilty in Moreau’s death.

This was as close as the Moreau’s could get to Hurwitz admitting his guilt. The financial penalty was aimed at getting at Hurwitz’s alleged secret assets and to “ensure that he will have consequences for the rest of his life.”

Mike and Penny Moreau don’t have their son’s remains. But as Penny said, "We've been out to the area where they say Tim is. It's beautiful. Tim came to Portland because he loved the woods. I could accept it if he were to remain there.”

Rock n Roll Homicide Part One: Starry Night
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Two: Missing Presumed Dead
Rock n Roll Homicide Parth Three: Travels With Larry

A Personal Note

2006-05-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

I want to get a little personal tonight and let you know how I got started on this project of collecting Portland murders. I have been a fan of true crime since I read In Cold Blood at about the age of 12. I became so interested in the case I learned how to look up stories in the old newspaper microfilms. I read the New York Times coverage of the Clutter Family murders that had inspired Truman Capote.

I was hooked on reading true crime after that, but I was also hooked on reading the old newspaper stories. As I grew up, I got away from reading the old newspaper stories, but I stuck with true crime. I ate up Helter Skelter and the works of Anne Rule.

In 1991, my best friend James Lee was killed during a taxi cab robbery in Seattle. James had been driving a cab for just a short time and his death came as a big shock. The aftermath of James’ death and the trial of his killer showed me the intense damage that murder causes. Not only the life of the victim is taken, the lives of the victim’s survivors are also damaged, as is the life of the killer.

James’ death was a turning point in my life. I returned to college and finally finished my degree. I moved into a more professional stage of my career. But my personal experience with murder left me fascinated.

In 1996 I returned to Portland for the first time in nearly 12 years. My first night in Portland I made the mistake of checking into the Century Plaza Hotel, which was located at 415 SW Alder. This hotel has had many names over the years. Currently it is Hotel Alder and it is low income housing run by Central City Concern. They have done a complete remodel of the building in the last two years and it looks very nice now.

When I stayed at the Century Plaza ten years ago it was in the last stages of its decay. The building is a maze-like warren of hotel rooms (currently 99 units) that has been used for nearly a century as housing for the marginal and endangered members of Portland’s working class.

The room that I stayed in had a strong aura of violence and I felt very unsettled there. I managed to spend one night, although I never was able to make myself lie on the bed. The next night I opted for sleeping in my car. The whole time I was in this hotel room I was convinced that something terrible had happened there.

A few months later I was settled in Portland and in my new job. The idea that something horrible had happened in that room stayed with me. That’s when I began reading the old Oregonians on microfilm and collecting Portland murders. I became obsessed with finding out what had happened in that hotel.

It took me a while, but I finally found it. In fact I will post the story of what happened there (one of the very worst domestic violence cases I have ever encountered) next. By then my project had grown into what you are starting to see here on my blog.

Don't Look Too Close

2006-05-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

1969 was a violent year in Portland. In the spring there was the hysteria over the “Co-ed Killings” and the search for Jerome Brudos who was responsible for killing four young women. The summer saw riots in Albina. One cop, Patrolman Steven Sims, was cited for excessive violence during the north Portland trouble. In September Sims would be charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of an escaped fugitive.

Shortly before Sims’ arrest Portland had one of its most shocking domestic violence cases. Some remembered the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City a few years before. New Yorkers took quite a beating for not helping a poor young woman as she begged for her life. In September 1969, Portlanders proved that they could be as callus as any New Yorker.

It began at the Duke Hotel, now the Whitney Gray Apts, on SW 12th, above Jake’s Famous Crawfish on September 14. Rosalie (Glenda) Hornsby, 30, was drinking in the room of Finis Taylor on a Sunday evening. About 9:30pm there was pounding on the door. Rosalie probably knew that it would be John Peterson, 30. She had been living with Peterson at the Miller Hotel and she must have known how possessive he was. We’ll never know if she knew how violent he was.

Peterson grabbed Hornsby and pulled her from the room. He pulled her so roughly that her head hit the wall, hard. Police later found a dent in the plaster and a smear of blood. Hornsby lost consciousness and if she was lucky she never regained it.

Finis Taylor, who had been drinking with Hornsby, closed his door and did not call the police. Hotel managers Leonard and Alice Dorland were downstairs at the time and came up in the elevator to investigate the huge crash.

When they arrived on the third floor they found Hornsby on the hallway floor with Peterson standing over her. Peterson picked her up and the four rode down in the elevator together. The Dorlands noticed that Hornsby was unconscious and having trouble breathing. As the elevator descended they also noticed that she lost control of her bladder.

The Dorlands said later that Peterson had told Hornsby to wake up more than once. “Wake up. I’ll kill you if you don’t,” Peterson said. Dorland followed Peterson as he carried Hornsby to a car outside the building occupied by two other men. One of the men (who was never identified) said, “Don’t look too close. Everything will be all right.”

Dorland did not call police, although “he was tempted.” “We would have called,” he said, “but he [Peterson] said they were married.”

A short time later Peterson entered the Miller Hotel, now Hotel Alder, on SW 4th, where he and Hornsby lived. Peterson was carrying Hornsby according to night clerk Wilson Rich. Rich believed that Hornsby was drunk.

About 12:30am Peterson called downstairs and spoke with Russell Jones, who had taken Rich’s place at the front desk. Peterson told Jones that he had hit his wife and wasn’t able to wake her. He asked Jones to come to his room to check on her.

Jones went to room 305 where the couple lived and saw Rosalie Hornsby lying on the bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. He said that he did not enter the room or look around it. He did not try to talk with Hornsby, but said she appeared to be alive and sleeping and he thought she was probably drunk.

Jones did not call the police. Peterson stayed in his room for about an hour making phone calls and left the building at about 1:30am. He told Rich he was going to get a car to take his wife to the hospital. Peterson did not return and Rich forgot about the woman dying upstairs.

About 2:55 am, Johnny Lewis, occupant of another room on the third floor called the police. He said he had been walking past room 305 and noticed that the door was open. He looked in and saw Rosalie Hornsby naked on the bed and she had apparently been beaten.

When police arrived they found that blood was splattered all over the walls, floor and furniture in room 305. Rosalie Hornsby died the next day at Multnomah County Hospital. John Peterson turned himself in to Police later that day and was charged with first degree murder.

Portland Cold Case #79-19210

2006-05-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Portland Police Bureau’s Cold Case Unit has only been in operation about two years, but they have been having a lot of success. Through DNA matches they have solved several cases recently, including finally linking Cheryl Ayer’s death to Randall Woodfield (The I-5 Killer) – remind me to tell you about him.

The cold case unit has "a total of about 280 unsolved murders right now in Portland, dating back to probably the early 1970s," says Sgt. Wayne Svilar, head of the unit. Among the vicitms of these unsolved murders are 63 women.

"Female victims, for the most part, are victims of physical contact cases," says Svilar. Close contact between the killer and victim means "there would be an exchange of some sort of evidence between them," says Svilar.

With all of the cases the cold case unit has solved in the last year survivors of murder victims must be feeling some hope. The case of Donna Kuzmaak is a case that has had little hope of being solved for a long time.

Kuzmaak,23, was found beaten, stabbed and strangled to death in the basement of her home on March 21, 1979. Kuzmaak was a young woman on the go working as a realtor at nearby E.G. Strasson in the pre-yuppie age. She left work early on the day of her death and went home.

She would have arrived home about 3pm. About 4:30pm her husband got home from work and found her body. The over-kill could suggest that she knew her killer, which is most often the case, but the 1970s were seeing an explosion of murder of random victims. Ted Bundy to the north and the Hillside Stranglers to the south are just two obvious examples.

So who killed Donna Kuzmaak. Many of us would like to know.

Rock n Roll Homicide Part Three

2006-05-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Travels with Larry

Portland became an uncomfortable place for Larry Hurwitz after the disappearance of Tim Moreau. His business was in trouble, the negative publicity around the disappearance combined with the oversold and overheated reputation Starry Night had come to have hurt business. The counterfeiting of tickets turned off concert promoters and they stopped using Starry Night for their shows.

Larry desperate for good bookings made errors like the Fake Toto concert of 1990. Starry Night announced a concert by hit band Toto known for such hits as "Rosanna'' and "Hold the Line.'' Fans paid $14.50 to $15 for tickets, premium prices for 1990. They were disappointed when they were entertained by Bobby Kimball, an ex-singer for Toto who left the band in 1984. Kimball had been playing his scam on a national tour. Larry had to give a lot of refunds for that one.

In addition the homeless street people and the poor retirees who made Old Town their home had begun to wear tee-shirts with the slogan: Who Bombed Sav-Mor? I want to know! 294-0250. The Oregonian called them “grim-faced soldiers who had invaded the neighborhood with a question on their chests.”

Rumors were rampant about the bombing. The one that turned out to be nearest the truth was that a conspiracy of local business owners had hired two Chinese tong members to firebomb the building, while police and firefighters looked the other way. But that wasn’t common knowledge yet.

The tee-shirts were part of a campaign by Bill Rees, a former college professor who had built an empire by buying up the aging buildings of Old Town. He had owned the building that had been burned in the bombing. The Oregonian said of him: He has a special sympathy for the aging pensioners holed up in Old Town hotels and shows limited but real good will toward those who have forged their own private hell.

By 1991, things were too hot in Old Town for Hurwitz and he sold Starry Night to David Leikens’ Oregon Theater Management Corp. Leikens happened to also own Double Tee promotions, the largest rock and roll concert promoter in the state. Leiken’s changed the name to Roseland and it is a good place for a concert today.

Jim Redden’s reporting in Willamette Week and the activities of Mike and Penny Moreau, kept public attention on the missing Moreau. Hurwitz’s failed libel suit just made things worse. Because he claimed monetary damages in his suit, he had been forced to file income tax returns for 1977 – 1990, which he had never done.

His obviously faked income tax returns got the IRS interested and soon they would uncover a profit skimming operation that operated at Starry Night from about 1987-1990. They said that Hurwitz had skimmed about $450,000 that he had not declared on his income tax.

Hurwitz’s testimony under oath during the libel suit also exposed his role in the plot to kidnap John Stanley’s parents in 1983. One of the questions Hurwitz was asked was about the statement in Redden's article that when Hurwitz learned about the missing money, "he immediately swore to kill Stanley.''

"Did you immediately swear to kill Stanley?'' asked the lawyer.

"I may have said those words,'' said Hurwitz. "Could be a figure of speech.''

When asked if it had been his idea to call Stanley’s parents and lure them to Portland by telling them their son was in an accident. Hurwitz claimed that Evan Parrish, an employee, had come up with the idea. Hurwitz said, “If you can do it go ahead.” He had even given Parrish the phone number for Stanley’s parents.

Hurwitz said that to say they planned to hold Stanley’s parents for ransom was “a lie.” They had only meant to use “parental persuasion.” You can understand why people connected Hurwitz with the popular TV show “Twin Peaks”.

If he thought he had suffered from “scorn of friends, neighbors and members of the community,” he would really find out what that was like now. It got especially bad in 1992 when the police searched the river for Moreau’s body and seized the carpet from Hurwitz’s office.

In 1994 Hurwitz slipped out of town and quietly moved to Seattle. There he made the contacts that allowed him to start promoting concerts in Asia. Shortly afterward, probably coincidentally since the IRS would soon come down with an indictment for tax evasion, Hurwitz moved to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. There he continued to organize popular concerts and promote ethical American business values.

In 1996 the IRS investigation began to heat up and in February 1997 Hurwitz was indicted in Federal Court for tax evasion. The U.S. State Department revoked Hurwitz’s passport and asked the Vietnamese to deport him. In November, 1997 Vietnamese authorities took Hurwitz into custody and he was deported to Thailand.

Federal authorities agreed to cooperate with Multnomah County in their murder investigation. Soon Larry Hurwitz would be coming home to Portland to face the music.

Coming Soon:
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Four: Facing the Music
Rock n Roll Homicide Part One: Starry Night
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Two: Missing Presumed Dead

Unanswered Questions

2006-05-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

Gary Douglas George, 51, was found beaten to death in his house on NE 42nd on April 24, 2006. Police say they have no “focal suspect." The problem may be that there are too many suspects, or that there is an obvious suspect, but no way to connect them to the crime yet.

George had lived in the rundown house, the only residence in an industrial area, for at least 12 years. Police say they have been called to this house at least eight times since 1994. George reported that he was the victim of various crimes from assault to armed robbery. George himself was arrested for assault in 1998, but charges were dropped in that case.

The most recent incident at the house, may be connected to the murder, but if it is Detective Barry Renna, isn’t saying. On March 1 George reported being in a gunfight with his ex-girlfriend and her ex-husband. George and Treva Jane Richardson, 47, had been fighting since they broke up. He claimed she had taken his car and he refused to return her dog. Richardson had been calling all week threatening to kill George if he didn’t give back the dog.

On March 1 Richardson and her ex-husband, David Earl Hughes, 51, showed up at George’s house on NE 42nd. Richardson broke one of the front windows of the house and climbed in yelling, “I want my dog.”

George grabbed a gun and Hughes broke the other front window and began pouring gasoline into the house. "I'm going to burn your house," the district attorney’s affidavit quotes Hughes saying. "You really screwed up, Gary!" Hughes then fired a shotgun and George returned fire.

Richardson and Hughes fled the area, apparently without the dog. They were arrested nearby and police found an illegal sawed-off shotgun that belonged to Hughes. Richardson and Hughes were charged with attempted murder.

Hughes admitted firing the shotgun and pouring the gasoline. Richardson admitted breaking into the house with a toy gun. She also admitted taking the shotgun from Hughes to “make me look scarier.”

The Grand Jury did not indict the couple for attempted murder. "It was determined that he was not shooting at him," Norm Frink, chief deputy district attorney, said. "He was shooting, shall we say . . . for emphasis." The two were however indicted for several offenses including attempted arson, possession of a short-barreled shotgun, menacing, coercion and burglary.

Richardson remains in Multnomah County jail on $127,000 bail. She has a previous conviction for a drug offense in 1993. Hughes was released on March 22 on $202,000 bail. Hughes had no previous criminal record, but was arrested on Aril 22 on a Clackamas County forgery warrant. He was released on his own recognizance the next day.

The day after Hughes was released on the forgery charge, Gary George was found in a pool of blood in his rundown house. Police will not say if they have questioned Hughes in the murder. Hughes and Richardson aren’t talking.

There has been no news on this case for several weeks. The questions remain – unanswered.

The Gangs That Can't Shoot Straight

2006-05-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

Well the shooting season has begun here in Portland. Last year Portland’s shootings centered in the downtown area, my neighborhood, and they tended to be melees that erupted in gunfire. This year drive-bys are in fashion. Portland’s shooters are staying true to form, though. As always more bystanders get shot than participants.

The season got off to a rough start on April 14 in NE Portland when someone in a blue Thunderbird fired several shots into a day-care center, injuring a four year old boy. Fortunately the boy is “doing fine.” Thank God four year olds are as tough as they are.

The target in that case, Charles Crockett , finally convinced a Multnomah County judge that he poses a threat to the community. In a phone conversation with his mother, that he knew was being recorded, he said of his uncle, “He is lucky I have hanging over my head what I have hanging over my head. Someone needs to kill him."

His uncle’s crime? Telling the police that Crockett said he would “take care” of the shooters who hit his mother’s 4 year-old foster son. Judge Nely Johnson decided that Crockett poses a threat to his uncle at least and possibly to a witness in a drug case he has pending. Bail remains at $100,000 and Crockett remains in jail.

Crockett is benched for the season so far, but others are taking up the slack. Although North and Northeast Portland seem to be the popular neighborhoods for shooting this year, downtown is still in the competition.

On April 18 James Lee Sims was shot in the shoulder and wounded near the corner of SW Oak and Fifth. Sims was released from jail in October after 4½ years for assault with a deadly weapon. The Police reassured us that the shooter and the victim knew each other.

After last years bloody shooting season the Police are pretty touchy on the subject of downtown safety. "Statistically speaking, downtown Portland is relatively safe compared to other metropolitan areas," said Paul Dolbey, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman. "Very rarely do we have a stranger on stranger attack."

He may be right, but I tend to agree with Aneida Garcia, a freshman at Heritage High School in Vancouver visiting Portland. She said, “There were a lot of people around, so anyone could've gotten shot." I just wish she had paid more attention in English class. No one has been arrested in that shooting.

On April 25 Todd A. Rutherford Jr, 15 was wounded in a drive-by shooting in front of the Multnomah County Albina Library on N. Killingsworth. Nearby Jefferson High School went into lockdown as the shooters sped away. Police said it was a “gang related” shooting and that part of Killingsworth is well known as a drug activity zone which has at least one shooting every season.

Quintrell Holiman and Javier Rhone, both 17, and associated with the Hoover Crips gang, were arrested for Rutherford’s shooting on May 3. Rutherford, a student at Benson High School had been absent from school since early April, but police said they did not know the reason for the shooting.

Yesterday we had the latest entry. About 11:30pm someone in a small red sedan opened fire on three people waiting for a bus at NE 60th and Cully. Only one of the victims suffered serious injuries and all are expected to recover.

An undercover Police officer, conducting surveillance, witnessed the shooting and chased the car. The chase ended near N. Mississippi and Holman St., where everyone bailed out of the suspect vehicle.

Two men Acey Runningbird, 20, and Marcus Ball, 29 were arrested in the shooting. One suspect is still at large. The victims and the shooters in this case are Hispanic. Police are not calling the shooting “gang related” but they say there has been trouble lately among Hispanic gangs in the Cully neighborhood.

Shortly after last night’s drive-by Police had to return to the neighborhood because of reports of a man with a shotgun near NE 60th and Killingsworth, very close to Cully. Rumor is that friends of the victims are arming for revenge. It looks like we’re in for a hot summer.

Wrap up from Last Season

There is good news in the case of the LinCKoln Park Bloods. With recent action from Portland’s Gang Enforcement Unit, the gang has been crippled by the arrest and conviction of 10 members; including Colby “Li’l Shooter” Benson, who says the CK in LinCKoln means Crip Killer.

Here’s a link to the Oregonian’s coverage of this case. Thanks to Detectives Doug Halpin, Mitch Hergert and Pete Simpson, who received Commendation medals for their work against this gang and the witnesses who risked their lives to put these dangerous people behind bars.

Rock n Roll Homicide Part Two

2006-05-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

Missing Presumed Dead

Timothy Donald Moreau came to Portland in August 1986 to attend Reed College. Moreau had grown up in New Orleans, LA, where he was an Eagle Scout with one younger brother. According to his roommate at Reed, Moreau was a “mama’s boy” who was 15 pounds overweight when he arrived as a freshman.

Reed changed Tim Moreau, as it was meant to do. He became a vegetarian and started an exercise program, dropping his excess weight. He also began to take LSD, nothing unusual for a “Reedie” then or now.

After his first year at Reed, Moreau was a disillusioned young man. He was also extremely unpopular on campus, because he regarded most of his fellow students as “hippies” and not worth his respect.

In December, 1988 Moreau quit school to pursue a career in music promotion. With a friend, Wade Benson, Moreau started Riddlers, a recorded music dance club that met twice weekly at the Red Sea Restaurant.

In March, 1989 Moreau was hired at Starry Night to help with promotion, among other things. Moreau was excited about his job at Starry Night and he looked up to his employer, Larry Hurwitz as a role model. “Larry took him under his wing,” Jason Lally, Moreau’s roommate said, “Tim totally worshipped him.”

Moreau continued his experimentation with drugs and alternative sexuality. Close friends said that leather restraints and bondage devices were found in his apartment after he disappeared. Police also found ticket stock and other equipment for counterfeiting concert tickets in Moreau’s apartment.

Makes you wonder, though if good old Larry might have visited Moreau’s place before the police. Kindly old boss Larry was eager to tell the police about Moreau’s drug use as well.

January 23, 1990, the same day news of the counterfeit tickets was published in the Oregonian, Tim Moreau was summoned to Starry Night. Four days later, friends of Moreau reported him missing.

When police searched Moreau’s apartment the Oregonian reported that they found checkbooks, credit cards and cash. They also found “key evidence that suggested that there is a counterfeit conspiracy'' involving several other concerts in Portland. Detective Steve Baumgarte, of the Portland Homicide Division, took over the investigation into Moreau’s disappearance.

Already it wasn’t adding up as a disappearance. Hurwitz was telling the story that Moreau had gone into hiding because of the counterfeit scam. He went into hiding, but left all of his money behind.

``He left virtually everything behind,'' Baumgarte said. ``That gives us quite a bit of concern. We consistently come across things that don't lead us to the conclusion that he went away on his own.''

Larry said that Moreau lost him in his car during a chase. Yet Hurwitz drove a high powered sports car, Moreau's car was a beat-up old Datsun that would barely do 55.

Larry wanted to create the impression that he was alone with Moreau when they met at Starry Night on January 23, but that was not true. Monitoring the meeting from another room, in case Larry needed help during the confrontation, was stagehand George Castagnola. Castagnola had been charged with attempted murder in 1981 when he “accidentally” fired a handgun during a police drug raid at his home. The charge was dismissed in a plea bargain.

In 1991, Larry Hurwitz sued Willamette Week and reporter Jim Redden for libel in their article Missing Presumed Dead which was published in June 1990. Redden’s article, which has been one of my main sources, outlined most of the charges and suspicions that I have recounted.

Hurwitz claimed that he ``has suffered non-economic damages including but not limited to: humiliation; the scorn of friends, neighbors, and members of the community; embarrassment, anxiety, sleeplessness,'' since the publication. The case was eventually thrown out, but it may have been Hurwitz’s fatal error.

A year after Moreau’s disappearance, Baumgarte considered the case to be homicide. Moreau’s parents Mike and Peggy became very active in trying to find their son, spending thousands of dollars on private investigators and reward offers, but still no trace of Moreau could be found.

In the summer of 1992, Dave Wilson, an employee at Starry Night came to the police with a story he had heard drinking with coworkers. They said that Hurwitz “and another guy” killed Moreau in Hurwitz’s office. Then they weighted the body down with microphone stands and dumped it in the Willamette River under the Steel Bridge.

Baumgarte asked Wilson to wear a wire and talk with Hurwitz to try and gather some evidence. Wilson disappeared. The disappearance of another Starry Night employee raised the pressure against Hurwitz, who had already sold Starry Night, but still he seemed untouchable.

The police searched the river, but found no body. The next day they arrived at Starry Night with a search warrant and confiscated the carpet in Hurwitz’s old office, turning it over to the crime lab for analysis.

Wilson surfaced a short time later, when he was arrested in Springfield, OR on a cocaine charge. He said that he had been camping in the woods for the last two months. He also said that he had made up the murder story to try to help a friend who was facing drug charges in southern Oregon.

Police were stymied. Baumgarte didn’t doubt that Hurwitz had killed the young man; in fact he was pretty sure that he had. But knowing and proving are two different things – the Policeman’s Paradox.

Coming Soon:
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Three: Travels With Larry
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Four: Facing the Music
Rock n Roll Homicide Part One: Starry Night

Siskiyou Outrage

2006-05-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

In 1923 Portland was a modern urban city, just beginning its huge sprawl as the impact of the automobile started to be felt. Police were concerned more with Prohibition, enforcing it or breaking it, than anything else. Meanwhile a railroad tunnel south of Ashland was to be the scene of what would go down in history as the last Old West Train Robbery.

On October 12, 1923, the city awoke to headlines screaming -- Siskiyou Outrage: Fiends Murdered Four Trainmen in Cold Blood. The killers were still holed up in a mountain cave hiding from lynch mobs of outraged railroad workers and a National Guard unit that searched for them with airplanes.

On that day no one knew that it would take four years and an international manhunt to bring the D'Autremont brothers to justice. The three young brothers, Roy, Ray and Hugh got nothing from the mail car they had attempted to rob. Instead they lay in their hiding place in danger of starving or freezing to death in the cold mountain nights.

Ray and Roy D'Autremont, born in 1900, were twins that were so near identical their mother had to tie ribbons on their wrists so she could tell them apart when they were infants. Roy(right) was a deeply religious Catholic who was already beginning to show signs of mental illness.

His brother, Ray(above), had been a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and had served a year in jail for criminal syndicalism during the 1919 Red Scare that followed the Centralia Massacre. Hugh(below) was a 19-year-old recent high school graduate who idolized and competed with his older brothers.

Ray and Roy, having been raised on tales of Jesse James and Harry Tracy, had been trying to start a life of crime ever since Ray's release from jail in 1921. Ray had developed a deep resentment against the capitalist "System" and had convinced his brother that they had to strike back against it.

After several unsuccessful attempts at armed robbery, including one memorable occasion when they watched a rival gang rob the bank at Yacolt, WA while they cased the place for their own robbery, the brothers were nearly ready to give up their plans and resign themselves to lumber jobs which they hated.

The strange career of Roy Gardiner, who waged a one-man war against the U.S. Post Office during the summer of 1922, changed all that for the D'Autremont twins. Gardiner lost $200 in the mail in 1920. When Postal authorities refused to even hear his complaint Gardiner robbed a mail truck in San Diego, CA of $50,000. Gardiner offered to return the money if the Post Office would give him back his $200.

The Post Office refused to be blackmailed so Gardiner declared war. Writing letters to local papers all over the West Coast, Gardiner publicized his complaint and robbed Southern Pacific mail trains of over $300,000 in a series of raids. Each time he offered to return the money if the Post Office would return his $200. Gardiner's quixotic war, which ended with his arrest in 1922, attracted a lot of attention in the press. It also inspired the D'Autremonts. They decided they would rob a train.

By the summer of 1923 the brothers, now joined by their brother Hugh who had graduated from high school in New Mexico, had decided that they would hit Southern Pacific #13.

This train, known as the Gold Special, was vulnerable as it stopped for a brake check before entering Tunnel #13, south of Ashland, at the beginning of its long ride down the mountain into California. The brothers spent several months camped in the area, staking out the train and planning their big job.

The meticulously planned job couldn't have gone more wrong. The worst problem came when they tried to blow the door off the mail car with dynamite. Ray, the only brother with demolition experience, inexplicably left the dynamite job to his brother Roy. Roy having no idea how much explosive to use blew the mail car to bits, causing an inferno that incinerated the body of Elvyn E. Dougherty, the mail clerk who had locked himself inside.

The tunnel, rather than muffling the sound of the explosion as the boys had planned, amplified the sound which was heard at the railroad camps at Siskiyou, OR and at Hilt, CA, several miles away. Rescue crews, thinking that the engine had exploded left immediately and messages for help were telegraphed to all stations along the line.

Meanwhile back in Tunnel #13 the D'Autremonts were succumbing to frustration. Brakeman Coyle Johnson was shot to death during a moment of panic. As Ray's plan fell apart before his eyes, he desperately ordered the murder of engineer Sidney Bates and fireman Marvin Seng. His brothers coldly carried out Ray's orders.

Unable to enter the mail car, because of the smoke and flames, and hearing the approach of the rescue crews, the boys fled into the hills. After a long hungry ordeal in the mountains the brothers split up. Hugh eventually joined the U.S. Army under an assumed name and shipped out for the Philippines. Ray and Roy, also taking fake names, settled in Steubenville, OH and took jobs. Wanted posters with photographs of the brothers circulated widely. Rewards of $5,300 for each brother were offered.

Army Corporal Thomas Reynolds, after returning from duty in the Philippines in 1927, recognized a wanted poster for Hugh D'Autremont and led authorities to the youngest brother. Hugh tried to deny his identity, but soon admitted who he was and was returned to Oregon to face trial. Hugh claimed that the murder charges against him were unjust. He wove fantasies about his daring escape from lynch mobs and said he was returning to Oregon to clear his name.

Meanwhile a co-worker in Ohio had recognized the twins. They were soon taken into custody and transported back to Oregon. Ray was subdued on the trip home, but Roy seemed to enjoy the attention of the press. He told wild stories of their flight through the mountains and said they were returning to help their brother clear his name.

On June 21, 1927 Hugh D'Autremont was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The next day Roy and Ray decided to stop denying their guilt. They made a full confession giving the first clear explanation of the disaster their plan had become. Ray and Roy plead guilty to murder and both received life sentences.

In 1949 Roy suffered a nervous breakdown in prison and was confined in the Oregon State Mental Hospital. He was lobotomized and spent the rest of his life under supervision. Hugh was paroled in 1958, but died a few months later of stomach cancer. The governor commuted Ray's sentence in 1972. He lived until 1984 writing and painting in Eugene, OR.

One of the bloodiest of U.S. train robberies was, in the words of Hugh D'Autremont, "All for nothing."

One More Thing

2006-05-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

By the way. If you have tried the links to my crime-map at www.platial.com then you probably already know that I did not know how to properly link my places. You might also be pretty confused about what I was trying to do.

The good news is I have learned to link the places and now it should be very clear what I am doing. I have gone back and corrected the links in my earlier posts and they should be correct from now on. Try it now. I think it will make more sense.

Hope your still enjoying what I'm doing here. Thanks for reading.

Rock n Roll Homicide Part One

2006-05-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Starry Night

Starry Night, a nightclub/theater now known as Roseland located at 8 NW Sixth Ave in Portland’s Old Town, opened in December, 1982. The Willamette Week announced the opening of this new music venue, saying there was “not a bad seat in the house.” A week later, announcing a concert by local band Nu Shooz, Willamette Week said, “While Starry Night may be a strategic venue for national acts, with its capacity of 967, at the same time it hopes to be a comfortable performance hall for local bands.”

The man behind Starry Night, Larry Hurwitz, who “turned a rundown church in the heart of Portland’s skid road into the city’s largest, most successful concert hall (PDXS 12/10/98)”, has an obscure history. Very little information is available on him before he opened the Starry Night club in 1982, when he was 27 years old.

Rumors are said to have circulated about Larry, and the source of his money, when he opened the club. Our source for those rumors? Larry himself:

“When I started people said my money came from the Mob on the East Coast. In the mid-80s, people said I was getting money from the bhagwan. Now people suspect Larry’s money comes from cocaine. None of it’s true. I’m so clean, it ain’t funny.”

Larry Hurwitz denied making those statements after they appeared in Willamette Week, but Larry has proved himself to be a liar many times. Whether his money came from the Mob or not, Larry acted like a mobster, over and over. He is anything but “clean.”

In 1983, when a security guard at Starry Night, John Stanley, allegedly stole $3,100 and another $3,000 worth of cocaine from Hurwitz’s office, Larry concocted an elaborate plot to lure Stanley’s parents to Portland and hold them hostage until Stanley returned what he had stolen.

Hurwitz was confronted at the airport by Port Police and questioned about the plot. The Port Police submitted documents to the Portland Police requesting charges of harassment and impersonating police officers against Hurwitz and an accomplice.

The paperwork somehow disappeared between the Portland Police Bureau and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office. No charges were ever brought against Hurwitz or anyone else in that case. Stanley disappeared. He wouldn’t be the only employee of Larry Hurwitz’s to disappear.

The outcome of the “Airport Case” seemed to be part of a pattern for Hurwitz. Rarely was he held accountable for his crimes. Jim Redden, in his excellent series on this case that appeared in PDXS, chronicled cases where Larry Hurwitz got away with crimes:

*The Oregon Liquor Control Commission caught him selling wine and beer without a license, and then gave him a license anyway.

*He stopped filing income tax in 1977. However Hurwitz would eventually be held accountable for this.

*He filed for bankruptcy without disclosing millions of dollars of assets.

A crime Redden didn’t know about at this time, although he probably suspected it, was the bombing of Sav-Mor Grub, a grocery store located at 101 NW Sixth Ave about a block from Starry Night. Sav-Mor Grub was a grocery/convenience store that sold supplies to the derelicts and street people of Old Town.

Until 1986 Sav-Mor Grub had been Club 101, a tavern that appealed to a tough crowd of street people and drug addicts. In 1986 Club 101 lost its liquor license and Sav-Mor Grub was born. The crowd of toughs and street people still gathered on the corner drinking fortified wine. The Oregonian called the corner of NW Sixth and Couch “a festering sore in the eyes of the police and the business community."

On July 22, 1989 an arson fire was extinguished at Sav-Mor Grub, the fire did $125,000 worth of damage. On August 24, 1989 two huge explosions tore through Sav-Mor Grub at 4:26 a.m. The resulting three-alarm fire not only destroyed the grocery store, but also Henry's Resale, Portland Tattoo Shop and Demetri's Grocery, all adjacent.

Arson investigators said the fire was “damn suspicious” and agents from ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) suspected either an explosive device or an arson that exploded. The Police weren’t sorry to see the businesses go. Neither were other business owners in the area, notably Larry Hurwitz of Starry Night and Al Jasper, who owned Marco Polo Restaurant, just around the corner. The bombing became one more enduring unsolved mystery of Portland.

Hurwitz always believed in going one better. His next crime became the enduring mystery of Portland for more than a decade.

On January 20, 1990 during a concert at Starry Night by John Lee Hooker, promoters of the concert found 180 counterfeit tickets. Police got involved in the case and soon found that the fakes had all been sold through a neighboring club, Day For Night 135 NW Fifth Ave, which was owned by Larry Hurwitz’s father-in-law. Some concert goers with fake tickets said they had bought them from Hurwitz personally.

When questioned by the police, Hurwitz said he knew nothing of the counterfeiting, but suspected one of his employees. On January 23 the story hit the Oregonian. That night Larry Hurwitz summoned his employee Tim Moreau, 21, to his office.

Hurwitz later claimed that he confronted Moreau about the fake tickets and they had an emotioanl meeting. Finally Moreau admitted the counterfeiting and agreed to turn over the money. Moreau said he would have to lead Larry to where the money was hidden.

According to Hurwitz’s story, Moreau eluded him at a stoplight and drove off into the night. Police later found Moreau’s car parked at the airport, but Moreau could not be proved to have taken any flight. Tim Moreau was never seen again.

Hurwitz blamed the counterfeiting on Moreau and said the case was closed. Larry’s story didn’t quite add up, though, and many questions remained.

Coming Soon:
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Two: Missing Presumed Dead
Rock n Roll Homicide Part Three: Travels with Larry
Rock b Roll Homicide Part Four: Facing the Music

I've Been Thinking About Murder Lately.

2006-05-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

Did he take his name from the character in XMen Comics or from the actor who played the face of Darth Vader? Wherever he got his name, Sebastian Shaw, the young man born as Chau Quong Ho in Vietnam 39 years ago, received his third life sentence for murder today in a Multnomah Co. court.

Shaw is not your average serial killer, though. Described by friends and family as an “explosive” young man prone to violence who once shot a television set and threatened his roommate’s life during an argument over doing the dishes. Shaw learned to hide his violence and turn it into different channels.

His first victim was probably Jay Rickbeil, the man for whose murder Shaw was sentenced today. Rickbeil, a paraplegic and proselytist for New Age beliefs, was found dead in his Southeast Portland apartment on July 3, 1991. His carotid artery was cut and he had bled to death. Rickbeil was known as someone who invited strangers to his home to talk and may have given his killer a card with his address on it.

The police had no suspects in Rickbeil’s death until police matched his DNA with a blood sample from Rickbeil’s home in 2001. By that time Shaw was already in jail, sentenced to two life terms for the murder of Donna G. Ferguson, 18, and Todd A. Rudiger, 28, in their Southeast Portland mobile home on July 17, 1992.

Police had no suspects in the 1992 killings until Shaw was connected, again through DNA, to a southeast Portland rape in 1995. The reason Shaw was able to elude police for so long is that he did not know his victims. That’s why he killed them.

In July, 1991 Shaw was suspended from his job at Paragon Cable for making frightening or offensive statements. In a rage he decided to act out his fantasy of killing someone. He decided the best way not to get caught would be to kill someone he didn’t know. That same day he killed Jay Rickbeil.

A year later Shaw was working as a security guard and became very angry at two coworkers. He was so angry he wanted to kill them, but knew that he would be the main suspect if he did. Instead he picked a couple at random and murdered them in their home.

When Shaw was arrested police seized his diary. It became clear from his writing that he had been thinking about killing for quite a while before he acted. An entry from February 1991 said, “I’ve been thinking about murder lately.” Another entry read, “My soul, now rotten, only wants to spread rottenness to others… Damn this creature I have become, for it is a dark beast.”

In 1994 Shaw was arrested driving a stolen car. In the trunk police found a blindfold, plastic ties, pepper mace, a throwing knife, a roll of duct tape, a lead weight tied in the end of a sock, two ski masks, six packages of surgical gloves and three sexually explicit magazines. In 1995 a woman was raped in her apartment near the Safeway on Hawthorne Blvd. where Shaw worked as a checker.

Police suspected Shaw right away, but couldn’t tie him to the crime. They asked Shaw for a DNA sample, but he refused to give it. They eventually got his DNA from a cigarette butt he threw away and they tied him to the rape. Shortly after that the Ferguson-Rudiger killings were also matched to his DNA.

In 1998 Shaw was indicted for the murders of Ferguson and Rudiger. He offered to confess to a “package” of murders. Skeptical detectives took Shaw’s offer seriously because of the nature of his crimes; selecting strangers, stalking them and preparing carefully before the killings.

Robert Gebo, a retired Seattle police homicide detective and serial killer expert, after examining the evidence in Shaw’s case concluded that Shaw is a dangerous predator who probably has killed other vicitms. "In our business, we would say the probability of him just sitting on his hands in the intervening years and doing nothing is slim to none," Gebo said.

In 2000 Shaw plead guilty to the Ferguson-Rudiger murders, avoiding the death penalty. By then he was not willing to talk to the police about other victims and they had not been able to connect him to any other cases. Then came the DNA match in the Rickbeil case. How many others are there? Only Shaw himself knows and he’s not talking any more.

Harry Tracy: The Mackintosh Bandit

2006-05-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

The sun hadn't been up long on June 9, 1902. Breakfast was over for the prisoners at the Oregon State Penitentiary. A group of prisoners had just been marched from the chapel to the stove foundry where they worked. F.B. Ferrel, a guard with a reputation for cruelty was in charge of the detail. Suddenly two prisoners broke away from the formation, grabbed rifles that they had hidden nearby and shot Ferrel to death. It was the beginning of the bloodiest jailbreak in Oregon up to that time.

Thus was born the legend of Harry Tracy who would be idolized by a generation of young people as the Lone Bandit, the Oregon Badman, or King of the Western Robbers. In 1947 Stewart Holbrook, Oregon's great lowbrow historian debunked the myth, by telling the more-or-less true story of Tracy's pathetic career, but still Tracy is remembered as the one true western outlaw to operate in Portland.

Born Henry Severn in Pittfield, Wisconsin in 1874, Tracy dropped out of school at a young age. He drifted west to Wyoming where he hooked up with a gang of cattle rustlers who worked with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Tracy preferred the city. In 1897 he was arrested for burglary in Salt Lake City. Never one to stay long in jail, Tracy soon escaped.

Tracy ran to Colorado where he joined the Hole-In-The-Wall gang. He was back to cattle rustling and highway robbery. In 1898 after the murder of a boy, William Strong, during a robbery, a posse went after the Hole-In-The-Walls. During a brutal gunfight, Valentine Hoy, a member of the posse was killed. Tracy was arrested along with three other gang members. One of the criminals was lynched. The other three were convicted of murder, one after being extradited to Wyoming.

Tracy went to jail in Aspen, Colorado, but escaped a short time later after nearly killing a guard with a lead pipe. This time he ran to Portland where he hooked up with Dave Merrill, the local bad-boy of Vancouver.

They committed their first crime together on January 3, 1899 when they held up the Second Street Trolley near College St. They got nearly $10 in change and a cheap watch. They robbed several saloons and grocery/butcher shops. Once they got nearly $100 in merchandise, but under $10 in cash. They actually missed $40 in gold during that robbery because they didn't search deep enough in the bartender's pocket.

By the beginning of February all of Portland was on the lookout for the Black Macintosh Bandit. The home of Dave Merrill's mother, on SW Front St. near Market, was under constant watch. On Sunday, February 5 the surveillance paid off. Dave Merrill was arrested after being found hiding in the bottom drawer of his mother's bureau with a gun. After intense questioning Merrill revealed that Tracy was expected to arrive in Portland on Monday.

That afternoon Detective Dan Weiner of the Portland police spotted Tracy, wearing his trademark black mackintosh, approaching Mrs. Merrill's house. As Weiner approached Tracy became suspicious and put his hand on a gun in his pocket. Weiner, without identifying himself, asked Tracy to walk up Market St. When they neared SW Fourth they saw the Southern Pacific passenger train coming up the street.

"I guess I'll take this train," said Tracy, "So long."

"I guess you won't," said the detective drawing his gun.

They exchanged shots and Tracy jumped onto the train. He jammed his gun into the engineer's ribs and told him to keep going. Weiner yelled for the train to stop, but the shooting had panicked the passengers and the Conductor thought Weiner was a robber at first. Finally he figured out that something was wrong and cut the air to the train's hydraulics.

Tracy jumped off the train near Montgomery St. Unfortunately for him, on that corner was Wey's Butcher shop that he had robbed only days before. Albert Wey, the 14-year-old son of the butcher, recognized the redheaded young robber and grabbed his father's shotgun. The shotgun was loaded with birdshot, but it hit Tracy right behind the ear, causing a terrible wound. Tracy crashed through a couple of yards before finally giving up.

Tracy was sentenced to twenty years. Merrill got 13. Tracy was cocky during his trial, complaining that Portland was a cheap town, hardly worth expenses. The Oregon State Penitentiary was not a nice place for cocky people at the turn of the twentieth century. Infractions were routinely punished at the lashing post with up to 150 lashes. The Oregon Boot, an infamous leg iron, was also used on unruly prisoners. It was no coincidence that Frank B. Ferrell was among the dead guards during Tracy's 1902 breakout. Many thought Tracy had killed him in revenge.

B.F. Tiffany and S.R.T. Jones, both guards, were also killed. Frank Inghram, a life prisoner who saved a guard's life by tripping Tracy during the jailbreak, was shot in the leg. Inghram's leg was later amputated and he received a pardon.

It was no surprise when Tracy broke out in 1902. He had done it many times before. Besides the Salt Lake City and Aspen, CO jails, he tried to break out of the Multnomah County jail during his trail. He stole a pistol, but never managed to leave his cell. He and Merrill both escaped from a train platform in Olympia, WA in December 1899 after being transported there to face charges. They were both free for New Years 1900, but were captured again in Portland a short time later.

The escape in 1902 was something else, though. Immortalized by a group of pulp fiction writers in the early decades of the Twentieth century as a desperate flight for freedom, it is hard to see it as anything else.

Trigger-happy posses formed in every county between Salem and Olympia, WA and National Guard units were called out in both states. Bloodhounds were brought down from the Walla Walla prison and put on the trail.

Detective Joe Day of the Portland police, who participated in the manhunt, told Stewart Holbrook, "The whole damned country was full of militia, and many of the boys were potted. They shot at everything and Clark and Cowlitz counties sounded like the Spanish American War all over again. It was the most dangerous place I was ever in."

Tracy and Merrill had no trouble avoiding the posses and the rolling batteries of Winchester rifles that dogged them. They moved steadily north taking food and clothing from anyone they encountered. One time they even robbed members of the Marion Co. posse that was pursuing them.

Tracy killed Merrill near the town of Napavine, WA on the night of June 28. No one will ever know what really happened between them, but later Tracy told the driver of a boat he had hijacked that it had been a "duel." Evidence showed that Merrill had been shot in the back. Tracy would be responsible for 11 murders before he was finally run to ground.

The hijacked boat dropped Tracy off near Seattle, sending the gold rush city into a panic. Tracy slipped through the city and crossed the Snoqualmie Pass, before he was killed in a shoot out with a small posse in Creston, WA. He had been free for over two months when he died.

Before his body could be shipped back to Salem by train, all of his clothes were torn off by souvenir seekers. When his coffin arrived in Salem it too was torn to pieces. The more aggressive even tore strips of skin from the body.

Tracy was never a successful robber, but he was probably the most successful jailbreaker in Oregon history. Unfortunately for him that is not a career with a long life expectancy. Harry Tracy was 27 when he died.

Pimpin' Is Not Stylin'

2006-04-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

This is pimpin’. Lavont E. Baker, 38, a convicted predatory sex offender, listed at Multnomah County’s predatory sex offender website, is a pimp. He targets underage girls. With the help of a couple of friends he kidnapped a girl assaulted and raped her, then forced her to go to work for him as a prostitute. She was hit in the face with a glass bottle and threatened with a knife unless she submitted to gang rape. Then Baker threatened to dowse the girl in gasoline and set her on fire unless she went to work for him.

Baker spent more than 19 years in jail for that crime. "I made a bad decision when I was 16. Since then, my life has been in other people's hands,” Baker said at the time of his parole hearing in August 2004. He made a tearful plea to the parole board at that hearing. “I need for the board to believe in me. Give me this opportunity and just let me show you,” he said, “I've never had a Christmas with my daughter. Ever. My daughter will be starting college this year.” He pleaded, “I'm just asking the board to please give me an opportunity. Just please give me a chance. Please.”

Members of the parole Board grilled Baker over breaking the rules by establishing a personal relationship with a female guard at the State Prison. Baker explained it this way:

“Everyone always remembered all the bad I did. This officer suggested that I needed to have spirituality in my life. So she began giving me Scriptures to read and talking to me about different aspects that had happened in my life. At that time, to me, that felt like a pat on the back for me to continue trying to make positive strides to do the right thing. So I began going to church in the institution and just trying to push forward and to be somebody different.”

Michael Washington, Chairman of the State Parole Board, said, “I understand from what you've told us that this officer was being very helpful to you, but this clearly was a violation of the rules and caused the institution some great concern. It causes us some concern as well because it's going to be a lot more open and free out in society. We need to have some idea that the conditions that are going to be applied to you are going to be adhered to.”

The conditions of Baker’s parole are strict: He is not allowed any contact with minors, nor is he allowed to be present in any area that minors frequent. He is not allowed to have personal relationships with any female without permission from his Parole supervisor. He is not allowed alcohol or pornography and he is not allowed to enter bars or taverns. He has to attend AA and NA meetings, enter an Anger Management program and to submit to routine polygraph tests.

With these restrictions, Baker was released on parole August 30, 2004. His post-release supervision is scheduled to end August 21, 2021. I guess Lavont must have thought that the restrictions were a little severe. Or maybe his spiritual rebirth didn’t quite take, because he has disappeared and is now wanted by Multnomah County.

When I see kids going to Halloween parties as pimps, shows like “Pimp My Ride” and outrages like Pimpfants “stylin’ wear for infants,” I like to remind myself what the word “pimp” really means. Thanks, Lavont.

JD Chandler's Portland Crime Map

2006-04-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

I found this website today www.platial.com. It has been a plan of mine to map the locations of violent crime in Portland history for some time. This new website allows me to do it. You'll see that many of my earlier postings have new hot links. These links should take you to the map of the crime scene. I will continue to add these locations as I publish posts. I hope you are all enjoying what I am doing here.

http://www.platial.com/jdchandler/map/5095?title=Portland_Crime_Map

Remembering Anna

2006-04-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Picture from the Columbian
Vancouver, Washington came together yesterday to honor the memory of Anna Svidersky, 17, who was killed last week while working at McDonald’s. Matt and Val Hadwin, (that’s Val in the picture) the owners of the McDonald’s on NE Andresen Rd, where Anna worked, announced that they would donate the proceeds of their sales on Thursday to the Memorial Fund for Anna Svidersky.

The Hadwins expected to raise about $15,000 for the girl’s family, but were surprised to find their restaurant swamped with customers from the time they opened in the morning until they closed at 10pm. People came from all over to order food to benefit the young victim’s family. The Hadwins and their expanded staff, workers from McDonald’s all over the region donated their time to help with the event, served over 2,600 customers, more than double the daily average.

Orders were twice as big as normal, as well. Some local businesses bought lunch for the entire staff and many people waited in line to make a donation, but not to eat. At the end of the day the Hadwins had raised over $80,000. McDonald’s corporation agreed to match the contributions with $1.50 for every dollar raised. Portland area McDonalds are each contributing 25 cents for every dollar raised.

At the busiest point yesterday afternoon there were 27 people behind the counter and two drive-through lanes with cars backed up for blocks. Supervisor Jim Gilbert acted as a carhop taking orders from drivers in line and running orders out to the cars. Gilbert was still enthusiastic after 8 hours on his feet. He said he would gladly endure sunburn and sore feet for Anna. “She always made you laugh if you ever were having a hard night," he said.

Many of the people who waited in line for hours to make a donation said they didn’t know the girl and that they rarely visit McDonalds. “I just wanted to support the family,” said Sandra Gordon of Vancouver. The randomness of the attack and the vivid personality of the victim have touched a chord here, most people seem to feel that Anna Svidersky could have been anyone’s child.

Meanwhile, her accused killer David Barton Sullivan , is awaiting mental evaluation of his competence to stand trial. First he will do a 15 day evaluation at Western State Mental Hospital. If he is found to be not competent, he will then spend 90 days at Western State, where he will undergo drug therapy and education about the criminal justice system. If he is still considered to be incompetent he can spend a second period of 90 days. If at that point he is still considered to be incompetent for trial he will be committed indefinitely to Western State.

If convicted of first degree murder with a deadly weapon, Sullivan faces between 25 and 32 years without parole. Because of crowding at the state hospital, Sullivan may have to wait as much as 90 days before his initial evaluation can start.

After the fundraising event at McDonalds a candle light vigil was held in memory of Anna. More than a thousand people participated in the vigil. Contributions to Anna Svidersky's family can be made at any First Independent Bank branch. Ask for the Memorial Fund for Anna Svidersky. All Clark County McDonald's restaurants will accept donations for Svidersky's family for the next month.

The Pandora's Box Murder

2006-04-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

The summer of 1946 was hot in Portland, in more ways than one. For at least a week it was over a hundred degrees everyday. Jack Teagarden played Jantzen Beach. You could almost hear the surf break in the rhythms of his band and the Columbia filled in for the sea.

It was a good year for movies. In one week that summer you could see: Spellbound, Mildred Pierce, A Walk in the Sun, or The Spiral Staircase. Portland always has been a good movie town.

There were 52 cinemas to choose from. Ranging from the stars of Broadway: Orpheum, Music Box, Oriental; to the classics: Aladdin, Baghdad, Rose Way; to the skid row: Star-"Jungle Virgin" plus burlesque, and 3rd Avenue--"Bring on the Girls" plus burlesque.

Besides Jantzen Beach, Oaks Park and Council Crest, it was not a good season for nightlife. The Fireside Room was, for obvious reasons, closed for vacation. Houston's was selling punchbowls made of ice. The Rose Room was closed for remodeling.

If it wasn't a night at the movies, or to take the air, and the crowds outdoors, you could take a drive. Thank God, gas was plentiful again; everything else was in short supply. With wartime controls still in place and famine stretching from India to Germany it was a time of shortages. Editorial cartoons illustrated the mood: Uncle Sam is waving the flag. A man says to him, "Nice, buddy, but do you know where I can get a shirt?"

Some people were glad the war was over. They listened to the war trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo and thought hanging was too good for the bastards.

Some were 18 and 19 year-old boys in the service and mad that there was no one to fight. That summer there was a rash of assault, robbery, rape, kidnapping and the occasional murder committed by sailors of the U.S. Navy. The traditional sailor’s weapon in Portland, a heavy beer mug, seemed to have graduated to a whiskey bottle by this time.

Violent crime has been a major part of Portland since the pioneer days. It was no different in 1946. William Kilpock, a 22 year-old war veteran said, “War is safer than standing in a Portland street. " He had a good reason to say this. One evening standing in front of the Orpheum Theater, after a show, Larry Brown, an ex-mental patient snuck up behind Kilpock and brained him with a hatchet. Kilpock survived a critical head injury. Brown went up for attempted murder.

There was also the gruesome reoccurring story of the woman's torso found wrapped in burlap floating in the Willamette. All summer long parts were found. Downtown the robbers and lunatics were bold. In the neighborhoods the crime was more domestic. The usual weapon was a knife, sometimes a gun. The killer was usually someone known and loved by the victim.

The most unusual of these cases occurred on Saturday July 27th 1946. On that evening, about 9 p.m. just as the rest of the city was starting to cool down, things got too hot for Fern Bowden. Her two teenage daughters were out with friends, her husband, James, on a fishing trip to Newport.

Things weren't good between Fern and Jim. She had filed for divorce a month ago and ever since had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jim had been nice, after his initial outburst, very hurt of course but putting up a good front. It was his jealousy, it pushed her further and further away. Ever since he got back from his war work in Alaska, he had been so suspicious. And there was Fred, whom she worked with at the freight terminal. He was so understanding and solid.

What was worrying her now was what was in that locker in the basement. The girls had seen Jim working down there with gloves on and he had yelled at them to stay away. It worried her, that's why she got the girls out of the house. A couple of drinks and a phone call to Fred to build up courage and then it was time.

At 8:45 p.m. the Hit Parade ended on KOIN. It was now or never. She left the radio on and could hear Tony Martin come on as she descended the stairs. A few minutes later the modest house at 2124 SE Yamhill was badly damaged in a blast that was felt several blocks away. Fern Bowden died instantly, her body so badly mangled that identification was difficult.

The patrolmen first on the scene thought it looked like a powder blast, maybe a hand grenade. They thought that maybe a war souvenir had exploded by accident.

James Bowden was questioned in Newport soon after the explosion. He denied knowing anything about it. Police began to suspect him after questioning his two daughters, Doris, 17, and Shirley, 13. The girls remembered seeing their father putting a paper-wrapped parcel into the footlocker. Their curiosity had been aroused by the fact that he wore gloves while he handled the package.

Among the debris in the basement police found a diary kept by Bowden. In it he had recorded the activities of his wife over the last couple of months, including meetings with a co-worker, Fred Hockenyos. A Clackamas Co. contractor came forward and said that he had sold Bowden six sticks of dynamite and some detonators in May. Bowden was soon arrested and charged with murder.

During his trial, which took place in December, 1946, Bowden claimed that he had built the bomb in order to kill Hockenyos, who he believed was having an affair with his wife. Bowden claimed that after building the bomb he had changed his mind and had locked it away in the basement until he could safely dismantle it. He said that he had warned his wife and daughters to stay away from the footlocker.

Both of the Bowden daughters testified at their father’s trial for what the press dubbed "The Pandora’s Box Murder." They said that their father had been acting strangely in the days before the explosion. He had aroused a lot of curiosity about the footlocker in the basement, even letting it be known that he kept his diary there. They believed that their mother had opened the footlocker to see what Bowden had written in the diary.

Judge Walter L. Tooze kept court in session day and night for a week in order to finish the trial before Christmas. After five hours of deliberation the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. James Bowden was sentenced to life in prison.

A Tragic Story Gets Weird

2006-04-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

On April 14, 2006 a mysterious drive-by shooting at a day care center on NE Bryant left a 4-year-old boy seriously wounded. Two days later the police and the Oregonian were baffled – No Clues, No Suspects in Shooting. This article did have a clue, although it wasn’t recognized at the time.

The day care center was owned and operated by Tracy Crockett. Her son Charles Crockett is well known to the police. Lt. Eric Hendricks of the Portland Police Bureau said, “He isn’t a gang member, but he is known to members of the gang enforcement team.” Last April Charles Crockett was charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Elijah Mandley, 15. The boy was hit in the leg will riding in a car.

Mandley has a weird and tragic story of his own. His father Isaiah Mandley Sr. was arrested for possession of crack cocaine less than a year after the boy was born in 1990. Elijah was 2 when the state took him out of his mother’s home because of her drug abuse. Elijah and his brothers grew up in foster homes.

In February 2004 Elijah and his brother Isaiah Jr., 16, were at a party in Northeast Portland when Isaiah Jr. fired a gun at a passing car, and struck TyNiece “Mia” McCorvey, 14, who was standing near by, in the head. The girl recovered and Isaiah was tried as an adult for attempted murder with a firearm and was sentenced to six years.

After the shooting party guests lied to the police about what happened, but since then it has come out that the car Isaiah Jr. fired at was full of Young Thugs members. Young Thugs is a new gang that is emerging in Northeast Portland.

Elijah Mandley was wounded in April 2005 when Charles Crockett apparently fired a gun into Mandley’s car. Mandley would not cooperate with the police and Crockett was acquitted. Eight months later Elijah was riding in a sport utility vehicle with Crockett when they were pulled over by the police. They were found to be in possession of a loaded handgun and an illegal sawed-off shotgun.

Mandley said the shotgun was his; he had just bought it that day “for protection.” Mandley plead guilty to possession of an illegal weapon in juvenile court and was put on probation. He was also turned over to the custody of his father Isaiah Mandley Sr. Isaiah Mandley Sr. has been on a mission the last few years to get sober and get his sons back. Here is a link to his story in the Oregonian.

On February 14 this year, Elijah Mandley accidentally shot and killed himself while playing with a loaded handgun in the bathroom at his father’s home. Police believe that he had been posing with the gun in front of the mirror when it accidentally discharged.

It was a lucky break for Charles Crockett. With Mandley’s guilty plea and not being available to testify at Crockett’s trial, Multnomah County Judge Frank Bearden had no choice but to acquit Crockett of the weapons charge on February 27. This isn’t the end of Crockett’s legal troubles though; he is still the main suspect in the November 2, 2003 shooting death of Isaiah Strickland outside another Northeast Portland party.

Crockett was arrested a few days after the shooting at his mother’s home on a parole violation. That leads to the strangest new twist in the case. At a court hearing on Crockett’s parole violation this week, Deputy District Attorney Sean Riddell asked the court to keep Crockett’s bail at $100,000 because he represents a “threat to himself and the public.”

"There are people trying to kill Mr. Crockett, and what is very apparent, they're not very good marksmen," Riddell said. Portland Detective Bryan Steed testified investigators learned that Crockett told his uncle by phone that he was out looking for those responsible and "was going to take care of them on his own."

Crockett’s attorney, Spencer Hahn, argued that the prosecutions request was “ludicrous” since the charges against his client are nonviolent drug possession and curfew violations. Hahn claimed that the Portland Police Bureau has a grudge against Crockett and are trying to keep him in jail so they can gather information from him. He also charged Riddell with misconduct for making the request. He downplayed Crockett’s threat to his uncle, saying it was normal for a crime victim to want justice.

"We do not have to leave our common sense at the door," Riddell said. "We all know what Mr. Crockett means when he says 'he's going to take care of them on his own.'"

Judge Linda Bergman said, "I didn't leave my common sense at the door either. I never had a request like this one. I don't think it's misconduct, but I think it's unusual." Bergman said she had serious constitutional issues with the State’s request, calling it a "preventive kind of detention I just can't do."

Crockett was released Tuesday after testifying in the shooting that wounded the 4 year-old. He said he was in the house, but not in “visual range” of the street at the time of the shooting. The boy is stable and recovering and Crockett’s mother lost the license for her day care.

So Charles Crockett is on the street tonight looking for the people who shot at him. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they were Young Thugs. Too bad they are more dangerous to innocent bystanders than to their targets. I think I will be staying away from parties in Northeast Portland this year.

Murder in Portland's Old Chinatown

2006-04-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Gong Fa, 23, a Chinese-American woman born in San Francisco, was murdered on SW Pine Street near Second, less than one block from the Police Station on November 10, 1893. Her throat was cut so severely that her head was nearly severed.

When police arrived on the scene, only a few minutes after the young woman’s death, some of the witnesses claimed that she had fallen from a second story window in the building in which she lived. A large pool of blood on the sidewalk and a razor sharp knife in the gutter under the body led police to believe that the woman had been killed on the sidewalk directly under a powerful electric street light.

This theory was supported by testimony from firefighters at the fire station nearby. The firefighters, who knew Gong Fa well, said that they had seen her pass in front of their station just moments before an alarm was sounded for a fire two blocks away. They said that she seemed to be hurrying toward her home, in the building in front of which she died.

The corner of Second and Pine was the center of Chinatown in the 1890s. On that corner was a building called the Joss House that included a Chinese theater and hospital and that served as the main Chinese community center in the city. With the police station and fire station less than a block away and several gambling dens, opium dens, houses of prostitution and taverns in the surrounding blocks, this was one of the street corners in Portland that could be guaranteed to have a crowd of people near it at any time of day, especially at night.

When police arrived on the scene, just minutes after the murder, they found a good-sized crowd of Chinese and "one or two whites." The Chinese witnesses apparently gave little or no information to the police. This was hardly unusual at the time, since many of the Chinese in Portland had questionable or outright illegal immigration status.

Chinese in Portland, in the 1890s, were also subject to intense physical and verbal harassment from the police, white citizens and Chinese "highbinders". Highbinders were combination pimps and enforcers, often murderers, who enforced the will of the powerful people who controlled prostitution, gambling and drugs in Chinatown.

It was well known, especially among the Chinese community, that the police department, if not corrupted was at least disinterested in solving crimes involving Chinese victims, even if the crimes happened practically on the police doorstep as this one did. Because of these factors the Chinese witnesses had little reason to cooperate, and a lot of reasons not to cooperate, with police.

Police Captain Holmberg and Detective Holzapple, who conducted the investigation into Gong Fa’s murder, apparently considered her death to be a "Chinese" crime and never even questioned potential white witnesses, or suspects. These and other factors contributed to the failure of the police to find and catch Gong Fa’s killer. On November 16, 1893, the Oregonian reported in its florid 1890s style, "Gong Fa’s assassination may be added to the long list of mysterious crimes that blackens the history of Portland’s Chinatown."

Gong Fa’s status as a Chinese-American woman contributed to her death being largely ignored, except for the journalistic sensation that lasted a few days, and was soon forgotten. Asian and Asian-American women in the 1890s were considered to be little more than property, a fact that was recognized in the Multnomah County courts.

In the year before Gong Fa’s murder there had been more than one high-profile case of competing highbinders fighting in court over the "ownership" of attractive young women. The women in these cases were allowed the right to choose their "husband" from the parties involved, but beyond that they had few rights. At times in the 1890s the Multnomah County Court appeared to be little more than a slave auction with legal trappings.

Gong Fa, described in the Oregonian as "very pretty – for a China woman", was a valuable commodity. Tension between her "husband" and her "discarded lover", at the coroner’s jury that followed her death, indicates that her "ownership" may have been in dispute at the time of her death. Her unsolved murder joins a long list of crimes against women that darkens the history of Portland.

This is Too Much

2006-04-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t have said it better than the suspect himself. David Barton Sullivan after being arrested for the murder of Anna Svidersky, 17, in Vancouver, WA on Thursday, had this to say to the police, “This is all evil stuff I have done. This is too much.”

For background on this case, and the victim of this senseless crime, you should read my post Death of Anna Banana.

I had a feeling we would hear more about Mr. Sullivan and already we have. It is pretty clear that he was a time-bomb just waiting to explode. He doesn’t seem to have been able to help himself. As anyone who has had anything to do with the mental health system already knows, it is hard to get help when you need it. There has to be some way to stop this kind of thing from happening, though.

Sullivan was first arrested in 1999 and convicted of two counts of fourth degree assault with sexual motivation. So far I haven’t been able to find much on this conviction, but he couldn’t have spent too much time under supervision, because by 2001 he was back at it.

That year he tried to kidnap a 14-year-old girl from the Naydenov Gymnastics Center in Vancouver. This time the criminal justice/mental health system kept him busy for at least a little while as he spent time at Western State Mental Hospital. He was diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic and entered a sex-offender treatment program. He pled guilty to Unlawful Imprisonment with sexual motivation and spent 90 days in jail. That 90 day sentence just gets me. Can it really be possible? Yes, it can.

In 2003 Sullivan was back at it, even though he was under community supervision. On June 14, he was spotted at Mountain View High School watching a 15 year-old girl running on the school track. When she left the track, Sullivan chased her, but she was able to get away. She identified Sullivan from a photo line-up of local sex offenders.

A corrections officer overseeing Sullivan’s case wrote on July 1, 2003 that he “has had difficulty adjusting to supervision, in part, because of his mental health disabilities.” His behavior at Mountain View High School "encompasses the same behavior which led to his previous convictions." The officer also noted that Sullivan had a stable living situation, he lived with his parents about a mile from the McDonald’s where Anna Svidersky was killed, and that he had begun mental health and sex offender treatment.

Who knows what David Sullivan has been doing since 2003? The next thing we know about him is that he left his parents house on the evening of April 20, carrying a kitchen knife and with the intention of “hurting a girl.” Police don’t believe that Sullivan knew Svidersky. It just seems to be a case of a pretty young girl in the wrong place at the wrong time and a dangerous man out to cause harm to someone.

Vancouver Police Chief Brian Martinek said, "It's unfortunately part of being a big city. We don't have any magic wall around us here." Do we really need a magic wall to protect us from society’s most violent? Maybe we just need a health care system (mental and physical) that works.

Here is a link to the Vancouver Columbian article.

The Dark Strangler

2006-04-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Forty years before the term "serial killer" was coined and nearly fifty years before the concept of "sexual sadism" was described Earle Nelson, known to history as the Dark Strangler, practiced both. When he was finally executed in 1928 Nelson was charged with 23 separate murders and was a strong suspect in 8 more. Portland lost four women to America's first sexual serial killer.

Portland's Police Bureau, busily trying to keep order in the whorehouses and speakeasies of the North End, was not ready to deal with a highly dangerous psychopath. In fact it wasn't until Nelson had killed three women and moved on that Portland police even realized that they had all been murdered.

Beata Withers, 35, was found strangled to death, naked except for a slip bunched under her arms, inside a trunk in a vacant room that she had advertised for rent on October 20, 1926. The Police at first said her death was a strange type of suicide, but the Oregonian speculated that it could have been murder from the start.

Two days later the body of Virginia Grant, 59, was found stuffed behind the furnace in a vacant house she owned. Despite the disappearance of two valuable diamond rings the police claimed she had died of natural causes.

The next day Mabel Flukes, 37, was found strangled to death in a vacant house in Sellwood. Police finally realized that there was a serious problem, especially when they found evidence that all three women had been raped post mortem. The Oregonian publicly linked the three murders on Saturday October 21. Earle Nelson was far away by then.

Exhibiting the mobility that would later be identified as part of the serial killing pattern, Nelson had returned to San Francisco. He had already killed 8 women in California, 3 in Philadelphia and 2 in Newark, New Jersey. On November 18 and 19, 1926, Nelson strangled and raped 2 landladies in the San Francisco Bay Area. On November 22 he killed Florence Monks, a landlady in Seattle. On November 29, 1926 when Blanch Myers, a 48-year-old widow was found strangled and raped in her Sellwood rooming house, Portland knew that the Dark Strangler had struck again.

Born Earle Leonard Ferral on May 12, 1897 to a mother in the advance stages of syphilis, Earle Nelson showed signs of mental illness from an early age. Raised by a Bible-thumping grandmother, Earle showed evidence of sexual abuse at school and by the age of seven he had been expelled because of his violent rages. At the age of ten Nelson suffered a serious head injury. Although the doctor said he would be all right, this was only the first wrong diagnosis of Nelson's condition.

Earle Nelson was arrested for burglary in 1915 and spent two years in San Quentin Prison. He was released in 1917 at the height of American participation in World War I. Nelson joined the Army, but deserted after six weeks. He began a compulsive pattern of enlisting alternately in the Army and the Navy, serving a few weeks and then deserting. He did this four times under as many names. In 1918 he was hospitalized by the Navy and diagnosed as living in a "constitutional psychotic state." On May 21, 1918 Nelson was described by Dr. J.B. Rogers as "not violent, homicidal or destructive." Wrong diagnosis again.

Nelson escaped from the hospital twice in 1918, managing to stay free for over a month the second time. He earned the nickname "Houdini" from the hospital staff. When he escaped a third time in May 1919 no one bothered to chase him. He was discharged in absentia from the Navy and his mental hospital file was closed with a note saying that Nelson had "improved."

Nelson found work as a hospital janitor and soon married a co-worker who was 36 years older than he was. Nelson's jealous rage, bizarre sexual demands and increasingly violent behavior ended the marriage fairly quickly. Nelson drifted from job to job, but found his real avocation on May 19, 1921 when he invaded the San Francisco home of Charles Summer and tried to rape Summer's 12-year-old daughter.

The young girl screamed for help and Nelson was captured. Nelson was confined in mental hospitals, except for a brief escape in 1923, until March 10, 1925 when he was discharged as "Improved." Five months later Nelson began the killing spree that would carry him to the gallows in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1928.

After the murder of Blanche Myers Portland was in a panic. Women were warned not to show vacant rooms or apartments to strangers. On December 1 two women, upon reading a description of the Dark Strangler, recognized a nice young Bible-reading man who had rented a room from them up until two days before. He had even given them some jewelry, which they turned over to the police. It turned out to be jewelry taken from Florence Monks in Seattle.

Nelson had rented the room under the name of Adrian Harris and an intense hunt for him began. He moved quickly and stayed well ahead of the police. On Christmas Eve he strangled and raped a woman in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Three days later he killed two women and an infant in Kansas City, Mo.

By spring Nelson had reached Philadelphia where he killed Mary McConnell. He moved on to Buffalo, NY where he killed another woman before moving on to Detroit. In Detroit he killed Maureen Oswald and Fanny May. Both women were raped after they died and Detroit police announced that the murders were committed by the "Pacific Coast Bluebeard."

On June 4, 1927 Nelson killed Cecilia Sistema in Chicago before slipping over the border into Canada. Nelson rented a room in Winnipeg under the name of Woodcoats. He said that all he wanted was a quiet room where he could read his bible. Within days Nelson lured 13-year-old Lola Cowan to his room where he killed and raped her. He stuffed Cowan's body under his bed and left the door open. The landlady cleaned the room the next day, but didn't discover the body for three more days.

The next day Nelson killed Emily Patterson, 23, in nearby Elmwood. He beat her to death with a hammer before raping her. Patterson's murder was so brutal that the Winnipeg newspapers called the killer the "Gorilla Man."

A $1,500 reward for the killer of Patterson and Cowan paid off with several sightings of Nelson as he made his way toward the U.S. border. He was captured just north of the border early on the morning of June 16, 1927. Murder charges were filed on Nelson in five U.S. cities, including four counts in Portland, but Canadian authorities would not give him up.

Nelson's trial was delayed for several months in order to let public feeling cool off. In November, at his trial Nelson plead insanity, but expert psychiatrists, using x-rays of Nelson's brain, testified that although Nelson was a "constitutional psychopath" he was still responsible for his actions.

On January 13, 1928 Nelson was hung in Winnipeg. On the scaffold before the execution Nelson said, "I declare my innocence before God and man. I forgive those who have injured me and I ask pardon from those I have injured." The hangman's knot was not properly tied and it took Nelson nearly eleven minutes to strangle to death. Many thought it was poetic justice for the Dark Strangler.

This story originally appeared in Our Town Magazine May 7, 2001.