PNW MURDERS
The Pacific Northwest has been home to many murderers and serial killers. With Halloween coming up, let's take a look at some of the slayings that took place close to home.
Cherie Ayers / Randall Woodfield / 10/09/1980
On October 9, 1980, Cherie Ayers, an X-ray technician and former classmate of Randall Woodfield, was raped and murdered in her apartment in the 9000 block of SW Ninth Place in downtown Portland. Her body was discovered on October 11 by her fiancé. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Ayers, a University of Oregon graduate, had known Woodfield since second grade, having attended the same schools in Newport.
During Woodfield's prior four-year imprisonment, he and Ayers had corresponded via letters. Suspecting Woodfield's involvement, Ayers' family provided his name to law enforcement. He was questioned but refused to sit for a polygraph test. Homicide detectives found his answers generally "evasive and deceptive" but, because his blood type did not match semen found in the victim's body, no charges were filed.
Woodfield is believed to have comitted 44 unsolved homicides and 60 unsolved rapes. He was convicted of only a few rapes and murders and was given a life sentence plus 165 years. He became known as the I-5 Killer because his crimes took place all along Interstate 5.
Wikipedia
Timothy Moreau / Larry Hurwitz / The Roseland Theater
Larry Hurwitz planned the murder of Tim Moreau with his assistant, George Gastagnola. The two enacted a counterfeit ticket scheme for bolstering their sales. This worked, for a time.
When pressed by a distraught customer, Moreau discovered the scheme, and when he confronted his boss, Hurwtiz was able to calm him down. However, when Moreau left, Hurwitz and Castagnola calmly began a plot to kill Moreau to prevent word from spreading.
On an unknown night in January, Moreau was called into Hurwitz’s office. After a brief argument, Moreau was strangled from behind with a microphone wire. Castagnola held Moreau down as the oxygen was cut off from his brain as the wire wrapped around Moreau’s neck. He struggled for a moment, but Hurwtiz and Castagnola held him down until Tim stopped moving. After committing the deed, the two calmly disposed of the body, and ordered pizza.
The body has never been found. In 2000 Larry Hurwitz was charged with tax fraud and while serving a year in prison, new evidence was discovered linking Hurwitz to Tim's death. After a plea deal, Hurwitz served 8 years in prison for the murder of Timothy Moreau.
The Starry Night Murder
Cole and William Neer / Westley Allan Dodd / 09/04/1989
On September 4, 1989, Dodd went to Vancouver's David Douglas Park, with a fish fillet knife and shoelaces, and sought out young boys to kill. He lured two brothers, 11- and 10-year-old Cole and William Neer, to a secluded area, where he forced them to undress, tied them to a tree and performed sex acts on them both. When he was done, he stabbed them repeatedly with a knife and fled the scene. The boys were soon discovered in the park. Cole was dead at the scene, while William died en route to the hospital.
After the murders of the two brothers, Dodd started a scrapbook with newspaper clippings and other facts about the murders. On October 29, Dodd drove to Portland, Oregon and there he encountered four-year-old Lee Iseli and his nine-year-old brother Justin at a local park. The younger boy was playing alone on a slide, and Dodd succeeded in convincing the boy to come with him. Justin had gone home, so Dodd told Lee that he would drive him back to his house. He managed to bring Lee to his apartment in Vancouver apparently unnoticed, and he ordered the boy to undress. Dodd then tied Lee to his bed and molested him, taking photographs of the abuse. Dodd kept Lee overnight while he continued to molest him, all the while jotting down every detail in his diary. The next morning, he strangled Lee to death with a rope and hung his body in the closet, photographing it as a macabre "trophy".
He would later confess to police that he had originally planned not to kill the boy, but eventually decided that it was necessary to keep him from telling anyone. Dodd stuffed Lee's nude body in trash bags and threw it in some bushes near Vancouver Lake. He burned Lee's clothing in a trash barrel except for the boy's underwear, which he kept as a souvenir of the crime. One day later, Lee's body was discovered, which sparked a manhunt for the killer. Dodd kept a low profile and mostly stayed in his apartment, writing down future plans for child abduction and also constructing a homemade torture rack for the next victim.
Dodd was eventually caught after he failed to abduct a 6-year-old boy from the restroom of the New Liberty Theatre in Camas, WA. He admitted to the three murders and was sentenced to death. He chose death by hanging and was hanged January 5, 1993.
Wikipedia
Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis /Ward Weaver III / 2002
In August 1997, Ward Weaver began an affair with a woman he met at work. The couple moved into a rented house on South Beavercreek Road in Oregon City. Weaver's then-12-year-old daughter Mallori became friends with Ashley Marie Pond (born March 1, 1989)[9] and Miranda Diane Gaddis (born November 18, 1988); the three girls were students at Gardiner Middle School, and were also members of the same dance class. In August 2001, Pond accused Weaver of attempting to rape her at his home, and the incident was reported to police; however, charges were not formally filed by law enforcement.
On the morning of January 9, 2002, Pond left her home at the Newell Creek Village apartments to walk to the nearby bus stop; she never arrived. Friends and family, including Gaddis, began to search for her; Gaddis resided in the same apartment building as Pond. The dance team which both girls were a member of organized a fundraiser to help assist the search for Pond, which they scheduled for March 23, 2002.
On the morning of March 8, Gaddis disappeared under similar circumstances to Pond. After Gaddis's disappearance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation instated a task force to search for the girls; FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele stated during a press interview: "There is a growing belief that the cases are related, and while there's a slight hope that they have run away, there is a growing belief that there was some kind of criminal activity involved."
After both girls vanished, Weaver (with the help of his son) dug a hole in his yard and covered it with concrete; Weaver told his son it was a pad for a hot tub. KATU television news reporter Anna Song conducted an interview with Weaver prior to his arrest, during which he stood on top of the concrete slab where Ashley Pond was buried. When asked about the slab, Weaver told The Oregonian: "I'm putting in a Jacuzzi. The last time I checked that wasn't against the law." Portland Tribune reporter Jim Redden got two tips early on – one from Linda O'Neal, a private investigator and a relative of Pond – which prompted him to interview Weaver. Weaver told Redden that he was the FBI's prime suspect, at a time when it was generally believed there was no such suspect.
On August 13, 2002, Weaver's son, Francis, called police claiming that Weaver had attempted to rape his nineteen-year-old girlfriend.[15][20] When speaking to authorities, Francis suggested that his father had been involved in the murders of Pond and Gaddis. Weaver was arrested for the attempted sexual assault, and law enforcement subsequently initiated a warrant to investigate his property. Pond's stepmother, who had suspected Weaver in both disappearances, erected a sign next to the concrete slab on his property which read: "Dig Me Up."
The FBI began a search of Weaver's property on South Beavercreek Road on August 24, 2002. That day, FBI agents discovered Gaddis's remains inside an empty microwave box in a storage shed behind Weaver's home. On August 25, the remains of Pond were unearthed from beneath the concrete slab in Weaver's backyard, where they had been stored in a 55-gallon barrel.
Weaver remained under arrest for the attempted rape of his son's girlfriend until October 2, 2002, when he was indicted and charged with six counts of aggravated murder; two counts of abuse of a corpse in the second degree; one count of sexual abuse in the first degree; one count of attempted rape in the second degree; one count of attempted aggravated murder; one count of first degree attempted rape; one count of sexual abuse in the first degree; one count of sexual abuse in the second degree; and two counts of sexual abuse in the third degree. In September 2004, Weaver pleaded guilty to two charges and no-contest to the rest. A plea bargain allowed him to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to two life sentences without parole.
Wikipedia