A few years ago, Deschutes County Sheriff’s Detective Tim Hernandez pulled over a car in Sisters for a traffic violation.

The address he saw on the driver’s license stopped him cold.

“It’s one of those things you never forget,” he said.

The address was 65600 Old Bend-Redmond Highway, which today is a cheery blue manufactured home with white trim, its front deck offering a stunning view of the Three Sisters: Faith, Hope and Charity. But 10 years ago, it was the scene of a crime that shocked Central Oregon for both its brutality and the youth of its perpetrators.

Barbara Thomas was 52 years old on March 26, 2001, when she was murdered by her then-18-year-old son, Adam, and his four friends. The teens, the youngest just 15, trashed her home while she was at work, then considered various methods for killing her. They eventually beat her over the head with champagne bottles, then shot her in the head with a .308-caliber rifle.

“I’ve done a number of murder trials, capital murder trials. Some I remember names and circumstances, and some I don’t,” said Deschutes County Circuit Judge Alta Brady, who oversaw the teens’ court proceedings.

She remembers this one.

“They were all heinous. They were all senseless. The reason this one always will be in my memory is the age of the defendants, the senseless loss of their potential and their futures. I have great compassion for the victim, but I think often about the five teenagers I saw over the course of about two years.”

Others involved in the case say the same: This is one they’ll never forget. For some, it has affected the way they deal with victims’ families; for others, how they treat runaways and teen crime.

These are people who have seen terrible things, who have arrested or prosecuted or sentenced murderers, stood at crime scenes and pored over autopsy photos.

And all of them can immediately conjure vivid details of working the Barbara Thomas murder.

Barbara Thomas’ brother Rod Jones doesn’t think about those vivid details, and he doesn’t try to find meaning in the murder.

“One of the first things (Deschutes County Sheriff’s Capt.) Marc Mills told us was, ‘Don’t try to make sense of this,’” he said. “That’s stuck with me for 10 years.”

Jones’ wife, Linda, echoed that sentiment.

“Don’t ask why, because there are no answers,” she said.

But the shock of murder, of a family member dying, never quite goes away.

“It’s never your family,” she said. That’s what everyone thinks.

Until it is.

The crime

It happened like this: Barbara’s son, Adam Thomas, 18; Justin Link, 17; Lucretia Karle, 16; and Seth Koch and Ashley Summers, both 15, planned to run away to Canada in Koch’s parents’ Cadillac. They stopped at Barbara Thomas’ house, from which Adam had recently moved, to fill up on food, drink alcohol and steal credit cards and cash. While there, they lost the keys to the car.

In looking for the keys, they turned the house upside down, scattering papers, upending drawers, breaking furniture. Then they talked about killing Barbara Thomas. Without keys, they needed her car to go to Canada, and they didn’t want to get in trouble for the damage done to her home.

Over the next several hours, the teens considered a variety of options. Electrocute her in the bathtub, Karle suggested. Inject her with bleach, Summers added. Set the house on fire, Thomas said. So Koch got electrical cords, Karle filled the bathtub, Thomas plugged in appliances in the bathroom. Someone filled a syringe with bleach. Through it all, Link was outside pushing the others to act.

While the girls stood watch in a bedroom and Link gave orders to the other boys from outside, Thomas and Koch took the lead.

When Barbara Thomas returned from work that evening, she opened the door to find her neat, clean home destroyed. Then her son and Koch hit her repeatedly over the head with champagne bottles. When that didn’t knock her out, Koch shot her in the head with a rifle.

The group fled for Canada, taking along booze and guns. They pulled off on a forest road to burn evidence near Santiam Pass and again to stash the murder weapon near the Canadian border.

Stopped at the entry by Canadian border patrol agents who saw the word “DANGER” flash next to Adam Thomas’ name in a computer system, the teens were eventually transported to a Bellingham, Wash., sheriff’s office. There, after a dinner of pizza and pop, they each admitted their guilt to Bend and Deschutes County law enforcement personnel, who had flown in for interviews. By the close of 2003, all five had pleaded or been found guilty. The three boys received life terms without parole, while the girls are serving 25-year sentences for their lesser roles in the murder. They are scheduled to be released in 2026.

Link and Thomas still have sentencing appeals pending; last year, Summers asked to have her sentence commuted but was denied. Koch, who pulled the trigger, has not appealed his sentence.

The aftermath

Hernandez, a sheriff’s deputy at the time, was the first on the scene more than 10 years ago. He’d been pursuing a runaway, Seth Koch, and tips led him to the home on Old Bend-Redmond Highway. First, he was diverted to a domestic dispute; had he arrived earlier, he might have encountered the killers leaving the house or even the murder in progress. But what he found there changed the course of his career and affirmed how he approached his work: Pay attention to even the smallest of cases and care for the victim.

“Barbara Thomas will be there for the rest of my life and career,” he said. “Ten years later, what I remember is Barbara Thomas. I never knew her, but I’ll remember. She was a very wonderful person.”

By all accounts, Thomas was a kind, hardworking widow trying to raise her increasingly troubled son.

When Darryl Nakahira, one of the prosecutors on the case, entered her home and saw her body on the floor amid the chaos the teenagers had created, what stuck with him was how clean and well-kept the home otherwise appeared.

Nakahira credits Hernandez for pursuing the runaway report instead of waiting for something more interesting to come his way.

“If not for Tim Hernandez being so diligent about runaways, who knows?” Nakahira said. “We probably wouldn’t have known until the next morning, when Barbara Thomas didn’t show up for work and her boss reported her missing.”

The murder changed the way the Sheriff’s Office handles runaway reports, Mills said.

“We take runaways much more seriously. Not that we didn’t prior to this, but we take it much more serious since this incident with Barbara Thomas,” he said. “We have a protocol that our deputies follow with runaways. It’s important to us that they are also considered missing persons, that we collect as much information or evidence so we can identify them tomorrow or years down the road.”

Mills also believes the tenuous friendships among the five, who had only begun spending time together in the preceding months, may have contributed to the crime.

“They were a short-lived group,” he said. “This was a group of people who were the same to the extent that they were dreaming of getting away from their day-to-day lives. And it turned into a horrible crime.

“I don’t know that any one of them believed this was going to happen before it happened. … But they all took a part. They all had a part as it unfolded. I think part of them believed that this would stop, and it never did.”

Kandy Gies, who helped Nakahira prosecute the case, disagrees. She believes the kids planned the murder and simply didn’t think of the consequences.

But everyone involved with the case believes the murder might not have happened had one or two of the kids spoken up and said “no.”

“It’s scary enough when one person does the unthinkable. But when five people come together to do the unthinkable? And not one says, ‘What are we doing here?’” Gies said. “If one had walked away, it would have ended differently.

“We’ll never understand. Not one person had the guts to say, ‘This is wrong.’ And 10 years later, there’s no answer of how and why this happened.”

Barbara Thomas’ murder demonstrates how quickly teenage misbehavior can escalate. Hernandez used the case as an example to other kids during his time as a school resource officer at Sisters High School. “I try to explain how these split decisions kids make, when they don’t think through the consequences and think they’re invincible — these kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives.”

The sentences

The five teens were found guilty of a variety of crimes that carried Measure 11 sentences.

Voters passed Measure 11 in 1994, creating mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes, including rape and murder. The three boys received life sentences without the possibility of parole. The girls received 25-year sentences.

In the intervening years, various groups have pushed for Measure 11 reform. A report by the state’s Criminal Justice Commission released in March found that Measure 11 has shifted power from judges to prosecutors, who use the mandatory sentences as a way to get plea deals.

But so far, Measure 11 has remained in effect, and the five teens’ sentences have stayed put.

Former Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan doesn’t dwell on their sentences. “I don’t feel bad sending them to prison for what they did. Not at all.”

Neither does Judge Brady, who didn’t have much leeway when she sentenced the five.

“This was the most extreme of Measure 11 crimes,” she said. “Measure 11 was very appropriate when we’re talking about such extreme crimes. There are some grayer areas, but no, not this one.”

Dugan, like the other prosecutors, has seen a lot of ugly, violent actions by teens. What he was surprised by was the brutality of the crime and the sheer number of those involved.

On the steps of the courthouse after the arraignment, Dugan said he spoke to TV reporters from all over the Northwest.

“What’s sad about this case is that these kids won’t see their high school graduation,” he remembers telling them. “They won’t go to prom. They won’t even go to McDonald’s for a Big Mac. It’s over for them.”

When deciding how to charge the girls, Dugan said, his main goal was to keep them in jail until they were too old to have their own children.

“I worry they would hurt their kids,” he said, “and what kind of a mother or a father can you be after 25 years in prison? They don’t have parenting skills. I want a baby to have a half-decent chance at success.”

The many victims

Even if their punishment was deserved, it was a sticking point for many in the community that such young kids faced such long sentences.

During the two years following the murder, Nakahira and others got to know Koch, Karle and Summers during prison visits.

“I mean, I can’t say it, but, ‘You wrecked your life,’” he said he thought while visiting with them.

“Youth was one of the things that caused everybody in this case so much anguish,” said then-Detective Sharon Sweet, who interviewed the teens when they were first detained in Washington. “They were so young, and their lives were wasted. They forfeited their futures.”

Summers and Karle will get out of prison, but not until they’re in their early 40s.

Sweet said it’s hard to imagine leaving jail at that age with no life experience to draw from. Even the technological advancements since 2001 will be challenging to adjust to. It all depends how they use their time in prison.

“Those two women will be released. The prison system is not a great system,” Brady said. “So they also have the opportunity to be institutionalized, to learn gang behavior and antisocial behavior. It’s what they use the time for. They can go either way, and it’s their choice.”

The list of victims also includes many people who weren’t directly involved in Barbara Thomas’ death.

Brady pointed to the jury that sat through Adam Thomas’ sentencing. The images and testimony were so graphic and upsetting that she brought in a counselor after the trial was over so they would have someone to talk to. Many took advantage of the service.

“Part of the tragedy of this whole thing is these young lives that are truly affected, not just theirs but their friends and especially their families, are affected forever,” Mills said. “Number one in my opinion is the loss of Barbara Thomas. … The second is what these five young people did to themselves and to their families and friends.”

Meanwhile, Sweet said, “The community really struggled with this case. I know a lot of people would initiate conversation with me and say, ‘Should these kids really go to prison for life? They’re just kids.’ But when you consider the unbelievable horror of what they did, there’s no other decision.”

None of the killers’ parents responded to requests for comment.

Only Summers and Thomas responded to The Bulletin’s letters. Summers agreed to talk but never responded to submitted questions. Thomas said he didn’t want to talk about his mother’s murder, but he did offer some insight into his life in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

In a handwritten letter, Thomas said he finds it hard to accept the role he played in his mother’s death.

“My emotional state fluctuates from incredibly depressed to mildly upbeat. Living with the guilt and the memory of my participation is a struggle,” Thomas wrote. “Whatever angry thoughts people have had about me over the last decade – and I’m sure there has been a slew of them – I have already thought about myself. Memories are a curse in prison because that’s all we have and we can never erase them, as much as we would like to.”

Since beginning his prison stay, Thomas has earned a GED diploma and continues to study.

“I miss my mom tremendously. I hate what I did and what the other kids did. I wish more than anything that I could change the past, but all I can do is change the person I was in the past,” he wrote. “And I have done that. I am no longer the selfish, stupid, hurtful kid I was ten years ago.”

That doesn’t mean much to Barbara Thomas’ brother and his family. Forgiveness is hard, although Rod Jones tries.

“When I think of losing Barb, I think of the families of Lucretia and Ashley and Justin and Seth. They lost someone, too,” he said. “That’s part of the healing.”

He didn’t care much about the other families involved in the tragedy 10 years ago. Today, it’s different.

Now when the Joneses think back to the murder and the subsequent courtroom drama, they think of the people who helped: Brady, Gies, Nakahira.

And they think of Barbara Thomas before she died.

Sara Jones, Barbara’s niece, remembers sleepovers, with movies and pizza, at the house on the Old Bend-Redmond Highway. Linda Jones, Barbara’s sister-in-law, thinks of Barbara visiting her at work to chat. And Rod Jones, Barbara’s brother, looks at old pictures and thinks of the sister he grew up with.

“I don’t even dwell on the murder. It’s not a part of my life,” he said. “I lived with her and Adam for four months. … That was a good time. We were both adults, and it was like a whole different relationship.”

For Sara Jones, now 24, some good may come from her aunt’s murder. After serving in the Army for five years, including a tour in Iraq, Sara is working toward a degree in criminology from the University of Phoenix. She wants to work with troubled youths like those who killed Barbara Thomas.

If she were alive today, Barbara Thomas would be a grandmother, with six grandchildren by her son Jason. She was planning for the first of those births, and a baby shower, the day she was killed.

Every March, the Jones family visits the cemetery, usually on Barbara Thomas’ birthday, which falls three weeks to the day before the anniversary of her murder.

“Life goes on. If you sit and dwell on it, you’ll go nowhere,” Sara Jones said while sitting in her parents’ living room in Redmond last week.

“But time doesn’t heal,” her mother said.

“No,” Rod added. “It doesn’t.”

Crime echoes through the years

March 26, 2001 • Barbara Thomas is killed by her 18-year-old son, Adam Thomas, and four friends in her own home. The five teens then flee the scene in Thomas’ car, headed for Canada. Tim Hernandez, then a deputy for the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, discovers Thomas’ body shortly after at her home (right).

March 27, 2001

• After driving through the night and stopping twice to get rid of evidence, the teenagers are stopped at the Canadian border and detained by the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office in Bellingham, Wash. That same day, Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office and Bend Police representatives head north by plane to conduct interviews with the five teens.

March 30, 2001 • The teens are transported back to Central Oregon.

April 9, 2001 • The teens are charged, as adults, with 22 crimes, including three counts of aggravated murder and two counts of attempted murder.

March 22, 2002 • Adam Thomas pleads guilty to the aggravated murder of his mother.

Aug. 2, 2002 • Seth Koch, who fired the gun that killed Barbara Thomas, pleads guilty to aggravated murder.

Jan. 30, 2003 • Ashley Summers and Lucretia Karle finalize a plea deal that gives them 25-year sentences for their role in Barbara Thomas’ murder.

May 15, 2003 • Justin Link, the only suspect who sought a trial, is found guilty of murder.

Sept., 26, 2003 • Court proceedings in the murder conclude with the three boys sentenced to life without parole.

March 28, 2026 • The earliest release date for Ashley Summers and Lucretia Karle. Seth Koch, Adam Thomas and Justin Link are serving life in prison without parole.