Emily Pickett

Some of the cremated remains of murder victim Kaylee Anne Sawyer were stolen from a Bend storage unit, and the man who pleaded guilty to the theft tossed them in a dumpster behind a Motel 6.

John Sue Vierra IV pleaded guilty in July in a major settlement resolving 16 property-crime cases, including the theft of Sawyer’s ashes on Jan. 8. His drug-fueled crime spree stretched from February 2021 until his arrest 12 months later. He was sentenced Wednesday in Deschutes County Circuit Court with Sawyer’s mother present.

Sawyer’s murder ranks among the most shocking in Deschutes County history. A student at Central Oregon Community College, she was kidnapped and murdered on July 24, 2016, by a campus security guard and her body dumped off a highway between Redmond and Sisters.

“When the defendant was done, he disposed of her body not once but twice, like she was garbage,” Juli VanCleave, Sawyer’s mother, told Vierra in court. “And as you were going through my purse, you may have noticed a small green glass heart. And I am sure that you deemed it worthless and threw it away. Well to me that glass heart held everything. And now I need to come to terms with my daughter being thrown away three times.”

Vierra, 30, and Emily Megan Pickett, 30, broke into a Northwest Self Storage on SE Third Street and cut the locks of 18 units, including one rented to VanCleave and her husband, who’d packed away all of their belongings while they remodeled their home.

Vierra and Pickett carried stolen items across the street to their room at the Motel 6. Their haul included two firearms from VanCleave’s unit and her green Coach purse containing $30,000 in jewelry.

Later in the alley behind the motel, the couple discarded the items they assumed had no value, including a green glass heart containing some of Sawyer’s ashes.

When Vierra was arrested the next month at St. Charles Bend, police officers informed him the heart contained the ashes of Sawyer, who was 23 at the time of her death. He confirmed he’d thrown it away, along with VanCleave’s original wedding ring and a “Stay Kaylee Strong” necklace the mother had worn 24-7 throughout the prosecution of Sawyer’s killer, Edwin Lara, now serving a life sentence.

On Wednesday, Deschutes County Circuit Judge Alycia Herriott went along with Vierra’s “global” plea deal and sentenced him to 40 months in prison.

Pickett, charged only in the Northwest Storage break-in, was sentenced in May to 10 days in jail and two years probation.

VanCleave was far from Vierra’s only victim. Over 12 months, he stole cars, motorcycles and a hearse. In many cases, he smashed windows and rooted through homes and vehicles, but stole nothing.

In August, 2021, Vierra stole a green Jeep Renegade from the downtown Bend parking structure. Seven days later, it was reported as a suspicious vehicle on a residential street. Vierra had hand-painted it black to avoid detection.

“The number of people in this community that you have negatively affected is enormous,” Herriott told Vierra. “You have created chaos in these people’s lives.”

In most of the 16 cases, Vierra was cited and released. In some cases, this was the result of a court-imposed policy at the jail to keep out nonviolent offenders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was caught in one case when police used the GPS tracking feature in AirPods to find him at a friend’s house. He was caught in another when stills from security footage were posted to Facebook by a victim.

Near the end of the spree, police would seek out Vierra to talk to him after major thefts were discovered. Prosecutor Kyle Fleming said that over a six-month period, “It seems like every time I was referred a new property crime case, it was John Vierra.”

Fleming called Vierra a “scourge of the Redmond and Bend area.” But he said it’s likely Sawyer’s ashes were not the intended target of the Northwest Self Storage break-in, and their theft was instead a “horrible consequence.”

VanCleave addressed Vierra directly, and asked that he not do the same. She said she was in her travel trailer, parked on her property, when she got a call from the manager of Northwest Self Storage, who told her thieves had broken in but it looked like they’d only stolen two guns. VanCleave said she was worried about the weapons being in the wrong hands, but she didn’t have an emotional attachment to them.

But the next morning she awoke in terror, realizing her purse was in the unit, too. And in that purse was “everything I held dear,” she said.

As well as all of her jewelry and her daughter’s ashes, her purse contained a hard drive of all files and documents from Sawyer’s murder case. VanCleave had been loaned the drive by the district attorney’s office, and she said she was days away from giving it back.

Vierra admitted to destroying the hard drive, for the magnets, he told police.

“Everyone knows that the loss of a child is the hardest thing anyone can go through, but I was not prepared for the anger I felt,” VanCleave told Vierra in court Wednesday. “I worked hard to get rid of that feeling because my daughter would not want me to feel like that. And as I look at you now, I struggle with that feeling again.”

Appearing sober and penitent via video from the jail, Vierra stared downward during much of his sentencing.

Along with his victims, he had a number of his supporters in the courtroom. His two siblings, a brother and sister, spoke of the damage mental illness and drug abuse have caused their family. His mother said he was a gifted musician and songwriter.

Vierra said he once counseled kids for Christian addiction services group Teen Challenge, and was “fired up for God.” But on meth and heroin, he was not the same person, he said.

“When I was in my addiction, I was a liar, a thief, not the person I want to be,” he said. “I can only imagine the anger that’s burning towards me. I know if anyone did this to me, I would be just as angry.”

Vierra’s spree ended Feb. 15 in the maternity ward of St. Charles Bend, where he was arrested visiting his daughter the day after her birth.

He said Wednesday the arrest turned out to be a blessing. “It was like God was pulling me off the streets.”

Being a father has inspired him to stay clean in jail, and reconnect with God, he said.

“I long to hold my daughter again,” he said, tearfully.

At this, VanCleave, seated in the front row, sighed.

She said after the hearing, “Everybody finds God in prison. Everybody stays sober. We’ll see how he acts when he gets out.” For a time, VanCleave was filled with anger over the loss of her daughter’s ashes.

“But then I realized, she is not in that heart, her ashes are. She is in my heart, where I have always carried her, where she will always be safe, and where she will never be thrown away again.”