Bringing cold cases to life

For the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, it all started with Susan Wickersham.

She was a 17-year-old Bend High student, out for a drive in 1973. After dropping the car off with her mother at the Sage Room Restaurant next to the Tower Theatre, she waited for friends to pick her up. When they didn’t come, she walked away from the restaurant.

Susan Wickersham never came home. Several years later, her remains were found by a man looking for firewood near Deschutes River Woods. Injuries to her skull showed she’d been shot in the head.

The case has never been solved.

That’s where the Sheriff’s Office cold case squad comes in. Formed in 2005, the squad consists of four retired law enforcement officials who volunteer about 20 hours each week poring over binders filled with information on unsolved crimes. And it’s Wickersham’s long-unsolved case that sparked the start of the cold case squad.

“She’s the primary reason, to look into that (case),” said Capt. Marc Mills, who was Wickersham’s classmate at Bend High.

There are a host of unsolved cases around Central Oregon, and the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office is in charge of seven of them. All told, the region counts 18 unsolved murders or disappearances.

For Mills, the cold case squad is a way to show a commitment to these long-ago cases.

“Years ago, there was a comment made to the effect of Bend (and Deschutes County) having a number of unsolved type cases,” he said. “When you hear things like that, you need to start digging into the past to see exactly what’s going on. So we got serious about it.”

A new set of eyes

There are cold case squads around the country. But the Sheriff’s Office has the only team in Central Oregon.

It’s a simple theory: a new set of eyes looking over an abundance of old case information just might see something others close to the case never spotted.

“They’ve got time to read all the reports, go back out and re-interview people who are still around,” Lt. Chad Davis said.

So every week, Art Johnson, Bob Cosner, Dan Anslinger and Pete Wanless walk through the doors of the Sheriff’s Office, cracking binders filled with old reports, calling long-forgotten witnesses and scouring old evidence for new leads.

There’s Wickersham, of course. Johnson is working that case right now. But there’s also Angela Chan, who disappeared in March 1989 after her husband dropped her off at their home in Redmond. Her car was found along Oregon Highway 126 near Dry Canyon two days later, her purse and shoes still inside. Anslinger reopened that case.

And there’s Ron Louis Nordstrom, whose disappearance Wanless is investigating. Nordstrom was last seen in June 1999 when he rode away from his home in Redmond on a blue mountain bike. Reported missing by family five days later, he was never seen again.

Cosner is trying to figure out the disappearance of Gary Alan Larsen, who was last seen on Sept. 16, 2001, after breakfast with friends at Shari’s in Redmond. Larsen knew people from Madras to La Pine and associated with drug users. He drove a white 1995 Dodge pickup, and neither he nor the truck was ever found.

While the four cold case squad members work on those, three other cases hang over them: Baby Doe, found decapitated in a garbage can near Ferguson’s Market in Terrebonne in May 1986; Corwin Osborn, a man who set off to hike the South, Middle and North Sisters in June 2001 and never returned; and Dee Marion McLemore, who left the Sunriver airport in 1989 headed for Reno in his Beechcraft Bonanza but never landed.

So the four members of the cold case squad work their way through documents, interviews and evidence, searching for clues.

Johnson is a retired federal Drug Enforcement Agency official. He was part of the original cold case squad that formed in 2005. He said federal law enforcement officials face a mandatory retirement at age 55, and it seemed a waste to not use his expertise and training to continue trying to solve crimes.

Johnson was paired with Anslinger, a retired police chief from Ketchikan, Alaska.

Part of the draw, of course, is to feel the camaraderie of being back in a law enforcement office. But there’s more to it.

“There’s that mentality. I like to see the bad guys go to jail,” Johnson said. “I want to see cases solved.”

Wanless worked as a Secret Service agent and retired as a captain from the Sheriff’s Office.

For the past few months he’s been going through three volumes on Nordstrom’s 1999 disappearance.

“A lot of the players are dead,” he said. “What I’m doing now is due diligence. We think he probably is dead, so I’m doing credit checks and Social Security checks and looking for any activity that would lead us to believe he might be alive.”

So far, he’s found nothing. Eventually he’ll switch cases with Cosner, his partner, and add yet another set of eyes on the case. Cosner retired as a sergeant from the Sheriff’s Office after 23 years in law enforcement. The pair joined the cold case squad a few months ago.

“Maybe the other person will see something I missed,” Wanless said.

Investigations reopened

The cold case squad doesn’t always agree with how the initial investigation took place.

“Sometimes it feels like somebody came to an immediate conclusion, and they focused so much on it that they lost sight” of other leads, Wanless said. “You can see that in a couple cases.”

But that’s easy to say now, Wanless noted, with the clarity of hindsight.

For Cosner, it’s a bit personal. Before retiring, he worked some of the cases that were never solved. It’s a chance to try again.

“We all have those cases, the ones we didn’t solve, that we didn’t get done,” he said.

It’s hard not to get attached. Johnson said that in the years he’s spent searching for Wickersham’s killer, he’s learned more about her family members and what the murder did to them. He wants to give them an answer.

“The primary thing is to bring closure to the family,” Wanless said. “And we don’t like to see someone running around (who got away with murder).”

There have been promising leads. They’ve traveled to other states, checked areas with cadaver dogs and interviewed people around the country. But the squad hasn’t yet cracked a case.

“It gets real frustrating sometimes,” Johnson said. “You’re dealing with people who have died. You get less and less people you can contact.”

There are other frustrations: issues with how evidence was handled years ago, for example, or tracking down women whose last names have changed.

But the detectives say they enjoy the work.

“I think I hope that sometime we’ll get a break and we’ll actually find out who did it,” Johnson said.

For some cases, it might be a person arrested on a drug charge who has information. In others, it could be a person who can no longer live with the pressure of keeping details from authorities. But Johnson said someone probably holds the details to one of the cases, and he wants to find that person.

“I truly believe there’s somebody out there who knows something.”

Unsolved

Central Oregon’s 18 cold cases and their corresponding agencies:

Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office

541-447-6398

• Susan Wickersham: The unsolved crime that sparked the formation of the Deschutes cold case squad. Wickersham, then 17 and a Bend High student, disappeared July 11, 1973. She dropped off her mother’s car at the Sage Room Restaurant next to the Tower Theatre around 11:30 p.m. and was last seen walking in downtown Bend, perhaps on her way to the Deschutes River Woods area. Wickersham’s remains were found three years later by a man looking for firewood on what is now the east side of U.S. Highway 97 near Deschutes River Woods. Her skull shows she had been shot once in the head.

• Baby Doe: A garbage collector in Terrebonne found the decapitated body of a newborn baby girl in a garbage can near Fergusons Market on May 20, 1986. Investigators believe the baby was murdered within 42 hours before her body’s discovery.

• Angela Lynn Chan: Chan disappeared on March 27, 1989, after her husband, Bruce Chan, reported dropping her off at their Redmond home. Bruce Chan was on leave from his Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in California for Easter, and the couple had been trap-shooting in an area near State Highway 126. Her yellow Datsun B-210 was found along the highway near Dry Canyon on March 29, 1989, with her purse and shoes inside. Chan was 29 at the time of her disappearance. She was never found.

• Ron Louis Nordstrom: Nordstrom was last seen June 9, 1999, when he left his home on Yucca Avenue in Redmond on his blue mountain bike. He was reported missing by family five days later. He hasn’t been seen since. Nordstrom was 46 at the time of his disappearance.

• Corwin Charles Osborn: On June 17, 2001, the 45-year-old left the Devils Lake Trailhead to hike the North, Middle and South Sister mountains. Osborn, of Bellevue, Wash., was last seen by a hiker who passed him on the trail to the summit of South Sister around 7 a.m. He had a one-day supply of water and food, and was due to meet his father at Lava Camp around 9 p.m. that day. He never returned from his hike. Search and rescue volunteers searched 150 miles of the wilderness in the week after Osborn disappeared, but found nothing.

• Gary Alan Larsen: Larsen, 28, was last seen by friends on Sept. 16, 2001, at Shari’s Restaurant in Redmond, where they were having breakfast after staying out all night, reportedly spending part of the evening at the Fireside Grille and Lounge. At the time of his disappearance Larsen lived with his mother, worked for Hap Taylor & Sons Inc., now Knife River Corp., and was associated with known drug users. He drove a white 1995 Dodge pickup, license number XTN945. Neither Larsen nor the vehicle was ever found.

• Dee Marion McLemore: McLemore went missing in October 1989 after he departed the Sunriver airport in his 1984 Beechcraft Bonanza. He was headed for Reno, Nev., and had some health problems at the time of the flight. Authorities believe his airplane crashed somewhere in Oregon, California or Nevada, but the wreckage has never been found.

Bend Police Department

541-322-2960

• Judy Reeder: Last seen Feb. 1, 1962, Reeder was a 17-year-old Bend High homecoming princess who parked her 1955 Ford sedan along Riverside Boulevard at 10 p.m. and was never seen alive again. Her body was found under the footbridge in 4 inches of water a day later by children playing in Drake Park. An autopsy revealed she had been struck in the head 13 times, possibly with a two-by-four, and evidence showed she was dragged to an area near the retaining wall of Mirror Pond.

• Mary Jo Templeton: On April 30, 1979, a Pacific Power and Light employee found a human thigh on the grate above the turbine at the north end of Mirror Pond. That thigh and additional body parts found by scuba teams in the next weeks were identified as those of Templeton, a waitress and hostess in Redmond and Bend. Templeton last spoke to a friend on April 26, 1979, and the state medical examiner determined her body had been cut apart with a heavy knife. In 1988, the FBI’s violent crimes clearinghouse found that the dismemberment matched four murders in Missouri and two in Tennessee, all of which remain unsolved.

• John C. Talbott: Talbott was shot on the evening of July 7, 1979, as he played pool with his girlfriend at the Westside Tavern on Galveston Avenue. Talbott was near the back of the bar around 10:30 p.m. when witnesses heard a pop and Talbott, 50, fell to the floor and died of a .38-caliber shot to the lung. At the time, a woman told authorities she heard a car door slam and saw headlights come on at the nearby gas station.

• Thomas Michael Gaines: On Feb. 2, 1986, Gaines was found shot to death in Gene Rhodes’ southeast Bend backyard. After a rock was thrown through his bathroom window around 10 p.m., Rhodes went to investigate and found the 43-year-old dead. Gaines had been shot in the chest, stomach and back with a .38-caliber gun.

Crook County Sheriff’s Office

541-447-6398

• Jerry Dale Calhoun: Calhoun disappeared May 30, 1999, from his Prineville home. His wife was the last to see him. Calhoun’s brother found his blue 1990 Subaru wagon on U.S. Highway 26 near Mount Hood six days later, but Calhoun was never found. Authorities said he had previously gone missing for days at a time.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office

541-475-6520

• Jackalin Ann Thompson: Thompson’s husband, Steven, told authorities his wife left their Culver home at 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2001, and never returned. The 28-year-old was going for a walk on Juniper Butte. In May 2003, mushroom pickers found her body 25 miles southwest of Madras, but authorities couldn’t determine the cause of death.

Oregon State Police

541-388-6213

• John Doe: An off-duty state trooper and his wife found skeletal remains while hiking below Rimrock south of Prineville on March 31, 1988. Near the bones were a short-billed cap, a large Jack Daniel’s belt buckle and some Canadian cigarettes. The remains haven’t been identified.

• James Phillip Brooks: Brooks was 23 and working as a ranch hand when he was shot in the chest by a high-powered rifle on Sept. 20, 1994, on ranch property 18 miles northeast of Mitchell. He was last seen riding a horse from the Fopiano Ranch. The horse and dog with him returned to the ranch that night. Brooks’ body was discovered two days later on a ridge running along the north side of Waterman Flat, two miles from any road.

• Shannon Elizabeth Rishel: Rishel, 25, of Redmond, was reported missing by her boyfriend, Jeff Gilmore, on July 9, 1995. Gilmore told authorities they were driving on a dirt road near Rufus, surrounded by 800-foot cliffs, when his white Camaro became stuck. He said he fell asleep and when he awoke Rishel was gone. Rishel’s clothing, purse and other personal items were found in the car, although she may have had a change of clothes with her.

• Danny Sweet: Sweet, 31, was reported missing on Jan. 2, 1993, by Mitchell residents who last saw him. His skeletal remains were found three years later by two antler hunters in a forested area eight miles northeast of Mount Vernon.

Portland Police Bureau

503-823-0446

• Katie Eggleston: Born and raised in Redmond, 22-year-old Eggleston was last seen on Aug. 2, 1993, near Lloyd Center in northeast Portland. Her car was found in the mall parking lot by a security guard that night, unlocked with the keys in the ignition and Eggleston’s purse on the seat. She was never found.

— Sheila Miller, The Bulletin