Disappearances of Shaina Kirkpatrick and Shausha Henson

Last updated
Shaina Kirkpatrick
Born
Shaina Ashley Kirkpatrick

(1997-04-27)April 27, 1997
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
DisappearedApril 4, 2001 (aged 3)
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Status Missing for 23 years and 6 days
Shausha Henson
Born
Shausha Latine Henson

(2001-01-26)January 26, 2001
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
DisappearedApril 4, 2001 (aged 2 months) [1]
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Status Missing for 23 years and 6 days

Shaina Ashley Kirkpatrick [2] (born April 27, 1997) [3] and her sister, Shausha Latine Henson [2] (born January 26, 2001), [4] are two missing American children who vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2001 from Portland, Oregon, United States. [lower-alpha 1] [5] The siblings accompanied their mother, Kimyala Henson, on a road trip with Kimyala's childhood friend, Christina Noel Mayer, and Mayer's boyfriend, Frank Lee Oehring. The group had intended to travel to Canada, but first drove to California, where Kimyala obtained her birth certificate.

Contents

Two weeks later, Mayer and Oehring were found dead in a murder–suicide at a rest area in Collier County, Florida. Eight days later, Kimyala Henson's body was discovered in a rural area near Pyramid Lake in Nevada; she had been bludgeoned with a hatchet and shot to death. Mayer and Oehring were assumed responsible for Kimyala's murder, and evidence showed that Mayer had assumed Henson's identity, and that she and Oehring had used Kimyala's credit cards to purchase gasoline and food. According to subsequent reports, Oehring allegedly led a Satanist group in Stewartsville, Missouri, of which Mayer was a member.

Despite widespread searches, neither Shaina Kirkpatrick nor Shausha Henson were located, and as of 2023, their whereabouts remain unknown.

Timeline

Background and disappearance

The siblings, Shaina Kirkpatrick (age 3) and Shausha Henson (age approximately 2 months) departed on a road trip from their home in Portland, Oregon, with their mother, Kimyala Henson. Kimyala was accompanied by her childhood friend, [6] Christina Noel Mayer, and Frank Lee Oehring, a fugitive from Stewartsville, Missouri wanted by police after the attempted murder of his ex-wife. [7] Mayer introduced Oehring to Kimyala as her husband, using the pseudonym of Curtis. Oehring reportedly led a Satanist group in Missouri, of which Mayer was an alleged member. [8]

Mayer and Oehring had made a surprise visit to the Portland area on approximately April 2, 2001, claiming they were scouting locations with the intent to possibly move there. [7] Mayer was able to contact Kimyala using a phone book. [7] The former childhood friends spent a week together before Oehring offered to take Mayer, Kimyala, and her daughters on a vacation to British Columbia, Canada, an invitation Kimyala accepted. [7]

Kimyala and her daughters were last seen at a hotel in Redding, California on April 5, 2001, accompanied by Mayer and Oehring. Earlier that day, the group had stopped in Sacramento to obtain Kimyala's birth certificate, as it is believed Mayer and Oehring convinced her she would need the document to enter Canada. [7] Two days after the group had embarked on their road trip, Kimyala's mother died in Portland; when family members attempted to contact her by phone to notify her of the news, they were unable to reach her. [7]

Murder–suicide of Mayer and Oehring

On April 20, 2001, an off-duty deputy found Mayer shot to death with a .22 caliber rifle in an apparent murder–suicide beside a picnic table at a rest area in Collier County, Florida. [6] [7] Oehring, who had shot himself in the head nearby, was still alive. He was flighted to Lee Memorial Hospital in Naples, where he died later that day. [9] In a garbage can at the rest area, Kimyala's birth certificate was discovered by authorities, torn in half. [6] Further investigation yielded that Kimyala's credit cards had been used to purchase gasoline and food through numerous states between April 6 and April 9, 2001, and that Mayer had fraudulently obtained a Nevada state identification card using Kimyala's identity. [6] The Kia Sephia that the group had traveled in was left parked at the rest area; inside the car, a diaper bag was found, but no other evidence of the missing children could be located. [6]

Discovery of Kimyala Henson

On April 28, 2001, eight days after the discovery of Mayer and Oehring, Kimyala Henson's body was found partially buried near Pyramid Lake, approximately 37 miles (60 km) north of Wadsworth, Nevada. [8] [6] She had been bludgeoned with a hatchet and shot to death. Ballistics analysis concluded that Kimyala had been shot with the same gun used in Mayer and Oehring's murder–suicide. [10]

Developments

As of 2023, the whereabouts of Kirkpatrick and Henson remain unknown.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ While the siblings went missing en route to California, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's website lists them as missing from Portland, Oregon, where they resided and from where they departed; the Portland Police Bureau is listed as the agency in charge of the case. [3] [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portland, Oregon</span> Largest city in Oregon, United States

Portland is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated in the northwestern area of the state at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, it is the county seat of Multnomah County, Oregon's most populous county. As of 2020, Portland's population was 652,503, making it the 26th-most populous city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA metropolitan statistical area, making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bend, Oregon</span> City in Oregon, United States

Bend is a city in Central Oregon and the county seat of Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. It is located to the east of the Cascade Range, on the Deschutes River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matricide</span> Act of killing ones own mother

Matricide is the act of killing one's own mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randall Woodfield</span> American serial killer and rapist

Randall Brent Woodfield is an American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, robber, burglar and former football player who was dubbed the I-5 Killer or the I-5 Bandit by the media due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corridor running through Washington, Oregon and California. Before his capture, Woodfield was suspected of multiple sexual assaults and murders. Though convicted in only one murder, he has been linked to a total of eighteen murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel David Moore</span> American character actor and director

Joel David Moore is an American character actor and director. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Moore studied acting in college before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. His first major role was as Owen Dittman in the 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, followed by roles in the comedy Grandma's Boy (2006), Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential (2006), and the independent slasher film Hatchet (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ward Weaver III</span> American convicted murderer (born 1963)

Ward Francis Weaver III is an American convicted murderer. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for sexual assault, rape, attempted murder, and the murders of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis in Oregon City, Oregon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tommy Lynn Sells</span> American serial killer

Tommy Lynn Sells was an American serial killer. Though convicted of only one murder, for which he received the death penalty and was eventually executed, authorities believe he committed a total of 22 murders. Sells himself claimed on various occasions to have murdered over 70 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald and Charlene Gallego</span> American serial killer duo

Gerald Armond Gallego and Charlene Adell Gallego were two American serial killers and rapists who were active mainly in Sacramento, California, between 1978 and 1980. They murdered at least eleven victims, mostly teenagers, often kept as sex slaves before killing them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roberts Field</span> Airport in Redmond serving Central Oregon, United States

Redmond Municipal Airport is in Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. It is owned and operated by the city of Redmond, Oregon.

A familicide is a type of murder or murder-suicide in which an individual kills multiple close family members in quick succession, most often children, spouses, siblings, or parents. In half the cases, the killer lastly kills themselves in a murder-suicide. If only the parents are killed, the case may also be referred to as a parricide. Where all members of a family are killed, the crime may be referred to as family annihilation.

The rate of crime in Oregon, at least since 1985, has varied from below the United States national average to slightly above, depending on if one is looking at violent crime or property crime statistics. The violent crime rate remained below the national average every year between 1985 and 2022, while property crime generally remained above the average during that time. Every year between 2011 and 2020, Oregon maintained one of the 20 lowest violent crime rates in the United States. However, some of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history were known for killing or operating in Oregon, including perhaps the most famous, Ted Bundy, as well as the second most prolific in terms of confirmed murders, Gary Ridgway, among many others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disappearance of Kyron Horman</span> Unsolved 2010 disappearance of an American boy

Kyron Richard Horman is an American boy who disappeared from Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, on June 4, 2010, after attending a science fair. Local and state police, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), conducted an exhaustive search and launched a criminal investigation, but have not uncovered any significant information regarding the child's whereabouts. Horman's disappearance sparked the largest criminal investigation in Oregon history. To this day, his whereabouts remain unknown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Laurence Marquette</span> American serial killer

Richard Lawrence Marquette is an American serial killer who killed three women, drained their blood, mutilated and dismembered their bodies, and scattered their remains between 1961 and 1975. He was the first person ever to be added as an eleventh name on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List, in connection with the 1961 murder of Joan Caudle in Portland, Oregon. He is currently incarcerated at Oregon State Correctional Institution.

Thelma Anne Taylor was an American teenager who was abducted and murdered in Portland, Oregon in 1949, after having disappeared on August 5. Her body was discovered the following week, on August 11. Taylor's murder received national attention and became a cause célèbre. The perpetrator, Morris Leland, was executed in 1953. The murder occurred in the St. Johns neighborhood of North Portland near the St. Johns Bridge and land that is now in Cathedral Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Longo</span> American mass murderer

Christian Michael Longo is a convicted murderer who killed his wife and three children in Oregon in December 2001.

Neal Martin Falls was an American suspected serial killer who was shot and killed in self-defense by Heather Saul, a woman in Charleston, West Virginia. Falls had been stopped by police in over twenty states during his life but did not incur any serious criminal charges. Only after his death did police discover evidence possibly tying Falls to other crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oak Grove Jane Doe</span>

Oak Grove Jane Doe is an unidentified murder victim found dismembered in the Willamette River south of Portland, Oregon near Oak Grove over a period of several months in 1946. The first discovery consisted of a woman's torso which was found wrapped in burlap, floating near the Wisdom Light moorage on April 12, 1946; this led the media to dub the case the Wisdom Light Murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hart family murders</span> 2018 murder–suicide in California, US

The Hart family murders was a murder–suicide which took place on March 26, 2018, in Mendocino County, California, United States. Jennifer Hart and her wife, Sarah Hart, murdered their six adopted children — Ciera (12), Abigail (14), Jeremiah (14), Devonte (15), Hannah (16), and Markis (19) — when Jennifer intentionally drove the family's sport utility vehicle off a cliff. Jennifer was in the driver’s seat, and Sarah was in the front passenger seat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ardenwald axe murders</span>

The Ardenwald axe murders is an unsolved mass murder that occurred in the early morning of June 9, 1911, in Ardenwald, Oregon, United States, then a neighboring community of Portland. The victims were the Hill family: William Hill, his wife Ruth, and Ruth's two children from a previous marriage, Philip and Dorothy. All four victims had been bludgeoned to death with an axe.

<i>Undine</i> (Columbia River sternwheeler) American passenger steamboat

Undine was a sternwheel-driven steamboat that operated from 1887 to 1935 on the Columbia and lower Willamette rivers. From 1935 to 1940 the same vessel was operated under the name The Dalles.

References

  1. ↑ Ferkenhoff, Erik; Hauck, Grace (September 23, 2021). "Do you know where they are? 43 missing persons cases the FBI needs help solving". USA Today . Archived from the original on March 27, 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Missing Persons Cases: Multnomah County". Oregon State Police . Oregon.gov. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Shain Ashley Kirkpatrick". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Shausha Latine Henson". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022.
  5. ↑ KTVZ News Team (May 26, 2019). "FBI still looking for 3 missing Oregon children". KTVZ . Archived from the original on June 10, 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gardner, Tom (May 9, 2001). "Body of Oregon mother found". St. Joseph News-Press . pp. 1, 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Ex-boyfriend says he questioned wisdom of trip". Albany Democrat-Herald . April 24, 2001. p. A4 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. 1 2 "3 Killings Deepen the Mystery of 2 Missing Children". Los Angeles Times . May 9, 2001. Archived from the original on June 10, 2022.
  9. ↑ "Oregon mother, children missing". Tampa Tribune . April 24, 2001. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ "A year of murder mysteries". Reno Gazette-Journal . July 16, 2001. pp. A1, A3 – via Newspapers.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.