Ghosts of Highway 20

Last updated December 19, 2024

The Ghosts of Highway 20 refer to a number of individuals who disappeared, or were victims of rape and murder, along Highway 20 in the U.S. state of Oregon from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.^[1]^[2] John Arthur Ackroyd, a highway mechanic with the Oregon Department of Transportation, was a suspect in these cases. Detectives were able to prosecute the murder of Kaye Turner of 1978,^[1] for which he was sentenced to five life sentences for aggravated murder. Ackroyd pleaded no contest in the murder of his stepdaughter Rachanda Pickle and agreed to not seek parole for the murder of Turner. A case was developed against Ackroyd for the murders of Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson, but Ackroyd died before the case could be presented to the Lincoln County, Oregon grand jury. Marlene Gabrielsen was the only known victim to have lived and is the first known victim. Her case was not prosecuted.

The title was adopted by The Oregonian , which published the cold-case stories of the forgotten women who disappeared along the route. The team that worked on the multiple-part series were reporter Noelle Crombie, video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.^[2] It is also the title of the album The Ghosts of Highway 20 by Lucinda Williams.

Marlene Gabrielsen

In the late spring of 1977, 20-year-old Marlene Gabrielsen went to Sisters, Oregon for the rodeo with her husband. The rodeo was ninety miles from their home in Lebanon and was her first night out since she had given birth to her baby girl three months earlier. She and her husband got in a disagreement and he wanted to split off with some friends. Marlene wanted to go back home.^[1]^[2]

I thought there was nothing wrong... all I knew it was just a beat-up old truck and I was going home to my kid... I noticed that there was no like covers on the doors. There was no handles, and no roll-you-down thing… didn't even faze me that this was a trap.

—Marlene Gabrielsen, of her ride with John Arthur Ackroyd^[3]

John Arthur Ackroyd gave her a ride, during which she fell asleep. One hour later, he pulled off the highway onto an old wagon road. He held a knife to her neck and dragged her into the woods where he ripped off her jeans, cut off her underwear and boots with the knife. He then raped her. After she pleaded to be taken to her home and her baby, he decided to drive her to her mother-in-law's house in Lebanon. Gabrielsen was careful to preserve evidence and asked for the police to be called. She described him as someone big and burly who may have worked in the woods. Although the evidence, including the rape kit and her bruised body, supported her story, the police did not prosecute Ackroyd. She was interviewed again after other women and girls went missing or were killed. She is believed to have been Ackroyd's first victim.^[1]^[2]

Kaye Turner

Kaye Turner spent the Christmas holiday of 1978 with her husband and their friends at Camp Sherman, Oregon in central Oregon.^[4] Kaye, 35, and her husband were from Eugene, Oregon. She was staff resources manager of the Lane County Office of Community Health and Social Services.^[5] That year, Turner completed marathons and climbed Three Fingered Jack and Mount Washington.^[4]

On Christmas Eve, she went on a run by herself before breakfast at about 8:15 a.m. She embarked on a run expected to take one hour along a two-lane camp road. Thomas Hanna, a state highway worker who lived at Camp Sherman, spotted her running south and he also saw another highway worker, John Ackroyd.^[4] Her husband Noel Turner drove through Camp Sherman looking for his wife when she had not returned by 10 a.m. Fearing his wife had been kidnapped, he phoned the police and a search was organized. The police originally suspected Noel in his wife's disappearance due to her extramarital affairs with two men. They interviewed Ackroyd who got off of work at 6:30 a.m. He was based in Santiam Junction, Oregon and drove to Camp Sherman, about 25 miles from work. He said that he planned on hunting coyotes. Ackroyd mentioned that he had seen a runner in a clearing, but the police did not consider him a suspect.^[4]

During the searches for Turner, two sets of footprints were found in the frozen snow. One matched Turner's Nike shoes. The other set was consistent with footprints of a large man. The scene indicated that there had been a scuffle and the smaller person being dragged away.^[4]

In August 1979, Ackroyd reported that he had found Turner's remains in the woods, about a half mile off the road that she had been running along.^[4] She had been kidnapped, raped, and killed.^[1]^[2] Police were surprised that Ackroyd had claimed the remains were of Kaye Turner, because little was found of her besides scraps of her clothes and scattered bones. He also said that he was the last person to see her. Over time, he disclosed that he talked with her before picking up another man, Roger Dale Beck, who was a friend and fellow hunter who lived in the Camp Sherman area. Ackroyd said that he saw her remains two months after her disappearance, but did not report the sighting.^[4]^[5] It was not until Ackroyd's step-daughter Rachanda Pickle went missing in 1990 that the police began to earnestly investigate Ackroyd and collect new information.^[5]

Ackroyd and Beck were indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury and arrested in 1992.^[5] Ackroyd was convicted in October 1993 of aggravated murder in the rape, murder and shooting of Turner^[2]^[6] for which he received a life sentence.^[7] Beck, who bragged to his family about killing Turner,^[8] was also found guilty in November 1993 of the aggravated murder of Kaye Turner by a Jefferson County Circuit jury at a separate trial.^[6]^[9] Testimony from Beck's ex-wife, Pam Ramirez and new forensic testing are credited with helping prosecute the case. Jefferson County District Attorney Bill Hanlon said that Ackroyd had tried to get the reward for finding Turner. If he had been silent, "this case would have gone nowhere".^[6]

Rachanda Pickle

13-year-old Rachanda Pickle, was the daughter of Linda Pickle who married Ackroyd in the mid-1980s. They lived at Santiam Junction at Oregon 22 and U.S. Highway 20, where state highway work crews lived. The area is remote and there were no children her age there. She was bused to school. Ackroyd was physically and sexually abusive to her. One day Rachanda was left at home alone. Ackroyd decided to take the day off and he returned home in the morning. She was never seen again.^[10] A massive search was conducted by 100 police officers from seven counties, but was unsuccessful in finding any leads to Rachanda's disappearance.^[11] Assumed to be dead, searches for her continued into 1993.^[12]

After compiling evidence including a number of interviews,^[12] police arrested Ackroyd and he was charged with Rachanda's murder in April 2014.^[13] He entered a plea deal.^[1]^[2] According to Linn County District Attorney Doug Marteeny, his office reached a deal with Byron Pickle, the victim's brother, that placed the prosecution of the murder on hold "in a manner that would ensure that Mr. Ackroyd would remain in prison until his death."^[14]^[8] Ackroyd pleaded no contest and agreed not to seek parole, meaning that he would die in prison.^[8]

Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson

Melissa Sanders, 17, and Sheila Swanson, 19, had been on a camping trip at Beverly Beach State Park with the Sanders family in the spring of 1992. The girls became bored and had decided to hitchhike. When the Sanders woke in the morning, the girls were gone and presumed to have had friends bring them back to Sweet Home.^[1]^[15]

The girls lived inland off of Highway 20, where they frequented a Shari's restaurant. Ackroyd, who was also a frequent customer at the restaurant, was suspected to have been involved in their disappearance. The night of the girl's disappearance, Ackroyd had returned to the state highway shop in Sweet Home covered in blood, which he stated belonged to a deer he had encountered and had to "gut…out.” When asked what happened to the deer’s carcass, Ackroyd said that he had thrown it in the brush near where he worked along Highway 20 between the coast and Sweet Home.^[15]

Local hunters found Sanders and Swanson’s bodies near an old logging spur off of Highway 20. They were among a number of women and girls who disappeared along Oregon's coast.^[16]^[8] Five teens disappeared from Lincoln County on Oregon's coast alone between 1984 and 1995. Melissa and Sheila's bodies were found about a month before Ackroyd was charged for the murder of Kaye Turner. Ackroyd declined to be interviewed by the police in the Sanders and Swanson case. There was no forensic evidence that tied Ackroyd to the murder of the girls, but investigators found that Ackroyd had met them earlier and offered them a ride. They also learned that he had once invited them to a party that he said he was hosting near Newport and the campground that they stayed at in 1992. Ackroyd was also seen three times near where the girls bodies were found on a logging road off of Highway 20.^[15]^[8]

Ron Benson, an investigator for the Lincoln County District Attorney's Office, connected the cases of Marlene Gabrielsen in 1977 with the case of Kaye Turner in 1978, as well as the disappearance of Ackroyd's stepdaughter, Rachanda, in 1990, and Melissa and Sheila’s murders in 1992. Police reopened the 1992 case in 2012 with Benson and Linda Snow investigating. Benson determined that there were similarities between the disparate cases and evidence against Ackroyd, such as the killer not having buried victims’ remains, Ackroyd taking time off around the time of the crimes, and the connection to wildlife and hunting in his statements about what he was doing at the time of the crimes. Investigators located the men who had seen Ackroyd arrive very late after his shift and covered in blood. They then had enough evidence for a grand jury.^[15] Since Ackroyd was already in prison and it would be expensive to prosecute the case, the case was closed.^[8]

Further cases

Police have tied the four homicide and one assault and rape cases to Ackroyd, and also believe him to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of other people in the area at the time he was suspected to have been active. A moss hunter in Linn County at Sweet Home, Oregon discovered the unidentified skeletal remains of a woman on July 24, 1976, along Highway 20 close to Swamp Mountain Road. Ackroyd is the prime suspect in her presumed murder but her identity still remains unestablished and she is referred to by authorities as the Swamp Mountain Jane Doe.^[17]

14-year-old Rodney Lynn Grissom and 15-year-old Karen Jean Lee were last seen in 1977 in Cornelius, Oregon on May 24 and 26 respectively. Authorities believe Grissom left with Lee intending to hitchhike to California, only to disappear two days after taking off. The two teens called a friend from a payphone in Lebanon, Oregon after leaving home, which was cut short when Karen said, "Our ride is here. I have to go."^[18]^[19] Karen and Rodney were never seen again. Later that year, in Linn County, Oregon, close to Highway 20, some of the couple's possessions were discovered. The items included Rodney's watch and some of his other belongings, along with Karen's trousers, some notebook pages, and a blouse that she had made. Karen's jeans looked like they had been cut. Elizabeth Mussler, 22, vanished in downtown Lebanon in the summer of 1977. The following year, her bones were discovered in a shallow grave in the woods near Green Peter Reservoir's Thistle Creek exit on Highway 20 in Linn County.

On April 27, 1978, another unidentified woman's skull was found in a wooded area off of U.S. Route 20 in eastern Linn County, Oregon. It was initially speculated that this decedent was the missing woman Karen Lee, but this was eventually ruled out. The victim remains unidentified and is known by authorities as the Linn County Jane Doe.^[20] On August 27, 1978, at 7 a.m., two men from Milton-Freewater, Oregon were hunting in the Finley Creek Cow Camp close to Elgin when they came across skeletal remains at a nearby grave. The remains were spread around, and the skull appeared to be sticking out of the grave. She had been buried face down in the shallow grave. She was also pregnant, and estimated to have been in the sixth to the eighth month of her pregnancy. She is known as Finley Creek Jane Doe.^[21]

In 1986, two Forest Service workers found a partial human skull, some additional bone fragments and one tooth near Government Camp off U.S. 26 on Mount Hood in Clackamas County, Oregon. The skull was not identified at the time until when the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office got a grant to begin DNA analysis on more than 100 sets of unidentified human remains, including the Mount Hood skull. Genealogical investigation and DNA testing on the skull identified Wanda Ann Herr, aged 19, as a potential match. Authorities were able to identify her by finding her living sisters. When Herr vanished in June 1976, she was residing in a group home in Gresham, Oregon. As no missing persons report had been made at the time, it was assumed that she had been a runaway.^[22]

Related Research Articles

<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.

Ellsworth Culver was an American humanitarian and aid worker and the co-founder of Mercy Corps International and sexual abuser.

James Michael Francke was an American judge from New Mexico and director of the state's Corrections Department, the governmental bureau which manages prisons, inmates, and parolees. He was later appointed by then-Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt to oversee a plan to double the state's inmate capacity as director of Oregon's Department of Corrections. On January 18, 1989, his body was discovered outside the department's office building in Salem; an autopsy determined he had been murdered the night before. A local petty criminal was eventually tried and convicted for the crime, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, the convicted killer maintains his innocence, and several conspiracy theories have been advocated, claiming that the killing was a murder for hire conducted by corrupt state prison officials threatened by an investigation Francke was conducting into prison mismanagement. In 2019, the man convicted for the murder of Francke was released from prison after his murder conviction was thrown out by a federal magistrate in Portland, who ruled he did not receive a fair trial; four years later, he was given a full release when his indictment by the county was dismissed with prejudice and his murder conviction was expunged from the record.

In 1985, a group of high-ranking Rajneeshees, followers of the Indian mystic Shree Rajneesh, conspired to assassinate Charles Turner, the then-United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Rajneesh's personal secretary and second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela, assembled the group after Turner was appointed to investigate illegal activity at the followers' community, Rajneeshpuram. Turner investigated charges of immigration fraud and sham marriages, and later headed the federal prosecution of the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon.

Charles H. Turner was an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Prior to his presidential appointment as U.S. Attorney, Turner worked under his predecessor, Sidney I. Lezak, for 14 years. He was appointed as Lezak's replacement by President Ronald Reagan.

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.

Sybil Virginia Plumlee was an American teacher, caseworker, and police officer who served in Portland, Oregon's Women's Protective Division, a special unit of the Portland Police Bureau, from 1947 to 1967. She is recognized as a pioneer in the law enforcement field, which has historically been dominated by men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bobby Jack Fowler</span> American criminal (1939-2006)

Bobby Jack Fowler was an American rapist and suspected serial killer who was active in the United States and Canada from 1973 to 1995. He died in prison of lung cancer during a 16-year sentence following a conviction for rape, kidnapping and attempted rape in Newport, Oregon, in 1996.

The Redhead murders is the media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded females in the United States between October 1978 and 1992, believed to have been committed by an unidentified male serial killer. The murders believed to be related have occurred in states including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The murders may have continued until 1992. The victims, many remaining unidentified for years, were usually women with reddish hair, whose bodies were abandoned along major highways in the United States. Officials believe that the women were likely hitchhiking or may have engaged in prostitution.

Cylvia Lynne Hayes is an American consultant who was the First Lady of Oregon from 2011 to 2015 as the fiancée of former Governor John Kitzhaber. Hayes was an unsuccessful candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives in 2002, running against state representative Ben Westlund. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Janelle Sojourner Bynum is an American politician and businesswoman serving as a member of the Oregon House of Representatives. She is a member of the Democratic Party and currently represents the 39th district, which covers northern Clackamas County, including most of Happy Valley and parts of Oregon City, Milwaukie and the surrounding area.

On May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two men and injured a third after he was confronted for shouting racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two black teenagers, Destinee Mangum and Walia Mohamed, on a MAX Light Rail train in Portland, Oregon, United States. Two of the victims, Ricky John Best of Happy Valley and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche of Portland, were killed; the third victim, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, survived with serious wounds.

Laverne Arlyce Pavlinac was an American woman who falsely confessed to assisting in the 1990 murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennett of Portland, Oregon; she also implicated her boyfriend, John Sosnovske, in Bennett's murder. Both Pavlinac and Sosnovske were convicted, with Pavlinac receiving a 10-year sentence. They served almost 6 years before both were exonerated after serial killer Keith Jesperson confessed to Bennett's 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 (38) and her wife, Sarah Hart (38), murdered themselves and their six adopted children: Ciera (12), Abigail (14), Jeremiah (14), Devonte (15), Hannah (16), and Markis (19). Jennifer intentionally drove their sports utility vehicle off a cliff, killing everyone in the family. Jennifer was in the driver's seat, and Sarah was in the front passenger seat.

Jami L. Resch is the former chief of police of the police bureau of Portland, Oregon, United States. She served in that role from December 31, 2019, until June 8, 2020.

John Arthur Ackroyd was an American murderer and suspected serial killer. In 1992, he was sentenced to five life terms in prison for the abduction and murder of Kaye Turner.

Michael Schmidt is an American attorney and a progressive prosecutor. He has served as the Multnomah County District Attorney since August 2020. Originally set to begin his term on January 1, 2021, Governor Kate Brown appointed him to the job early, in August 2020, to replace Rod Underhill, who retired in July. Schmidt will be succeeded by Nathan Vasquez on January 1, 2025 at the end of his term after conceding loss in the primary election in May 2024.

On February 19, 2022, Benjamin Jeffrey Smith approached and assaulted a small group of protesters, at the edge of Normandale Park in Portland, Oregon, United States. He murdered one, caused the paralysis of another from the shoulders down, and seriously injured three others, including a bystander who had approached to deescalate.

Homer Lee Jackson III was an American serial killer who killed at least three women and one teenager in Portland, Oregon from 1983 to 1993. The killings remained unsolved until forensic evidence led to his arrest in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Elizabeth Roberts</span> Murder victim unidentified for 43 years

Elizabeth "Lisa" Ann Roberts, otherwise known as Precious Jane Doe, was an American homicide victim found near Everett, Washington on August 14, 1977, who was an unidentified decedent for 43 years until being identified on June 16, 2020. She had been picked up by a male driver while hitchhiking and killed after refusing sex. Her assailant had strangled her with a cord and then emptied his gun into her head, complicating identification. Roberts was a teen runaway who left her Oregon home in July 1977, less than a month before her murder. She was given the nickname "Precious Jane Doe" by Detective Jim Scharf, who began investigating the case in 2008. The detective was quoted as saying, "This young girl was precious to me because her moral decision from her proper upbringing cost her her life [...] I knew she had to be precious to her family too, so I had to find them. We needed to give her name back to her and return her remains to her family." Roberts was 17 at the time of her murder, though initial police estimations of her age were much older. Her body was found by blackberry pickers, and the medical examiner determined she had been dead for approximately 5 days before discovery. She was discovered fully clothed in a pastel tank top and denim cutoffs. As her identity remained unknown, Roberts' case was relegated as a cold case. In 2020, genetic testing via hair samples was used to locate her biological family, who led to her adoptive family.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Crombie, Noelle. "The Ghosts of Highway 20 - Part 1 of 5". The Oregonian. Retrieved September 15, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hare, Kristen (January 29, 2019). "The Oregonian spent years on a story about a serial killer who got away, again and again, with murder". Poynter. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
↑ Crombie, Noelle (December 28, 2018). Ghosts of Highway 20 (video). The Oregonian. Event occurs at 5:03 to 5:59. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Crombie, Noelle. "Ghosts of Highway 20 - Part 2". The Oregonian. Retrieved September 16, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
1 2 3 4 "Man Arrested in Corvallis, charged in woman's slaying". Corvallis Gazette-Times. June 13, 1992. p. 10. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
1 2 3 "Convictions solve 1978 murder". Statesman Journal. November 24, 1993. p. 3. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
↑ Crombie, Noelle (December 31, 2016). "Inmate convicted in notorious Christmas jogger murder found dead in cell". The Oregonian. Retrieved September 16, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Crombie, Noelle. "Ghosts of Highway 20 - Part 5" . Retrieved September 16, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
↑ "Ghosts of Highway 20:John Ackroyd". Oregon Live.
↑ Crombie, Noelle. "Ghosts of Highway 20 - Part 3" . Retrieved September 16, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
↑ Terry, Lynne (April 4, 2013). "Salem inmate charged in murder of girl, 13, who vanished in 1990". The Oregonian. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
1 2 "Detective still looking for missing girl". Albany Democrat-Herald. April 2, 1993. p. 3. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
↑ Odegard, Kyle (2014-01-05). "Linn murder cases". Albany Democrat-Herald. p. 8. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
↑ Paul, Alex (December 30, 2016). "Murder suspect Ackroyd found dead in Salem prison cell". Corvallis Gazette-Times. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
1 2 3 4 Crombie, Noelle. "Ghosts of Highway 20" . Retrieved September 16, 2021. Contributors included video editor and producer Dave Killen, and photojournalist Beth Nakamura.
↑ Scanlan, Chip (August 27, 2019). "Chasing ghosts that will forever haunt". Neiman News, Harvard University. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
↑ "762UFOR". Doe Network . Retrieved October 31, 2022.
↑ "Karen Jean Lee". The Charley Project. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
↑ "Rodney Lynn Grissom". The Charley Project. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
↑ "865UFOR". Doe Network . Retrieved October 31, 2022.
↑ "1258UFOR". Doe Network . Retrieved October 31, 2022.
↑ "Wanda Ann Herr". The Charley Project. Retrieved October 31, 2022.