Oregon Museum Tavern Shooting | |
---|---|
Location | Salem, Oregon, U.S. |
Date | May 7, 1981 10:30 p.m. |
Target | Oregon Museum Tavern |
Attack type | Mass murder, shooting spree, mass shooting |
Weapons | 9mm Browning HP handgun |
Deaths | 5 (including 1 who died in 2013) |
Injured | 18 |
Perpetrator | Lawrence William Moore |
The Oregon Museum Tavern shooting occurred on May 7, 1981, at the Oregon Museum Tavern in Salem, Oregon, United States.
At the time of the incident, Lawrence William Moore (born October 1955) was a 25-year-old unemployed mill worker from Scio, Oregon. On May 7, 1981, at 10:30 pm, Moore walked into the crowded Oregon Museum Tavern on Front Street NE during a ladies' night event. Without saying a word, he began to fire his 9mm Browning handgun. [1] [2] [3] Moore first fired at the bar, before turning the weapon at patrons who began to flee. [3]
Throughout the shooting, he spent multiple magazines. [4] While reloading, a bar patron began hitting him with a pool cue and he was overpowered and pinned to the ground by several of the patrons. He was held down until the police arrived. [5]
3 people died on-site and 20 were wounded; one of whom died at the hospital later that night. Dennis Scharf eventually succumbed to his injuries nearly 32 years later. In the end, a total of 5 people lost their lives and 18 were injured.
Lawrence was described by neighbors as a typical country boy. He enjoyed shooting guns and often practiced shooting targets at home, he was polite and a hard worker. He was regularly seen walking around the neighborhood with his golden retriever, Thaddeus. Neighbors and coworkers recall him being shy and an on-time worker. [5] Former classmates painted a different picture of Moore, though. They described him as appearing 'disturbed' and aloof. They said he became more reclusive as more time after high school passed. When they would see him in public and try to speak with him, he would walk away without saying a word in the middle of the conversation. [5]
At trial, beginning on October 6, 1981, he pleaded innocent to the murder charges, citing mental disease or defect as a defense; however, he admitted to being the gunman. Moore stated the reason for the shooting that he was trying to apprehend members of a 'syndicate' of millionaires, Jews and criminals who had been trying to poison him.
Moore was subsequently found guilty of four counts of aggravated murder and sentenced to four life terms in prison. [6] As of December of 2024, Moore remains incarcerated in the Oregon State Penitentiary, in Salem, Oregon, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections. [7]
The names of the deceased victims are included in a joint memorial wall at Oregon City's Mountain View Cemetery that memorializes some 390 people that were murdered. The memorial was dedicated by The Greater Portland Area chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. [8]
Charles Linza McNary was an American Republican politician from Oregon. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1917 to 1944 and was Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. In the Senate, McNary helped to pass legislation that led to the construction of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and worked on agricultural and forestry issues. He also supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of the Great Depression. Until Mark Hatfield surpassed his mark in 1993, he was Oregon's longest-serving senator.
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 18 murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.
Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP), also known as Oregon State Prison, is a maximum security prison in the northwest United States in Salem, Oregon. Originally opened in Portland 173 years ago in 1851, it relocated to Salem fifteen years later. The 2,242-capacity prison is the oldest in the state; the all-male facility is operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC). OSP contains an intensive management wing, which is being transformed into a psychiatric facility for mentally ill prisoners throughout Oregon.
Douglas Franklin Wright was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people in Oregon between 1969 and 1991. He was sentenced to death for three of these murders and was executed in 1996 at the Oregon State Penitentiary, becoming the first person to be executed in Oregon since 1962. He was also the first person executed in Oregon by lethal injection.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the Happy Face Killer because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of Jesperson's victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
The Oregon Department of Corrections is the agency of the U.S. state of Oregon charged with managing a system of 12 state prisons since its creation by the state legislature in 1987. In addition to having custody of offenders sentenced to prison for more than 12 months, the agency provides program evaluation, oversight and funding for the community corrections activities of county governments. It is also responsible for interstate compact administration, jail inspections, and central information and data services regarding felons throughout the state. It has its headquarters in Salem.
Elizabeth Diane Downs is an American woman who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children near Springfield, Oregon, on May 19, 1983. Following the crimes, she made claims to police that a man had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. She briefly escaped in 1987, but was quickly recaptured. Downs has been repeatedly denied parole and psychiatrists have diagnosed her with narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial personality disorders, with one labelling her as a "deviant sociopath".
The Easter Sunday Massacre occurred on Easter Sunday, March 30, 1975, when 41 year-old James U. Ruppert fatally shot eleven members of his own family in his mother's house at 635 Minor Avenue in Hamilton, Ohio.
Walter Clarence Winslow was an American attorney in Oregon. A native of the state, he practiced law in Salem and later served temporarily on the Oregon Supreme Court. In legal practice he worked for brothers John Hugh McNary and Charles L. McNary in his early years as a lawyer.
On May 21, 1998, 15-year-old freshman student Kipland Kinkel opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in the cafeteria of Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, United States, killing two of his classmates and wounding 25 others. He had killed his parents at the family home the previous day, following his suspension pending an expulsion hearing after he admitted to school officials that he was keeping a stolen handgun in his locker. Fellow students subdued him, leading to his arrest. He later characterized his actions as an attempt to get others to kill him, since he wanted to take his own life after killing his parents but could not bring himself to.
On October 12, 2011, a mass shooting occurred at the Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, California. Eight people inside the salon and one person in the parking lot were shot, and only one victim survived. It remains the deadliest mass killing in Orange County history.
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.
On February 22, 2017, Adam Purinton shot two Indian men, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, whom he had allegedly mistaken for Iranians, at a restaurant in Olathe, Kansas, killing Kuchibhotla. He reportedly yelled "get out of my country" and "terrorist" before firing. A third man, Ian Grillot, was wounded after he came to the two men's aid. Several hours later, Purinton was arrested in Clinton, Missouri.
On November 7, 2018, a mass shooting occurred in Thousand Oaks, California, United States, at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country-western bar frequented by college students. Thirteen people were killed, including the perpetrator, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and a police officer who was shot multiple times, with the fatal round accidentally being fired by another officer. One other person sustained a gunshot wound, while fifteen others were injured by incidental causes.
William Scott Smith is an American serial killer and kidnapper who has been convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering at least four women in Salem, Oregon from 1981 to 1984. For his known crimes, Smith was sentenced to four life terms, and remains a suspect in several other murders.
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.
Dixie Tavern is a bar in Portland, Oregon, United States.
On 9 July 2022, a mass shooting took place at a tavern in Orlando, Soweto, Gauteng, South Africa. 16 people were killed in the incident.
On August 28, 2022, a gunman opened fire at a Safeway grocery store in Bend, Oregon, killing two men, one of whom was an employee, and wounding two other people before committing suicide.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)SID number:5794821