Police in Oregon and Washington state have accused a suspected serial murderer with the killings of three women whose bodies were discovered within days of each other in 2023.
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office stated on Friday that Jesse Lee Calhoun, 39, had been indicted on three counts of murder and mistreatment of a corpse. He is being imprisoned at the Snake River Correctional Institute, where he is doing time for an unrelated offense.
According to the Associated Press, the indictment was issued just weeks before Calhoun, who was convicted of burglary, assaulting a police officer, and attempting to strangle a police dog, was scheduled to be released.
Calhoun is charged with the killings of Charity Lynn Perry, 24, Bridget Leanne Webster, 31, and Joanna Speaks, 32, according to authorities. Perry and Webster were discovered dead in Oregon, while Speaks died in an abandoned barn in southwest Washington.
“Today’s indictment of Jesse Calhoun marks a significant step toward justice,’ Multnomah County Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell stated. “We recognize that until today, there have been many questions and that their deaths have caused fear and anxiety across our area and for the families that have been waiting for answers.”
Diana Allen, Perry’s mother, stated that while the wait for answers has been frustrating, investigators “cared more about justice for Charity than they did for (her) feelings.”
“I have to have a level of respect for that,” Allen stated.
Since the authorities made the public announcement last year that at least four women’s murders—including Perry and Webster—had been connected to one individual, Calhoun has been a person of interest in the deaths.
In the 22-year-old deaths of Ashley Real and Kristin Smith, he is still considered a suspect. Unidentified is a sixth woman discovered dead at the same time period.
Six women were discovered dead over a three-month period and within 100 miles of one another, according to a June 2023 report in The Oregonian, which sparked a multi-jurisdictional inquiry into the killings.
According to the newspaper, the authorities first denied any connection between the killings.
Although they did not give Calhoun’s identity at the time, they declared in July that four of the cases had been connected and that they had a “person of interest.”
Records state that Smith went missing on December 22, 2022, and her body wasn’t discovered until February 19, two months later, in a wooded region in southeast Portland. She was recognized in May of last year.
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Speaks, an Oregonian, was discovered in the barn of a deserted Ridgefield, Washington, home on April 8, 2023. According to the Oregonian, blunt head and neck injuries were the cause of her death.
On April 24, 2023, the bodies of Perry and the unnamed woman were discovered on the same day. According to the publication, the Jane Doe was discovered near southeast Portland, and Perry’s body was discovered in a culvert in east Multnomah County.
Six days later, investigators say, Webster’s body was discovered in northwest Polk County. Real’s body was found in a Clackamas County woodland area one week after Webster was located.
When Calhoun was released in 2021, he was serving a four-year jail sentence related to the 2019 case. The accused murderer was among the over 40 prisoners freed as a token of appreciation from then-Governor Kate Brown for volunteering to fight destructive wildfires in 2020.
While Calhoun was free, all the women passed away.
According to the Oregonian, Calhoun’s sentence reduction was revoked in July 2023 when he came to the attention of the murder investigations.
Additionally, Calhoun’s ex-girlfriend connected him to Real by claiming that they had once engaged in a sexual connection.
