Posted on 08/23/2002 9:35:01 PM PDT by IamHD
BY JANINE ROBBEN
The Tribune
Investigators said Monday that they moved as quickly as they could in the investigation of the two missing Oregon City girls and were precluded from searching Ward Weaver’s property before the weekend.
Those statements failed to satisfy some of the investigation’s most vocal critics, including a private dog handler who castigated Oregon City Chief Gordon Huiras for not following up on what the handler described as significant leads in April.
Weaver’s ex-wife Kristi Sloan also criticized investigators over the weekend for moving too slowly.
“The day we went on this property was the first day we legally could get on this property,” Huiras said at a news conference Monday. “We have a Constitution that has certain rights that everybody’s guaranteed, and part of our job is to make sure those rights are provided.”
The remains of Miranda Gaddis were discovered Saturday, and remains expected to be those of Ashley Pond were found Sunday by investigators searching a shed and under a concrete slab in Weaver’s back yard.
Prosecutors said Monday they would seek an indictment against Weaver.
The seven-month investigation appeared to have focused on Weaver and his property early on. The attention on Weaver then apparently waned until May, when investigators began a flurry of Weaver-related activity, according to the logs of police contacts. The logs are some of the few pieces of information about the missing girls investigation that are public.
The pace of the investigation also raised concerns about whether other people were placed at risk during the probe, including the 19-year-old girlfriend of Weaver’s son, who alleges that Weaver choked and raped her at his house Aug. 13. She told police she thought she was going to die.
Other young women known to have been in Weaver’s house after Ashley’s disappearance included Weaver’s 13-year-old daughter, Mallori; Miranda, who reportedly spent the night there Feb. 23 as part of a birthday party for Mallori; and another 12-year-old girl who Weaver invited to vacation in California with him and his daughter after Ashley and Miranda disappeared.
Weaver has been jailed on the rape charge since Aug. 13.
Warning from detective
The mother of a 12-year-old classmate of Ashley and Miranda, who called the Tribune earlier this month to express support for Weaver, said Sunday that she was devastated by the discovery of the bodies in his yard.
“I can’t begin to tell you how horrible I feel, knowing my daughter was there in his home,” said the woman, who said her daughter spent the night at Weaver’s house a month or six weeks ago. “She sat down and ate dinner with him.”
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Weaver had invited her daughter to vacation in California with him and his daughter this year, after Ashley and Miranda disappeared. She said that after rumors of the invitation got around school, she received a call from an Oregon City detective who told her “it’s probably not a good idea” to let her go.
“I wish I would have known,” she said of investigators’ apparent level of concern about Weaver at that time. “The thing is, he’s a very good deceiver. And they let his daughter live with him. What about her?”
In early July, Weaver told the Tribune that his daughter was going to stay with her mother in Portland for a while because of pressure from the investigation. But she was present at his house on July 12, when the Tribune contacted him there. Weaver, who is divorced from Mallori’s mother, had legal custody of the girl until shortly after he was arrested on the rape case, when her custody was transferred to the state.
Miranda spent the night at the house as recently as Feb. 23, according to an ex-wife of Weaver, Kristi Sloan, who said in televised interviews that Miranda was there for a birthday party sleepover for Mallori. Miranda disappeared two weeks later.
Local police criticized
Weaver’s ex-wife Kristi Sloan had harsh words for the FBI on Saturday night after the first set of remains, later identified as those of Miranda, were found in a storage shed behind Weaver’s house.
Sloan was included in an Aug. 20 Tribune story on tipsters who had not been contacted by investigators. She complained in televised interviews last weekend that it took investigators five months to thoroughly search Weaver’s property after she reported her concerns about him.
One of the investigation’s most outspoken critics is private dog handler Harry Oakes, himself the subject of criticism by other dog handlers and law enforcement.
On Aug. 15, more than a week before the remains were found, Oakes wrote Chief Huiras a letter that berated him for not acting on a finding Oakes said he submitted to the police April 4.
On Ashley’s trail
Oakes, who talked to the Tribune on Friday — the day before the first set of remains was discovered — said police investigators ignored his search dog’s “death alert” at the back of Weaver’s house on March 15, one week after Miranda disappeared.
“They didn’t do squat,” he said. “They kicked us out of the search.”
Oakes said he became involved in the missing girls investigation after Ashley’s mother, Lori Pond, responded affirmatively to his March 4 written offer to help. He said he first met with her and obtained a belonging with Ashley’s scent on it March 7, the day before Miranda disappeared. He then had his dog search the canyon below the girls’ apartment complex March 10 and returned March 15 to search Weaver’s property on South Beavercreek Road above the apartment complex.
According to Oakes, he became interested in Weaver’s property after his dog gave him a “death alert” in the canyon, which is downhill from Weaver’s property, and may have picked up scents as a result of rain runoff seeping downhill. Oakes described a “death alert” as physical behavior on the part of a search dog that indicates the presence or former presence of a human body or items, such as tools, that have been in contact with a corpse.
In his letter and prior reports to Huiras, Oakes said that he identified himself as a private search-dog handler to Weaver’s son Alex and obtained Ward Weaver’s permission, by telephone, to search the property.
“He did ask for me to ‘stay away from the freshly poured concrete’ as he just got it laid out on the ground and didn’t want it ‘messed up,’ ” Oakes said Weaver told him. (The timing of the pouring of the concrete pad is in question.)
Oakes said he gave his dog the belonging with Ashley’s scent and she followed the scent to the back of Weaver’s house, where the dog gave another “death alert.” Oakes said the spot was where Weaver had poured the concrete, which he said Weaver told him was for a hot tub pad.
Oakes, who did a third missing girls search on March 17 with his associate, Michelle Keating, has a long, negative history with other search dog handlers. One of those handlers was interviewed before the discovery of the first set of remains on Saturday. He said Oakes’ dog “wouldn’t alert in a graveyard.”
Keating attributed the bad feelings to Oakes being “pretty outspoken.”
Another dog searches
Oakes and his dog were not the only dog handlers and search dogs on Weaver’s property before last weekend.
Marty Neiman, who participated in one of those searches with his dog Jan. 19, before the concrete pad was poured, said Sunday that he did not believe Ashley was buried in Weaver’s yard at that time.
According to Neiman, Weaver gave the Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy who accompanied him permission to search his property but not his house. “Obviously, the cement wasn’t there,” he said Sunday, “but there were no burial sites on his property. You don’t bury three barrels without leaving dirt. We searched all around the house; there were no fresh dig marks.”
Neiman said that on Jan. 19 he also looked into the shed in which Miranda’s body was discovered Saturday and saw “just a bunch of old stuff that had been there for a long time. Cobwebs.”
On June 30, Weaver told the Tribune that he had allowed investigators to search his house and that search dogs already had been through the home. However, Neiman said his dog was not in the house, and Oakes said his dog was only at the back entrance of the house. The Tribune was not able to reach other dog handlers involved in the investigation.
According to Oakes, he submitted his dog’s findings to the Oregon City Police Department on April 2. But logs of police contacts on the missing girls investigation show that between March 8 — the date of Miranda’s disappearance — and May 7, no one from the Oregon City and West Linn police departments filed any reports that mentioned Weaver, his family members or close associates.
Investigators from the two departments, plus agents from the FBI, make up the full-time members of the missing girls task force, FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele has said previously.
The log, which is the only part of the missing girls investigation made public, does not include reports prepared by the FBI. It also does not indicate whether a person was mentioned in a report because he or she was interviewed on that date or because someone else interviewed on that date mentioned him or her.
Between May 7 and July 24, the logs show numerous reports that mention Weaver, his sister, his children, his ex-girlfriend and her daughter, or his ex-wife, none of whom, with the exception of some of his children, has any known connection to the missing girls themselves.
Jim Redden contributed to this story.
Contact Janine Robben at jrobben@portlandtribune.com.
When did Weaver pour concrete in back yard?
One significant fact in the missing girls’ case is in dispute — when Ward Weaver constructed the concrete pad in his back yard.
A source close to the Pond family told the Tribune that it was poured within days of Ashley’s disappearance Jan. 9. According to this source, Ashley’s mother, Lori, fingered Weaver as a possible suspect in part because he poured fresh concrete along the back of his house shortly after her daughter disappeared.
But Kristi Sloan, one of Weaver’s former wives, has told reporters the concrete was not poured until after Miranda Gaddis disappeared. Sloan says that during a visit to Weaver’s home shortly after Miranda disappeared, she told him the fresh concrete made him look bad.
According to the FBI and Oregon City police, Miranda’s body was found in a shed behind Weaver’s house; the other body was found under the concrete.
— Jim Redden
http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=13381
That's utter nonsense! Lies don't add to the discussion. Intential smears don't add to the discussion. Innuedo doesn't add to the discussion. Outright distortions don't add to the discussion. Sophomoric theories which have no factual basis don't add to the discussion. The failure to grasp simple concepts such as the hard facts in this case doesn't add to the discussion. It is one thing to participate. It is quite another to add to or detract from the discussion.
My post regarding the vast number of people who don't subscribe to the "All Ricci All the Time" syndrome is something you conveniently side stepped.
I didn't sidestep it at all. I made it perfectly clear that I prefer the opinions and insights of those on these threads who aren't logic-challenged, as opposed to those on numerous other boards.
The only poll that matters will be a jury and they will rely on facts - not baseless theories. You (and your cheering section) can dream up theories to your hearts content, but occasionally having even a single fact to support it would be an awesome change for the better. Take the "runaway" theory, for example. Please enlighten one an all with even one single hard fact supporting such a theory.
It is unfortunate that you consider my doses of reality to be "criticisms and attacks". Reality bites!
I agree 100%, I thought the same thing, I would either put them in private schools and not publish the locations or home school. Since money doesn't seem to be an issue I have wondered why they were in public schools anyway. Do Mormons have church owned schools? I haven't heard that mentioned before.
You are correct. She is no longer in physical danger.
What facts? Please share if you know of any. There has been no information that even hints at conflict/abuse between E. and her parents/family, nor is there any talk from the teenage rumor mill of boyfriends, behavior or school issues, peer problems, etc. The slightest possibility of any of these would not be lost on FBI and other LE. This is a murder case. There is not a speck of evidence that she ran away.
Watch how the FBI operates, their defense is a good offense. Despite the fact they're without excuse they'll flagranly boast they've done everything possible and udderly blow off anything they don't want to answer. They've been at this for a long time and they're not answerable to anybody. Their spokespeople are specially selected and very good at what they do. If their only pressure comes from the media they're home free.
If there were genuine hints, I doubt the LE and the Smarts would be sharing them with the public in general. No, there is no "evidence" she ran away with someone, but just listen once again to the words of Lois Smart pleading with whoever is with her daughter -- words to the effect that they can't have a life together, etc. Those words are more telling than all the Ricci circumstantial information.
Read it carefully.
*It does NOT say LE found NO evidence that Elizabeth had used the computer;
*Dinse said questions were asked about what was found on the computers and that the questions were answered -- Dinse did NOT say the answers were satisfactory.
*The National Enquirer did not make up the computer story as some have charged, the information was from LE. Who "leaked" the info that the PC's contained porno info? Who knows, but it almost certainly came from SLC.
Here is the excerpt from June 21:
"As for the computers, Dinse said authorities were searching for indications Elizabeth had been talking to anyone online or receiving e-mails from anyone.
He would not say what was found on the hard drives, but emphasized that "we have found nothing on the computers that creates a nexus to this crime. There certainly were questions, and those questions have been asked and responded to."
Two personal computers and one with business material on it were among those turned over by the Smart family at police request, Dinse said, and all three now have been returned. He did not say who owned the other nine computers, but said "we are mostly done with [them]."
The National Enquirer tabloid newspaper is expected to publish a story today about the contents of the computer, said Det. Dwayne Baird."
We all heard her use these words a few times then she moved on to new approaches, you need to move on too.
It was one of the few times in this case that anyone has spoken without restraint and from the heart. If you can't see that, then you simply don't want to see it.
How can you say this? None of us ever heard anyone in authority state this..How would you know this is a murder case? Were you there?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.