Posted on 08/28/2002 7:04:34 AM PDT by EggsAckley
OREGON CITY, Ore. (Reuters) -
The remains of at least one of two missing teenage girls discovered in an ex-convict's backyard had been put there recently -- explaining why past searches of the property had failed to find them, police said Tuesday.
With a grand jury impaneled to determine whether to charge toolmaker Ward Weaver, 39, with murdering Ashley Pond, 12, and Miranda Gaddis, 13, police officials rushed to assure the public that they did everything they could to find the girls.
Pond's body was found in a barrel under a concrete slab on the one-acre property rented by Weaver, who is currently in jail on charges of raping his son's girlfriend. Gaddis's body was found in a nearby shed.
"We do believe that evidence ... in the shed indicates (Miranda) had not been in that location since her death and had only recently been moved there," Oregon City police chief Gordon Huiras told Reuters in a brief interview on Tuesday.
He estimated that the body of the blond teenager had been in the shed "a short time, maybe weeks." He declined to speculate about when Pond's remains might have been brought to the property.
Police have not described the condition of either body or detailed how they were killed.
Pond disappeared in January and Gaddis in March. Both girls lived in the same apartment complex which was just yards from Weaver's home and Pond, a friend of his daughter who often stayed over at the Weaver house, had complained that he molested her. Police have been criticized for not finding the girls or their bodies sooner.
Huiras said, "You have to remember, there was no crime scene. There were no witnesses, no forensic evidence. There was no obvious starting point to this investigation,."
Investigators had thousands of tips and a huge pool of people to interview. "There is a large number of registered sex offenders in the area," Huiras said.
In addition, an undetermined number of convicted felons live in the low-income apartment complex where Pond and Gaddis lived. "I'm not sure how many, there is no way to track that," Huiras said.
A SAD END
"This is a terribly sad resolution," FBI special agent Charles Mathews said, "but if you take another perspective, it was a quick resolution. Although this was a very sad outcome, some of these types of cases are never solved."
The families of the two girls have publicly supported the investigators' efforts. "Our main constituency is the girls, their families and the jury. I don't need to rebut anyone's criticism," Mathews said.
"Frankly I don't think there is that much criticism out there in the community anyway," he added.
But some residents of this rural community that averages less than one murder a year were angry that the search took so long and that the answers were so close. Weaver's home sits just outside the entrance to the apartment complex where the girls lived. Their grieving mothers drove past it hundreds of times since the girls vanished.
Kristi Sloan, Weaver's ex-wife, tearfully told reporters that she had given investigators information that they did not seem to act on. After Weaver poured a concrete slab in his back yard, one which later yielded Ashley Pond's body, a sign appeared on it saying "Dig Me Up."
The investigation quickly took on a visible urgency shortly after the Aug. 13 arrest of Weaver on suspicion that he raped his son's girlfriend. He now sits in the Clackamas County Jail on a suicide watch with bail set at $1 million on the rape charge. He has pleaded not guilty.
Weaver, who has a history of violence against women, gave many interviews up to his arrest for the alleged rape, telling reporters that although he was a suspect, he had nothing to do with the girls' disappearance. Prosecutors are seeking an indictment against him for the murders, but he has not yet been charged. Early in the investigation he took a lie detector test and allowed his property to be searched with dogs.
Weaver's father sits on death row in California for a 1981 double murder in which he disposed of the body of one of his victims -- a young woman -- under concrete in his backyard.
makes you wonder if Dad took one for the team -
How common is it there would be two generations of murderers with the same M/O ?
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