Karl Terry Oregon Death Row

karl terry

Karl Terry was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for two murders. According to court documents Karl Terry was camping with the two victims, Jeffrey and Dale Brown, when while the two men were sleeping they would be attacked by Terry with a samurai sword. Karl Terry was sentenced to death. Karl Terry now goes by the name Tara Zyst

Oregon Death Row Inmate List

Karl Terry 2021 Information

karl terry 2021
Offender Name:Zyst, Tara Ellyssia
Age:47dot clearDOB:09/1973dot clearLocation:Oregon State Penitentiary
Gender:Femaledot clearRace:White Or European Origindot clearStatus:AIC
Height:5′ 11”dot clearHair:Blonddot clearField Admission Date:11/24/1995
Weight:150 lbsdot clearEyes:Bluedot clearEarliest Release Date:Death

Karl Terry More News

A Clackamas County jury sentenced Terry to die for hacking to death Jeffrey and Dale Brown with an 18-inch long Japanese sword as they slept Aug. 6, 1994. The three were camping in a Milwaukie park next to the Willamette River in celebration of Dale Brown’s birthday.

Karl Terry Other News

Tara Ellyssia Zyst is Oregon’s only transgender death row inmate, perhaps the only transgender death row prisoner in the nation. 

Born Karl Anthony Terry, she was convicted in 1995 on two counts of aggravated murder for the deaths of her boyfriend and his brother. Since that time, Tara has sat on Oregon’s death row, where she has consistently been denied requests for hormone therapy and sexual reassignment surgery for a diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder.

Allowing a convicted murderer the option of converting their external physical self from that given at birth to that of their internal wish may seem absurd. But as more light is shed on transgender concerns, agree with it or not, the courts have determined that they have this right.

“The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes prisons legally required to provide inmates with medically necessary treatment for medical and mental health conditions, including gender dysmorphia.”

That quote is not from a lawyer or the LGBT community. Rather, it is the statement made by a California Department of Corrections spokesperson, Terry Thornton, in response to recent news that they were providing gender reassignment surgery to a transgender person in their custody, one who also happens to be a convicted murderer.

Shiloh Heavenly Quine was convicted in 1980 for the killing of Shahid Ali Baig, a father of three. Having received a sentence of life without parole, she will spend the rest of her life behind California prison bars. She began life in prison as a man. Due to a 2016 ruling by the California Supreme Court, however, she did not have to remain that way. She underwent surgery this past week.

Quine previously wrote that her presence in the men’s prison creates “confusion and mixed emotions from the males that go from romantic thoughts to disgust and explosive turmoil reactions.” “I thought of myself as a female since the age of eight,” reported Quine. In her case, she came to prison with a gender dysmorphia.

Just as a prison system is required to provide dialysis to a prisoner diagnosed with kidney failure, the prison must provide treatment for mental disorders, including gender identity disorders. To disallow this amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. For Quine, that amounted to a daily fight to stay alive, including five failed suicide attempts.

Tara completely and painfully empathizes with what Quine went through. She has identified as a woman since she was a young teenager in Tennessee, at a time and place that was unprepared to handle such a phenomenon. Her fight is likewise a daily one, which she is failing.

The Oregon Department of Corrections currently provides daily dialysis to a death row inmate, costing tens of thousands of dollars annually. They’ve recently paid $80,000 for hepatitis C cure therapy for another condemned man. But they refuse treatment for Tara.

They have not ignored transgender issues altogether. They are currently relocating all male-to-female transgender inmates to a medium security prison, a male facility within its system. Tara, however, is not included in this transfer plan. Her classification as a death row inmate presents a unique challenge.

But according to Tara, the prison has avoided this challenge by simply ignoring her.

“They have responded to my request for therapy by insisting that gender identity disorders are excuses for homosexual prisoners to gain access to hormones that they believe will make them more desireable to the male population,” Tara writes. “I am offended beyond words.”

This has been the typical response from prison authorities over the years, says Kris Hayashi, Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center. “For too long institutions have ignored prisoners and casually dismissed medically necessary and lifesaving care for transgender people just because of who transgender women are.”

But now the law is on their side.

Tara has consistently and emphatically proclaimed her innocence over the crimes she has been convicted of. But after 22 years on death row those pleas have gone ignored as well. She is tired of the fight.

“I want to make it clear,” Tara recently wrote to her attorneys of her intentions to end her remaining death penalty appeals. “I’d rather be dead than to have to keep living this way.”

Tara sits on death row for two murders that she says she did not commit. Her biggest struggle, however, is the one that she’s lived with her entire adult life, the one she sees every time she looks in the mirror.

Even though the laws have changed to address Tara’s condition, they are not being applied to Tara.

Even if we are not be able to relate to Tara’s struggle, or agree that a murderer should be able to have a sex change, regardless of their condition, gender identity issues are real. The medical field has made this clear. The courts have laid the ground rules.

Death row is not an understanding place. It is a cruel environment for anyone. It is a place of torture for a transgender prisoner. The law states what must be done.

Bianca Clark is the executive director of Prison Lives,  a non-profit organization established to educate and enable prisoners to be productive individuals while incarcerated for a positive existence both inside and outside of prison life. Prison lives also provides resources to the families of inmates.


https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/317412-why-states-should-pay-for-inmates-sex-changes

Ernest Lotches Oregon Death Row

Ernest Lotches

Ernest Lotches was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for a murder. According to court documents Ernest Lotches and the victim were involved in a gun battle at a mall in Oregon. Lotches was being questioned for a minor assault with the security guard when he pulled out a gun. The two men engaged in a gun battle that ended with the death of the victim. Ernest Lotches was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Oregon Death Row Inmate List

Ernest Lotches 2021 Information

Ernest Lotches
Offender Name:Lotches, Ernest Noland
Age:66dot clearDOB:08/1954dot clearLocation:Oregon State Penitentiary
Gender:Maledot clearRace:Amer Indian Or Alaska Nativedot clearStatus:AIC
Height:5′ 10”dot clearHair:Browndot clearField Admission Date:06/30/1992
Weight:165 lbsdot clearEyes:Browndot clearEarliest Release Date:Death

Ernest Lotches More News

Lotches was convicted of killing William G. Hall, 33, a downtown Portland security guard during a running gun battled that terrified Saturday shoppers in August 1992. Hall, a security guard for the downtown Economic Improvement District, had tried to question Lotches about a minor assault. Lotches fled, and the two exchanged gunfire. Hall died after pulling a 9-year-old child out of the line of fire as Lotches was trying to commandeer a car.

Ernest Lotches Other News

At about 2:30 in the afternoon on August 22, 1992, Ernest Lotches approached Hedges in O’Bryant Square near downtown Portland.   While bantering back and forth with Hedges, defendant pretended to be a police officer and frisked Hedges.   While Hedges was bending over, defendant slapped Hedges on the back of the motorcycle helmet that Hedges was wearing.   The slap was unprovoked.   Hedges stood up and asked defendant what he was doing.   Defendant then began shouting obscenities at Hedges.   Hedges made an effort to calm defendant;  defendant joined a friend sitting on a nearby retaining wall.   Hedges kept an eye on defendant and, when defendant and his friend walked away, Hedges followed him.   After a few blocks, Hedges saw a Portland Guide,2 Cramer,  and told Cramer that he wanted to file a complaint against defendant.

Cramer radioed to the Portland Guides headquarters and to other nearby guides that a man had been assaulted by an individual who was then near Pioneer Square.   Cramer described defendant and asked for an officer to respond.   Two other unarmed Portland Guides, Edwards and Calderon, spotted defendant walking down the street and began to follow him at a distance of about half a block.   They signaled to Riley, another unarmed Portland Guide who happened to be nearby, and Riley, too, began to follow defendant.   Ernest Lotches appeared to notice that he was being followed and increased his pace.

William Hall, an armed EID officer, approached defendant from the direction in which Ernest Lotches was walking.   Riley also converged on defendant.   Hall called out to defendant, stating that he would like to have a word with him.   Defendant then threw his hand up toward Riley in an apparent effort to strike him.   Riley blocked defendant’s swing.   Defendant ran north toward Alder Street.   Hall, Riley, Edwards, and Calderon began running in pursuit.

There is some dispute about precisely what happened next but, by all accounts, defendant slowed down and Hall began yelling, “He’s got a gun.   Get down.”   Shots were fired.   Most of the witnesses to the episode could not say who shot first or even where Hall was when the first shot was fired.   Riley testified that he saw defendant pull a gun out of a paper bag and that no shots had been fired before that moment.   A bystander, Gates, testified that she heard a shot and then saw defendant pull a gun out of the back of his pants.

In any event, during that incident, defendant raised his gun, aimed it directly at Edwards, and shot at her.   Bullets hit her in the left breast and in the right arm, fracturing a bone and requiring surgery and the insertion of a metal plate.   Riley dragged the wounded Edwards into a nearby shop and  ran for cover in the back of the store.   Hall engaged defendant in an exchange of gunfire;  two bullets fired from Hall’s gun later were recovered from inside the shop.

Defendant fled down Fourth Avenue with Hall in pursuit.   Defendant ran up to a car stopped at a traffic light in which Keaton and her 9-year-old grandson were riding.   Defendant came up from behind Keaton, pointed a gun at her head through the half-open window, and said something to the effect that “You are going to take me somewhere.”   Keaton responded, “No way,” and stepped on the accelerator.   The car stalled and Keaton immediately began trying to unfasten her grandson’s seatbelt and shove him out the car door.   While Keaton was fumbling with the seatbelts, she looked up and saw Hall standing in front of a pillar along the street on the opposite side of her car, yelling at defendant, directing him to get away from the car and “leave the innocent alone.”   According to Keaton, defendant then ceased his efforts to get into her car and directed his attention to Hall. Meanwhile, the grandson unlocked the car door, got out, and ran toward where Hall had been standing.   Keaton took the keys out of the ignition and threw them down a sewer grate, and then closed her eyes and waited.

Defendant began shooting in Hall’s direction.   Hall left the relative cover provided by the pillar and pulled Keaton’s grandson to safety.   He also shot out two of the tires on Keaton’s car and pushed two transients out of the line of fire.   In the skirmish, defendant shot Hall twice.   One shot entered and exited Hall’s wrist. The other, fatal, shot entered Hall’s arm, traversed his lungs, and penetrated his heart.

Defendant, himself uninjured, then fled down Stark Street, hiding his gun behind his back.   He approached a pickup truck stopped at a traffic light on Washington Street.   Reaching through the window of the truck, he pointed his gun at the driver’s head and ordered the occupants out of the vehicle.   They immediately complied.   Defendant then drove off, heading the wrong direction down Third Avenue, a one-way street.   He sped down that street, swerving to avoid oncoming cars.   He then drove over the Burnside Bridge and turned onto Martin Luther King Boulevard.   Defendant next attempted to turn onto Southeast Ankeny, but he was driving  too fast and was unable to negotiate the turn.   The truck jumped the curb, hit a parked car and, ultimately, came to a stop after crashing into some other parked cars in an adjacent used-car lot.

A customer at the car lot who saw the crash went to aid defendant. He forced open the driver’s-side door of the truck and asked defendant if he was hurt.   Defendant answered no and made an effort to get out of the truck from the passenger side.   The customer asked defendant if he was going to run, and defendant replied, “Hell, yes, I got to get out of here.”   The customer stepped aside, and defendant slid back to the driver’s side to get out.   By that time, several marked police cars had arrived at the scene.   One of them, driven by Officer Elliot, pulled up in the vicinity of the truck after having been flagged down by an individual in front of the car lot.   After Elliot had stopped his car, defendant reached back into the truck and pulled out his gun.   Defendant turned and aimed the gun in Elliot’s direction and began walking toward him.   Defendant then stopped, assumed a combat stance in which he squared off and held the gun in front of him with two hands.   When Elliot realized what was happening, he leaned away from defendant and put his car in reverse.   Defendant fired at Elliot as he was backing up.   Defendant then aimed and fired a second shot at Elliott that narrowly missed him and struck the driver’s seat of the police car.

After shooting at Elliot, defendant began running toward the corner of Ankeny and Grand Avenue.   He attempted unsuccessfully to commandeer one vehicle, and then succeeded in getting into a second one, which someone apparently had abandoned in the middle of the street.   While defendant tried to start that car, Elliot, now armed with a shotgun, approached defendant and ordered him to drop his gun. Defendant again briefly appeared to consider fleeing.   However, by this time, he was surrounded by other officers.   He threw down his gun and surrendered.

After he was taken into custody, defendant agreed to give blood and urine samples.   Experts later extrapolated  from those samples that defendant probably had a blood-alcohol content of approximately .17 percent at the time of the crimes.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/or-supreme-court/1023264.html

Clinton Cunningham Oregon Death Row

Clinton Cunningham

Clinton Cunningham was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for a sexual assault and murder. According to court documents Clinton Cunningham would pick up the victim, Shannon Faith, hitchhiking. The woman would be sexually assaulted and murdered by being stabbed thirty seven times. Clinton Cunningham was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Oregon Death Row Inmate List

Clinton Cunningham 2021 Information

Clinton Cunningham
Age:53dot clearDOB:11/1967dot clearLocation:Snake River Correctional Institution
Gender:Maledot clearRace:White Or European Origindot clearStatus:AIC
Height:5′ 10”dot clearHair:Browndot clearField Admission Date:10/28/1992
Weight:212 lbsdot clearEyes:Browndot clearEarliest Release Date:Death

Clinton Cunningham More News

A resident of Poteau, Okla., Cunningham was convicted of raping and murdering 19-year-old Shannon Faith of Vancouver, B.C., in 1991. He picked her up hitchhiking near Coos Bay. They spent the day driving on the beach and drinking beer before he agreed to give her a ride to Eugene. After stabbing her 37 times, Cunningham dumped Faith’s partially-clothed body by the side of a logging road near Elkton.

Clinton Cunningham Other News

The jury found Clinton Cunningham guilty. We therefore view the evidence in the light most favorable to the state. State v. McDonnell, 313 Or. 478, 480, 837 P.2d 941 (1992).

On October 19, 1991, Larry Moyer drove his friend Shannon Faith to a place north of Coos Bay, from where Faith intended to hitchhike to Eugene. On that date, Clinton Cunningham, Travis Allison, and Troy Johnson were traveling in the Coos Bay area in a truck driven by defendant. Defendant displayed a knife to Johnson. Defendant and Allison discussed not having enough money for gas. The three men decided to drive to the nearby sand dunes. On the way, they saw Faith hitchhiking and offered her a ride. Faith agreed to accompany the men to the dunes. Between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., the group drove to Johnson’s house in Coos Bay. Johnson and Allison remained at Johnson’s house.

About 7:30 p.m., defendant and Faith went to Larry Moyer’s house in defendant’s truck. Faith introduced defendant to Moyer. Faith told Moyer that she was going to Eugene with defendant. Moyer tried to talk her out of leaving and wrote down defendant’s name and truck license number. Moyer observed empty beer cans in the truck and noticed that Faith was slurring her words and was unable to walk straight. Faith and defendant left.

On October 20, about 5:30 a.m., defendant returned to Johnson’s house. When Allison asked defendant if he “got him some last night,” defendant grinned. He told Allison that he had taken Faith to a friend’s house. After breakfast, defendant and Allison departed for Roseburg. On the way, they stopped at a store. At that time, defendant threw his knife into a nearby creek, telling Allison that he did not need it anymore.

About 11:30 a.m. the same day, a motorist found Faith’s body in a remote wooded area about nine miles west of Drain, Oregon. The body had been rolled about five feet down an embankment overgrown with blackberry bushes. The victim was lying on her back, her legs spread somewhat apart and flexed in a “froglike position.” She had on a long-sleeved shirt and some socks, but no pants or underpants. Tests of samples taken from her body revealed the presence of spermatozoa and seminal fluid in her vagina. Medical examiners later found an abrasion near the victim’s perineum, as well as series of four abrasions along the inside of her thigh, about six inches from her vulva, suggestive of fingernail scratches. A criminalist who helped the medical examiner swab the victim’s mouth, vagina, and rectum, in order to test for the presence of seminal fluid or sperm, testified that she was “most anxious to get some vaginal swabs since it looked like a rape had taken place since [the victim] had no pants or panties on and her legs were apart.” From the location of various bloodstains, it could be inferred that the victim had not been wearing pants at the time she was stabbed. An autopsy later revealed that she had been stabbed about 37 times, on her face, neck, breasts, back, abdomen, and hands, causing her to die from loss of blood. Some of the wounds were “defensive wounds,”[1] indicating that she had tried to ward off the attack, and some of the wounds may have been inflicted at a point when she no longer was able to offer any significant resistance. Some of the wounds above and around her breasts suggested “the possibility of sexual mutilation in a perimortem or postmortem context.”

The victim’s pants and underpants were later found stuffed inside a tote bag that had *434 been thrown into some blackberry bushes near the victim’s body. Her pants had been turned inside out. Although the victim’s legs were covered with blood, the outside of her pants had little or no blood on them. That led the state’s criminologist to conclude that the victim’s pants were down or off at the time of the knife attack. Neither the victim’s pants nor underpants had sperm or seminal fluid on them.

After hearing a news report that a body had been found, Moyer contacted the police and gave them defendant’s name and truck license number. Soon thereafter, on seeing a picture of the victim on television and recognizing her as the hitchhiker that he, Allison, and defendant had picked up, Troy Johnson also contacted the police.

On October 21, defendant and Allison were stopped in Roseburg, where defendant was cited for violation of a city ordinance and Allison was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Later that day, the officer who stopped them discovered that defendant was a potential homicide suspect. Defendant’s truck was located later by the Roseburg police, who discovered that defendant had traded it for a car.

On October 26, defendant was arrested in Oklahoma. Defendant initially admitted to having been in Oregon, but denied having owned a truck and also denied having had any contact with Shannon Faith. Defendant later admitted that he had driven the truck in Oregon. He told the police that on October 19 he had been drinking with Johnson and Allison, that they had picked up a female hitchhiker on the way to the dunes and that, after he had dropped off Johnson and Allison, he had met Moyer. He said that, about 20 minutes after he and the hitchhiker began driving to Eugene, they pulled off the road, she pulled down her pants, and they had consensual sexual relations. He denied forcing her to have sex with him at any time. He said that he and the hitchhiker then drove several more miles, that she kept turning up the radio, and that he kept turning it down. He then pulled his truck off the road to urinate and told her to get out of his truck. He stated that she grabbed his knife from the dashboard or glove box and came at him. He stated that he took the knife away from her, cutting her hand, but she continued coming at him and he kept pushing her away with the knife. He recalled making another wound that cut her throat and another wound in her back. He recalled stabbing her a total of three or four times. He stated that she fell to the ground and was having difficulty breathing and that some of her clothing came off as he dragged her to a ditch. He said he then threw her bags into the bushes and later threw his knife into a creek and disposed of his bloody clothing in a dumpster in Roseburg. He agreed to perform a videotaped reenactment of what had happened.

The pathologist who performed the autopsy on the victim testified at trial that he had viewed defendant’s videotape reenactment and found it to be inconsistent with the victim’s injuries, because defendant had acted out the infliction of only a few of the victim’s actual wounds.

Defendant’s knife was recovered from the creek, and his clothing was recovered from a dumpster in Roseburg. The victim’s bags were recovered from the bushes near where her body was found. The pants that she had been wearing on the day she died were found in one of her bags.

Defendant was indicted on two counts of aggravated murder. The first count alleged that the murder was committed intentionally in the course of and in furtherance of the crime of rape in the first degree. ORS 163.095(2)(d);[2] ORS 163.115(1)(b).[3] The second *435 count alleged that the murder was committed intentionally in an effort to conceal the crime of rape in the first degree. ORS 163.095.[4] Defendant also was indicted on one count of intentional murder, ORS 163.115(1)(a),[5] and two counts of rape in the first degree, ORS 163.375, see n 14, infra.

https://law.justia.com/cases/oregon/supreme-court/1994/320-or-47.html

Robert Langley Oregon Death Row

robert langley

Robert Langley was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for two separate murders. According to court documents Robert Langley would murder Anne Louise Gray and bury her body. During the same year Robert Langley would murder Larry Richard Rockenbrant and bury his body on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital. Robert Langley was sentenced to death.

Oregon Death Row Inmate List

Robert Langley 2021 Information

robert langley 2021
Offender Name:Langley, Robert Paul
Age:61dot clearDOB:12/1959dot clearLocation:Oregon State Penitentiary
Gender:Maledot clearRace:White Or European Origindot clearStatus:AIC
Height:5′ 10”dot clearHair:Greydot clearField Admission Date:06/20/1989
Weight:195 lbsdot clearEyes:Greendot clearEarliest Release Date:Death

Robert Langley More News

Langley was convicted of killing and burying Anne Louise Gray, 39, and Larry Richard Rockenbrant, 24, in separate incidents in 1988. Langley received two death sentences. Both sentences were overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court on legal technicalities. His last sentencing date was Feb. 2, 2006. Rockenbrant’s body was found underneath a cactus garden on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital, where Langley lived while he took part in a program for mentally and emotionally disabled prison inmates. Langley’s therapist approved his request to plant the garden as a way to relax.

Robert Langley Other News

Robert Paul Langley Jr. will face a fourth death-penalty proceeding in connection with an aggravated murder he committed in Salem in 1987.

District Attorney Walt Beglau announced Tuesday that prosecutors will return to Marion County Circuit Court, where Langley three times has been sentenced to death in the case of Anne Gray.

The Oregon Supreme Court has reversed the sentence three times, most recently last week, and returned the case to circuit court.

“I intend to present evidence and seek the death penalty in Mr. Langley’s case,” Beglau said in an email to the Statesman Journal.

Gray was 39 when she was strangled Dec. 10, 1987. Her body was found buried in the backyard of Langley’s aunt in April 1988. That same month, on April 14, Larry Rockenbrant, 24, was killed. His body was buried in a cactus garden at Oregon State Hospital, where Langley lived while he took part in a program for mentally and emotionally disturbed prison inmates.

Langley was convicted of aggravated murder in separate trials in 1989 and sentenced to death. He is now 52.

The Supreme Court reversed both death sentences in 1992. It ruled that in Gray’s case, the jury was not allowed to hear mitigating evidence, and in Rockenbrant’s case, evidence from Gray’s murder was improperly admitted in the trial.

In 1994, Langley was sentenced to death for a second time in Gray’s murder, but sentenced to life in prison with a 30-year minimum in Rockenbrant’s murder.

The Supreme Court overturned that death sentence in 2000, ruling that the jury failed to consider the option of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Langley was sentenced to death for a third time in Gray’s murder in 2005. But the high court overturned that sentence last week, ruling that the trial judge erroneously compelled Langley to represent himself in court. That self-representation followed several reshufflings by Langley of his defense lawyers.

If Robert Langley is sentenced to death again, his case will go back to the Supreme Court on an automatic review, as all death sentences are.

Based on previous reviews of Langley’s second and third death sentences, the latest review is likely to reach the high court five or six years after the sentence is handed down in circuit court. That’s likely to put the latest review close to or beyond the tenure of current Gov. John Kitzhaber, who during his first term let stand Oregon’s most recent executions in 1996 and 1997.

Kitzhaber announced Nov. 22 he was imposing a moratorium on executions for the rest of his current term, which ends Jan. 12, 2015. If he were to win another four-year term in 2014 — he has not announced his intentions — that term would end Jan. 14, 2019.

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David Simonsen Oregon Death Row

David Simonsen

David Simonsen and Jeffrey Williams were sentenced to death by the State of Kentucky for a sexual assault and murder. According to court documents David Simonsen and Jeffrey Williams would pick up up the two German tourists who were sexually assaulted and murdered. Both David Simonsen and Jeffrey Williams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Oregon Death Row Inmate List

David Simonsen 2021 Information

David Simonsen 2021
Offender Name:Simonsen, David Lynn
Age:53dot clearDOB:01/1968dot clearLocation:Oregon State Penitentiary
Gender:Maledot clearRace:White Or European Origindot clearStatus:AIC
Height:6′ 06”dot clearHair:Browndot clearField Admission Date:02/27/1989
Weight:195 lbsdot clearEyes:Browndot clearEarliest Release Date:Death

Jeffrey Williams Death

jeffrey ray williams

Jeffrey Ray Williams died in custody in 2019. No cause of death was released however it is believed it was from natural causes

David Simonsen More News

Williams and David Lynn Simonsen were convicted and sentenced to death for the 1988 sexual assault and shotgun slayings of Unna Tuxen, 24, and Kathrin Reith, 22, German tourists who were hitchhiking up the West Coast near the Oregon-California border.

David Simonsen Other News

On September 3, 1988, the bodies of two women were found in a remote area near Coquille.   Both women, who had been dead for two or three days, were nude from the waist down.   They had been tied together at the wrists and shot in the head from close range with a shotgun.   Police found a great deal of physical evidence at the scene, including tire tracks from a small automobile.

Investigators eventually determined that the victims were from West Germany.   A week after the bodies were discovered, two witnesses separately came forward to report that defendant had said that he and a man named Jeff Williams had been involved in shooting two women with a sawed-off shotgun.   On September 11, 1988, police arrested defendant.   After being advised of his rights, defendant gave two statements confessing that he and Williams had abducted, raped, and murdered the women.   As a result of defendant’s confessions, investigators eventually recovered significant evidence implicating defendant, including the suspect automobile and the murder weapon.

After being charged with two counts of aggravated murder, defendant pleaded guilty.   The trial court conducted a penalty-phase proceeding.   The jury answered the penalty-phase questions put to it in the affirmative, and the trial court sentenced defendant to death.

On October 4, 1990, on automatic review, this court affirmed defendant’s convictions, but vacated the sentence of death, because the jury was not presented with the “fourth question” under ORS 163.150 (1989).  State v. Simonsen, 310 Or. 412, 798 P.2d 241 (1990) (Simonsen I);  see generally State v. Wagner, 309 Or. 5, 14-20, 786 P.2d 93 (1990) (setting out reasons that “fourth question” must be given).

On remand, defendant again was sentenced to death.   However, on automatic review of that sentence, this court held that the state had obtained evidence against defendant in violation of his right against self-incrimination under Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution.  State v. Simonsen, 319 Or. 510, 514, 878 P.2d 409 (1994) (Simonsen II).   Accordingly, this court again vacated the sentence and remanded the case for a third penalty-phase proceeding.  Id. at 519, 878 P.2d 409.   At the close of that proceeding, the jury again answered the penalty-phase questions in the affirmative and the trial court sentenced defendant to death.   This automatic review followed.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/or-supreme-court/1415715.html