I’m a volunteer at Ryon State Park, named after an early settler Aristotle Ryon. I’m a two way guy in that I edit the Ryon Newsletter and do physical work in the park, getting rid of invasive species, improving the trails and doing some planting. I’m retired now and love spending time in Ryon’s natural beauty. There’s always a chance that I might see a coyote, an owl or maybe a salamander. It is no surprise that this place is so popular.
Recently our executive director asked me to write a column in the newsletter about the most notorious episodes in our history – two brutal murders about a year apart. Each homicide stayed in the papers for weeks and caused visitors to avoid the park at night and to only visit while accompanied.
After a bit of research through old newspapers, and interviews with police investigators, I came up with this:
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There were a couple of things in common about the murders. Both occurred on an obscure dead end trail, Illana, where hardly anyone goes, and even though it is not polite to speak ill of the dead, neither of them were upstanding citizens.
Victim one was Charlie Talbot. The police concluded that he was on the trail after dark because he had been excluded from the park after repeatedly and illegally bringing his vicious dog Caesar off leash to the park. Caesar was known to attack wild life, people and other dogs with impunity. Mr. Talbot was found with his head bashed in after Caesar showed up the next morning at park headquarters and led a ranger to the body where it had been dragged twenty feet off trail.
Victim two was Chris Massey. She too had been excluded from the park because she had been caught digging up plants in the park to take home. Her murder was even grizzlier. She was killed a year after the first in a similar location to where Mr. Talbot was found, but with her head cut off by some sort of curved blade. She was easy to find because she had told her daughter where she was going.
The park is in an urban area with many entrances and no way to register those that enter the park. Despite a plea to anyone in the metro area who had seen either of the victims in the park on the day that they were killed, or anything suspicious, there were no leads in either case. In both cases there was no forensic evidence – identifiable footprints or DNA. The two victims had nothing in common except for being excluded from the park, so the police assumed that there was no connection between the two crimes.
Neither murder has been solved.
I didn’t mention in the article that no one checked the shovel that I use. It wouldn’t have been a problem anyway. I got a new shovel.
Nobody messes with my park.
*Appears in Yellow Mama
Doug Hawley is a little old man who lives with editor Sharon and cat Kitzhaber in Lake Oswego Oregon USA. He was a mathematician. In retirement he volunteers, collects music, hikes and writes.
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