PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — A newly released indictment against a man accused of killing three women provides when the victims were killed and when their bodies were dumped.
Earlier this month, Jesse Lee Calhoun was charged with the second-degree murders of 24-year-old Charity Lynn Perry, 32-year-old JoAnna Speaks and 31-year-old Bridget LeAnne Webster.
Calhoun is also charged with three counts of second-degree abuse of a corpse.
In a two-page indictment released Friday, prosecutors relied on the testimonies of 16 witnesses that were presented to a grand jury. The expert witnesses included detectives, medical examiners, and forensic scientists.
The indictment claims Calhoun killed Perry on March 8, 2023. Her body was found nearly seven weeks later, on April 24, at East Historic Columbia River Highway and Northeast Tumalt Road, near Ainsworth State Park.
Perry's mother, Diana Allen, says Perry was known to frequent the open-air drug market at Washington Center in downtown Portland, an area Multnomah County sheriff's deputies say she was last seen in March 2023.
Allen recently learned that Perry overdosed in that area on March 6 and was taken to the hospital.
She says the timing of her reported death just two days later is painful.
“That right there is the hardest thing to process," said Allen.
But she said it's also helping her heal.
“It releases some of the guilt,” she said.
Allen is now struggling to find out the details of Perry's hospital stay and discharge date.
She says Perry struggled with mental health and addiction, but she was always able to find her and help her in the past.
“They didn’t call me, I’m her emergency contact,” she said.
Now that she knows the day her daughter died, she plans to add the date to her headstone.
“That date is so important to me,” said Allen. “It explains why I couldn’t find her during that time. Detectives that I know, they know I would have went and got her. I went and got her every other time.”
Calhoun is accused of killing Speaks 10 days after Perry, on March 18, 2023. Her body was found three weeks later on April 8, at an abandoned property on South 5th Street in Ridgefield.
Police later determined Speaks was killed in Portland and her body moved. The document also details an autopsy from April 10, 2023, showing Speaks was killed by blunt force trauma to the head.
Speaks' death is the only one of the three so far in which the manner of death was revealed.
The indictment claims Calhoun killed the third victim, Webster, on April 26, 2023. Her body was found four days later, on April 30, at Harmony Road near Mill Creek in Polk County.
In a news conference earlier this month, Multnomah County prosecutors said they are continuing to investigate the deaths of two other women who may also be linked to Calhoun, Kristin Smith and Ashley Real.
Prosecutors say they expect Calhoun to be transported to Multnomah County for an arraignment on the charges. A date has not been set.
Calhoun is currently being held at the Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern Oregon, where he is serving time for a parole violation.
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