OR, Update, Convict suspected of being serial killer
Mark Fenster
Update of one atc thread from 2001.
Fenster
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OR, Convict suspected of being serial killer
Prosecutors plan to appeal a judge's acquittal of double murderer
Sebastian Shaw in a third slaying as they continue their investigation
Saturday, May 08, 2004
ASHBEL S. GREEN
and ROBIN FRANZEN [The Oregonian]
Sebastian Alexander Shaw was angry at two co-workers in the summer of
1992, so angry he wanted to kill them.
But Shaw knew police would suspect him. So the ex-Marine did what
experts say only the most unusual killer would do: He took out his
rage on two strangers.
On July 17, after driving around, looking for a random target, Shaw
entered a Southeast Portland mobile home, raped an 18-year-old woman
-- "for the heck of it," he later told police -- and stabbed to death
the woman and her man companion.
Police caught up with Shaw in 1998. By then, police had used DNA to
connect him to the gunpoint rape and attempted strangulation of a
Southeast Portland woman.
Detectives were convinced they had a serial killer on their hands, and
they launched an extensive West Coast review of unsolved slayings. But
they couldn't tie Shaw to other cases. In 2000, he pleaded guilty to
the double murder and rape, and was sentenced to life in prison.
A few months later, Shaw told detectives he might be willing to
confess to a "package" of killings.
Detectives, who hear such claims all the time from convicts eager to
trade information for prison perks, think there is strong reason to
believe that Shaw is telling the truth about other homicides. That's
because of the nature of Shaw's crimes, from selecting strangers to
carefully plotting their slayings.
"Why was Ted Bundy so successful? Did he know any women he killed? No,
he did not," said Larry Findling, a retired Portland police detective
who investigated Shaw. "That's what makes serial killers so dangerous
-- they have a prior plan; they have an escape plan. And they don't
talk."
In 2000, another DNA match tied Shaw to a third slaying, but by that
time, he wasn't talking.
Prosecutors planned to try to put Shaw on Death Row -- or use the
threat of a death sentence as leverage to get him to clear up other
killings.
Late last month, the leverage disappeared. A Multnomah County judge
issued a rare pretrial acquittal of Shaw, 36, in the third slaying,
saying prosecutors had engaged in "inexcusable neglect" of the case.
Prosecutors say they will appeal.
In the meantime, investigators are left wondering who else Shaw might
have killed.
From Vietnam to Mount Angel
Born as Chau Quong Ho in 1967 in Vietnam, Shaw was airlifted off the
roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975 shortly before the city
fell, relatives told Richard Wolf, his lead attorney.
He ended up living in Mount Angel with his estranged father, a former
officer in the South Vietnamese army whose job had been to hunt down
communists in rural villages.
"Dad was way post-traumatically stressed, beating him with a wooden
dowel, locking him out of the house," Wolf said.
By 1986, Shaw had left his father, taken a Western-sounding name,
become a U.S. citizen and joined the Marines.
"He joined the Marines because the Marines are who helped save him
from the roof of the embassy," Wolf said. "He really wanted the sense
of belonging that I think a lot of people get in joining the Marines."
He earned an expert rifleman's badge and a good conduct medal. In
1990, Shaw was honorably discharged for being overweight.
In a diary seized by police, Shaw described the discharge as
devastating.
"I changed so much as a person ever since I failed the Corps. No one
knows my secret, and it is to my eternal shame that I shall probably
keep this secret until my grave. The blow to my self-worth seems
continuous," Shaw wrote.
"Murderers do just snap"
"Once I wouldn't have harmed a rodent, but now I would nuke a city
without blinking. Damn this creature I have become for it is a dark
beast just waiting for the unwitting fool to come by and release it. I
feel nothing, and nothing real and all feelings felt are fleeting
will-o-wispy. I exist now only to finish my task I have assigned
myself . . ."
Robert Gebo, a retired Seattle police homicide detective and serial
killer expert, said there is a misconception that a traumatic event
causes future serial killers to snap one day.
"I don't accept that, and most behaviorists wouldn't. The vast
majority of murderers do just snap. And they probably never, ever
would do that again," said Gebo, who consulted with police in the Shaw
investigation. "Whereas, these other guys, they like it, and they're
going to continue to do it no matter what happens. They think they're
smarter than everyone else."
Shaw had a few brushes with the law after his discharge from the
Marines. But in 1992, when police found the bodies of Donna Ferguson,
18, and Todd A. Rudiger, 29, they had no reason to suspect Shaw.
Lab matches up DNA
When the Southeast Portland woman was raped in 1995, detectives did
not realize there was a connection with the Ferguson-Rudiger murders.
The connection emerged in 1997, when the state crime lab determined
that DNA found at the two crime scenes matched.
Police went back to the rape victim and developed a detailed sketch of
her assailant. They soon focused on Shaw, who had been arrested in
Portland in 1994 on auto theft.
In the trunk of the stolen vehicle, police found a blindfold, plastic
ties, pepper mace, a throwing knife, a roll of duct tape, a lead
weight tied in the end of a sock, two ski masks, six packages of
surgical gloves and three sexually explicit magazines.
At the time of the rape, Shaw worked as a checker at the Safeway store
at 2800 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., not far from the victim's apartment. The
woman shopped there and occasionally went to a bar on Hawthorne that
Shaw also frequented.
Detectives asked Shaw to provide a DNA sample, but he refused. After a
surveillance, however, police obtained a sample of his DNA from a
discarded cigarette butt.
It matched DNA found at the scene of the 1992 double homicide and the
1995 rape.
Known for violence
In 1998, Shaw was indicted in the two killings and the rape, but
police suspected his life of crime went further. After all, friends
and family had described him as an explosively violent man who
attempted to sexually abuse his teenage cousin. He also once shot out
a television and threatened to kill a roommate after a dispute about
whose turn it was to do the dishes, according to a search warrant
affidavit.
In addition, Gebo, the Seattle serial killer expert, looked at the
evidence of the crimes, including Shaw's stalking behavior and
selection of strangers, and concluded he was a dangerous predator who
surely had committed other crimes.
Police looked for similar sex assault-homicides in Oregon and other
places Shaw had lived, including California and various places he was
stationed in the Marines. Nothing solid came up. When he was sentenced
to life in prison for the Rudiger and Ferguson murders, his case
appeared to be closed.
A few months later, Findling said he and Detective Michael Stahlman
talked to Shaw to see whether he would explain how he selected
Ferguson and Rudiger. During the interview, Shaw admitted killing the
couple as proxies for co-workers at a Portland security company.
"Think about that for a while," Findling said recently. "If that
doesn't chill, nothing will."
Other than the DNA, detectives found no connection between Shaw and
the third man he was accused of killing in 1991, Jay Rickbeil, 40.
They do know that Rickbeil was slain the same day Shaw was fired from
his job at a cable company.
Prosecutors plan to appeal Multnomah County Circuit Judge David
Gernant's decision to acquit Shaw of the Rickbeil murder. That appeal
holds the best chance of finding out what Shaw was up to during that
period.
"In our business, we would say the probability of him just sitting on
his hands in the intervening years and doing nothing is slim to none,"
Gebo said.
Ashbel "Tony" Green: 503-221-8202; tony...@news.oregonian.com
Robin Franzen: 503-221-8133; robinf...@news.oregonian.com