The Dark History of Oregon's Highway 20's Disappearances | Forensic Files

from the late '70s to the early '90s there was a man in Oregon killing young women they knew it was him but they
never had enough to prove it how did he get away with murder let me tell you welcome to Crime
junkie hi crime junkies I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Brit and the story I have for you today will have you
screaming there was this guy out in the Pacific Northwest because of course it's
a Pacific Northwest and he keeps popping up at the center of these mysterious disappearances but over and over again
police say there just isn't enough so he's let out let off just to be out there out there to strike again first a
jogger who goes missing on Christmas Eve he's the last to see her then his stepdaughter goes missing he's the last
to see her and then two teens stop at a diner before they go on a camping trip and who is the last to interact with
them this guy and I think that is just the tip of the iceberg there could be many more cases he's responsible for and
how he got away with this for so long is a story you won't believe this is the story of the mysteries of Highway 20
[Music] it's around 10:00 a.m. when NL Turner realizes his 35-year-old wife Kay hasn't
returned from her run now she had left around 8:00 a.m. and planned to be gone for about an hour but to make it home
for breakfast well that's now come and gone times two and NL is getting a little worried so he hops in his truck
to see if he can go find her probably just hoping that she maybe sprained an ankle or got lost or something cuz
though she's an avid Runner she is kind of an unfamiliar terrain right now because this is Sunday Christmas Eve
actually of 1978 and null and Kay are vacationing in this remote area of Oregon called Camp Sherman which is
right off of this um big Main Road known as Highway 20 and they took this little
trip as a holiday getaway with some friends exchanging gifts sitting by the fire like singing carols it was supposed
to be this magical time like doing all the christmy things but that wouldn't stop Kay from getting her workout in
again Avid Runner and what should have been Kay's time to recharge and clear her head is quickly becoming now her
family and friends's Nightmare because there is no sign of Kay as her husband is driving around everywhere and by 1:30
no is Thoroughly panicked enough that now he needs to call police so NL and others are eager to get searching right
away but they're told by police to wait which is just at this point burning precious daylight hours in their mind So
eventually Sheriff deputies arrive and they along with the locals and the Turner's friends finally do start
searching for K even when it gets dark they search through the night but there isn't a single sign of her not even on
Christmas Day or the day after despite the searches getting bigger and bigger like these are extensive land searches
and I assume they talked to all the friends and stuff and we're sure she actually even made it on the run like
nothing happened to her wherever it is they're all staying yeah according to Noel cromby who wrote extensively about
this for The Oregonian Kay even asked one of their friends to go jogging with her but they declined and they do
eventually find a couple of witnesses this pair of Highway workers who like they talked to separately they were like
said they saw her again separately like running solo in the morning that she vanished so she went on the run
everything seemed fine and they must not have seemed all that suspicious or suspicious at all because police didn't
seem to dig deeper into either of these like Highway worker guys and there's something else that they didn't dig
deeper into either this one to me is far more baffling so on day three this is December 26th the deputy in charge of
the search gets a radio call from a couple of trackers who had been helping authorities out and they tell the deputy
that they've discovered two sets of Frozen Footprints in this clearing over by the woods like near where she was
seen running I don't know it sounds like it was close I I'm not totally clear on
exactly where this was but according to these trackers one set of prints could have been from Kay's running shoes they
knew that she'd been wearing this specific type of Nike shoe ones with like the old school waffle soul that we
know but the other set of prints appeared to be from a larger shoe and so right away it's clear that these are not
the prints of two people out for a stroll in the woods more alarmingly The Trackers say seems like there was some
kind of struggle and that the larger person dragged away the smaller person did they follow these prints they did
but then it got dark and they couldn't go any further which is something that to me like is you follow up on after but
it seems like this Deputy didn't believe them or he didn't seem as interested because that appears to be as far as
this went how does it even happen this is like the best and kind of the only lead that they have dude I don't know I
mean maybe authorities did look further into it and there's just no record reporting of it and maybe there wasn't
anything more to learn or they decided they weren't like from the people or k whatever but I don't know I feel like we
should have at least closed the loop on that like yeah especially if they're not
related at all but that doesn't happen so we're here left guessing and as more days pass without any sign of K police
start looking inward a little more examining Kay's life to see if there would be any reason for her to leave on
her own according to the the limited docu series Lost women of Highway 20 when investigators look at her and her
husband's life back in Eugene Oregon where they live they discover this calendar that belonged to Kay at her
office and in it there is evidence to suggest that she had actually been seeing people outside of her marriage
and at the time that police are learning this this is news to null who they obviously like ask about this and they
know or like believe that he's not lying about not knowing because they do end up
asking him to take a gra about this and he ends up passing but he does admit that he knew k wasn't happy in their
marriage and we can assume police looked more into any possible Affairs that Kay
was having but there's nothing in the source material to suggest that Kay did take off with someone and again they
have witnesses like putting her out running so logistically like that might not even make sense right like you're
not going to be like putting on your running shoes while you're on vacation with your husband to like away with so
before they knew it it was spring and then summer and it takes a full eight months before the first sign of K pops
up and in a really chilling way so one day in August the owner of this little general store in Camp Sherman is just
like going about their usual day when this local guy rolls in now the guy is known to her the owner but not in the
best way he had been in a couple of times and really sked her out when she caught him touching himself in the store
while looking at some adult magazine so like the second shees walk in she's like oh hell no and she goes into the
and gets her husband when he comes out the guy tells him he found some clothes while he was out rabbit hunting that he
thinks might belong to that missing jogger from back at Christmas and so he asked the shop owner if there is some
kind of reward which there was like a $1,000 reward at the time but the shop owner is all kinds of suspicious of his
story because he knows at the time there are no rabbits in the area but before this guy can wise up the shop
owner phones police and is like hey you probably should get here and like don't waste any time get here now and if
police aren't tripping over themselves to get to the general store already they are when the store owner calls them back
because since he'd hung up with them the guy has said something else he admits that he might have been the last person
to see K Turner alive now it's unclear exactly when authorities put two and two together but they soon realized that
this local this stranger who might have stumbled across K's clothes isn't some random guy they already knew him they
had interviewed him early in the investigation his name is John akroy and he was one of the highway workers who
admitted to seeing Kay running the day she disappeared okay I mean there's suspicious and then there's this there's
this right so they go meet John and he leads police out into the woods about a mile and a half from Camp Sherman where
they find several pieces of clothing there is a yellow pair of shorts underwear a broken watch Nike running
shoes and then there among the clothing they find a lower Jawbone with teeth still intact oh my God and sure enough a
medical examiner will later confirm those teeth belonged to Kay do they find the rest of her mm not at the time so I
mean it has been in this area her body I mean in the elements for some eight months now like you've got Critters to
deal with I mean a perfect example is one of the officers actually who's on the scene they notice a piece of K's
blonde hair like Tangled Up in a bird's nest so so evidence is literally flying away scattered everywhere but even
though they won't be able to determine how she died just based on the little that they have and the way that her
remains were left they do find Clues as to when so K's broken watch reads 9:27 December 24th
it's a mechanical watch not digital just to be clear and the stem had been knocked out so like it stopped the time
though there's like some conflicting reporting that maybe it read 9:05 but either way if it was am that means that
it would have broken about an hour or so into her dog that morning right around the time nol was expecting her to be
home so now that they know Kay's fate they bring their first and only person of interest in for questioning and JN
tells police much like he did the store owners that he would was just hunting rabbits with his dog when he stumbled
across the remains the clothes whatever and police are also suspicious of this because again there wasn't a lot of
rabbits in this area so they ask JN if he's willing to take a polygraph which he agrees to he ends up failing but he
still denies any involvement in Kay's death but here's the thing his story does begin to shift
two branches of the same tree two pieces of a soul where one sister goes the other will be for she is but
half of the whole the missing half pre-order your copy at Ashley flowers.com so initially when John told Poli he saw
Kay running on the day she disappeared there had been nothing else to that story well now all this time later he
says actually I stopped and talked to Kay now it's nothing wild he just like we exchanged holiday pleasantries or
whatever but it's significant enough like enough of a change to make everybody be on high alert so police ask
him if he ever touched Kay because that was one of the polygraph questions he failed and yet again all of a sudden the
story shifts he says well yeah no I did touch K but he says bizarrely that he touched her in February two months after
her disappearance she goes missing in December right and take a seat buckle up cuz the ride is Shifting again now he
tells police that he actually found her body first in February so not in August and he says he didn't report discovering
her remains because he was afraid that he might get accused of killing her and when he found her in February he like
touched her arm or something and what exactly does he think is going to happen now Brett the red flags on this guy are
like piled so high you can't see over them and it doesn't get any better John claims that when he found Kay's body in
February she was nude and partially covered in snow and he said it looked like her throat had been cut and that
she was also shot in the chest so he's giving pretty precise details that I don't know maybe only the killer would
know yeah specific but still even though this is super weird police can't prove that John is the killer because even
though he's giving this weird specific story they can't prove that that is a right story or a wrong story either way
because they have no physical evidence to work with right and to complicate things John sort of has an alibi he says
that he spent most of Christmas Eve with a buddy named Roger Dale Beck was this the other Highway worker witness no
these are two totally different guys um again Jon and that other guy weren't even together when they saw K I don't
even know if they like work together like two separate things anyways so this Roger guy confirms that he was with John
but it's unclear if he was with him before or after JN would have seen Kay we just know that he says he went
hunting with John at some point that afternoon and then nothing weird stood out to him certainly nothing that would
suggest to him that like his hunting buddy had killed a woman or was planning to kill a woman and Roger's wife this
woman named Pam she kind of chimes in at some point giving both of these guys Alibi saying that they were at their
house most of the morning but John can't be there or with them right when he sees
Kay which he's already admitted to like a couple of times that feels like the only window that really matters here yes
and I'd love to drill in on that but by this point Jon has wised up and he now gets a lawyer so no more talking and the
police have to let him walk but that doesn't mean that they stop digging into him so they learned that in 1977 the
year before Kay disappeared a woman named Marlene gabrielson told police that JN had sexually assaulted her after
he picked her up when she was hitchhiking along Highway 20 and her story is horrifying she said that she
fell asleep in the car on the way home and she woke up to Jon dragging her out of his truck by her legs and she said
that he ripped off her pants even cut her underwear and boots off with a knife and then sexually assaulted her at some
point later she said Jon seemed to contemplate what to do next with her like it sounds like he was concerned
about letting her go but she pleaded with him pointing out that she had a new baby John relented gave her a pair of
his pants to wear and they just like resumed their drive and despite everything she had just gone through
before Jon finally dropped her off marleene convinced him to give her his phone number by like pretending that she
liked him Marlin's a Smart Cookie very not and not she's not doing this just so he like thinks everything's fine she's
doing it so she can identify him later like she wanted to see John punish for what he did to her and I can only assume
that's what police used that number to track Jon down after she'd gone to the hospital and had done a sexual assault
cat so they had brought Jon in for questioning at that time but this is where Marlene's tragic story got even
more tragic and infuriating Jon told police that Marlene came on to him and despite the bruises
and the scratches that Marlene suffered and everything else she did to prove her
story to basically hand them the evidence they need on a silver platter because he said it wasn't a sexual
assault they believed him and he was never prosecuted unbelievable even worse the police seem
to suggest that maybe it was Marlene's fault they question her drug use her drinking if she was being flirty with
John maybe coming onto him sexually in Lost women of Highway 20 marleene talks about how police made her feel like a
liar was there ever a polygraph for John then because I feel like we would have learned he was a liar like a year
earlier BR they did and somehow he passed which probably just helped fuel the police's belief that Marlene was
lying and it also points to the thing we've said so many times like the there were flaws there are problems with this
kind of testing and there are problems with not believing victims like that has very big very real life-threatening
consequences and the police are learning that but even if they see that incident
in a whole new life now it doesn't change the fact that they still don't have anything to tie him to Kay's murder
and so her case starts to go cold according to the Oregon journal in October they end up finding Kay's skull
about 3/4 of a mile from where her clothes and her lower Jawbone were found but again like it doesn't give them much
of anything the investigators don't glean anything new from this so all Kay's husband and her friends can do is
wait and that weight becomes excruciatingly long I mean over a decade passes and in
that time letting John akroy slip through their fingers has dire consequences once again so this time
it's midm morning on July 11th 1990 when a 911 dispatcher with the Lynn County Sheriff's Office gets a call from a
concerned mother named Linda she tells them that her 13-year-old daughter Randa pickle is missing has been since the day
before and she is worried sick is sure something is wrong and it's now been 24 hours so she's calling to make the
report Linda says that she thought she needed to wait the 24 hours to report her daughter missing and it has to break
her heart when the dispatcher corrects her and tells her that like in the cases of children that's not true but they're
here now so the dispatcher starts asking questions who was the last to see her daughter Linda tells them that it was
her stepfather and of course Brit do you want to take a wild guess at who her father was John akroy isn't it it is
John akroy for the second time John is about to become the main suspect in a disappearance now John had married Linda
in the mid 80s but divorced soon after despite this though it sounds like they stayed together anyway and according to
Noel's piece in The Oregonian they are living together in 1990 and raising Linda's children from her previous
relationship Randa and her brother Byron now home for them was this remote Community known as Santiam Junction
which is where Highway 20 Oregon Route 126 and Oregon Route 22 like all intersect B all these big highways John
worked as a highway mechanic so it made sense for the family to live in this is it essentially was like a compound where
other Highway workers lived as well and how far was this from Camp Sherman about
30 minutes so police descend on this area they bring in search resources to find Randa and it's clear that police
early on n think that she didn't just run away like nothing in her room was missing none of her close friends had
any idea where she was and Randa wasn't known to just wander off into the woods in the Lost women of Highway 20 dock her
brother Byron points to the fact that she was actually scared to go into the woods alone and Linda tells police that
the last time she saw her daughter was the morning of the 10th so the day before Randa was up early even helped
Linda do her hair and before Linda left for work she gave her daughter a list of
chores to do that day but then when Linda got home no chores had been done and Randa wasn't there and if she went
somewhere she would usually leave a note that's not there either so what's John's
story through all this well he said that he dropped Linda off at work that morning and then he went to go work in
Bend Oregon John is still a mechanic for the state at that point but he says that
when he got there he found that some parts that he was waiting for like didn't come in so he ended up just
taking the day off so so he's off of work the day she disappears correct even more than that supervisors of his would
later say that there was no reason for him to take off like just cuz whatever parts weren't there like there's plenty
of other work that he could have been doing that day so he was off but he was supposed to be at work yes then where
was he home he tells police that when he got home richanda was there he saw her on the couch watching cartoons he asked
her if she wanted to take pictures of deer on some like back roads or something something but she didn't want
to go with him cuz she's a teenage girl and that sounds awful so he says he left
to go take pictures on his own noticed richanda wasn't home by the time he got back he said when he noticed she wasn't
there he like looked around a little bit then he left to go pick Linda up from work and then when they got home
together Rando still wasn't home now in an eerie like deja vu type thing Jon is adamant that he's got nothing to do with
randa's disappearance while Jon does help search for his stepdaughter I mean he kind of leads the charge actually
he's also saying things right and left that are just big like WTF moments like at one point John tells police that on
the night that Randa disappeared he and Linda had sex despite you know like her daughter being missing he even tells
police it was great sex like he makes sure to say that and he he said it was notable because JN has he tells them
alol laido so it's unusual that they even have sex listen I I don't want to take an especially deep dive into the
mind of sexual predators but I have to wonder like if he did do something to Randa he could have kind of
gotten off on it like the knowledge of what he did would kind of carry through and arouse him later which would be F
like in so many words like they kind of point to that in the dock like how messed up it would be for you to have
like a libido in this situation when you normally don't and then to want to have
sex with this woman whose young daughter is newly missing like that day like I don't know yeah so John's interview with
the police and like a lot of things with John it only gets more troubling from there at one point John theorizes how
someone could have done something to Randa he talks about how someone could have knocked her out with a punch could
have tied her up or used a knife to threaten her and that her size and weight would have made it easy for
someone to carry her away and police soon find evidence that could suggest that these aren't just
theories in the back of Jon's truck police find a rope with randa's hair and blood some blood is also found on the
doorstep of his truck and I don't think these are massive amounts of blood just like tiny drops but blood nonetheless I
mean at least they have some physical evidence this time not so fast John claims that Rand used the Rope to play
with like some kittens or something so he is like maybe that's how her hair got on it he doesn't know how the blood
would have gotten there but you know kids be kids basically like he's like you know how they are and he kind of
just like throws up her hands no explanation is a good explanation to him like and it might not be a good
explanation but it isn't proof again of anything to these police officers obviously John is front and center but
there is a brief per period where police do look at randa's biological father Steve as a possible suspect too you see
richanda had just returned from visiting him in fact her brother Byron was still
visiting him when she went missing and without going into too much detail Steve didn't sound like father of the year by
any means but the problem is Steve lived 5 hours away so police are confident that he wasn't in the area that the time
she disappeared so even though they kind of go down this other path they pretty quickly are right back looking at JN and
are they bringing K up at all when he's in the Hop seat for Randa I don't know how much they actually Grill him on K
but I think they're at least aware of it even though there's probably been a ton
of turnover in I mean it's been like a decade and even though Kay disappeared in another County it sounds like the da
of that County was monitoring the search for Randa I think there's like maybe some hope that if they can't get him on
K that they'll get him on Randa so I mean they're definitely connecting the dots but outside of law enforcement
there were others who were less quick to judge JN Byron talks about how his mom would get upset when he would ask about
Jon's possible involvement in a Statesman Journal article published not long after Randa goes missing Linda
publicly talks about how she is concerned about the focus on John now why she's responding this way I don't
know according to the Lost women of Highway 20 doc Randa showed signs apparently of physical abuse and
according to her friends sexual abuse at the hands of JN like I guess Randa and her friends would talk about it
sometimes like some of them were dealing with similar things at home and according to her friends she did tell
another adult but when she did nothing happened and then she was scared that she was going to get in trouble or
something was going to happen because she told someone that feels like it could be a motive for JN to do something
though like if he knew that she talked and hadn't been listened to the first time or he was afraid that maybe she
would again right which makes it very convenient timing for Randa to just disappear and despite one of the most
extensive searches in Lynn County History police do not find her so now authorities have two cold cases tied to
John akroy but in the fall of 1991 an investigator looking back into K's case has an idea he discovers that Roger Dale
Beck so the guy that was supposedly with John on Christmas Eve he found out that
he had gotten divorced from his wife Pam and this detective he is Will to place a
beted that now that maybe alliances have changed stories might change as well so
he tracks down Pam who is now living in California he shows up at her house knocks on her door and when she answers
and finds out who this guy is it takes almost no convincing at all for Pam to come clean all those years ago she had
straight up lied about Roger and John Pam tells the detective that Roger and JN went out to poach deer on Christmas
Eve morning but they didn't return to the house until the next day and when they did they had blood on them and it
wasn't just like a little dropp or staining here and there Pam literally had to dispose of Roger's jeans and
shirt it was so bad and they didn't even try to pass it off as deer blood they had told Pam that they had accidentally
mistaken Kay for a deer and shot her and they were going to need Pam to basically
be their Alibi if police ever came around asking questions she needed to tell them that they got home around noon
eventually Roger even admits to her that even that like bull hunting accident story wasn't real he told her that Kay
had been sexually assaulted and shot and Roger had threatened to do the same to Pam which is probably why she lied for
him I mean she was terrified but with Pam's new information K's Cas starts ramping back up but the police are in a
Race Against Time at this point they know Jon is still out there and could strike again though according to the or
Onan at this time J's basically been booted out of santam Junction the people weren't comfortable with him being there
so he got moved I assume by his supervisors or maybe like he chose to leave I don't know but he is still at
the same job working as a mechanic for the state highway department so like your tax dollars hard to work folks
great so he's apparently not living with Linda anymore and is staying with his mother in Sweet Home where he grew up
but he's working out of a town called Corvalis and Corvalis unfortunately is a well unfortunately for the people there
at the time is a thriving little college town and while it sounds like authorities plan to keep tabs on him I'm
not sure that's as easy as it sounds John's like a roving mechanic that means that he is constantly moving up and down
Highway 20 but in all of that moving Jon doeses have some usual haunts he becomes
this like known commodity at this one particular place called Sherry's Diner along Highway 20 in Lebanon Oregon and
there this is wild all the regulars there knew him by his CB radio handle the Pervert I'm sorry his handle was the
Pervert what I know and this guy is either the unluckiest man alive or every girl and every woman who crosses his
path is The Unlucky One because in 1992 John finds himself right in the center of another missing person's case
actually this time the case of two young women it's a pair of best friends 17-year-old Melissa Sanders and
19-year-old Sheila Swanson wait wait wait those names sound really familiar because we talked about them before in
the Kelly Disney episode right like it's been a while I'll link to that episode in the show notes for people to have a
little bit of a refresher but here we can actually dive even deeper into the details of their cases so according to
the Lost women of Highway 20 both girls hung out at sher's Diner and they knew the Pervert he would buy food for
Melissa and he was there one of the last days the girls were ever seen when they
had come in and told everyone that they were going to go on a camping trip in Newport which is like along the Oregon
coast so John knew where they were going to be he did and he even mentioned to the girls that he might be in the same
area now the girl's tent ends up being found over that way empty but the girls are never seen alive again now I don't
know how much authorities looking into Kay's case really know about this new case yet part of giving him the boot out
of town meant that it was harder to keep tabs on what was happening in the communities that he was living in ones
that he was working in socializing in and it being the '90s information wasn't exactly super accessible between
jurisdictions so while investigators in one part of the state are looking for their two teens investigators in another
are running a parallel path trying to reignite the K Turner investigation according to the doc the US F and
Wildlife had new or like a new high-tech lab basically so K's clothes are sent off for forensic testing and soon enough
the results come back with some very interesting finds the first is that the waistband of K's shorts appeared to have
been cut or sliced some sources say that her underwear were cut off too which is
like the sexual assault that they let John go on marene marene yes also tears in Kure appear to be from stab wounds
and Lead fragments on the shirt indicate that she was shot so that lines up at least somewhat closely with what JN had
told investigators about like the appearance of Kay's body when he claimed to have found her in February and it
lines up with what Pam said yes so if John couldn't feel the net kind of slowly closing in on him he is about to
on May 31st 1992 police actually arrest not John but his friend Roger for the murder of K Turner why Roger and not
John good question there is no clear answer that I have seen reported on so I'm not sure if it was just because they
had Pam really pinning Roger for it that was like a stronger connection maybe they were also hoping that Roger would
flip on Jon so they wanted him in custody first I don't know but not arresting Jon first or at least at the
same time could have caused valuable evidence to be lost because a little over a week later police discover that
the storage unit that John had rented was completely cleared out the evening of the 31st so the exact day that Roger
was rested no that's not suspicious at all Ashley what are you talking about I know they do they know what was in the
unit at all they don't and unfortunately for them the unit been like I mean it's
been like swept up someone else had moved in right after I know they tried to like send someone into the crime lab
to check the unit out but there's like there's nothing The Source material about what if anything they find so I'm
assuming it was nothing but it's game over for JN almost 2 weeks after Roger's arrest so on June 12th that's when Jon
is finally arrested and this means that Kay's family might finally see some justice all these years later and two
other families might not have to wait nearly as long cuz almost 4 months after his arrest so now we're in October this
is October 10th some Hunters come across the bodies of Melissa and Sheila a few miles off of Highway
20 according to Noel crom's report the medical examiner thinks that the girls were most likely strangled though there
are some conflicting sources that say they were stabbed either way like K the conditions of the bodies make it
difficult to determine precisely what happened and like K there's zero forensic evidence the only possible
piece of evidence police do find at the scene is this like little rivet near one
of the bodies and some kind of beaded seat cushion the speculation being that the rivet which like this little screw
it could be something that John would have been using in his work and the seat cushion is something that Highway
workers often had in their trucks to keep them cool in the summer so Jon's truck is searched he didn't have one of
these cushions in it so maybe that one was his but it was impossible to determine at the time and JN who is now
in custody isn't talking so while police try to connect some of the dots between
the girls and JN ultimately it is this all too familiar song there is no physical evidence connecting Jon to the
girl's murders now sometime later a coworker of John's would claim that around the time that the girls
disappeared JN came into work late one night and his arms and his hands were covered in dry blood John claimed to
have hit a deer and then gutted it but this guy I guess didn't even really believe his story then did he go to
police with the story if he did it wasn't until later like certainly not then it sounds like he maybe mentioned
the story to his boss but then it just kind of like stayed work gossip at the time and then after the news about
Melissa and Sheila's bodies being found like I think this guy began to wonder if
there was a connection to this story but again a little unclear about like when he went to the police or the press or
whatever so in September of 1993 JN goes on trial for Kay's murder and according
to the Statesman Journal people like Roger's wife Pam testify against him they also find more witnesses to
corroborate what a predator the quote pervert is a woman named Jane Morris testifies that one day in 1978 like
months before Kay's disappearance she encountered JN while she was riding a bike along a road in Camp Sherman and
she says that JN pointed a gun at her attempted to get her to stop but thankfully she didn't and then one of
the more critical testimonies comes from a forensic anthropologist who tells the
jury that the only way Jon could have seen wounds like the type of wounds he described seeing on K was if he saw them
in the first few days after K died so him saying even that he saw her in February not August even that separation
wasn't enough to actually make sense it doesn't make sense there like there is no way he could describe the cuts the
shot whatever unless it happened within like days so goodbye John yep on October
6th 1993 just a few days shy of the one-year anniversary of Melissa and Sheila's bodies being discovered over 3
years after his stepdaughter Randa vanished and over 14 years after after police are pointed to K's remains that
is when John akroy is found guilty of K Turner's murder according to an article in The Oregonian he is sentenced to life
with a 20-year minimum which is the maximum under the law when that crime was committed over a month later Roger
Beck is also found guilty and he receives the same sentence authorities seem to believe that Roger was only
involved in Kay's murder and so they really only focus on JN for answers in those cases for Melissa and Sheila and
of course richanda whose case has continued to make headlines occasionally during this time but even though it's
making headlines police aren't much further along on that case but they do keep coming back to her file year after
year they even get desperate enough to ask John to help in the fall of 2012 an investigator with the Lynn County
Sheriff's Office visits Jon in prison hoping maybe he's finally ready to talk or open up and provide some kind of
answers to the questions that have surely haunted the people that he once called family but despite the
investigator's best efforts Jon is not giving up his ghosts according to Oregonian he continues to Spill the same
lies he did in the beginning and it sounds like this is the last time any investigator speaks with Jon by 2013
there is some concern that Jon could eventually get out on parole so despite only having circumstantial evidence and
as we've mentioned like zero body prosecutors do randa's case to a grand jury as sort of like a Hail Mary and the
prosecution does have a solid pitch to throw like logic dictates that Jon is probably the one who could have done
this he was the last one to have seen her alive opportunity there was accusations of him sexually abusing her
which gives motive oh and by the way he has now been convicted of Kate Turner's murder so like we' got this history here
and look I'm all for due process but we we could kind of like probably know who did this apparently the grand jury feels
the same way because they indict on a single count of murder but indicting is different than Prosecuting and
convicting like and can be a lot easier right so the prosecution what they decide to do is they go to randa's
family specifically because they want to offer him a plea deal they're like listen if we go to trial and he's
acquitted like that's it like it's over and he could go on to get parole right so in their minds it's better to focus
on like they want to use this to focus on keeping him behind bars and the family agrees and JN ends up entering a
no contest ple so he's not admitting fault but he's not denying it either and this outcome means that he can never be
paroled and while he receives some punishment for Randa sadly her body still hasn't been found like that wasn't
ever part of the deal that they made with him what about Melissa and Sheila's cases did they ever bring anything
against him there ultimately they decide not to at this point they say they're confident it is Jon who killed them but
Jon at this point is already serving a life sentence like he's never getting out so prosecutors decide not to proceed
with that like knowing he can never see the light of day has to be Justice enough because that same year John
actually dies in prison so they can never prosecute him even in the future and while some might think that that
would bring this story to a close there are still so many questions that remain unanswered including if these are the
only only murders John committed that's honestly what's been in the back of my mind this whole time has he ever been
linked to any other cases yeah so The Oregonian Flags to date five other people that have either gone missing
from or their remains have been found discovered in the general area offer around Highway 20 where John was known
to operate the first is a skull of a Jane do that they found in July of 1976 which predates K by like 2 years it even
predates yeah marleene Sexual Assault The Oregonian calls this Jane Doe um I think they call her swamp Mountain de
and they report that her skull was found a mile off Highway 20 she was believed to be they think younger than 35 and
authorities found a leather coat a belt blue jeans and a sandal with like a white leather strap nearby that could
have belonged to her and then in May of 1977 15-year-old Karen Lee and 14-year-old Rodney Grom went missing
from the town of Lebanon we know that JN would have passed through there regularly I mean that's the same town
where sher's Diner was located where John would hang out in the 9s it's where he encountered Melissa and Sheila Karen
and Rodney were never found but clothing and items of theirs were eventually found in the woods and Karen's jeans
appeared to be cut similarly to how John cut clothing off of marleene and Kay now
what we learned about Karen and Rodney is that the two wanted to run away to California and one of the teens's last
phone calls to a friend indicated that they had found found a ride but who they were getting this ride from is unknown
maybe John maybe not then in August of 1977 22-year-old Elizabeth musler went missing also from Lebanon her father was
the last to see her downtown in February of 1978 her body ended up being found in
a shallow grave in the thistle Creek area of Green Peter Reservoir and also in 1978 another skull of a Jane do was
found by a logging crew in the woods near Snow Creek which is like a quarter mile south of Highway 20 did they ever
ask John about these other cases sort of I don't think he was asked in like great
detail about these cases but he was asked more broadly like hey John what about some of these like other cases in
the area he claimed he didn't know what they were talking about and he had nothing to do with anything so at the
end of the day no other cases have been directly linked to John it's all speculative at this point but it shows
that maybe this story isn't totally over while some of his victim's families can
take some solace in the fact that this man will never harm anyone again it's heartbreaking to think that there could
still be other families who don't have or may not get the same answers but it's never too late I mean that's why we do
this show so I mean if anyone out there knows anything about these cases or about John akroy his life his movements
please call the Lyn County Sheriff's Office tip line at [Music] 9988 you can find all the source
material for this episode on our website crime junky podcast.com you can also follow us on Instagram at
crimejunkiepodcast make sure to subscribe to our channel so you get all the new video episodes of crime junkie
but we are on our podcast every week telling stories search for Crime juny wherever you get your podcasts
[Music] oh [Music]

When a string of missing and murdered women along Oregon's Highway 20 terrorizes the community, police are lead to the same person over and over again...

Infamously referred to as the "Ghosts of Highway 20," the disappearances along this stretch of highway in Oregon have a chilling connection to John Arthur Ackroyd. Marlene Gabrielsen is believed to be Ackroyd's first victim; after narrowly surviving her encounter with him, she was later interviewed as more women went missing. While Kaye Turner's disappearance didn't initially raise suspicion toward Akroyd, he and Roger Dayle Beck were the last to see her. It wasn’t until Acroyd’s own stepdaughter, Rachanda Pickle, went missing that the case took a troubling turn. As more victims like Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson were discovered, the pattern of disappearances began to add up. Authorities also discovered remains, such as the unidentified "Swamp Mountain Jane Doe," further linking the crimes. Additional disappearances, including those of Rodney Lynn Grissom and Karen Jean Lee, added to the mystery, with their possessions found later along Highway 20. What did all these disappearances have in common, and was it a coincidence or a pattern?

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Brief Summary

John Akroy, a suspected serial killer, evaded justice for years before being linked to multiple murders in Oregon.

Key points

The Disappearance of Kay Turner. Kay Turner goes missing on Christmas Eve, leading to a frantic search.
Discovery of Remains. Months later, Kay's remains are found, revealing chilling details.
John Akroy's Alibi. John Akroy becomes the main suspect after his stepdaughter goes missing.
John's Alibi Raises Questions. John was off work the day Randa disappeared, raising suspicions about his alibi.
Shocking Police Interview. John's bizarre comments during the investigation leave police and listeners stunned.
Evidence Found in John's Truck. Police discover a rope with Randa's hair and blood in John's truck, raising alarms.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a story you won't believe.

1:18WatchFeb 7, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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