Randall Woodfield - Crime Spree

Crime Spree

In early 1975, several Portland women were accosted by a knife-wielding man, forced to perform oral sex and then robbed of their handbags. Law enforcement reacted by having female police officers act as decoys. On March 3, 1975, Woodfield was arrested after being caught with marked money from one of the undercover officers. In April 1975, he pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree robbery. Woodfield was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was freed on parole in July, 1979.

On October 9, 1980, Cherie Ayers, a former classmate of Woodfield's, was raped and murdered in Portland, Oregon. Ayers had been bludgeoned and stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Woodfield was questioned but refused to sit for a polygraph. Homicide detectives found his answers generally "evasive and deceptive," but because his blood type did not match semen found in the victim's body, no charges were filed. One month later Darci Fix and Doug Altic were shot to death execution-style, in Altic's Portland apartment. A .32-caliber revolver was missing from the scene. While Darci had once been involved with one of Woodfield's closest friends, police did not connect Woodfield to the crime.

On December 9, 1980, a robber wearing a fake beard held up a gas station in Vancouver, Washington. In Eugene, Oregon four nights later, a man matching the same description raided an ice cream parlor; on December 14, a robber matching the previous two descriptions robbed a drive-in restaurant in Albany. A week later in Seattle, a waitress was trapped in the restroom of a chicken restaurant by a gunman wearing a fake beard; the gunman forced her to masturbate him. Shortly afterward, a gunman matching the same description of the man in all the previous crimes robbed a Seattle-area ice cream parlor.

By January 1981, law enforcement had dubbed the robber "The I-5 Bandit," given his apparent preference for committing crimes along the Interstate 5 corridor. On January 8, he held up the same Vancouver gas station he had robbed in December, this time forcing a female attendant to expose her breasts after he emptied the cash register. Three days later, he robbed a market in Eugene, and on the 12th shot and wounded a female grocery clerk at a store in Sutherlin, Oregon.

On January 14, a man matching the description of the I-5 bandit and wearing a fake beard invaded a home occupied by two sisters, aged eight and ten; he forced the girls to disrobe and perform fellatio on him. Four days later, in Salem, a man matching the same description entered an office building and sexually abused two women, Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot, after which he killed Hull and wounded Wilmot, leaving her for dead. On January 26 and 29, he travelled to southern Oregon and committed robberies in Eugene, Medford and Grants Pass. In the latter location, two females, a clerk and customer, were fondled by the robber.

On February 3, 1981, the bodies of Donna Eckard, 37, and her 14-year-old daughter were found together in a bed in their home at Mountain Gate, California, north of Redding. Each had been shot several times in the head. Forensic tests showed that the girl had also been sodomized. The same day in Redding, a female store clerk was kidnapped, raped and sodomized in a holdup. An identical crime was reported in Yreka on February 4, with the same man robbing an Ashland, Oregon motel that night. Five days later in Corvallis, a man matching the I-5 Bandit's description held up a fabric store, molesting the clerk and her customer before he left.

On February 12, 1981, robberies committed by a man matching the now infamous I-5 Bandit's description occurred in Vancouver, Olympia, and Bellevue, Washington; the Olympia and Bellevue incidents included three sexual assaults. On February 15, Julie Reitz was shot and killed at her home in Beaverton, Oregon.