The indictment against a man accused of murdering three women and moving their bodies to rural areas shows the killings occurred over just 50 days — offering the first clear timeline regarding the series of women whose deadly disappearances rattled the region last year.
Prosecutors formally filed the Multnomah County Circuit Court indictment a week after announcing that they had charged Jesse Lee Calhoun with three counts each of second-degree murder and second-degree abuse of a corpse.
The two-page document reveals few details, but shows that authorities called 16 witnesses, primarily police detectives, forensic investigators and staff from the Oregon medical examiner’s office, to closed-door grand jury proceedings held May 14-16.
It accuses Calhoun, 39, of causing the death of Charity Lynn Perry, 24, Bridget Leanne Webster, 31, and JoAnna Speaks, 32, and transporting their bodies, but doesn’t say how the women died.
Only the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office has publicly revealed how Speaks died — of blunt force trauma
Perry’s killing came first, on March 8, 2023, followed by Speaks’ death on March 18 and Webster’s killing on April 26, according to the indictment.
Family members of the women said the indictment provides some of the only information they’ve had in the year since Calhoun was revealed to be a person of interest in the investigation into the women’s deaths.
One of the women not named in the indictment, 22-year-old Ashley Real, was linked to Calhoun — both by the woman’s father and by Calhoun’s ex-girlfriend.
Diana Allen didn’t learn of Perry’s death until seven weeks after investigators now say her daughter was killed — when Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies recovered Perry’s body April 24 from a culvert near Ainsworth State Park in eastern Multnomah County.
The grieving mother has since buried her daughter in Cowlitz County, where Perry grew up with two siblings, but specified her date of death only as April 2023 on the headstone. Allen said she plans to update the marker with the latest information.
“It’s really hard to know that you are not the only family going through this,” Allen said.
Allen is now wondering what happened when her daughter was briefly treated, likely for a drug overdose, at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center on March 6 in Northwest Portland, just two days before Perry was killed.
Authorities said Perry was last seen near a downtown drug market, but Allen knew her daughter to be living about a block from the Share House Men’s Shelter in Vancouver.
For months, Allen had been dropping off clothes, food and hygiene supplies at her daughter’s tent in hopes of convincing Perry to seek mental health treatment – until Perry’s friends at the camp told her that her daughter had stopped coming back to the tent.
“I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t find her during March and April,” Allen said.
Speaks’ body wasn’t found until April 8 in a derelict barn near Ridgefield in northern Clark County about three weeks after investigators say she was killed. Investigators previously indicated that Speaks was killed in mid-March.
Webster’s body was found in rural Polk County, five days after her killing.
Court records list Calhoun’s last known address as a quiet street in Troutdale.
Calhoun remains in custody at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, where he’s serving out a four-year car theft and burglary sentence that had been commuted by then-Gov. Kate Brown for helping fight catastrophic wildfires in 2020.
Calhoun was arrested last July after Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt asked Gov. Tina Kotek to revoke his commutation — citing only unspecified criminal activity.
A District Attorney’s Office spokesperson said no date has been set for Calhoun’s first court appearance on the new indictment. He’s expected to be transferred from the Eastern Oregon state prison to face charges here no later than June 7.
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