A Clackamas County man who seven years ago decapitated his mother and drove with her severed head to a grocery store will be transferred from the state psychiatric hospital to a secure community-based treatment center, a state panel decided Wednesday.
The Oregon Psychiatric Security Review Board decided to grant a “conditional release” to Joshua Webb, 44, according to the board’s executive director, Alison Bort.
The decision means Webb will move from the Oregon State Hospital in Salem to Lifeways McNary Place, a 16-bed residential treatment center in Umatilla sometime later this month or early next month.
The Umatilla facility is locked and staffed around the clock.
Earlier this year, the board tentatively agreed to a conditional release based on the outcome of Webb’s “transition visits” to the Umatilla location.
Webb has lived at the Oregon State Hospital since 2018 when he pleaded guilty except for insanity in the killing of his mother, 59-year-old Tina Webb, and the stabbing of an employee at the Thriftway in Estacada on May 14, 2017.
At the time of the crimes, psychologists who evaluated Webb concluded he likely experienced duress from psychotic disorders related to schizophrenia.
The Psychiatric Security Review Board is charged with determining how long Webb remains in state custody.
The five-member panel is appointed by the governor to four-year terms. It includes psychiatrist Dr. Scott Reichlin, psychologist J. Wilson Kenney, attorney Anne Nichol, Clackamas County parole and probation officer Trisha Elmer and Julie Duke, who represents the public.
Webb has made four brief trips to the Umatilla center, which staff and hospital employees deemed a success, according to testimony during Wednesday’s hearing. The visits lasted between 90 minutes and four hours.
Cecelia Carey, the social worker at the state hospital who has worked with Webb for 18 months, said Webb returned from the visits “very attuned” to the rules and expectations of the center and seemed “very excited about things like just making his own cup of coffee.”
The decision comes after state hospital staff concluded Webb is well enough to leave the hospital.
The panel reached its decision over the objections of the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office and the Oregon Department of Justice; their lawyers argued that Webb’s failure to demonstrate remorse or empathy, the shockingly violent nature of his crime and his viewing of serial killer programming while at the state hospital should make him ineligible for conditional release.
According to the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office, the board’s decision included restrictions on Webb’s media consumption; Bort did not immediately respond to an email Thursday seeking details of the condition.
During the hearing, the board discussed at length a report made by Carey that noted Webb had been seen viewing television or a YouTube video about serial killers.
Carey told the board that Webb told her a program about the infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, was on in a common room at the state hospital and that he was “so sad by what he’d seen and his concern was there were so many victims where their families never knew what happened to them.”
She said a second instance had been reported to her by another hospital employee who saw Webb watching content on a computer that showed another notorious serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. The employee did not discuss it with Webb; Carey said she later approached Webb.
“I said, ‘Hey, you know, what’s going on with you viewing things on serial murderers?’” she told the board.
She said he told her that the video had “popped up on a YouTube channel” that he watches and that he closed out of it when he saw the video on Dahmer.
He told Carey that he did visit a site that features videos on conspiracy theories and cults, as well as videos on serial killers. The site includes titles like “The most gruesome serial killer you’ve never heard of” and “He saved their body parts for later.”
Carey said Webb told her what he had seen made him sad “because these people are clearly so sick, meaning the serial murderers, they didn’t get help and things boiled over and they did these terrible things.”
She said she later suggested “that perhaps he not consume that media.”
“And he said, ‘OK, I got it. I’ll stick to kittens and rainbows and it’s not a big deal. I won’t look at that stuff anymore,’” she told the board.
Carey’s explanation did not satisfy Oregon Department of Justice attorney Elisabeth Waner, who said during the hearing that records show Webb is a pathological liar.
Waner told the panel that Webb was aware that his “very concerning” lack of remorse and empathy “could be considered a barrier for discharge.”
“Suddenly, Mr. Webb is showing genuine empathy and remorse for the victims and maybe that didn’t arouse suspicions for Ms. Carey, but that should arouse suspicions for this board,” Waner told the panel.
“Anytime you’re consuming serial killer content, it’s voyeurism at best, but it’s pathological at worst,” she said.
Waner also said she was alarmed that Webb had access to disturbing content at the state hospital and urged the board to restrict his media consumption if it granted his conditional release.
“I think the public would be really concerned to know that that’s something that occurs,” she said. “And I think it is concerning, again, that the response from the treatment team was to dismiss, to be slightly dismissive, of those concerns.”
Scott Healy, first assistant Clackamas County district attorney, told the board that a conditional release represented too great a risk given Webb’s “extreme” crime.
“The victim’s question is, you know, is this really a person that we want to take a chance on and take a chance on at this time?” Healy asked.
Carey said Webb had expressed remorse in two conversations she had with him. She said he told her it was “terrible and that what happened was awful to the person in the store, but of course, to his mother.”
She said they spoke about the possibility of Webb communicating with his father.
“We had talked about him having conversations with his dad in which he wanted to apologize and acknowledge, you know, taking his wife away from him,” she said.
But those talks broke down, she said, over Webb’s father’s interest in knowing his wife’s last words. She said Webb became distraught over the request.
“He said, ‘I just can’t. That’s not something that I can share with him, and if that’s what he’s going to require of me, for us to have, you know, to be able to talk, I’m not ready to do that right now,’” she said.
During the hearing, the board also heard about a report included among Webb’s records that documented how in 11th grade he had drawn “a picture with a head being cut off.”
At the time of the attack on his mother, Webb lived in an outbuilding on his parents’ Colton property. His sister discovered their mother’s body. Their father was away from home at the time.
According to prosecutors, Webb admitted to police he killed his mother, dismembered her body, killed his dog and later stabbed a market employee, though he never said why.
Surveillance video from the Harvest Market Thriftway showed Webb running into the store with his mother’s head and a large knife.
Bystanders managed to detain Webb until police arrived.
— Noelle Crombie is an enterprise reporter with a focus on criminal justice. Reach her at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.
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