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Prosecutors
do not expect to take the case to trial until well into
next year.
If convicted,
Rydman and Davis could be sentenced to death. Moon, who
was just 17 at the time of the murder, could be sentenced
to life without parole.
Two
worlds collided--with grisly
results--in Olson's West Hills home. Jessica Rydman, Calvin
Davis and Medero Prince Moon (top to bottom) are now in
jail awaiting trial for aggravated murder. Vice cops say
80
percent of escort
services are actually fronts for prostitution.
Jessica
Rydman tried to turn herself in no fewer than three times:
at the Cornelius Police Department (it was closed), at the
Washington County Jail (wrong jurisdiction) and at the Justice
Center downtown.
Although
prosecutors have kept many details under wraps, a police
affidavit alleges that Rydman was seen driving Olson's Jeep,
and used Olson's credit cards, in the days following the
murder.
"If
you've ever argued with a lippy drunk, you know what Wayne
was like." --sailor who used to race Olson
Olson
was a buttoned-down banker who loved to cut loose after
hours on his sloop, Destiny.
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It was midnight on a sweltering August evening. The moon lurked
below the horizon, and the barest hint of a breeze was rustling
the juniper, when Glenna Olson came home to a nightmare.
As a colleague dropped her off at her West Hills home after
a three-day business trip, she noticed that something was
wrong: Unread newspapers were sitting in the driveway, and
her husband's cars--a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 1998
BMW--were both missing.
Inside, the house had been ransacked: Burglars had taken
jewelry, cameras, a cigar humidor, a briefcase, a cell phone,
a laptop, four tickets to a Santana concert, a wooden letter
rack, a ceremonial sword, a football autographed by Joe
Montana and a bottle of port.
And when she walked into the bedroom, she found her husband,
Wayne, bound and gagged, lying motionless on the carpet
in a pool of blood, a bullet through his brain.
The murder of Wayne E. Olson, a 53-year-old senior vice-president
of the Bank of America, reverberated through the upper echelons
of Portland society. The paid obituary that ran a few days
later in The Oregonian described him as a pillar
of the community: a devoted father and husband, a successful
banking executive, an avid sailor and skier who served on
the Mount Hood Ski Patrol, and a tireless fund-raiser for
causes as diverse as troubled youth and the county library.
"He will be remembered for his legendary enthusiasm for
life and devotion to family, friends and community," read
the notice.
Friends and associates of Wayne Olson echo this appraisal.
"He was a wonderful guy," says Poppy Dully, executive vice
president of the Library Foundation.
"He was a great guy, and we miss him," agrees Bank of America
spokesman Rich Brown.
"He was outgoing, friendly, disarming--there was never
a false note," says Paul Bragdon, former president of Reed
College and chairman of the Library Foundation's Board of
Trustees.
But just days after the obituary appeared, the story took
a tabloid turn with the announcement that authorities were
looking for a 31-year-old exotic dancer named Jessica Rydman,
a 23-year-old gangster named Calvin "Slick" Davis, and a
17-year-old juvenile offender named Medero Prince Moon,
in connection with the murder.
Indeed, a closer examination of Olson's life yields a more
complex portrait: a buttoned-down banker with a boat named
Destiny and a dog named Secret; a paradigm of propriety
at the office who liked to cut loose at strip clubs after
hours; a champion of troubled teens who struggled with alcohol
and could be violent and abusive when he drank and whose
erratic behavior got him thrown out of the Portland Yacht
Club.
While the chain of events leading up to his death remains
unclear, it appears that Wayne Olson lived two contradictory
lives. Two lives that over time became increasingly compartmentalized,
sealed off from one another like a banker's tally of assets
and liabilities. Two lives that collided, with fatal consequences,
on the night of Aug. 20.
If you wander around Civic Stadium, the Convention Center,
Airport MAX or the River District, you won't find any plaques
to Wayne Olson.
But city insiders say that Olson, who was in charge of
public-sector financing for the Bank of America, was a key
financier for each of these projects. As a result of Olson's
willingness to consider innovative proposals, the Bank of
America extended to the city of Portland a line of credit
totaling roughly $135 million.
"Only a handful of people in the state understand urban
renewal," says Ken Rust, director of the city's bureau of
financial management. "Wayne understood it, and he helped
the bank understand it."
The man with millions at his fingertips came from modest
beginnings. Born in Brooklyn and raised in San Diego, Wayne
Edgar Olson was the eldest of three children. His father
spent nine months a year at sea for the U.S. Navy; his mother
worked as a nurse in a veterans' hospital. He attended San
Diego State University and was a member of the football
and wrestling teams.
Olson came of age in the late '60s, an era of tremendous
social upheaval, when many of his contemporaries were protesting
against Vietnam, marching in the streets, tuning in, turning
on and dropping out. But Olson showed little interest in
revolution. He moved to Portland and got a job as a banker--and
an ambitious one at that. "He was really into his job,"
says a close associate. "More into his job than anything."
A former co-worker in the banking industry confirms Olson's
vaulting ambition. "Wayne felt that everybody was entitled
to Wayne's opinion," she remembers. "He liked to be in control
of everything."
Olson's dedication to his career paid off. He got a better
job at the Oregon Bank, which later became Security Pacific,
and in 1986 he moved into a ranch house, now worth $300,000,
in the exclusive Wilcox Estates section of the West Hills,
screened off from the neighbors by juniper bushes and a
blue spruce. The boy who worked through high school at the
San Diego library had finally arrived.
In 1991, Olson met Glenna Klepper, another banking executive,
at a company picnic. They hit it off instantly. He was funny
and charming, with an infectious laugh. She was flattered
by his attention. They married in 1994 on the slopes of
Lake Tahoe, and quickly settled into the joys of family
life with their springer spaniel, Secret. They car-pooled
into work and entertained guests or curled up with videos
at night. "We were complete and total homebodies," Glenna
says.
They also became regulars in the charity cocktail circuit,
showing up at glamorous shindigs like the real-estate industry's
First Citizen Award, the Library Foundation gala dinners
and the opening of Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Meanwhile,
Wayne moved up the ladder at work, becoming a vice-president
in what was now, after a series of mergers, Bank of America.
He got a corner office on the seventh floor of the Bank
of America building, at the foot of the Morrison Bridge,
where he ran the bank's public-sector finance department.
But there was more to Olson's life than fund-raisers and
municipal finance.
Through a haze of cigarette smoke and wilted testosterone,
a diminutive blonde, clad in a pair of leather boots and
a saucy smile--but nothing else--wraps her legs around a
brass pole and hangs upside down, defying the laws of gravity,
if not the state of Oregon.
"Allllright guys!" the DJ roars over the thrusting bass,
as a dozen dancers shimmy across the room, trolling for
prospects. "Now's your chance to get one of those two-for-one
table dances. Repeat after me: Come to Daddy!"
"Come to Daddy," the customers mumble.
"Louder!" the DJ commands.
"COME TO DADDY!" they shout, the balding guys in casual
slacks, the young guns in tight T-shirts, the mooks with
their sweaty foreheads peeking from the straps of their
backwards ball caps.
The pout and wiggle of Club Exotica International, a windowless
strip club on Northeast Columbia Boulevard, seems a million
miles away from the minutiae of municipal bonds. But in
the end, both worlds are dominated by the same credo: Money
talks, baby. Money talks.
Blond, blue-eyed Jessica Rydman danced here for three months
last winter, strutting across the stage for her two-song
sets and hustling for more personal sessions afterwards.
"She was pretty busy in the table-dance room," says David
Aronson, a former bartender at the club.
A Portland native who grew up in the Woodstock neighborhood,
Rydman had been working in the industry for several years,
as a dancer in Portland's multiplying strip clubs and lingerie-modeling
establishments (a.k.a. "jack shacks") and as an escort.
Associates describe her as a "wigger," a hip-hop soul trapped
in a white girl's body, who braided her hair in corn-rows,
spent hours under the sun-lamp and preferred to date black
men. "She definitely liked the brothers," says Aronson.
Several industry sources describe Rydman as a single mom
devoted to her four daughters. "She is a heartfelt person
and a nice lady," says Piper Goldstein, a former cocktail
waitress at Club Exotica. "She was definitely a softie."
"This gal was a normal, nice lady," says an ad rep for
Exotic magazine. "You weren't going to do differential
equations with her. But she was a knock-out."
Rydman led a troubled life, however. According to court
papers, she suffered from depression and was on food stamps
and welfare. Interviews and court documents also show that
Rydman had a history of falling for men who did not treat
her well. In 1994, she accused her boyfriend of slamming
her head through a window and punching her with his fist
while she was four months pregnant with his child. Early
this year, Rydman called the police and said she had been
attacked by another boyfriend. (No charges were filed.)
And in August, less than three weeks before Olson was murdered,
Rydman told a police officer that a new boyfriend, Calvin
Smith Davis, had manhandled her after she threatened to
break off their relationship. According to the police report
in that case, Rydman claimed that Davis told her he would
"beat her ass," "kill her," "fuck her up" and "blow up her
house."
There's good reason to believe these were more than idle
threats. Davis, who bears a tattoo reading "Too Slick" across
his chest, belongs to the Looters Park Pirus, a sub-faction
of the Compton Bloods. In 1998, he was sentenced to two
years in prison for possession and delivery of eight rocks
of crack cocaine. "He was a classic gang member," says his
parole officer, Carl Green. "He didn't strike me as wanting
to change his life in any way."
Perhaps Rydman was intimidated by Davis' threats or his
gang connections. Or perhaps she was simply trapped in the
classic cycle of battered-wife syndrome. Either way, she
urged the police officer who responded to her call not to
interfere. "[Rydman] was afraid but doesn't want to press
charges," the report concludes.
In the past decade, Oregon's booming economy, combined
with its liberal constitution, triggered an explosion in
the most intimate sector of the service economy, the sex
industry. Today, Portland boasts more than 40 strip clubs,
25 lingerie-modeling establishments, 28 adult emporia and
an estimated 150 escort services, who advertise their services
in three different sex-oriented local magazines.
As the sex trade has expanded, it has also moved upscale.
Just as the 25-cent cup of coffee has been pushed to the
verge of extinction by the gourmet cappuccino, so the streetwalker
on Burnside has been upstaged by the personal escort, armed
with a cell phone, a website and an ad in a glossy magazine.
The vast majority of women who work as dancers and lingerie
models are careful not to stray outside the law. But Portland
vice cops say that as many as 80 percent of personal escorts--performing
"private dances" at a customer's home or hotel room--do
engage in prostitution.
Typically, the girl demands her call-out fee, say $200,
before she performs a private dance. Then she'll ask about
a tip, usually a cue for the customer to spell out what
he's really looking for. "If she doesn't like the guy, she'll
act disgusted when he asks for sex," says vice squad Det.
Greg Duvic. "If she likes him, they may commit a prostitution
act."
Jessica Rydman appears to have subscribed to this business
model. While her ads in Exotic magazine specified
"Legal Inquiries Only," the full-frontal photographs left
little to the imagination. She had a string of prostitution
arrests stretching back to 1989. And two industry sources
say she made no effort to conceal the nature of her services.
"She was a prostitute and made it very clear to everyone,"
says a former co-worker. "She'd talk about it. She'd say,
'I charge more than most girls because I'll do anything.
I don't care if people think I'm a ho.'"
It remains unclear when and how the worlds of Rydman and
Olson first collided. Certainly, Club Exotica is one possibility--two
different sources confirm that Olson was no stranger to
strip clubs. Another possibility is Exotic magazine,
a copy of which was discovered in the trunk of Olson's BMW
a few days after the murder.
In any case, there can be little doubt about the nature
of their relationship: In court documents, Rydman described
Olson as a "customer" of her escort service.
Many of Olson's closest friends say they find it difficult,
even impossible, to believe he consorted with a prostitute.
"I was shocked and alarmed," says Clarence Potts, who knew
Olson for almost 30 years. "A prostitute's out of the picture
as far as what I saw. He was devoted to [Glenna]."
"There is no secret life," says family friend Karen Winder.
"He had one life. He was absolutely devoted to Glenna. There
was no other side."
"I had complete and total trust," says Glenna. "I was never,
ever given one reason not to trust him."
Still, there are small clues scattered throughout Olson's
life that, with hindsight, suggest a man who had trouble
hewing to the bounds of convention.
For one thing, there's the claim in Olson's paid obituary
that he belonged to the Mount Hood Ski Patrol, an elite
group of volunteers who act as the guardian angels of the
slopes. In fact, current members of the patrol reluctantly
confirm that Olson did not belong to the Patrol, although
he often stayed in the Patrol's cabin.
Many longtime associates also confirm that Olson had trouble
holding his liquor. "When he drank, he'd just turn into
an asshole," says Richard Mayor, a Portland lawyer.
Down at the Portland Yacht Club, where the river laps against
the docks and the boats glide near the eastern tip of Tomahawk
Island, Olson was a well-known--and controversial--figure.
"He had a problem controlling his alcohol consumption,"
says one sailor who used to race with Olson up and down
the Columbia. "If you've ever argued with a lippy drunk,
you know what Wayne was like."
Two other yachtsmen witnessed an episode during a weekend
event known as Parker's Landing, when sailors race up the
Columbia to the mouth of the Washougal River, near Camas,
hold a barbecue, then return to Portland the next day.
During one such race in the mid-'80s, so many boats participated
that the moorage facilities at the rendezvous couldn't provide
a separate slip for every vessel. Instead, late-comers simply
tied up alongside the early birds, double- and triple-parking
in order to conserve slip space.
Olson's boat, Snappy Tom, was one of the first to
arrive, and other boats tethered to it. But towards the
evening, as the sun went down and the festivities got under
way, Olson apparently decided that he didn't want to stay
the night. Rather than try to locate the owners of the other
boats, Olson simply cast them adrift. Then, a bottle of
booze in hand, Olson weighed anchor and motored back to
Portland. "I just couldn't believe he'd be so irresponsible
with someone else's $20,000 boat," says one witness.
"It seemed to me that Wayne always led a second life,"
says Mike Allen, a contractor and ski patroller. "He had
his business life, where he wore a suit, was good at his
job, very professional. The other side of Wayne was very
much the party guy."
The party guy was also a ladies' man. Before meeting his
last wife, Glenna, Olson had been married three times--hardly
excessive, in late 20th-century America, but not exactly
a testament to propriety. In 1990, Olson's third wife, Martha,
filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. She
also asked the judge to impose a restraining order. "Respondent
is an alcoholic and is violent when he drinks," she testified.
"The filing of this divorce action will upset him greatly
and I am afraid of him. I believe that he is likely to call
me at work and harass me and that he is likely to attack
me physically."
Olson denied the accusations. "I must say, for the record,
I have never been violent toward my wife nor am I now, or
have I ever been an alcoholic," he replied. Nonetheless,
within a year, he had checked himself into an alcohol-rehabilitation
program.
Many friends noticed a change in Olson after he married
Glenna. He seemed more relaxed, they say, mellower. He quit
smoking. He drank less.
But in 1998, Olson's temper got the better of him in a
bizarre incident at the Portland Yacht Club, an incident
that ultimately led to him becoming the first member to
be thrown out of the club in two decades, when he blew up
at the office secretary, Marsha Marzano, who had not completed
an assignment he gave her. Standing inches from her face,
Olson shouted at her with such fury that she later had to
wipe his spit from her glasses and rinse it from her hair.
Afterwards, Commodore Howard Shaw went down to the docks,
where Olson was calmly greasing the winches of his 34-foot
sloop, Destiny.
"I said, 'Wayne, what happened?' And he said, 'She was
making me look bad,'" Shaw recalls.
Less than a week later, in an extraordinary decision, the
Board of Trustees voted to terminate Olson's membership.
Olson suffered yet another lapse in judgment last November.
Driving his Jeep to the airport to pick up Glenna from a
business trip, he was stopped by a police officer and cited
for driving under the influence and carrying an open container.
It was his second DUII.
After that incident, Olson checked himself into a 12-week
outpatient treatment program at Kaiser. "Mr. Olson was very
sincere about his treatment process, was engaged in treatment,
and did very well," reads the provider's report. Olson successfully
graduated from the program in April--the same month he was
promoted to senior vice-president at the bank.
There is nothing particularly sinister about these episodes,
taken individually. In some ways, they constitute a meager
roster of misadventures for a man in his fifties. What is
perhaps more striking is that many of his closest friends
and associates were only vaguely aware of them. "That's
not the Wayne I knew," is a typical response.
The exact circumstances of Olson's murder remain a mystery.
Everyone seems to have a theory. Some speculate that Olson's
legendary abrasiveness when drunk fueled some sort of confrontation
with Rydman over the terms of their arrangement--a confrontation
that resulted in a horrific execution and three suspects
charged with murder.
Others think the murder was the fallout of a botched burglary--that
Rydman knew of Olson's position at the bank and believed
that he had access to untold riches stashed away in hidden
vaults.
Another theory holds that Rydman's boyfriend, Calvin Davis,
masterminded the scheme, persuading her to get Olson to
relax his guard so that Davis and Moon could ransack the
house.
Some or even all these theories may be discarded when more
facts come to light. In the meantime, it is difficult to
know what to make of the tragedy. For many Portlanders,
it is little more than a morbid diversion, a gruesome fairy
tale with a predictable moral. For others, perhaps, it suggests
the unpleasant possibility that we may not know our friends,
or ourselves, as well as we like to think.
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