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A Multnomah County grand jury indicted Jesse Lee Calhoun on May 16 for the murder of three women.
The three, Charity Lynn Perry, 24, Bridget Leanne Webster, 31, and Joanna Speaks, 32, were found dead last year in separate incidents.
The grand jury returned indictments against Calhoun, 39, on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of second-degree corpse abuse. Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced the charges today after families of the victims had been notified.
WW first identified Calhoun as a suspect in as many as four killings last year. Part of what made his case unusual, in addition to the number of victims involved, was that Calhoun had been released early from a previous prison sentence for his work on a crew of inmates fighting wildland forest fires. He was among more than 1,000 inmates to whom Gov. Kate Brown granted early release. Police investigating the suspicious deaths of six women last year considered Calhoun a suspect in at least four of the cases (the murder of the fourth woman, Kristin Smith, 22, remains unsolved).
Calhoun has been in custody since last year for violating the terms of his early release from prison. It is unclear whether he will be charged in any of the other cases police investigated. A spokeswoman for Schmidt says other cases remain under investigation.
Anyone with information about the deaths of any of these victims and/or information about Jesse Calhoun should contact Portland Police Bureau Detective Jeff Pontius at jeffery.pontius@police.portlandoregon.gov and/or Detective Stephen Gandy at stephen.gandy@police.portlandoregon.gov.