KEY Evidence

The bad news just got worse at the University of Portland.

Last weekend, The Oregonian reported that Deniz Aydiner, the suspect in the May 2001 murder of UP student Kate Johnson, was allegedly involved in earlier burglaries in the dorm where Johnson was murdered.

The possible link between the burglaries and the murder, first reported by WW (see "The Murder at Mehling Hall," WW, May 1, 2002), could prove expensive for the North Portland school.

That's because the police reports relating to the burglary noted that there were no signs of forced entry and that the burglar may have used a master key. Similarly, there were no signs of forced entry into Johnson's room.

Aydiner's alleged involvement in both cases again raises questions of whether UP officials took adequate precautions to secure Mehling Hall after the burglaries. UP spokeswoman Kathleen Campbell says it did. Campbell says that the exterior doors to Mehling Hall were rekeyed prior to Johnson's death and that records of that work were given to Portland police in June 2002.

But former UP security director John Garner, who has criticized key control at UP, says that, based on his 22 years of experience on the campus and his conversations with former colleagues, he doubts Mehling was properly rekeyed. "College dorms are almost impossible to secure, but if you're faced with a problem you've got to change what you're doing," Garner says. "You may not solve the problem, but you can't continue business as usual."

Johnson's family has retained a Vancouver, Wash., lawyer, Rick Potter, to evaluate whether to pursue legal action against UP. He says the latest news is significant but no decision about filing a lawsuit has been made. "We think they were rekeying the interior doors but had not done them all and had not done any of the exterior doors [when the murder occurred]," Potter says. "But we're still investigating."

WWeek 2015