Jeffrey Paul Cutlip confessed by telephone. In July 2012, while living in Brownsville, Texas, the 63-year-old called the Brownsville Police Department and said he had been involved in killings in Portland, Oregon, decades earlier. Portland detectives flew to Texas, arrested him and brought him back to Oregon. In 2013 he pleaded guilty to the murders of Marlene Claire Carlson, 44, in 1975, Julie Marie Bennett, 15, in 1977, and Nielene Loribell Doll, 33, in 1993. A Portland court sentenced him in January 2014 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
None of the three deaths had been solved, and Bennett's death had been classified as a drowning. Cutlip told police he had killed four women in Oregon. Police were able to confirm three. He died in prison in March 2026, at 76, under the name Jesse Andre D'Breeze.
Little is known of Cutlip's early life. What is on record is a criminal history the Associated Press called a long one. In December 1982 he was convicted in Oregon of first-degree burglary, with other charges, according to ABC News Radio and KGW, the Portland television station, and the AP reported in 2014 that the 1982 charges involved two women.
The 1982 case made him a registered sex offender. Oregon later classified him as a predatory sex offender, and in 2012 he was listed as a "predator" in the state's sex offender database. Oregon corrections records quoted by ABC News Radio in 2012 said he had targeted women who were strangers to him.
He served prison time for those convictions. The AP reported that he had only recently been released from prison on the 1982 convictions when Nielene Doll was killed in 1993.
Marlene Claire Carlson was 44 years old in the summer of 1975. She was divorced and the mother of three children. She lived in an apartment building in Portland, and Cutlip was a tenant in the same building.
She was last seen alive on July 30, 1975. On August 6, about a week after she was last seen, she was found dead in Portland. She had been strangled. Cutlip was not a suspect at the time, the AP reported, and the case stayed unsolved until 2012.
Her youngest child, a daughter, was among the relatives who spoke when Cutlip was sentenced in 2014. She told the court she was grateful to know the truth at last and to be able to close a chapter that had included decades of searching for answers. She spoke of the freedom he had enjoyed in the years since, the freedom he had taken from her mother.
Julie Marie Bennett was 15. She went missing in the Portland area on April 4, 1977, and was found dead two days later in the Portland area. Her death was classified as a drowning, and it stayed classified that way until 2012.
It was Cutlip's own account in 2012 that turned her death into a murder case. When Portland detectives arrested him in Texas that July, Bennett's death was one of the two killings, from 1975 and 1977, on which he was first held. Her brother was in court at the sentencing in 2014 and told the court that Cutlip deserved the death penalty.
Nielene Loribell Doll was 33 and lived in Spokane, Washington. In 1993 she was visiting Portland, and she met Cutlip in a bar there, according to the AP. She was reported missing in early July of that year. On July 21, 1993, she was found dead in rural Clackamas County, outside Portland.
The AP reported that Cutlip had only recently been let out of prison on his 1982 convictions when she was killed. Her death, like the two before it, was unsolved until he spoke to police in 2012. Doll's case was added after he was returned to Oregon: KGW reported that he was indicted in a third death less than two weeks after his extradition.
At his sentencing a Portland police detective read aloud a letter from Doll's daughter. It ended with a curse directed at the man who had killed her mother.
By 2012 Cutlip had been living in Brownsville for almost a year. In April 2012 he was arrested there for failing to register as a sex offender, ABC News Radio reported.
In July 2012 he called the Brownsville police. In that call, by the account of a Brownsville police officer, he spoke of "three or four murders" in Portland between 1970 and 1993. Officer Billy Killebrew of the Brownsville Police Department told ABC News that the next step was to see what Cutlip would say. The AP later reported that he had admitted to police that he killed four women in Oregon.
Two Portland homicide detectives flew to Brownsville to question him. ABC News Radio reported that he called police on a Saturday and that the Portland detectives arrested him on the Sunday in connection with deaths from 1975 and 1977. Only two of the deaths he described had led to his arrest by then, and it was not clear at the time why. He was held in the Cameron County Jail to await extradition, which officials said could take weeks if he fought it. Portland police said they would not release the victims' names or details of the cases until the families had been told and his claims had been fully investigated.
He appeared in court on a Tuesday morning while awaiting extradition to Portland, KGW reported.
Cutlip was extradited to Portland in August 2012 and held in the Multnomah County Jail. On August 28, 2012, the Associated Press reported that a grand jury had indicted him the day before in the deaths of Marlene Claire Carlson in 1975, Julie Marie Bennett in 1977, and Nielene Doll in 1993. The AP described him as a 63-year-old man who had been living in Texas when, police said, he called to confess to several unsolved Oregon homicides.
At a bail hearing in November 2012, reported by the AP on November 27, he was denied bail. His defense attorneys questioned his mental state and argued that there was little evidence to tie him to the crimes beyond his own statements.
In 2013 Cutlip pleaded guilty in Multnomah County to one count of aggravated murder and two counts of murder for the deaths of Carlson, Bennett and Doll. KGW reported the pleas, entered on a Wednesday, and said sentencing was set for December 16.
Which of the three deaths the aggravated murder count covered has not been reported.
Cutlip was sentenced in Portland on Friday, January 17, 2014. He was 64. The court imposed life in prison with no possibility of parole. He made no statement.
Relatives of all three victims addressed the court or were heard through letters. They called him sick and evil. He did not look at them, and his expression rarely changed, according to the AP. Carlson's youngest daughter spoke of the decades her family had spent searching for the truth. Bennett's brother said he believed the case was one that called for the death penalty. A detective read the letter from Doll's daughter.
When he was sentenced, the AP reported, police had confirmed three of the four killings he had described, and the investigation was not over.
Cutlip served his sentence under the name Jesse Andre D'Breeze. He was held at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla, Oregon.
He died there on Sunday, March 29, 2026, in the prison infirmary, while in hospice care, the Oregon Department of Corrections said in a news release reported by KATU and KPTV on March 30, 2026. He was 76. The department said he had been serving a life sentence without parole for two counts of murder and one count of aggravated murder. No cause of death was given.
Cutlip told police in 2012 that he had killed four women in Oregon. Police were able to connect him to three deaths, and those are the only killings for which he was charged and convicted. A Brownsville police officer said in 2012 that Cutlip had spoken of three or four killings in Portland between 1970 and 1993. No fourth victim was publicly identified at his sentencing in 2014 or at his death in 2026, and the fourth killing remains his own claim.
July 30, 1975: Marlene Claire Carlson, 44, is last seen alive in Portland.
August 6, 1975: Carlson is found dead in Portland; she had been strangled. Cutlip, a tenant in her building, is not a suspect.
April 4, 1977: Julie Marie Bennett, 15, goes missing in the Portland area; she is found dead two days later, and her death is classified as a drowning.
December 1982: Cutlip is convicted of first-degree burglary, with other charges, and becomes a registered sex offender.
Early July 1993: Nielene Loribell Doll, 33, of Spokane, is reported missing after a visit to Portland.
July 21, 1993: Doll is found dead in rural Clackamas County.
April 2012: Cutlip is arrested in Brownsville, Texas, for failing to register as a sex offender.
July 2012: He calls the Brownsville police and confesses; Portland detectives arrest him in Brownsville.
August 2012: He is extradited to Portland and indicted in the deaths of Carlson, Bennett and Doll.
November 2012: A judge denies him bail.
2013: He pleads guilty to one count of aggravated murder and two counts of murder.
January 17, 2014: He is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
March 29, 2026: He dies in the infirmary at Two Rivers Correctional Institution, Umatilla, Oregon, aged 76, while in hospice care.