Jesse Lee Calhoun Indicted in the Deaths of Three Women Found Around Portland in 2023
A Multnomah County grand jury charged Calhoun with second-degree murder and abuse of a corpse in the deaths of Charity Lynn Perry, Bridget Leanne Webster and Joanna Speaks.
Published
For more than a year, the families of women found dead around Portland in the spring of 2023 had waited for someone to be charged. On Friday, May 17, 2024, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced that a grand jury had indicted Jesse Lee Calhoun, 39, on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of second-degree abuse of a corpse. The indictment, returned the day before, accused him in the deaths of Charity Lynn Perry, 24, Bridget Leanne Webster, 31, and Joanna Speaks, 32, all of whom were found dead under suspicious circumstances in 2023.
Speaks was the one found in Washington. Her body was discovered in April 2023 near an abandoned barn in Ridgefield, in Clark County, Washington. Perry and Webster were found in Oregon that same spring.
Calhoun was already in prison. He was being held at Snake River Correctional Institution and had been due for release in June on a separate case. Under the plan the district attorney's office described, he would finish his time there and then be moved to Multnomah County custody to be arraigned on the new charges. The office did not say what evidence tied him to the deaths. "The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office recognizes the profound effect these women's deaths have had on their families, friends, and the community," it said in a statement.
Not every family got an answer. The office said the deaths of two other young women found in 2023, Ashley Real and Kristin Smith, were still under active investigation. "We keep fighting," said Kristin's mother, Melissa Smith. "I know they'll keep fighting right alongside me."
For those whose daughters and sisters were named, the indictment brought relief and new questions. Perry's mother, Diana Allen, said she could now have her daughter's death certificate changed to reflect how she died, and would no longer have to consider having her exhumed for another autopsy. Speaks's stepsister, Ariel Hamby, said the families still had no timeline of what had happened. "We're happy to have a name. We're happy to have some sort of answer but the DA didn't give us much more information," she said. "It kind of leaves us with more questions but at least we know there's a path."
Calhoun had not been tried, and the charges were accusations only.
Sources
- Man indicted on murder charges for deaths of 3 Portland-area women, KPTV FOX 12 Oregon (Jack Helean)
- Man indicted in Oregon in three women's deaths, including one found dead in Clark County, The Columbian (Becca Robbins)
Related News
- August 5, 2025: Jesse Calhoun Is Indicted in the Death of Kristin Smith, a Fourth Woman
- September 16, 2026: Jesse Calhoun Is Indicted in the Death of a Sixth Woman, Libby Gibson