Randall Woodfield went to an Oregon prison in 1981 for one murder. On the night of January 18, 1981, a gunman sexually assaulted two young women who cleaned an office building in Keizer, just north of Salem, and shot them both. Shari Hull, 20, died. Her co-worker survived and picked Woodfield's photograph from a lineup. A Marion County jury convicted him on June 26, 1981, of Hull's murder, the attempted murder of the second woman and two counts of sodomy, and he was sentenced to life plus 90 years. A Benton County jury added 35 years that December.
He had been a college football player, a Green Bay Packers draft pick and, by 1975, a convicted robber. The crimes that made him known as the I-5 Bandit and the I-5 Killer ran from October 1980 to February 1981 along Interstate 5 in Washington, Oregon and California. Oregon never tried him for any other killing. DNA testing linked him to the death of Cherie Ayers in 2005 and to five more deaths in 2012, and Portland police said in 2012 that they could prove seven killings in all. Prosecutors chose not to charge them while he stays in prison. He has never confessed to any of them.
Woodfield grew up mostly in Otter Rock, a small community about eight miles north of Newport on the Oregon coast. Sports Illustrated and the Portland Tribune describe a middle-class family: his father was a manager at Pacific Northwest Bell, his mother kept house, and he had two older sisters.
At Newport High School he played football and basketball and ran track. He graduated in 1969. While still in high school he was caught exposing himself to women on the Yaquina Bay Bridge. His parents sent him to a therapist, and, according to Sports Illustrated, the school's coaches kept the matter quiet. His juvenile record was expunged when he turned 18. A Newport teammate, who did not want to be named, told the Portland Tribune in 2017 that he had been "a little strange" and fixated on his hair.
He went on to Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, in eastern Oregon. The Portland Tribune says he played there for two years, 1969 to 1971; Sports Illustrated says he played one season. A teammate there, Ted Spencer, remembered him as "a decent talent" and something of a ladies' man. Sports Illustrated reported that while at Treasure Valley he was arrested on an accusation of ransacking a former girlfriend's home, and that a jury found him not guilty.
At Portland State University he redshirted in 1971. He was recruited by coach Don Read, who left for the University of Oregon, and he played under Read's successor, Ron Stratten. In 1972 he was a second-string flanker and caught five passes for 97 yards. In his senior season, 1973, he led a team that won one game and lost ten with 18 catches for 216 yards. The receivers coach, Gary Hamblet, said the team ran the option and seldom threw.
He was active in Campus Crusade for Christ and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. A secondary coach, Tim Temple, told the Tribune that Woodfield "always led us in prayer." Another teammate said he led a double life, dating showgirls and visiting topless clubs while attending Bible study. Hamblet called him one of the nicest, most gentlemanly young men he had coached. The offensive coordinator, Mike Brundage, called him "kind of a loner" and recalled an exposure incident in a parking lot near Memorial Coliseum. Several teammates told the Tribune he avoided contact on the field; Stratten told Sports Illustrated that Woodfield did not like running routes across the middle.
During his Portland years he was arrested several times for indecent exposure and convicted twice, Sports Illustrated reported. Stratten said he learned of the arrests only years later, and that he would have warned professional teams if he had known. He left Portland State three semesters short of a degree in physical education. The Columbian reported in 2012 that his first contact with police in Clark County, Washington, came in 1972, when he exposed himself in Vancouver and was charged with indecent liberties; the outcome of that charge is not known.
The Green Bay Packers chose Woodfield with the 428th pick of the 1974 NFL draft, according to Sports Illustrated; the Portland Tribune places the pick in the 18th round. He signed a one-year contract for 16,000 dollars, with bonuses if he reached 25 and 30 catches. The contract required him to stay in shape, to stay away from gamblers and to wear a coat and tie in public. He attended a minicamp in Scottsdale, Arizona, in April 1974 and drove himself to training camp in De Pere, Wisconsin. The team's media guide listed him at 6 feet and 170 pounds.
The Packers released him on August 19, 1974. He blamed the team's run-first offense. Police later believed his indecent exposure arrests had played a part; the Packers declined to comment to Sports Illustrated.
He stayed in Wisconsin, living in Oshkosh, working as a press-brake operator and playing for the Manitowoc Chiefs, a semipro team. In the 1974 Central States Football League championship game he caught two passes for 42 yards in a 14-0 loss to the Madison Mustangs. The Chiefs dropped him after the season without giving a reason. A detective later found at least ten indecent exposure cases in Wisconsin that were linked to him, Sports Illustrated reported.
Back in Portland, a man with a knife had been attacking women, forcing them into sex acts and taking their handbags. On March 5, 1975, a female undercover officer walked through a Portland park. A man with a paring knife demanded money, and officers arrested him. He gave his name as Randall Woodfield.
In his police interview, as Sports Illustrated described it, he said he did not drink or smoke, called himself a Christian, admitted to "sexual problems" and trouble controlling his impulses, and said he had taken steroids. On April 29, 1975, he pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery, a reduced charge, and was sentenced to ten years in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Mouse Davis, who became Portland State's head coach in 1975, told the Tribune that Woodfield had worked out with his receivers for a time. A player warned Davis about Woodfield, and Davis learned he had already been in prison. That ended their contact.
In the penitentiary he read and lifted weights, and he collected several disciplinary marks, one of them for having contraband basketball shoes. A former teammate told the Tribune he was a "model inmate" who wrote letters in the style of the Apostle Paul.
He was paroled in the summer of 1979 after serving less than four years. He worked as a bartender and a bouncer, among other jobs, and drove a gold 1974 Volkswagen Beetle. Friends threw him a party when he got out; he arrived two and a half hours late. Another friend told the Tribune that in the months that followed Woodfield seemed hardly to sleep and was "going 24 hours a day."
Cherie Ayers, 29, had been Woodfield's classmate at Newport High School. Sports Illustrated reports that the two had reconnected around their high school reunion and had seen each other socially. On October 11, 1980, she was found dead in her Portland apartment. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and beaten.
Portland detectives looked at Woodfield, but a blood test and a comparison of biological evidence available at the time did not link him to the killing, and he declined to take a polygraph. The case stayed open for 25 years.
About seven weeks after Cherie Ayers died, Darcey Fix, 22, and Doug Altig, 24, were shot to death with a .32 revolver in a home in North Portland. KATU gives the date as November 27, 1980. Sports Illustrated describes the house as Fix's home; KATU's report calls it Altig's. Fix had once dated a Portland State track athlete who was one of Woodfield's closest friends. KGW gave their full names as Darcey Renee Fix and Douglas Keith Altig. No one was charged.
In December 1980 a series of armed robberies began along the interstate. On December 9 a bearded man robbed a gas station in Vancouver, Washington. Four nights later, in Eugene, a man wearing a false beard and tape across his nose held up an ice cream parlor. The next night a bearded man robbed a drive-in restaurant in Albany, Oregon. About a week after that, in Seattle, a gunman held a waitress in a restroom and sexually assaulted her.
Witnesses described a tall man, sometimes with a beard and with tape or a bandage on his nose, armed with a .32 revolver. Detectives in several jurisdictions began to connect the holdups and assaults, and the press called the man the I-5 Bandit. Detective Jim Lawrence of the Portland Police Bureau said in 2012 that Woodfield had committed at least 25 robberies, many of them involving sexual assaults. Sports Illustrated and Willamette Week reported that more than 100 crimes, most of them robberies and sexual assaults, share his methods.
Shari Hull was 20. On Sunday, January 18, 1981, she was working a night shift with a co-worker, cleaning an office building in Keizer, in Marion County. As they were leaving, a man with a gun confronted them, sexually assaulted both women and shot each of them in the back of the head. Shari Hull died of her wounds. Her co-worker survived.
The survivor's account and her identification of the gunman became the center of the only murder case the state ever brought against Woodfield.
On February 3, 1981, a waitress was kidnapped and sexually assaulted after a holdup in Redding, California. That same day, about 15 miles north in Mountain Gate, in Shasta County, Donna Eckard, 37, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jannell Jarvis, were found shot dead in their home. The next day a similar crime was reported in Yreka, about 100 miles farther up the interstate.
Shasta County never charged anyone with the deaths of Donna Eckard and Jannell Jarvis. In 2012 Portland's cold case unit announced that DNA linked Woodfield to them. Under California law a jury could impose the death penalty for such killings, KATU noted, but the Shasta County district attorney's office was not planning to file charges while he remained in prison.
Julie Reitz was 18 and lived in Beaverton, a Portland suburb. Woodfield knew her from his job as a bouncer; Sports Illustrated reported that he had once let her into a bar despite a fake identification card. She was shot and killed at home in February 1981. Sports Illustrated dates her death to Valentine's Day, February 14; KATU gives February 15. Her mother had warned her as she left home that night to be careful. "There's a dangerous person out there," she remembered telling her, in an interview with the Associated Press in 2012. "I knew literally from the day she died that it was the I-5 Killer," her mother said.
The lead investigator was Dave Kominek, a detective with the Marion County Sheriff's Office, who identified Woodfield as a suspect early, according to Sports Illustrated. Several things pointed to him. He had been to prison for robbing women at knifepoint. He knew several of the victims, including Cherie Ayers and Julie Reitz, and Darcey Fix had dated one of his friends. He knew the I-5 corridor well, and he fit the witness descriptions. Marion County detectives also put together a log of pay-phone calls made with his calling card, which placed him within a few miles of several of the killings.
On March 5, 1981, police questioned Woodfield and searched the room he was renting in Springfield, Oregon. They found tape of the same brand that had been used to bind victims and a .32 caliber bullet in his racquetball bag. The surviving Keizer cleaner picked his photograph out of a lineup.
Four days later, on March 9, 1981, he was charged with Shari Hull's murder, the attempted murder of her co-worker and two counts of sodomy. By March 16, indictments from Oregon and Washington included murder, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, armed robbery and firearms charges. He was represented by a public defender.
The trial was held in Salem in the summer of 1981. The prosecutor was Chris Van Dyke, of the Marion County district attorney's office, trying his first murder case. He described Woodfield to the jury as "arrogant, cold, unemotional."
The defense argued mistaken identity. It also argued that a detective's use of hypnosis had shaped the surviving woman's identification of Woodfield. She was the prosecution's central witness.
Woodfield testified. He admitted he had owned a .32 pistol, but said he had thrown it into a river when he learned that owning it violated his parole.
The jury deliberated for three and a half hours. On June 26, 1981, it found him guilty on all counts: the murder of Shari Hull, the attempted murder of her co-worker and two counts of sodomy. Oregon had no death penalty at the time.
United Press International reported on October 13, 1981, that a Marion County judge had sentenced Woodfield, then 30, to life in prison plus 90 years: life for the murder of Shari Hull and additional 30-year terms for attempted murder and sodomy. UPI noted that he faced trial the following month on sodomy and kidnapping charges, and that other charges were pending in Oregon, Washington and California.
The second trial was in Benton County, in the mid-Willamette Valley. In December 1981 a jury there convicted him of sodomy and weapons charges arising from an attack on a woman in a restaurant restroom, and 35 years were added to his sentence, Sports Illustrated reported.
Other district attorneys, including those in California, decided not to put him on trial. KGW reported in 2012 that the state, unable to afford trial after trial, had accepted the life sentence.
No appellate ruling in Woodfield's criminal cases has been reported. His convictions stand.
In 1983 the Oregon Parole Board denied him the opportunity to request a parole hearing, KATU reported in 2012. His life sentence, KATU said, carries a possibility of parole. Rod Underhill, then chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County, told the Associated Press in 2012 that the chance of Woodfield becoming eligible for parole was very slim, and he told KGW that he considered a parole hearing an "extremely" remote possibility.
The Seattle crime writer Ann Rule wrote a 1984 book about the case, The I-5 Killer, and used that name for him. From prison, Woodfield sued her for libel, seeking 12 million dollars, Sports Illustrated reported. The suit failed. A television film about the case, Hunt for the I-5 Killer, was broadcast in 2011.
Portland police kept the evidence from Cherie Ayers's apartment. In 2005, DNA testing linked Woodfield to her killing, according to the Associated Press and Oregon Public Broadcasting. That year Paul Weatheroy, a sergeant who later led the Portland Police Bureau's cold case unit, interviewed Woodfield at length about unsolved cases. Woodfield confessed to nothing.
Multnomah County did not charge him with Cherie Ayers's death. Prosecutors decided they would pursue the Ayers, Fix and Altig cases only if he were ever given a parole hearing.
On May 10, 2012, the Portland Police Bureau announced that new DNA techniques had connected Woodfield to three more cold cases involving five people: Darcey Fix and Doug Altig in Portland, Julie Reitz in Beaverton, and Donna Eckard and Jannell Jarvis in Shasta County, California. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that a method called magnetic bead extraction had allowed the Oregon State Police crime lab to make the links, after older testing had tied him to Cherie Ayers in 2005. Sergeant Weatheroy, by then head of the cold case squad, credited the new technology.
Detective Jim Lawrence of the cold case unit said investigators could now "definitively prove" that Woodfield had killed seven people, five in Oregon and two near Redding. He said Woodfield might be responsible for as many as two dozen more deaths. He told KATU he was confident that Multnomah County prosecutors could prove the cases beyond a reasonable doubt if they had to.
Prosecutors in Multnomah, Washington and Shasta counties said they did not plan to file charges, because he was already in prison. Underhill said a death sentence was not an option in Oregon, which did not allow capital punishment when the killings took place. The Portland police said the DNA results allowed them to close the three cases, and that if Woodfield ever came up for parole the cold case unit and the Multnomah County district attorney's office would present the cases to the parole board.
Julie Reitz's mother told KATU she accepted the decision not to prosecute, since a trial would cost taxpayers money, but that the idea of Woodfield even asking for a parole hearing troubled her; she called the possibility "a slap in the face." She told KGW she had not needed DNA evidence to connect him to her daughter's death, and that knowing she was not alone in her grief gave her some comfort. "The loss of a child, whether by disease, accident, or violence is devastating to a parent," she told Oregon Public Broadcasting, adding that the best a parent could hope for was that something might prevent the same loss for another family.
Because Woodfield traveled widely before 1981, investigators elsewhere have looked at him in their own unsolved cases.
In 2014 cold case detectives in Eugene said they feared that Woodfield or Ted Bundy might have picked up Martha Morrison, who disappeared in September 1974 while hitchhiking home from Portland, the Eugene Register-Guard reported. The report named him only as a possible suspect.
In 2018, investigators in Dunn County, Wisconsin, told WCCO that Woodfield had not been ruled out by DNA evidence in the killing of Mary Schlais, a Minneapolis art student who was stabbed to death in February 1974 while hitchhiking to Chicago. They said he had been traveling between Portland and Green Bay at the time. They had not interviewed him, and he was not charged. In November 2024 a different man, an 84-year-old from Minnesota, was charged with first-degree murder in her death after investigators used DNA and genetic genealogy.
In 2017 Woodfield was held at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, the prison where he had served his robbery sentence in the 1970s. The Oregon Department of Corrections turned down Sports Illustrated's request to interview him in 2016, saying an interview "brings notoriety to the inmate," and he did not answer SI's letters or emails. Guards and Weatheroy told the magazine he still liked to talk about football and remembered his playing days in detail, but grew distant when conversations turned serious. A 2006 MySpace profile in his name acknowledged his murder conviction and said his Packers tryout ended because the team did not need his skills.
Jim Lawrence told Sports Illustrated that Woodfield had shown no accountability or remorse, and that he believed Woodfield would offend again if released.
The Portland Tribune reported in January 2017 that Woodfield, then 65, was serving his life sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary. WCCO reported in February 2018 that he was still in prison.
Proven in court: the murder of Shari Hull, the attempted murder of her co-worker and two counts of sodomy (Marion County jury, June 26, 1981); sodomy and weapons charges from the restaurant restroom attack (Benton County jury, December 1981); and second-degree robbery (guilty plea, 1975).
Attributed by police through DNA, never charged or tried: the deaths of Cherie Ayers (DNA link 2005), Darcey Fix, Doug Altig, Julie Reitz, Donna Eckard and Jannell Jarvis (DNA links announced in 2012). In legal terms these remain uncharged. Portland police have said they can prove them, and Multnomah County has said it would bring charges in the three Portland-area cases it holds if he were ever given a parole hearing.
Suspected: estimates of the total vary widely. KATU reported in 2012 that police suspected him in 18 to 24 deaths. Sports Illustrated wrote in 2016 that cold case detectives conservatively counted about a dozen, while some journalists and amateur investigators put the number as high as 44. He has been named as a possible suspect in at least two 1974 cases outside the I-5 crimes; in one of them, the Mary Schlais case, another man was charged in 2024.
Some later accounts say he was convicted of murdering three women. The court outcomes reported at the time show one murder conviction.
1969: Woodfield graduates from Newport High School, Oregon.
1969 to 1971: Treasure Valley Community College, Ontario, Oregon.
1971 to 1973: Portland State University; redshirt year in 1971; leads the team in catches in 1973.
1972: charged with indecent liberties after an exposure incident in Vancouver, Washington.
1974: drafted by the Green Bay Packers (428th pick); released August 19, 1974; plays for the semipro Manitowoc Chiefs.
March 5, 1975: arrested in a Portland park after demanding money from an undercover officer at knifepoint.
April 29, 1975: pleads guilty to second-degree robbery; sentenced to ten years.
Summer 1979: paroled.
October 11, 1980: Cherie Ayers, 29, is found dead in her Portland apartment.
November 27, 1980 (KATU): Darcey Fix, 22, and Doug Altig, 24, are shot dead in North Portland.
December 1980: armed robberies in Vancouver, Eugene and Albany, and an assault in Seattle.
January 18, 1981: Shari Hull, 20, is killed and her co-worker wounded in Keizer.
February 3, 1981: Donna Eckard, 37, and Jannell Jarvis, 14, are found shot dead in Mountain Gate, California; a waitress is kidnapped and assaulted in Redding.
February 14 or 15, 1981: Julie Reitz, 18, is shot dead in Beaverton.
March 5, 1981: questioned; his room in Springfield is searched.
March 9, 1981: charged with Shari Hull's murder.
March 16, 1981: indictments in Oregon and Washington.
June 26, 1981: Marion County jury convicts him on all counts.
October 1981: sentenced to life plus 90 years.
December 1981: Benton County jury convicts him of sodomy and weapons charges; 35 years added.
1983: Oregon Parole Board denies him the chance to request a parole hearing.
1984: Ann Rule's book The I-5 Killer is published; he later sues her for libel and loses.
2005: DNA links him to Cherie Ayers's death; he is interviewed by Paul Weatheroy and confesses to nothing.
2011: the television film Hunt for the I-5 Killer is broadcast.
May 10, 2012: Portland police announce DNA links to Darcey Fix, Doug Altig, Julie Reitz, Donna Eckard and Jannell Jarvis; prosecutors decline to charge.
2014: Eugene detectives name him as a possible suspect in the 1974 disappearance of Martha Morrison.
November 2016: Sports Illustrated reexamines the case; the Department of Corrections refuses an interview.
January 2017: reported serving his sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
February 2018: Wisconsin investigators say he has not been ruled out in the 1974 killing of Mary Schlais.
November 2024: another man is charged in the Schlais case.