Ryan Scott Blinston was a tree trimmer from Oroville, a small city in Butte County in rural Northern California. Over about two weeks in May and June 2020 he killed three women. Two were elderly clients of the tree-trimming service he worked for. The third was an acquaintance from Oroville. On June 14, 2020, Butte County deputies serving an arson warrant arrested him in the Brush Creek area of the county, after a 50-year-old man there was seriously injured in an attack.
It took almost a year for investigators in two counties to link the killings to him. In May 2021 the district attorneys of Butte and Tehama counties charged him together with three murders. A Butte County jury convicted him on May 17, 2022, of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, arson and resisting arrest. On August 4, 2022, he was sentenced to three terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with further terms. He never told anyone why he did it, the Butte County district attorney said.
Oroville sits in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, north of Sacramento. Butte County had about 200,000 residents when the Associated Press described it in 2021, with suburbs, foothill communities and the college city of Chico. It had once been a center of methamphetamine production, and in 2018 a wildfire killed more than 80 people and nearly destroyed the town of Paradise. The county saw car thefts and property crime and perhaps six killings in a typical year, the AP reported. Michael L. Ramsey, the district attorney, had served in the office for 44 years and said he had never seen a case like this one.
Blinston was a familiar name to local police, but not for violence. According to the Associated Press, he had a history of methamphetamine use and had served two state prison terms, for driving a stolen car, possessing stolen property and fleeing the California Highway Patrol. CBS Sacramento reported that one of his earlier arrests, in 2013, came when he was found driving a stolen Lexus and in possession of three guns taken in burglaries. He had been out of custody for several years by 2020.
Ramsey said none of the earlier cases involved violence on anything like the scale of what followed. "He wasn't Public Enemy No. 1, in any sense," he told the AP in 2021, adding that nothing in Blinston's record would have pointed to "a nascent serial killer in our midst." Butte County sheriff's officials knew him as a man with a history of resisting arrest.
By the spring of 2020 he was working for a local tree-trimming service that worked for clients in Butte County and in neighboring Tehama County to the north. Prosecutors later said the company cooperated fully with the investigation and the trial. The company's name was not made public by the district attorney.
Loreen May Severs was 88 and lived with her husband, who was 91, in Los Molinos, a farming community in Tehama County. She was a Los Molinos native, known to friends as "Pete," a neighbor told the Corning Observer. He described the couple as among the nicest people he knew. They went for walks almost every day and shared the fruit from their trees with the people around them. Her husband was a veteran of the Korean War.
The couple had been clients of the tree-trimming service that employed Blinston. Loreen Severs was killed in Los Molinos on May 23, 2020. Her husband was badly injured and survived. He died in December 2020 of an illness unrelated to the attack, according to the district attorneys of both counties.
The Tehama County Sheriff's Office treated the case as a homicide and an attempted homicide. For four months no arrest was announced. In September 2020 the sheriff's office told KRCR that investigators had identified the person they believed was responsible and that charges were expected. The suspect, who was not named, was already in jail on unrelated charges.
Sandra George was 82 and lived alone in Oroville. Her niece later wrote to the court that she was "a fiercely independent person." She too had been a client of the tree-trimming service. She was killed in Oroville on June 4, 2020.
Oroville police began a homicide investigation into what they described as a suspicious death, and investigators from the California Department of Justice came to help. By the time Blinston was arrested ten days later, he was considered a person of interest in her death, the Associated Press reported, but he was not charged with it until May 2021.
Vicky Cline was 57 and lived in Oroville. She was a former waitress, the Associated Press reported. She and Blinston knew each other. Ramsey said the two had apparently been talking in the days before she disappeared. Her family, at the sentencing two years later, remembered her as a loving mother.
She was killed in June 2020. Oroville police began an arson case and a missing person investigation, which they described as suspicious, and identified Blinston as a person of interest. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest on an arson charge, and Oroville police asked the Butte County Sheriff's Office to help find him. She was found dead in Plumas County on June 21, 2020, a week after his arrest. Forensic evidence later linked her to Blinston's car, prosecutors said.
The search for Blinston brought together officers from the Oroville Police Department, the Butte County Sheriff's Office, the Butte Interagency Narcotics Task Force and the sheriff's Special Enforcement Unit. On June 14, 2020, Butte County deputies serving the arson warrant arrested him in the Brush Creek area of the county, as the district attorney's office called it; the first sheriff's accounts, as reported by KRCR and CBS Sacramento, gave the area as Berry Creek. A 50-year-old man there had been seriously injured in an attack shortly before. He survived.
Blinston, then 36, was booked into the Butte County Jail on the arson warrant and held without bail. The sheriff's office said he would also be booked on one count of attempted murder. He later pleaded not guilty in that case.
For almost a year the attack in the Brush Creek area was the only violent crime with which Blinston was charged. Investigators from four agencies worked on the other cases: the Butte County Sheriff's Office, the Tehama County Sheriff's Office, the Oroville Police Department and the California Department of Justice. The killings had taken place in two counties, about two weeks apart.
Cellphone location data and the tree-trimming company's work records linked him to the women, prosecutors said, and in Vicky Cline's case blood and DNA evidence was matched to her. The company cooperated with investigators, and its business records, along with phone data and surveillance video, were later among the hundreds of exhibits at trial.
In September 2020 the Tehama County Sheriff's Office announced that it had identified a suspect in the Los Molinos case who was already in jail on unrelated charges.
On May 13, 2021, the Butte County district attorney, Mike Ramsey, and the Tehama County district attorney, Matt Rogers, announced that they had charged Blinston in Butte County Superior Court with the murder of Loreen Severs and the attempted murder of her husband, the murder of Sandra George, the murder of Vicky Cline and arson. The Associated Press, citing prosecutors, reported that the complaint had been filed on Wednesday, May 12; the district attorney's release said the charges were filed that morning, May 13. The AP reported that the charges carried special allegations that he used a deadly weapon, attacked an elderly victim and committed multiple murders.
The two district attorneys agreed to try all of the cases together in Butte County. They said the multiple-murder complaint would allow them to seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and that through the combined work of agencies in both counties they would be able to seek justice for the victims and "ensure no one else will be harmed." The earlier attempted murder charge from the Brush Creek area remained a separate case, pending in the same court.
Blinston, 37, was arraigned on Thursday, May 13. He entered no plea and was held without bail until a hearing set for May 19, the AP reported, and some of the victims' relatives attended. Prosecutors said they did not know his motive. The AP reported that there was no immediate sign of burglary or robbery. Asked whether there might be other victims, Ramsey said, "We hope to God there isn't but we can't be sure."
On January 25, 2022, Blinston appeared in Butte County Superior Court for a preliminary hearing on the murder case. Judge Michael Candela found that there was "sufficient evidence to proceed to trial" on the murder, attempted murder and arson charges, Action News Now reported. The case was set for arraignment and the setting of a trial date the next day, when a trial date was also to be set in the separate attempted murder case from June 2020. Blinston, then 38, remained in jail without bail.
The trial began on May 2, 2022, in Butte County Superior Court before Judge Corie Caraway. All of the charges from both counties were heard by one Butte County jury of seven men and five women. Deputy District Attorneys Niels Bringsjord and Mark Emmons prosecuted the case.
Over almost three weeks the prosecution called 35 witnesses. They included experts on DNA and on cellphone location technology, forensic pathologists and an anthropologist. Hundreds of exhibits were admitted: photographs, diagrams, surveillance videos, phone data and business records. The jury heard the cellphone location evidence and the company's work records that linked him to the women, the forensic evidence in Vicky Cline's case, and the account of the deputies who arrested him in the Brush Creek area. Blinston did not testify.
Prosecutors did not offer a motive, except to say that robbery was not one, the Associated Press reported.
The jury began deliberating late on the afternoon of May 16, 2022, and returned its verdicts the next morning, Tuesday, May 17. It found Blinston guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, for the killings of Loreen Severs, Sandra George and Vicky Cline; two counts of attempted first-degree murder, for the attacks on Loreen Severs's husband and on the man in the Brush Creek area; arson; and resisting arrest. The district attorney's office gave his age as 38.
Because he had been convicted of more than one murder, the only sentence available for the murders was life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said. Judge Caraway was to set a sentencing date the next day. The Corning Observer reported that sentencing was set for June 14, and Univision reported that the hearing had been moved to June 13. It was held on August 4.
"I would like to thank Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey and his office for their tireless work on this case," Rogers said after the verdict. He also thanked the Tehama County Sheriff's Office, the Oroville Police Department and the other agencies that had worked on the investigation.
On August 4, 2022, Judge Caraway sentenced Blinston in Butte County Superior Court to three terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the three murders. For the two attempted murders he received two terms of seven years to life, and he received a further determinate term of 16 years and eight months, according to Action News Now and the Corning Observer. The district attorney's office described the sentence as three life terms without the possibility of parole plus two more life terms for the attempted murders.
Relatives of all three women addressed the court, most through statements read by a victim advocate. A nephew of the Severs couple called them the "friendliest people in the world" and said he would never understand why Blinston had killed his aunt and attacked his uncle. Sandra George's niece wrote that her aunt had been fiercely independent.
Vicky Cline's family thanked those who had helped them seek justice. Her daughters described her as a loving mother. One said that Blinston had made her realize that "evil and monsters actually do exist," and asked the judge to make sure he never walked free. The other said she needed him to understand "the magnitude of the suffering he has inflicted on an entire family." Her sister said there were no words for the pain that he had caused.
The man who survived the attack in the Brush Creek area also spoke. He called it a "devastating experience" that had deeply affected his life, and he asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
Judge Caraway called Blinston a predator and said she hoped the sentence would bring some closure to the families. Ramsey noted that Blinston had never told anyone why he killed or tried to kill his victims. He said Blinston would "spend the remainder of his unnatural life" in prison and would never again be able to harm anyone in Butte or Tehama County. On the day of sentencing, Blinston was held without bail in the Butte County Jail, waiting to be transferred to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
In August 2022 Blinston was in the Butte County Jail awaiting transfer to state prison to serve his sentence. No appeal or appellate decision in his case has been reported.
The joint statements of Ramsey and Rogers credited the sheriff's offices of both counties, the Oroville Police Department and the California Department of Justice, whose investigators had worked the cases together across the county line. Prosecutors also thanked the tree-trimming company that had employed Blinston for its cooperation.
Loreen Severs's husband did not live to see the trial. He died in December 2020, five months before Blinston was charged with attacking him.
Several details vary between reports. The district attorney's own sentencing release says in its first paragraph that the crimes happened in "May and June 2021," but every date it then gives is in 2020, as are the dates in all other police and court reports; the killings took place in 2020. The rural area where Blinston was arrested is called Brush Creek by the district attorney and Berry Creek in the first sheriff's accounts as reported by KRCR and CBS Sacramento. Reports differ on whether the murder complaint was filed on May 12 or May 13, 2021. One early KRCR report of the charges described two of the murder counts as attempted murders; the district attorney's release lists three murder charges. One Action News Now report described one conviction as evading federal officers; the district attorney's releases list resisting arrest. A Spanish-language report on the verdict placed the attack in Los Molinos on a different day than the court record and said both members of the couple were killed; the court record shows that her husband survived the attack and died months later of an unrelated illness. Ages for Blinston at the verdict range from 37 (the Associated Press) to 38 (the district attorney).
Prosecutors offered no motive beyond ruling out robbery, and Blinston did not testify at his trial. Ramsey said in 2021 that investigators were unable to rule out other victims. Reports on the case through 2022 did not attribute any other killing to him.
2013: Blinston is arrested driving a stolen Lexus and in possession of three guns taken in burglaries (CBS Sacramento). He serves two state prison terms over the years for driving a stolen car, possessing stolen property and fleeing the California Highway Patrol (Associated Press).
May 23, 2020: Loreen Severs, 88, is killed in Los Molinos; her husband, 91, is badly injured and survives.
June 4, 2020: Sandra George, 82, is killed in Oroville; police begin a homicide investigation.
June 2020: Vicky Cline, 57, of Oroville is killed.
June 14, 2020: Butte County deputies serving an arson warrant arrest him in the Brush Creek area, after a 50-year-old man there is seriously injured in an attack. He is booked into the Butte County Jail.
June 21, 2020: Vicky Cline is found dead in Plumas County.
September 2020: Tehama County sheriff's officials say they have identified a suspect in the Los Molinos case who is already in jail.
December 2020: Loreen Severs's husband dies of an unrelated illness.
May 12 or 13, 2021: The Butte and Tehama district attorneys charge him with three murders, an attempted murder and arson.
May 13, 2021: Arraigned in Butte County Superior Court; no plea entered.
January 25, 2022: Judge Michael Candela finds sufficient evidence for trial at a preliminary hearing.
May 2, 2022: Trial begins before Judge Corie Caraway.
May 17, 2022: The jury convicts him of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, arson and resisting arrest.
August 4, 2022: Sentenced to three terms of life without the possibility of parole, two terms of seven years to life and 16 years and eight months; held in the Butte County Jail pending transfer to state prison.