Ward Weaver III killed two girls who lived a short walk from his house in Oregon City, Oregon, a suburb south of Portland. Ashley Pond, 12, disappeared on January 9, 2002. Miranda Gaddis, 13, disappeared on March 8, 2002. Both had left the same apartment complex in the morning to go to school, and both were friends of Weaver's daughter. For more than seven months the FBI, the Oregon City police and other agencies searched for them. They were found in late August 2002 on the property Weaver rented, Miranda in a storage shed and Ashley in a barrel beneath a concrete slab he had poured in his backyard.
Weaver had announced to reporters that he was the main suspect while denying any part in the disappearances. He was caught after his son's girlfriend escaped from his house and reported that he had raped her, and his son told emergency dispatchers that his father had admitted killing the girls. In September 2004, facing a possible death sentence, Weaver pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in both deaths and no contest to rape, sexual abuse and attempted murder charges. He is serving life without the possibility of parole.
The case also became a public argument about missed warnings. Ashley had told a teacher in 2001 that Weaver tried to rape her, and the report went nowhere. Weaver's former wife said she had told the FBI about the concrete slab months before it was dug up.
Weaver's father, Ward Francis Weaver Jr., was a long-haul truck driver. In February 1981, according to the California Supreme Court, he offered a ride to Robert Radford, an 18-year-old Air Force trainee, and Barbara Levoy, 23, whose car had broken down near Tehachapi, California. He killed Radford with a metal pipe a few miles down the road, then kidnapped and raped Levoy, killed her near Oroville and eventually buried her body in his own backyard, where police found it about 17 months later. A Kern County jury convicted him in 1984 of both murders and of kidnapping Levoy, and on March 7, 1985, set the penalty at death. The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in 2001, in People v. Weaver.
A retired detective who helped recover Levoy's body told the Associated Press in 2002 that she had been buried under a concrete slab; other accounts say under a deck. A prosecutor in the father's case said the elder Weaver's trucking routes matched 26 unsolved killings of hitchhikers, but he was never charged with any of them. As of April 2021, the Portland Tribune reported, Ward Weaver Jr. was still on death row at San Quentin.
The Oregon Department of Corrections gives Ward Weaver III's date of birth as April 1963. Few reliable details of his early life have been published. What the press established in 2002 was a record of violence. He served about three years in a California prison in the 1980s; the Associated Press described the convictions as assault and credit card forgery, and CBS News reported that the assault involved a babysitter he struck with a piece of concrete. Two former wives accused him of violence. One assault charge was dismissed because of problems with the evidence. The mother of his eldest son, a former wife, later told reporters that he had raped her; she divorced him in the 1990s.
By 2002 Weaver was 39, a single father of five and a toolmaker by trade. He rented a ranch house on a hill in Oregon City, near South Beavercreek Road, above the Newell Creek Village apartments, a low-income complex set in the woods south of Portland. His house became an unofficial gathering place for a group of girls from the middle school dance team, which included his daughter.
Ashley Pond was a sixth grader at Gardiner Middle School in Oregon City and a few weeks short of her 13th birthday when she disappeared. She was a gymnast. After her death her English teacher read aloud an essay Ashley had written called "What I Do Well," in which she described her gymnastics. She danced with the school's team, the Fallen Angels. She lived at Newell Creek Village with her mother, Lori Pond, and a younger sister.
Ashley's life had already been hard. She had been sexually abused by her father, who pleaded no contest to sexual abuse and was given six years' probation, according to records cited by CBS News. She was close to Weaver's family and often stayed overnight at his house. Weaver himself said she had lived with his family for several months in 2001; her mother told the Portland Tribune that this was false, although Willamette Week later reported that witnesses confirmed she had stayed at his house for an extended period. In 2001 Weaver took Ashley, his daughter and his girlfriend on a trip to California, and they stopped at San Quentin to visit his father.
In 2001 Ashley told adults that Weaver had tried to rape her. According to CBS News, she told her reading teacher, Linda Virden, on September 4, 2001; other reports place the accusation in the summer of 2001. Virden reported it to the state's child protective services and never heard back. Ashley's stepmother said she also contacted the state. The report was not passed to the Oregon City police, and no one charged Weaver. After Ashley disappeared, Virden took the information to the police herself.
Weaver did not hide the accusation. He spoke about it to reporters in 2002, denied it, and said it had surfaced while Ashley's father was due to stand trial for abusing her.
Miranda Gaddis was 13, a classmate of Ashley's at Gardiner Middle School and a fellow member of the dance team. The two girls lived a few doors apart in the same complex, and both were raised by single mothers. Miranda lived with her mother, Michelle Duffey, and had a sister. She, too, had been sexually abused before she ever met Weaver: CBS News reported that a former boyfriend of her mother's had been sentenced to 75 months in prison. Miranda was a good friend of Weaver's daughter, her aunt Terri Duffey said, and visited the house often.
When Ashley vanished, Miranda at first thought her friend had run away and was angry with her, her mother told the Associated Press. Later she came to believe Ashley had been taken.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 9, 2002, Ashley ate breakfast with her younger sister and set off to catch the school bus. Her mother was the last person she spoke to; Ashley told her she loved her. She never reached the bus stop near the apartments. Some people assumed at first that she had run away, and the early search drew limited attention.
Two months to the day later, on Friday, March 8, 2002, Miranda was getting ready for school when her mother last saw her. She, too, left for the bus and was never seen again. Her disappearance changed the investigation. Police concluded that Ashley had not run away, and the FBI joined the case.
By mid-March 2002 the FBI believed both girls had been kidnapped and had begun a nationwide search. About 70 agents and support staff were working on it, following more than 500 leads, and FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said there was every reason to hope the girls were still alive. Family members had been ruled out as suspects. The dance team planned a benefit concert for March 23 to raise reward money. The case drew attention across the Pacific Northwest and beyond; the two girls appeared on the cover of People magazine.
Weaver was questioned early. After each disappearance he let investigators search his house and yard with dogs, and nothing was found. A few days after Miranda vanished, he dug a hole along the back of the house and filled it with concrete. He said it was a pad for a hot tub. No hot tub was ever installed.
Weaver did not keep his head down. In an interview on June 30, 2002, published by the Portland Tribune on July 2, he called himself the FBI's prime suspect and denied any involvement. He said Ashley had accused him of molesting her, talked openly about his father's murder conviction and his own record, and complained that the FBI wanted to interview his four children without his permission. He gave the reporter his home and cell phone numbers.
He went on to give interviews to KATU in Portland, to Good Morning America, where he criticized Ashley's mother as irresponsible, and to Inside Edition. In the KATU interview, recorded in July 2002, he stood on the new concrete slab in his backyard. He said he hoped Miranda would come home, but that Ashley should "stay where she is," Willamette Week recalled in 2005. He told people he had failed a lie detector test. To relatives he said the police suspected him only because of his father. "He kept blaming it on our dad," his half brother Rodney told the Associated Press.
The FBI did not publicly call him a suspect. Its practice, a spokeswoman later explained, was to use the word "subject" and to name no one until charges were filed.
On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 13, 2002, a 19-year-old woman, the girlfriend of Weaver's eldest son, Francis, ran from Weaver's house and flagged down a passing driver, who took her to a store. From there she called police and said Weaver had raped her and choked her. She has never been publicly named. She told police she had trusted him; she "thought he was like a father," Francis said.
Francis Weaver, then 19, called 911 as well. According to dispatch summaries obtained by The Oregonian, he told dispatchers that his father had confessed to killing the two girls and was planning to move to Mexico. Weaver was arrested that day in Oregon City and appeared the next day in Clackamas County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree rape and sexual abuse. He pleaded not guilty and was held on $1 million bail. Oregon City Police Chief Gordon Huiras said at first that the arrest had produced no new evidence about the missing girls. Weaver was later evicted from the rented house.
On the night of Friday, August 23, investigators obtained what they described as legal authority to search Weaver's property. Weaver also gave written consent through his lawyer, Timothy Lyons, who said his client wanted to bring closure to the families. A chain-link fence and crime scene tape went up overnight, with tents in the yard.
The search began on the morning of Saturday, August 24, with about 40 agents from the FBI and state and local police and three search dogs. At about 3 p.m. that day they found human remains in a storage shed behind the house. They were in a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Dental records identified them as Miranda Gaddis. FBI Special Agent in Charge Charles Mathews said the remains did not appear to have been in the shed since her disappearance, and dogs had found nothing in the shed during the earlier searches.
On Sunday, August 25, using ground-penetrating radar, investigators broke up the concrete slab. Beneath it, in a buried 55-gallon barrel, were the remains of Ashley Pond. Other barrels on the property held only dirt and gravel. Agents worked with picks and a backhoe for another day and finished on the night of August 26, saying they did not expect to find other victims there. The medical examiner confirmed Ashley's identity within days. "I think the case has been resolved," Mathews said.
Mathews identified Weaver as a suspect on August 25, the first time any official had done so. The next day Greg Horner, the chief deputy district attorney of Clackamas County, said prosecutors would take the case to a grand jury. Lyons said, "We expected this."
The fence around Weaver's house became a memorial. People covered it with teddy bears, flowers, candles, balloons and notes, many from children. So many came that authorities closed South Beavercreek Road, and residents kept a vigil there through the nights. The landlord asked the FBI to leave the fence in place. Oregon City held all-night counseling sessions for students.
On the evening of Thursday, August 29, more than a thousand people filled the high school for a memorial service, many of them teenage girls wearing yellow ribbons. The service was about the girls' lives. A video showed family photographs, and relatives, teachers and police officers read poems and messages. About 60 current and former members of the Oregon City High School dance team attended, along with dancers from teams across the state. Chief Huiras said his department had "adopted" the two girls into its law enforcement family.
The discovery that both girls had been a few hundred yards from their homes all along brought hard questions. Kristi Sloan, one of Weaver's former wives, told CNN she had told the FBI about five months earlier to look at his backyard and the newly poured concrete. She said she was disgusted and frustrated, and blamed the FBI more than the local police. Neighbors said the FBI should have acted sooner. Ashley's stepmother had placed a sign on the slab reading "Dig me up," CBS News reported.
Officials answered that they could not search without legal grounds. Mathews said that until Weaver's arrest and his son's report of a confession, investigators had lacked probable cause to search the house, and that the information available to them early on had been limited. "There are certain legal standards that need to be met," Chief Huiras said. Legal experts quoted by CBS News agreed that police needed specific evidence to obtain a warrant. Not all of the families blamed investigators. Terri Duffey, Miranda's aunt, said they might have had legal limits to follow, and a lawyer for Michelle Duffey warned that evidence could be thrown out if the case were handled outside the law.
The handling of Ashley's 2001 report drew the sharpest criticism. The state's child protective services admitted to CBS News in October 2002 that it had been "deficient," especially in screening such reports and referring them to law enforcement. The teacher, Linda Virden, said the agency's response had not been enough and that she believed it had cost both girls their lives. Ashley's stepmother said at least one life, and possibly two, might have been saved.
The Oregon Department of Human Services fired the caseworker and his supervisor who had handled the Pond reports. An administrative law judge later reinstated both, though they were demoted and no longer handled abuse cases. The department's director, Jean Thorne, said in 2003 that all abuse reports sent to law enforcement must now be followed up, and the agency moved money from management to hire more caseworkers.
In August 2003 Michelle Duffey sued the department for $1.5 million in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Her complaint said reports of suspected abuse involving Ashley had reached caseworkers but were never sent to police, and that the agency should have seen Weaver as a danger to Ashley and to the other girls around her, Miranda among them. Lori Pond and the 19-year-old woman Weaver had raped filed suits as well. In December 2005 Lori Pond settled for $10,000, the only plaintiff to receive a settlement. In a letter to her, a department assistant director, Ramona Foley, wrote that government agencies "must find lessons in tragedy," and listed changes made since the girls' deaths, including more staff training and better communication with police about suspected abuse.
Weaver's rented house was torn down within weeks. On October 4, 2002, he was due in Clackamas County court after a grand jury had heard evidence for two weeks, and in October he was indicted on charges of aggravated murder, rape and abuse of a corpse. The Oregon Department of Corrections record lists six counts of aggravated murder covering the two deaths, two counts of abuse of a corpse, a count of first-degree rape and a count of attempted aggravated murder involving the son's girlfriend, and several counts of sexual abuse. He pleaded not guilty and faced a possible death sentence. The Associated Press named the case Oregon's top news story of 2002.
The evidence was circumstantial. Autopsies could not establish where, when or how the girls had died. Horner, the chief deputy district attorney, said he was confident a jury would convict on both murders.
Weaver spent the next two years in Clackamas County Jail. In interviews from jail he handed reporters documents that he said showed prosecutors had no direct evidence, and he blamed drug dealers and outlaw bikers. Once those interviews aired, Judge Robert Herndon imposed a gag order.
His first lawyers, Lyons and Joseph Watson, asked to withdraw in March 2003, citing an ethical conflict that had broken down their relationship with him, and new lawyers, Michael Barker and Peter Fahy, were appointed. Later his lawyers said he had stopped communicating with them and moved to have him declared unfit for trial. At a hearing on April 21 and 22, 2004, psychiatrists testified that he said he heard voices, that he had tried to kill himself, and that his mental state had fallen apart in solitary confinement. A prosecution expert believed he was faking. Herndon found him severely depressed and unable to help in his own defense, suspended the case and sent him to the Oregon State Hospital for evaluation. Lori Pond wept in court at the ruling. At a hearing on August 25, 2004, he was said to have regained the ability to assist in his defense.
The prosecution also changed hands. In August 2004 the lead prosecutor, Alfred J. French III, stepped down from the case after appearing in a political advertisement for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Willamette Week reported.
The defense asked Herndon to move the trial out of Clackamas County, presenting a survey in which most potential jurors believed Weaver had killed the girls. Weaver did not attend the hearing on September 15. On September 16 Herndon refused to move the trial and set jury selection for January 24, 2005.
The next day, September 17, the defense contacted prosecutors about a plea. According to Terri Hyne, Michelle Duffey's sister, Weaver had first offered to plead guilty to the murders only if the charges of sexually abusing a young girl and of raping and trying to kill his son's girlfriend were dropped. Prosecutors refused; they wanted him held to account for all of it. Barker said Weaver changed his mind after receiving a letter from his 15-year-old daughter that read, "Daddy, make it stop."
On Wednesday, September 22, 2004, Weaver, then 41, stood in Herndon's courtroom handcuffed and slumped, holding a small picture of his daughter. He told the judge he had taken medications but was acting of his own free will. He pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in the deaths of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis and no contest to the sexual abuse, rape and attempted murder charges. The Associated Press counted 17 counts in all, including abuse of a corpse. The agreement took the death penalty off the table, and Herndon sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Lori Pond spoke to him in court. She told him that she would have the memory of her daughter for the rest of her life.
Reports differ on how many life terms were imposed. The Associated Press reported two life sentences without parole; the Portland Tribune reported four; in 2021 the Tribune described the terms as consecutive. The Department of Corrections record shows the aggravated murder counts and the rape and attempted murder counts as open sentences that began on September 22, 2004, and gives his earliest release date as "No Parole."
In December 2004 Willamette Week reported police records suggesting that Weaver had effectively admitted the killings before the bodies were found. His sister told police that on the morning of August 24, 2002, an investigator working for his lawyers warned her to "prepare for the worst," and that Weaver called her from jail that day to say trouble was coming. She did not say he had confessed to her. The Portland Tribune had reported a confession on August 24, 2002; at the time an FBI spokeswoman denied it, and Chief Huiras said Weaver had not confessed to him.
Weaver entered the Oregon prison system on September 22, 2004. From June 2005 he was held at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, in eastern Oregon, in an administrative segregation unit for about 45 prisoners who needed protection from the general population.
On March 4, 2007, another prisoner, Marvin Lee Taylor, 44, who was cutting his hair, stabbed him with a homemade knife. Barbers in the unit were not allowed scissors and used electric razors. The two men were alone in a day room, and a guard stopped the attack. Weaver was treated for wounds to his neck and shoulder. It was the first incident involving him since his arrival, a prison spokeswoman said. Taylor was charged with assault, possession of a weapon and supplying contraband. "We're not sure of the motive," the Malheur County district attorney, Dan Norris, said, adding that the attack showed how hard it was for the prison system to manage high-profile inmates.
DNA testing carried out during the murder investigation showed that Francis Weaver was not Ward Weaver's biological son, something neither man had known. Francis had been raised by Weaver and called him Dad. In February 2014, at 31, he was arrested with two other men in the killing of Edward Spangler, 43, of Grants Pass, who was shot during an attempt to rob him of marijuana in Canby. A jury convicted Francis Weaver in March 2016 of murder, robbery and being a felon in possession of a firearm, and he was sentenced to life in prison; police said he had supplied the gun. At sentencing he told Spangler's family, through tears, that the killing was never meant to happen. In September 2020 the Oregon Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that the plea agreement given to the man accused of firing the shots had violated the Oregon Constitution by discouraging him from testifying for Francis. A new trial was set for October 2021, the Portland Tribune reported. How that retrial ended has not been reported.
As of October 17, 2026, the date of the latest update to his public record, Ward Weaver III is in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla, in northeastern Oregon. He is 63. The record gives his earliest release date as "No Parole." No later court ruling or news report was found when this was checked on October 18, 2026.
The Weaver house is gone, and the lot stayed empty. A later plan by Central City Concern to build a 40-unit apartment complex there for people recovering from addiction was dropped after it failed to win state funding, KGW reported. Miranda's sister, Miriah Gillett, had gathered signatures against the development; Michelle Duffey had hoped it would go ahead.
The families of both girls spent years in court against the state. Lori Pond's $10,000 settlement was the only one any plaintiff received. After the bodies were found, the Duffey family said they would probably move away.
The case remained a reference point in coverage of Weaver's family. When Francis Weaver was arrested in 2014, news reports described three generations of men in the family convicted or accused of killing. Janine Robben, a former Clackamas County prosecutor who covered the case for Willamette Week and the Portland Tribune, was writing a book about the family, titled Close to Home, the Tribune reported in 2021.
Proven by his own pleas, and final: the aggravated murders of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, abuse of their remains, and the rape and attempted murder of his son's girlfriend, together with the sexual abuse counts.
Never established: how, when and where the girls died. The autopsies could not answer those questions, and the plea meant there was no trial at which evidence was tested in public. Whether the shed was Miranda's first resting place is also unknown; dogs had found nothing there in earlier searches, and the FBI said the remains did not appear to have been there since she vanished.
Never charged on its own: Ashley's 2001 report that Weaver tried to rape her. The record does not say which, if any, of the 2004 counts related to it.
Not proven: whether Weaver confessed before his plea. His son told dispatchers he had; a newspaper reported a confession in August 2002 that the FBI denied; his sister's account to police stops short of one.
Suspected but never charged: Weaver's father's possible connection to 26 unsolved killings of hitchhikers. In August 2002 investigators said they were looking at other disappearances, possibly in California, for links to the son; no such link has been reported.
Details that vary between sources: Ashley's age (12 in most reports, a few weeks short of her 13th birthday; some reports call both girls 13); when Ashley made her 2001 accusation (summer or September 4, 2001); whether she lived with Weaver's family for months (Weaver and witnesses said so; her mother denied it); the number of life terms (two or four); and whether Barbara Levoy was buried under a slab or a deck at the elder Weaver's home.
1981: Ward Weaver Jr. kills Robert Radford and Barbara Levoy in California; he is convicted in 1984 and sentenced to death on March 7, 1985.
April 1963: Ward Francis Weaver III is born.
1980s: serves about three years in a California prison for assault and credit card forgery.
1990s: his first marriage ends in divorce.
2001: takes Ashley Pond, his daughter and his girlfriend to California, stopping at San Quentin to visit his father.
Summer or September 4, 2001: Ashley reports that Weaver tried to rape her; child protective services does not pass the report to police, and no charges follow.
January 9, 2002: Ashley Pond, 12, disappears on her way to the school bus from Newell Creek Village, Oregon City.
March 8, 2002: Miranda Gaddis, 13, disappears from the same complex; the FBI joins the investigation. Days later Weaver pours a concrete slab in his backyard.
March 2002: about 70 FBI agents and staff are following more than 500 leads.
June 30, 2002: Weaver tells the Portland Tribune he is the FBI's prime suspect (published July 2).
July 2002: gives a KATU interview standing on the slab.
August 13, 2002: arrested for raping his son's 19-year-old girlfriend; his son tells 911 that Weaver confessed to killing the girls.
August 24, 2002: Miranda's remains are found in a storage shed on Weaver's property.
August 25, 2002: Ashley's remains are found in a barrel under the slab; the FBI names Weaver as a suspect.
August 29, 2002: more than a thousand people attend a memorial service at the high school.
October 2002: indicted on aggravated murder, rape, abuse of a corpse and other charges.
December 2002: the case is named Oregon's top news story of the year.
March 2003: his first defense lawyers seek to withdraw.
August 2003: Michelle Duffey sues the Department of Human Services.
April 22, 2004: Judge Robert Herndon suspends the case and sends Weaver to the Oregon State Hospital.
August 25, 2004: found able to assist in his defense again.
September 16, 2004: change of venue refused.
September 22, 2004: pleads guilty to aggravated murder in both deaths and no contest to the other charges; sentenced to life without parole.
June 2005: moved to Snake River Correctional Institution.
December 2005: Lori Pond settles her lawsuit against the state for $10,000.
March 4, 2007: stabbed by an inmate barber; survives.
February 2014: Francis Weaver is arrested in a Canby killing; convicted in 2016, conviction overturned in 2020.
October 17, 2026: Oregon DOC record shows him at Two Rivers Correctional Institution, with no parole.