William Scott Smith

Victims

3 CONVICTIONS: Rebecca Darling and Katherine Redmond at trial in 1984, and Sherry Eyerly BY GUILTY PLEA in November 2007, twenty-five years after she disappeared and WITHOUT HER BODY EVER BEING FOUND. All three are convictions, so the count and the convictions coincide

Years active

1982 - 1984

Location

Salem, Marion County, Oregon, USA

Method

Strangulation

Status

Arrested on April 26, 1984, aged twenty-three, and sentenced that year to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murders of Rebecca Darling and Katherine Redmond. THE SHERRY EYERLY CASE WAS REOPENED DECADES LATER: she disappeared on 4 July 1982 while delivering pizzas in Salem, her van was found abandoned with the engine running and pizzas still inside, AND HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN RECOVERED. He was charged in 2006 after a fellow prisoner and an accomplice gave statements, PLEADED GUILTY IN NOVEMBER 2007 to murder and kidnapping in the first degree, and was SENTENCED ON DECEMBER 17, 2007 to a third life term, to run consecutively with the two he was already serving. The plea spared the state a trial in a case with no body and spared the family a further search. He is held in the Oregon Department of Corrections. Under the sentencing rules of 1984 an Oregon life term carried a minimum before parole eligibility, so his position depends on the board rather than on the sentence alone; nothing in the accessible record shows a hearing outcome.

William Scott Smith killed three young women around Salem, Oregon over two years. He was convicted of two of them in 1984 and of the third twenty-three years later.

He was born in 1960, had dropped out of school, was working as a fry cook, and had a conviction for menacing dating from 1978. Rebecca Darling, twenty-one, and Katherine Redmond, eighteen, were killed between 1982 and 1984. Sherry Eyerly, eighteen, a pizza delivery driver, disappeared on her round in July 1982; her van was found with the door open and the deliveries still inside, and her body has never been recovered.

He was arrested on April 26, 1984 and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment that year. The Eyerly case was reopened decades later and he received a third life sentence on December 17, 2007.