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NEWS Luke Wirkkala Murder Retrial Kicks Off
Wirkkala, who was found guilty of murder in 2014, is back in the courtroom and arguing he acted in self-defense
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By Hanna Merzbach
Luke Wirkkala is back on trial in Deschutes County, over eight years after shooting his houseguest, David Ryder, on Feb. 4, 2013. The jury will again be tasked with deciding if Wirkkala, now 40, acted in self-defense when killing Ryder, who was 31 at the time.
In his first trial in 2014, Wirkkala was sentenced to life in prison with at least 25 years before parole. But the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned this decision and ordered a new trial in 2018, after determining that police should have stopped questioning Wirkkala when he asked for a lawyer. The trial has been delayed for several months due to COVID-19 and finally began on March 18 in a temporary courtroom at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds.
Even though the Court of Appeals didn’t challenge the facts of the case, the trial will revisit these facts and bring new witnesses to the stand. Much of the case is undisputed: Ryder and Wirkkala had both moved to Bend in 2012 and met at a campground while looking for more permanent housing. Ryder, a Kentucky native, was working as a software engineer at G5 in Bend, while Wirkkala, who grew up in Astoria, had moved to Bend to work as a freelance photographer and writer.
After hanging out a few times, Wirkkala invited Ryder to watch the Super Bowl at Hideaway Tavern. The two returned for a nightcap at Wirkkala’s home, where Wirkkala shot Ryder in the neck. Wirkkala’s then-girlfriend Rachel Rasmussen and her 11-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew were also home, but didn’t witness the events directly.
Wirkkala and his family and friends have long been adamant that he acted in self-defense, starting a “Free Luke Wirkkala” campaign and holding protests around Deschutes County. They argue that, prior to firing the shotgun, Ryder physically and sexually assaulted Wirkkala, and he acted to defend himself, as well as his home and family.
Steven McConnell, Wirkkala’s brother-in-law and a character witness in the trial, has helped lead the campaign to get Wirkkala out of jail.
“We’ve tried everything,” he said. “I just hope the end result is that his actions are justifiable and, at the end of the day, Luke (Wirkkala) is found not guilty.”
Prosecutors, on the other hand, plan to argue that the sexual interaction— which is documented with evidence— could have been consensual.
“The only two people who know exactly what happened are the defendant and David Ryder,” prosecutor Jayme Kimberly said in her opening statement on March 18. Both Kimberly and fellow prosecutor Kristen Hoffmeyer work for the Oregon Department of Justice, which took control of the case at the request of Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel. He cited a bar complaint Wirkkala made alleging prosecutorial misconduct in the first case, as well as a potential conflict of interest related to a cousin of Wirkkala’s sending allegedly disturbing letters to Hummel’s office.
Wirkkala is being defended by Thad Betz, as well as Joel Wirtz of Deschutes Defenders, which has represented local defendants including Edwin Lara, the killer of Central Oregon Community College student Kaylee Anne Sawyer. The defense argues that, after a night of drinking, Wirkkala fell asleep at his home and awoke to Ryder forcing him to perform oral sex and strangling him. In a 2018 lie detector test, Wirkkala confirmed that Ryder physically assaulted him, which he defined as placing hands around his throat and forcing his head down, as well as punching, hitting, kicking, biting and scratching.
Wirkkala says he proceeded to break free from Ryder, run to his room and get his shotgun. He says he fired a round as a warning, but when Ryder continued to advance, he shot him at close proximity in the neck, killing him instantly. Wirkkala confirmed in the lie detector test that Ryder was advancing towards him when he shot and, in a letter to the Source Weekly, he said he fired the gun as a “last resort.”
Rasmussen, who had been in the neighboring room, was the one to call the police, who arrived to find Wirkkala crying on the floor near Ryder’s body. They found shotgun shells on the floor and empty beer cans strewn about. Both Wirkkala and Ryder were found to be legally drunk, with Wirkkala’s blood-alcohol level between 0.18% and 0.38% at the time of the shooting and Ryder’s at about 0.23%.
Officers found “fingernail scratch marks” on Wirkkala’s neck and abrasions on his hand. In the retrial, Wirkkala’s defense will present evidence of his DNA under Ryder’s fingernails, as well as evidence of the sexual activity. Prosecutors will argue that Wirkkala acted with intention, as he went to his room, grabbed his shotgun and returned to shoot Ryder. In the previous trial, prosecutor Mary Anderson argued that the marks on Wirkkala’s neck could have been from “rough sex” or have been self-inflicted. She argued that Wirkkala could have been the one to come onto Ryder, and he could have become angry if Ryder rejected his sexual advances. The prosecution pointed toward Wirkkala’s history as a journalist as evidence that he’s “someone who composes” and “works things through.” They also showed the jury the video of Wirkkala’s first interrogation where he used aggressive language against detectives after he was not granted a lawyer.
Midway through the interrogation, Wirkkala told the detectives, “I appreciate the hospitality here, fellas, but I think I’m going to get a lawyer.” They kept talking anyway, and Wirkkala swore numerous times at Bend Detective Tim Knea. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that Knea should have stopped questioning Wirkkala at that point, and since this recording was the state’s only evidence of Wirkkala being hostile toward police, it could have affected the trial’s results.
Rasmussen, now Wirkkala’s ex-wife, testified last week that she is supportive of Wirkkala in the case.
“I believe he was sexually assaulted that night, and I thank him for protecting our family,” she said. The defense had hoped to show evidence of Ryder’s “prior bad acts,” which were excluded from the first trial. They specifically aimed to show the jury that Ryder was kicked out of the Navy in 2004 for drinking, with reports of sexually aggressive behavior. But, according to McConnell, the judge is currently preventing the defense from detailing these prior bad acts in court. He said the defense can only bring them up to argue against specifics statements the prosecution makes about Ryder.
Ryder’s family didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time, but in a 2018 statement to The Bulletin, Neda Calhoun, Ryder’s mother, wrote that Wirkkala “deserves to rot in prison.”
“My son gets no more chances at anything because his life was stolen from him and his family,” Calhoun added.
Wirkkala’s family argues that he is also a victim in the case. According to McConnell, Wirkkala’s brother-inlaw, the events have been traumatizing for their family, along with Ryder’s. Ryder’s family had hoped the prosecutors wouldn’t settle the case before the retrial. According to Wirkkala’s letter to the Source, prosecutors did offer him a settlement for manslaughter, instead of murder, where he could have left prison in less than two years from now.
“I turned them down because this isn’t just about getting back my freedom,” he wrote. “It’s also about justice, and standing up for what is right, and restoring my good name. I do not intend to stop fighting here for justice until the fight is done.”
The trial is scheduled to last four weeks before Deschutes County Circuit Judge Randy Miller.
Evelyn and Steve McConnell, Luke Wirkkala’s sister and brother-in-law, demonstrated in support of Wirkkala in downtown Bend March 6. Below, Wirkkala shared this photo with the Source Weekly, displaying some of the wounds he sustained the night of the alleged attack by David Ryder.
Bend Man Charged with Three Counts of Murder in Two Separate Incidents
Man charged in death of woman hurt on Christmas Day; separate incident involving roommates this week
By Nicole Vulcan
ABend man faces three charges of second-degree murder following the deaths of a pair of brothers over the March 20 weekend, along with the earlier death of a Bend woman. Bend Police arrested Randall Kilby, 35, on March 21, after cops found two men dead in a house on Granite Drive in southwest Bend. The two men, Jeffrey Taylor, 66, and Benjamin Taylor, 69, lived in the house with Kilby’s mother, authorities said.
On Monday, Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel announced he’d also charged Kilby in the death of the woman, Daphne Banks, 43, who suffered a head injury on Christmas Day at the same location, and who died Jan. 10 at St. Charles Medical Center. At least one of the men killed over the weekend died from hatchet wounds, Hummel said, with the second man’s injuries also consistent with hatchet wounds.
A mother cries for help
Police went to the house on Granite Drive after a neighbor called authorities to report “a woman and a man walked by them, and the woman silently mouthed, ‘help,’ Hummel told reporters Monday. That woman was Kilby’s mother, Hummel said, who, after being a witness to
one of the murders, was held against her will by Kilby. At one point she talked her son into going for a walk, Hummel detailed, where she saw the neighbor and asked for help. Later, after Kilby drove his mother around, she was able to run to a neighbor’s house for help.
According to accounts from witnesses, Kilby got into a dispute with one of the brothers before the killings. Kilby has a prior criminal history, including an arrest for multiple hit-and-run crashes and a chase that went from Tumalo to Bend in 2019.
No one had yet been formally charged
in the case of Banks, who is thought to have previously been in a relationship with Kilby, Hummel said. At the time of her injury, Kilby and others who lived at the same house on Granite Drive told police that Banks had fallen and hit her head.
Bend Police arrested Kilby on a charge of assault after the incident, but Hummel had not yet formally charged Kilby with a crime. Hummel told reporters Monday that his office had not yet charged Kilby because despite his office working on the case “every day,” they did not have sufficient evidence to convict Kilby of a crime. Without more evidence, and should Kilby have been tried and deemed innocent, laws around double jeopardy would not have allowed him to be tried again—even if more evidence came to light, Hummel said.
“Nobody takes this crime more seriously than me and the team,” Hummel said at his Monday press conference. Still, he said, “we don’t want to go too quickly and don’t want to go too slowly.”
After his arrest over the weekend, Kilby provided more information about Banks’ case, which led to charges in her case, too, Hummel said.
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Here are the People Running for School Board, Parks in the May Election
By Nicole Vulcan
After a raucous 2020 election season, some might be overwhelmed at the prospect of going through it all again—but here we are, looking at another election season. Local elections for school board parks and other positions are happening May 18. Ballots will be mailed out starting April 28, and the Source will conduct endorsement interviews in contested races. Stay tuned for those throughout the month of April.
The candidates are:
Bend Metro Park & Recreation District
Position 3: Nathan Hovekamp, Lauren Nowierski-Stadnick Position 4: Zavier Borja, Robin Vora Position 5: Deb Schoen, Elizabeth Hughes Weide
Redmond Area Park & Recreation District
Position 1: Matthew Gilman, Jon Golden Position 2: Lena Berry, Mercedes Cook, Jeremiah Pedersen Position 3: Kevin Scoggin
Sisters Park & Recreation District
Position 1: Bob Keefer Position 2: Molly Baumann Position 3: Jeffrey Tryens
Bend-La Pine School Board (Administrative District #1)
Zone 1: Maria Lopez-Dauenhauer, Carrie McPherson Douglass Zone 2: Wendy Imel, Marcus LeGrand Zone 4: Gregg Henton, Shirley Olson Zone 7: Cab Burge, Jon Haffner, Janet Sarai Llerandi
Redmond School District 2J
Position 1: Shawn Hartfield, Stephanie Hunter Position 2: Lacey J Butts, Michelle Salinas, Michael Summers, Rachel M. Visinoni Position 3: Jill Cummings, Lavon Medlock, Ron Osmundson Position 4: No candidates yet; filing deadline extended to March 26 at 5pm
Sisters School District 6
Position 1: Jenica Cogdill, Rodney Cooper Position 2: David Thorsett Position 5: Kevin Eckert, Edie Jones
Mail-in ballots for the May 18 election will be sent out starting April 28.
Noticias en Español Estas son las personas que postulan para el puesto en la mesa directiva del distrito escolar y de parques y recreación durante las elecciones de mayo.
Por Nicole Vulcan Traducido por by Jéssica Sánchez-Millar
Después de una bulliciosa temporada electoral 2020, algunas personas podrían sentirse agobiadas ante la expectativa de pasar por todo esto de nuevo, pero aquí estamos, pasando por otra temporada electoral. Las elecciones locales para la mesa directiva del distrito escolar y de parques y recreación y otros puestos, se llevarán a cabo el 18 de mayo. Las boletas se enviarán por correo a partir del 28 de abril y the Source conducirá entrevistas de los puestos disputados. Esté al tanto de estas entrevistas durante el mes de abril.
Los candidatos son:
Parques y Recreación Distrito de Bend
Posición 3: Nathan Hovekamp, Lauren Nowierski-Stadnick Posición 4: Zavier Borja, Robin Vora Posición 5: Deb Schoen, Elizabeth Hughes Weide Posición 2: Lena Berry, Mercedes Cook, Jeremiah Pedersen Posición 3: Kevin Scoggin
Parques y Recreación Distrito de Sisters
Posición 1: Bob Keefer Posición 2: Molly Baumann Posición 3: Jeffrey Tryens
Mesa directiva del distrito escolar de Bend-La Pine (Distrito administrativo #1)
Zona 1: Maria Lopez-Dauenhauer, Carrie McPherson Douglass Zona 2: Wendy Imel, Marcus LeGrand Zona 4: Gregg Henton, Shirley Olson Zona 7: Cab Burge, Jon Haffner, Janet Sarai Llerandi
Distrito escolar de Redmond 2J
Posición 1: Shawn Hartfield, Stephanie Hunter Posición 2: Lacey J Butts, Michelle Salinas, Michael Summers, Rachel M. Visinoni Posición 3: Jill Cummings, Lavon Medlock, Ron Osmundson Posición 4: Todavía no hay candidatos; la fecha límite para postular se extendió hasta el 26 de marzo a las 5 p.m.
Distrito escolar 6 de Sisters
Posición 1: Jenica Cogdill, Rodney Cooper Posición 2: David Thorsett Posición 5: Kevin Eckert, Edie Jones
