there anyone else in your house this morning?”
“No, just me and Mallori live here now. Nobody else.”
“Would you have any objections if I just looked around your place a bit? It’s just routine.”
“Sure, go ahead. Help yourself.”
Fryett and Nunes carefully examine room after room, not even sure exactly what they hope to find. The bedrooms and the closets are first, but they seem fine. The bathroom is next, nothing suspicious there. A pass through the living room and dining room doesn’t reveal anything either. The kitchen is the only room left, but it too yields no clues.
“Could you show me around the backyard while Nunes stays inside with your daughter?” Fryett asks.
Weaver agrees and leads Fryett out the kitchen door to the rear of the house. Though the night is dark, Fryett notices the outbuilding again, but a cursory inspection fails to arouse any suspicions. At the end of the visit Fryett and Nunes shake Weaver’s hand and politely thank him for his cooperation.
Weaver says, “Glad to help, and if I can be of any further help, feel free to call on me any time. I wish I had more information for you.”
Detective Fryett thanks the talkative witness for his comments and hands him a business card. “Call me sir, if you should think of anything else.”1
In these first twenty-four hours after Miranda vanishes, few clues surface. However, soon an explosion of FBI activity erupts. Agents from all over the country quickly swarm the makeshift command center above an Oregon City firehouse, swelling the total of official investigators past seventy. A separate agent is assigned responsibility for each building in the huge Newell Creek Apartment complex. Some inhabitants are interviewed as often as three times in three days. As days pass, the pressure intensifies as authorities become almost desperate to squeeze out a meaningful lead that can break open the baffling mystery.
More days pass and the FBI task force ratchets up its reward fund to fifty thousand dollars. This money is to be awarded to the provider of the one meaningful tip that solves the mystery. Linda wonders if the FBI investigators are following the wrong tips and ignoring the helpful ones. She knows that sifting through mountains of useless information eventually changes attitudes. And the “no crime scene, no witnesses” mantra only adds to collective confusion.
Harry Oakes, a man on the outside looking in, has been a search dog trainer for years and paid his dues to the profession.2 But for mysterious reasons, the established dog handlers in the area have never accepted Harry as a legitimate member of their profession. His dog, Valorie, is just as smart as theirs. Perhaps, he thinks, I’m too outspoken when I think the established handlers get it wrong. When the authorities refuse to allow Oakes to join their official search for Ashley, he calls the girl’s mother, Lori Pond, and offers to search for her daughter. She is ambivalent, but she meets with Oakes and Valorie on the morning of March 7. After he briefs her about his techniques, she is impressed enough to cooperate. “I need a personal item,” he tells her matter-of-factly, “for a good scent…shirt or pants, something like that. Preferably something that hasn’t been washed. Anything she would have worn recently.”
Lori surrenders a pair of knee socks that Oakes carefully places into a plastic bag. He thanks Lori for letting him volunteer his expertise and promises he’ll be returning to conduct a private search.
Incredibly, the very next day, March 8, Miranda Gaddis disappears from almost the exact same location as Ashley. Oakes knows that the FBI and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department will be all over that whole area. But it doesn’t mean that he can’t search too. After all, he has secured the permission of the first missing girl’s family.
Harry and his dog Valorie thoroughly search the Newell Creek Canyon on March 10. For hours and hours they methodically prowl back and forth across every square foot of the rugged terrain. Just before dark, while she crawls under some thick foliage at the bottom of a steep canyon below Beavercreek Road, Valorie finally releases one, enthusiastic alert. She howls and howls. Oakes makes note of the location, realizing that it is getting too dark to continue. He resolves to return soon and resume.
Because of several personal conflicts, Oakes isn’t able to return with Valorie until March 15. Early that morning he arrives where his dog had alerted, determined to discover the basis for the disturbance and hopeful it will yield a clue. He begins the ritual as he always does, by giving Valorie her head when they reach the familiar spot. Once again the dog wails in a mournful, whimpering cadence that means, “There’s a dead body here somewhere!” Valorie then unexpectedly bounds up the slope and races frantically under brush and over dead tree limbs, Oakes sprinting to keep her in sight. Finally the dog shifts direction and lopes toward the lone house at the end of the road by the apartment complex. Harry senses excitement. Valorie is definitely interested in something here. He hesitates, thinking, Well I still have to do things right, but this could be our big break. After carefully mulling over the situation, Harry walks up to the front door and knocks. A shirtless teenage boy pushes the door wide open. He stares at Oakes, then at Valorie who is panting and wagging her tail. “What do you want?”
Oakes extends his hand, but the teen refuses to shake it. “Well, I’m Harry Oakes, a private dog handler. I’m helping in the search for the missing girls and would it be okay, I mean can I have permission to let her explore the ground for scents?”
The shirtless one shrugs. “I don’t even live here. I’ll have to call my dad and ask him. If he says it’s all right, then, okay. I’ll be right back.” He slams the door, leaving Harry standing for several minutes. The door opens again with the teenager, this time wearing a white tee shirt, smiling.
“My dad says it’s okay, as long as you keep your dog away from the new concrete slab in the backyard. He’s getting ready to install a hot tub on it. That slab was just poured and he doesn’t want it messed up.”
Harry thanks the boy for his cooperation and while the kid observes from the kitchen window, Harry takes Valorie around back and puts her to work. Valorie pays no attention to any surrounding ground but instead makes a beeline for the concrete slab. First she merely hovers over it, but soon she is pacing back and forth with increasing intensity. Finally, she throws her head back high in the air and unleashes her unique, blood curdling death alert. She lunges at the slab, scraping its hard surface with her front paws. Harry has to yank her chain to pull her back. Valorie erupts with a thirty-second non-stop bark blast. “Quiet, Girl! Quiet!” Harry commands. Harry is so shaken he pulls Valorie tightly and briskly walks her off the Weaver property and on down Beavercreek Road to a strip mall. He enters a store and asks to use their phone to call the police.
A female officer takes his call. Harry’s heart is still pounding. “I’m telling you ma’am, there’s something under the slab at Ward Weaver’s house. It needs to be checked out.” She records his telephone number and address before thanking him for the tip. That is the end of it! Nothing! When Oakes does not hear from the police, he writes a letter to Oregon City Chief of Police, Gordon Hurias, detailing Valorie’s March 15 reaction to Weaver’s concrete slab. He sends copies to the Pond family and the FBI task force.3
On the same day that Harry Oakes and his dog are investigating Weaver, a blonde young man named Brian Taylor stands in the upstairs apartment above Lori Pond’s unit, involved in an energetic exchange with two middle-aged males wearing FBI windbreakers. “Yes, on March 8, I was camping up at Bagby Hot
