On the morning of Wednesday, January 9, 2002 & 12-year-old Ashley Pond was rushing around her home in Oregon City, Oregon. It was 8 am & Ashley was running late for school, so she rushed from the Newell Creek Village apartments where she lived with her mom, Lori Pond & her three younger siblings, to make the ten minute walk to her bus stop.
Ashley was born on March 1, 1989 & was less than two months away from becoming a teenager. Despite her young age, life had been exceptionally difficult. Her parents had divorced & when she was 8, it was discovered that David Pond, Lori’s husband, who Ashley believed to be her biological father, was not. Instead, Ashley’s biological father was a man named Wesley Roettger Jr.
After Ashley’s world was turned upside down & the dust began to settle, she started having regular weekend visits with Wesley. Sadly, it was during one of these visits on Christmas Eve 2000 when her father sexually abused her. This had not been close to the first time this happened, but Ashley was done & ready to tell someone what had been going on. After Ashley reported the abuse she’d been subjected to, on January 5, 2001, Wesley was indicted on 40 counts of rape & sexual abuse of his own daughter that had been going on over the course of several years.
With the help of his attorney, Wesley managed to paint his daughter as a troubled young girl who would lie to anyone about anything. After discounting Ashely’s credibility, his attorney successfully arranged a plea deal for Wesley & on September 6, 2001, all but one of the charges were dismissed & Wesley received a measly 120 months of probation.
After Ashely vanished, on the dark & cold evening of January 9, 2002, a 911 call came through & Lori Pond was calling to report Ashley missing after her daughter failed to come home from Gardiner Middle School. When Lori called the school looking for Ashley, she learned that she never made it to school that day. The last time her family saw Ashley, she was eating breakfast with her younger sister that morning before school.
Sadly, it was during the 911 call that the immediate assumption was made that Ashley was a runaway rather than a missing person.
Law enforcement were familiar with Lori as they had contact with her on five separate occasions between January 25, 2001 to the day that Ashley vanished, that varied from complaints that she’d locked her children out of the house, got in domestic disputes that put her children in harm’s way & frequently drank to excess. During this time, it was determined that Lori was providing minimally adequate care so no interventions were made. Lori had been only 16 years old when she gave birth to her first child.
A member of Ashley’s extended family, Linda O’Neal, worked as a private investigator & on the day that Ashley didn’t come home she believed that she was likely okay & would eventually come home. Linda felt it was very possible that Ashley had simply run away. According to Linda, when she was asked to describe Ashley as a little girl, she indicated that she was known as having an attitude.
At the time of her disappearance, Ashley was a popular girl among her peers at school & a member of both the swim & dance teams. The majority of people who knew Ashley well did not believe that she had simply run away.
It wasn’t until a full week had gone by & the 12-year-old still hadn’t come back or contacted anyone in the family that local law enforcement finally began to suspect that there was more to the case. They called on the FBI to report what they were now considering an abduction.
The case was immediately difficult due to the sheer number of potential suspects in the area. The apartment complex where Ashley & Lori lived was what was described as a mulligan stew of troubled souls. There were many individuals living in the complex that suffered from mental illness that had been placed at the location by the county. There were a lot of single moms that attracted highly unsavory boyfriends & no less than 90 sex offenders lived within a mile of the apartments. One potential suspect was Ashley’s biological father, Wesley.
As time continued on without any sign or word from Ashley, those that knew & loved her felt sickened by the fact that something terrible must have happened to her. Ashley’s friend, Miranda Gaddis, was interviewed by a TV reporter as she expressed just how shocked & saddened she was that something like this could happen to her friend.
As the weeks ticked by, a task force investigated hundreds of leads & they continued to keep an eye on those close to Ashley, including Lori & her boyfriend. Investigators followed some of the men that lived within the complex, but no one appeared to know anything & it started to feel as if Ashley had just vanished into thin air.
Residents of Oregon City, already rocked by Ashley’s disappearance, were stunned when on March 8, 2002, two months later, Ashley’s friend, 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, had also vanished. Miranda had only participated in a TV interview about her friend’s disappearance a couple of months earlier & now she herself was gone.
Like Ashley, Miranda was last seen at 8 am as she left her house to head to her bus stop at the top of the hill. The girls were close friends & they lived within the same apartment complex. Her mother, Michelle Duffey, left for work about 30 minutes before her daughter left for school. When she left, Miranda was in the kitchen getting ready for school. Michelle received a call from her older daughter at about 1:20 pm that day, informing her that Miranda hadn’t been at school that day.
Now with two young girls missing, the FBI ramped up their investigation & called in about sixty agents to assist with the case & a task force was assembled.
As with Ashley’s case, investigators followed all leads, but seemingly came up empty. It was clear that the person who abducted Ashley & MIranda was targeting the same type of girl. They were close in age, involved in similar activities & even looked remarkably similar to one another, not to mention that they had each vanished on their way to the bus stop stemming from the same apartment complex. Both girls attended the same school, they were both on the same dance team & vanished within eight weeks of each other.
Sadly, like Ashley, Miranda had also been previously sexually abused by a former boyfriend of her mother’s who was sentenced to 75 months in jail. As a result, Miranda & her siblings were removed from the home & placed into foster care for 18 months.
With the disappearance of two young girls, the area was in sheer panic & worried that they were potentially living among a serial killer.
In the meantime, Ashley’s family member & private investigator, Linda O’Neil, couldn’t sit by & do nothing. She knew that the FBI had no suspects, no crime scene, no evidence & no clues, so she felt that extra help couldn’t be a bad thing.
Linda began to look at a list of possible suspects that included a former neighbor who was dealing with a restraining order from an ex-girlfriend against him as well as Miranda’s father, who was convicted of kidnapping & sexually assaulting two minor girls in February 1995 when Miranda was six. She also spoke with people that knew Ashley in order to get a feel for the people she was familiar with or came into contact with.
Linda spoke with Ashley’s aunt who mentioned the name Ward Weaver III, a 39-year-old neighbor & a family friend whose home sat right next to the apartment complex where Ashley & Miranda lived. The man had been divorced twice & as of August of 1997, began renting a home at 2507 South Beavercreek Road. He lived in the $600 per month home with his 19-year-old son, Francis, his 13-year-old daughter Mallori & a girlfriend he met at work.
Weaver had a criminal record for an assault that occurred sixteen years earlier when he spent three years in prison for striking his son’s babysitter with a hunk of cement. Both of his ex-wives also accused him of violence. He was currently a single, working father who was raising a daughter, Mallori, who was Ashley’s age & often hung out & had sleepovers with both Ashley & Miranda. Both girls passed the Weaver home on their way to the bus stop & sometimes Weaver even drove Ashley to school when she was running late.
Police had already looked into Weaver & verified his alibi & also sent several teams of officers & dogs to search his house & property. During these searches, nothing suspicious was found & investigators moved on to their extensive list of additional potential suspects.
During the summer of 2001, about six months before she disappeared, Ashley was living at the Weaver home to escape her chaotic home life. Linda was also aware that in August 2001 Ashley claimed Ward Weaver had attempted to rape her while she was at his house. The incident was reported to police, but no charges were filed.
When Linda ran a computer check on Ward Weaver, she was shocked when she realized that his father, Ward Weaver Jr., was a murderer who had been on California’s death row for two decades. Weaver Jr. was convicted of killing a man & a woman near Bakersfield, California in 1981. While he was working as a truck driver, he stopped for a couple who were broken down on the side of the road near the Mojave Desert. He went on to beat the 18-year-old man, Robert Radford, to death with a lead pipe & kidnapped his 23-year-old girlfriend, Barbara LeVoy.
On his way back to his home in California, he repeatedly raped the woman & eventually strangled her to death with a diaper after she bit his finger. He then enlisted his 10-year-old son’s help, Ward Weaver’s half brother, in digging a hole in the yard under the pretense of a broken pipe. He went on to bury Barbara’s body, covered the area with concrete & built a wooden deck over the space at his Oroville, California home.
Weaver Jr. had all but abandoned Weaver III at age 4 & the younger Weaver was raised in a very violent home, often beaten with a belt by his stepfather. In turn, Weaver would take his aggression out on his siblings.
In the meantime, a second private investigator, Harry Oakes, stepped in to assist. Oakes ran a for profit search & rescue center alongside his 12-year-old rescue dog, Valerie. In this case, he waived his fees & despite the fact that many police departments weren’t fond of the man, they allowed his assistance.
Oakes began to do some background work & showed his dog some of Ashley’s clothing. With this, Valerie began to track Ashley’s scent from the apartment complex, up the road & to the staircase of none other than Ward Weaver’s property.
Oakes decided to knock on Weaver’s door & asked the man for permission to search his house. Weaver explained that officers had already brought in seven different search dog teams & indicated that he had no issues with Oakes searching since he had nothing to hide.
As Oakes entered the home with Valerie in tow, the dog gave a death alert of Ashley’s scent in Ward’s hallway as well as a slab of concrete Weaver had poured in his backyard. The area where the slab met the grass, there was an area of dirt where the two came together & Valerie seemed particularly interested in this spot.
With this information, Oakes wrote up a report & turned it into the Oregon City police department on March 20, 2002, less than two weeks after Miranda vanished & two & a half months after Ashley vanished. However, according to Oakes, both the police as well as the FBI basically ignored his report.
When Linda O’Neal came across Oakes’ report, she saw it as an immediate red flag as the fact that Valerie alerted to the freshly poured slab of concrete in the man’s yard was highly suspicious. It also made Linda recall what she read about Ward Weaver’s father; the man had buried one of his victims in the middle of his yard & covered it with a slab of concrete.
As the next few weeks went by, Linda’s suspicions of Weaver only grew when she started to hear feedback from others about him. Teachers, dance coaches & Weaver’s ex-wives came forward with stories about disturbing & inappropriate behavior. One teacher recalled a time when Weaver dropped Ashley off at school & she was horrified when she witnessed the man in his late 30s passionately kissing the 12-year-old girl.
A family friend mentioned a time when Ashley spent weeks at a time at Weaver’s house & even slept in the man’s bed with him. A girlfriend of Weaver’s indicated that he had been angry with Miranda for warning local girls to steer clear of the man for fear that he might molest them.
By June 2002, Ashley had been missing for about six months & Miranda for three months. Despite the fact that the case of the missing girls had been plastered on the cover of People magazine, the FBI was no closer to closing the case.
Linda O’Neal indicated that she got the scare of her life when she came home one day & found her son working on his car alongside a stranger who just so happened to be Ward Weaver himself. The man turned to her & said, Kids are so naive, aren’t they? Linda told the man that her family was none of his business & he replied, Mrs. O’Neal, that’s what I came here to tell you.
Ward himself had even been interviewed on TV in July when he voiced that he fully believed that Ashley had run away, That little girl took off, I wholeheartedly believe that. During Weaver’s interview, he admitted that he was a prime suspect in the cases as he gave the reporter a tour of his home & spoke of how the girls used to sleep over at his house. Viewers could see a People magazine that covered their disappearance, sitting within plain sight. He led the reporter outside & they walked along a new concrete slab as he indicated that he planned to install a new jacuzzi.
FBI canines were sent back to search both the apartment complex where the girls lived as well as Weaver’s house, but apparently found nothing as an FBI spokesperson insisted that the agency had no suspects. In the meantime, Linda was screaming inside, believing that investigators were basically ignoring what should have been their top suspect, Ward Weaver. She believed that he was responsible for whatever happened to Ashley & Miranda & feared that someone else could be next.
When Linda decided to contact the FBI with her concerns, they told her that they didn’t need any help from private investigators & that they did not believe that Ward Weaver was a suspect. As she hung up the phone, Linda felt defeated & devastated.
These feelings morphed into straight-up anger & Linda picked up the phone & got into touch with Portland Tribune reporter, Jim Redden. She discussed the information with Jim, which she believed in her heart to be legitimate information that they should be interested in rather than ignoring. At the time of their conversation, Jim had never heard of Ward Weaver.
Linda & Jim began to mull over ideas of how to proceed from there & came up with the plan of surprising Weaver with an unplanned interview. On an early Sunday morning, Jim headed over to Weaver’s house & knocked on his door & to his surprise, the man invited him into his home.
As Jim spoke with Weaver, he felt that Weaver came off as a very normal guy, but the more they spoke, the more nervous Weaver seemed to grow. This is when he told Jim that he was the FBI’s prime suspect & Jim took his response as honest & candid.
After Jim left Weaver’s house, he touched base with Linda & told her that he struck him as an okay guy. Linda felt further defeated, but in the meantime, Jim wrote the article & Ward Weaver’s name was in print for the first time in relation to the missing girls. Now the center of attention, Weaver seemed to be enjoying the spotlight after the article was published & came onto national TV & said, She’s better off hiding out wherever she’s found a place to live.
It was only days later that the FBI executed a search warrant & launched a massive raid, towing cars away that potentially contained evidence, on a completely different suspect. This was another prime suspect who was the neighbor of the girls & denied having any role in their disappearances. The man had been interviewed five or six times & was questioned about a camping trip he claimed to have taken on the day that Miranda vanished. After he failed a polygraph test, the attention was now focused on this man.
In the meantime, by early August, when seven months passed since Ashley disappeared & more than five months since Miranda vanished, Weaver began telling people that he was relocating to either Mexico or Idaho. When his house was emptied & he was ready to go, the cards came tumbling down for him.
In 2002, 19-year-old Randi Oneida was dating Weaver’s son, Francis Weaver, & she was also the mother of Weaver’s grandchild. She had always viewed Weaver as a nice person to be around & believed he was someone she could trust.
That is, until August 13, 2002, when Randi got into a car with Weaver to head back to his house. As they drove, she indicated that nothing seemed amiss & he was acting as he always did. However, everything changed once they got inside the house when she suddenly noticed that he seemed to snap & his face looked different as if he was possessed.
Out of the blue, Weaver jumped at her, threw her to the floor as he ripped her clothing off & raped her. When he was finished, he tried to kill her. Randi later indicated that she hasn’t even been able to discuss the worst of it. As soon as he finished his attack, Weaver stood up & his face suddenly shifted back to normal. Randi immediately pushed him off of her with her feet & fled the house, running through the backyard.
As she ran through the yard, Randi grabbed a tarp covering the concrete slab in his backyard to wrap around her naked body. She ran into the street & as she trembled, she managed to flag down a passing car. Within hours, Weaver was arrested & placed behind bars.
Linda O’Neal was sickened when she learned what had happened, already sure of what kind of person Weaver was, fearful that there would be another victim before he was taken into custody. Now behind bars for a violent rape, Linda felt sure that the FBI would move quickly to charge him for the disappearance of Ashley & Miranda.
However, despite the fact that his property was searched while he was behind bars, it only had to do with that particular attack & it was very quickly concluded.
Shortly thereafter, protesters were gathered at Weaver’s property, angry that he had yet to be charged in Ashley & Miranda’s cases. Fast forward to August 23, 2002 & investigators obtained another search warrant. White tents were erected & the FBI brought in dozens of agents & plenty of equipment.
The following day, August 24, 2002, they discovered a box in a shed behind the house that contained the human remains of Miranda Gaddis.
The next day, investigators dug up the concrete slab that Oakes’ dog Valerie had previously alerted to five months earlier. It was at this location where they found the remains of Ashley Pond inside an oil barrel & with this horrific discovery, two gorgeous young girls were gone forever.
Police were alerted by Francis Weaver who called 911 on August 13 to report that not only had his father raped his 19-year-old girlfriend but he’d also confessed to murdering Ashley & Miranda.
It turned out that all along, both girls had been in Ward Weaver’s backyard. Months had gone by, anxiety & grief stretched out, families didn’t have any answers during this time. Many people were furious that it took police so long to search Weaver’s property, especially since he knew both girls very well & had been previously accused of sexually abusing Ashley. Weaver’s ex-wife had also told police that the concrete slab in his yard was poured three days after Miranda went missing. In their defense, investigators indicated that they needed to have all of the evidence in line to secure a search warrant.
The autopsy indicated that both girls died as a result of homicidal violence of unspecified etiology as the medical examiner could not identify a definitive cause of death. Ashley was found fully clothed, her remains mummified. A white rope was found wrapped around her neck & connected to her wrists & she was found in the fetal position. Her remains were wrapped in plastic bags & covered in a tarp. Ashley’s blood alcohol level was 0.17%, more than twice the legal limit for drivers in Oregon. The level would have been consistent with about five shots of hard liquor within a very short time period before her death. However, because a body produces alcohol as it decomposes, it’s very difficult to say how much alcohol she actually consumed. Because Ashley was so young & only 110#, five shots of alcohol would have likely significantly impaired her & a forensic scientist indicated that she would likely have passed out.
Officials don’t believe that Miranda’s body had been in the shed very long, maybe a few weeks. Based on the findings of Styrofoam pieces, cigarette butts & a Q-tip, it appeared that she had been kept elsewhere before being relocated to the shed.
Miranda’s remains were found partially clothed & secured by cords. The box had been taped shut & covered in clear plastic before it was placed inside the shed. It’s speculated that one or both of the girl’s bodies had been frozen in a chest-style freezer in Weaver’s home before it was moved to the location discovered. At least one of his fingerprints was found on the tape used to seal the box.
After the discovery of the girl’s remains, Ward Weaver claimed to have nothing to do with their deaths. But without further explanation, he ended up pleading guilty. On October 2, 2002, Weaver was indicted & charged with six counts of aggravated murder as well as ten other charges. In order to avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to murdering Ashley & Miranda in September 2004 & received two life sentences without parole. After his father’s sentencing, Francis Weaver made a statement indicating that he was happy that his father would never be able to hurt anyone ever again nor destroy any lives.
Despite the fact that Weaver pleaded guilty, he never confessed or gave details about how Ashley or Miranda were murdered. In 2009, Miranda’s younger sister, Miriah, went to confront Weaver on two occasions at the Oregon State Penitentiary to learn the details as she felt it was the only way to put her sister’s death behind her.
During her second visit which just so happened to be on January 9, 2009, exactly 7 years after Ashley vanished, Weaver admitted to killing both girls for the first time. He described how he killed them with his bare hands & said he was able to evade the police & search dogs by hiding their bodies & moving them around his property. He also told Miriah that had she been older at the time, he would have likely killed her too.
On February 14, 2014, Ward Weaver’s son, 31-year-old Francis Weaver, was arrested & charged with the murder of a drug dealer in Canby, Oregon. He was given a life sentence after he was found guilty. This makes the third generation of Weaver men to be convicted as murderers. Francis was the person who contacted authorities after his father raped his girlfriend & at that time, he also told authorities that his father had confessed that he was responsible for the murders of Ashley & Miranda.
Up until this point, both Francis & Ward believed that Francis was Ward’s biological son. It wasn’t until DNA tests from Ashley & Miranda’s murders revealed that he was not. Francis’ mother, Maria Shaw, later indicated that the boy’s father was either a now-deceased Marine named Richard or a Navy man named Christopher.
By 2021, two of the three convicted murderers in the Weaver family were faced with the possibility of breaks from the criminal justice system. Ward Weaver’s conviction still holds as life without parole, but in September 2020, the Oregon Supreme Court overturned Francis Weaver’s murder conviction after the court ruled a plea bargain agreement that prosecutors within Clackamas County violated his constitutional rights. His charges were later reduced to manslaughter
In 2019, after Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order instituting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, Ward Weaver’s father, Ward Weaver Jr, has since been released from death row at San Quentin State Prison & was released into the general prison population. Although he was convicted of two murders, he is suspected of many more as he worked as a long-haul truck driver on a route where dozens of unsolved murders occurred. Many of the victims were hitchhikers
12-year-old Ashley is remembered as a girl who was dedicated to learning her dance routines for the Gardiner Middle School dance team where she also made close bonds with fellow members. Her favorite food was cup of soup, she loved to wear sweat shirts & jeans & her favorite music was rap & hip hop. She hoped to one day become a veterinarian.
13-year-old Miranda was described by friends as outgoing, spunky, funny & very loving. She hoped to one day become a model. She was very close with her family which included her mom, two sisters & a brother.
The fact that three generations of men within one family turned out to be murderers, raises the question of nature vs. nurture. Are people born evil, raised to be bad or a combination of the two?
References:
- ThoughtCo: Ward Weaver Case: The Ashley Pond & Miranda Gaddis murders
- Corrections 1: Third generation killer gets life in prison
- Koin 6 News: Potential news for convicted murderers in Weaver family
- CBS News: Step by step in Oregon killer case
- Crime Library: Ward Weaver: Like father, like son
- The Oregonian: Ward Weaver III lived a life of cruelty & rage, reportedly raped son’s fiance
- California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation: California Capital Punishment
- Ati: The disturbing story of Ward Weaver III, the Oregon dad who brutally murdered his daughter’s preteen friends
- Portland Tribune: Ward Weaver killings, family explored in book on the origins of evil
- NBC News: What the private eye knew
- Medium: Ashley Pond
- Ashley Pond: Daniels Knopp Funeral, Cremation & Life Celebration Center
- Surviving Parents Coalition: Michelle Duffey
- Pamplin Media Group: Confronting a killer
- Medium: Miranda Gaddis
