In the San Gabriel Valley, the murders Rainey suspects Cortez of committing include the Lopez killing on Aug. That search led to a dozen other unsolved murders, including two in San Antonio and one in a Bexar County park near the Texas city, Rainey said. The 16-year-old girl’s strangled body was found in a Eugene elementary school playground in March, 1978.Īlthough Cortez had been a suspect since 1981, Rainey again began gathering information about him. Rainey’s focus on Cortez began 1 1/2 years ago when the detective was assigned the unsolved murder of Karen Whiteside. Todd added that he believes all the issues can be resolved without court trials. And he said he did not want his client speaking to reporters. Meanwhile, Cortez’s attorney, Walter Todd of Salem, Ore., declined to comment on Rainey’s investigation.
“But I don’t have any particular knowledge that he’s done any particular crimes.” “If Manny told me he killed somebody on a particular date, I would tell police,” Holmes said. Holmes, however, believes that Rainey has gone overboard, and he wants the seized material back. But the detective, nonetheless, believes that the researcher ignored ethical responsibilities by failing to offer police the information. Rainey admits that Cortez’s statements in the manuscript are not considered evidence because they are hearsay and that Holmes was not legally required to tell police about them.
#UNSOLVED SERIAL KILLERS OREGON FULL#
Although the names of victims and some facts surrounding their deaths are altered, substantial similarities exist between the manuscript accounts and actual cases, the detective said.Īfter a source tipped him off to the manuscript’s existence, Rainey said he met with Holmes and decided that he was not getting full cooperation. The crimes in the account are fiction, the researcher insisted.īut Rainey believes otherwise. The manuscript was intended as a semi-fictitious work and not a confession or recanting of Cortez’s unsolved crimes, Holmes said.
Holmes, an author who lectures nationwide, said he used Cortez’s statements to help police understand the mind of a murderer. The researcher said he cautioned Cortez not to give him details of slayings other than the Ashland crimes, but encouraged the convicted killer to talk about his feelings while committing murder. The convicted killer had been assaulted while in prison and got a taste of what his victims had gone through, Holmes said. Holmes, reached by telephone at a law enforcement conference in Hawaii, said Cortez contacted him because of regret over his past killings. Cortez hoped that his time for recognition finally had come, even if vicariously and anonymously, the detective said. So, six years ago, Cortez teamed up with Ronald Holmes, a well-known University of Louisville criminology professor who was gathering information on serial killers, Rainey said. “He got no credit for how clever he’s been, for how he’s avoided detection.” “He had to bite his tongue all this time, because California and Texas have the death penalty,” the detective said.
In 1982, he pleaded guilty to the City of Industry kidnaping.Īs the years passed, Cortez sat in prison, enviously watching while other serial killers gained fame with books and movies about them, Rainey said. In 1980, Cortez was convicted of the Ashland murders. 6, 1977, kidnaping of a 16-year-old City of Industry girl, who escaped. 27, 1979, murders in Ashland of Rachel Isser and Deanna Jackman, both 11 years old, and the Dec. “Cortez sees himself as this elite criminal” like Ted Bundy, the detective said, referring to the serial killer who was executed in Florida in 1989.Īlthough Cortez, 37, is linked by police to a dozen abductions and slayings, he is imprisoned in Oregon for only three crimes: the Dec. That Cortez should seek the authorial limelight is not surprising to Rainey. The manuscript “is not a serial number, not a fingerprint,” Rainey said, “but it is consistent with other evidence.” Cortez’s literary efforts, brought to a screeching halt, have revived stale investigations and given hope to authorities who thought they had reached an impasse, said Detective Les Rainey of the Eugene, Ore., Police Department.
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