These past few months I’ve had an uptick in the amount of feedback I’ve received from victims family members and loved ones, and I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Deborah Lee Tomlinson’s sister Jean, who was kind enough to answer some questions for me.
Tell me about your sister, what was she like? What do you remember most about her? I remember she seemed happy to go live with our biological Mother, she thought she could do whatever she wanted with no limits. She found out that wasn’t true.
How many siblings did she/you have? Do you happen to know where she went to high school? There were at the time 4 of us and two step brothers. My Aunt Helen recently told me she ran away from Eugene and not Creswell, then we were told she was spotted in Santa Rosa, CA. With a black guy ( our Dad didn’t like people of color) they think she was maybe pregnant. But who knows.
Whatdid your parents say about Deborah, and how would they describe her? By that I mean, what was she like? What was her favorite book, or band? They absolutely refused to talk about her at all, with either me or my twin Joyce. I know she loved Rock and Roll. She got caught several times sneaking out at night and didn’t get along with our step mother.
How was the relationship she had with your parents? Were they close? Our father raised us with a step mother at the time and they didn’t get along.
It’s often reported that Deb ran away with an unidentified friend. Do you know who it was? I have no idea if its true or who she was.
What do you know about the circumstances surrounding Deborah’s disappearance? Is there anything important that stands out to you that you feel is important? Just that she was spotted in Santa Rosa with a guy.
I know she was young but did your sister date often, that you know of? Not allowed to date until we were 16.
There were quite a few murders and disappearances in Oregon around the time Deb disappeared. Do you think any of the cases could be related? I’m not sure but that’s how I found your blog.
What are your current feelings or emotions regarding your sisters disappearance? The new “big thing” in the world of forensics is genetic genealogy. Have the Eugene police been in touch with you at all recently about your sister? Never a word, but the NCMEC (or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) said all records were destroyed in a fire.
What do you hope to see happen in regard to the investigation? How did your sisters disappearance affect your family dynamics? Joyce and have always been close and Debbie running away was hard for many years. We always thought once we all grew up she would make contact.
I learned about Deborah’s disappearance only because her name was included in a list of young women that could possibly be linked to Ted Bundy. Do you think he had anything to do with her disappearance? I wish I knew, but like I said she was spotted in Santa Rosa by a close family friend but I was never told by who. Our Grandmother lived there.
I think it’s a shame that Deborah’s disappearance isn’t discussed more publicly, and that she didn’t get any news time. Do you think if it was handled differently by police the case might be solved by now? I always thought so.
What do you think happened to your sister? I think she fell in love with the guy and ran off with him.
I’ve been compiling a list of missing and murdered young women from the 1970’s in Oregon in a notebook, and I figured why not also include it here. As I learn of new victims I will update the list… over the years I’ve found dozens of names on various websites and newspaper articles about other missing and murdered women, but they’re scattered all over the internet in a million different sources… why not put them all here?
Janet Lynn Karin-Shanahan: (April 23, 1969, Eugene). Twenty-two-years-old. Strangled and found in the trunk of her own car.
Beverly Annette Gayley: (June 15, 1969, Deschutes County). Her remains were found in a wind cave covered with a bedspread and rocks; she had a ligature wrapped around her neck. A significant amount of blood was found in Gayley’s home, as well as in the trunk of her car.
Julie Dade: (January 21, 1970, Junction City). Twenty-Year-Old. Julie’s husband, Terry was later found deceased in the couple’s Maple Street apartment. At about 4:20 AM, neighbors in the area of the Maple Street Apartments heard a female yelling and a witness saw a man dragging a screaming woman into a vehicle before leaving the area. A nearby neighbor woke to the sound of an explosion, saw the car on fire and tried to put it out but it was too late.
Sandra Young: (February. 23, 1970, Sauvie Island). Her remains were found on Sauvie Island in 1970 but were not identified until February 2024; her murder remains unsolved.
Barbara Katherine Cunningham: (May 25, 1971, Eugene). Thirty-four-years-old. Found deceased in her apartment by her mother.
Barbara Ann Bryson: (July 29, 1971, Stayton). Nineteen-years-old. Was last known to be attending a party.
Anne Marie Lehman: (found on August 19, 1971, Josephine County). Seventeen-years-old. Disappeared from Aberdeen, Washington in the winter or spring of 1971; the circumstances surrounding her case are unclear, although it is rumored she was a victim of human trafficking. Her remains were found by a man and his son while they were out mushroom hunting off the Redwood Highway, close to mile marker thirty-five; it is unclear as to why she was in Oregon.
Josephine County ‘Jane Doe’: (remains found on August 19, 1971). Body found near the California border; believed to be female victim somewhere between fourteen and twenty-five-years-old.
Fay Ellen Robinson: (March 12, 1972, Eugene). Found deceased in apartment.
Alma Jean Barra: (March 23, 1972, Happy Valley). Twenty-eight-years-old. Found deceased in Willamette National Cemetery.
Beverly May Jenkins: (May 25, 1972, Cottage Grove). Sixteen-years-old. Her remains were found in June1972just off the I-5 roughly ten miles outside of Cottage Grove; she had been strangled to death.
Jane Pellett: (June 7, 1972, Salem). Twenty-eight-years-old. Found deceased on a busy roadside on June 26, 1972.
Geneva Joy Martin: (June 16, 1972, Eugene). Nineteen-years-old. Found deceased on the side of the road by a farmer.
Rita Lorraine Jolly: (June 29, 1973, West Linn). Seventeen-years-old. Disappeared while out on a routine nightly walk.
Allison Lynn Caufman: (July 1973, Portland). Fifteen-years-old. Died as a result of head injuries after being shoved from a car moving at a high rate of speed.
Laurie Lee Canaday: (July 9, 1973, Milwaukee). Her remains were recovered on the pavement at the intersection of Southeast Scott Street and McLoughlin Blvd in Milwaukee, OR.
Susan Ann Wickersham: (July 11, 1973, Bend). Seventeen-years-old. Was found deceased from a gunshot wound on January 20, 1976.
Vicki Lynn Hollar: (August 20, 1973, Eugene). Twenty-four-years-old. Disappeared along with her 1965 VW black VW Beetle with IL plates and the running boards removed.
GayleLeClair: (August 23, 1973, Eugene). Twenty-two-years-old. Found stabbed in her apartment.
Delores Thompson and Gwendolyn Fulce: (September 8, 1973, Portland). A double homicide, twenty-four-year-old Thompson and twenty-one-year-old Fulce were found deceased in a home on North Ivy Street.
Deborah LeeTomlinson: (October 15, 1973, Creswell/Eugene). Fifteen-years-old. Disappeared along with a friend on her sixteenth birthday. According to her sister (and my friend) Jean she was seen in California after she disappeared).
Virginia Erickson: (October 21, 1973, Sweet Home). Thirty-two years old, mother of six. Disappeared, most likely killed by her husband.
Suzanne Rae Seay-Justis: (November 5, 1973, Portland). Twenty-three-years-old. Was from Eugene, hitchhiked to Portland despite having a car of her own.
Belinda Cowden, along with her husband Richard and two children, David and Melissa: (September 1, 1974, Copper). The family were the victims of a still unsolved mass murder after they vanished from their campsite near Carberry Creek in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon; they were last seen on September 1, 1974, when Richard and David bought milk at the Copper General Store. When they never showed up for dinner at Belinda’s mother’s house later that day, their campsite was found deserted, with their truck, wallets, and a half-full carton of milk left behind. On April 12, 1975, two gold prospectors found their bodies roughly seven miles from the campsite: Richard was found tied to a tree on a steep hillside, and Belinda, David, and baby Melissa were hidden inside a nearby small cave that had been sealed up with rocks. Autopsies later revealed that Belinda and David had been shot with a .22 caliber weapon, while Melissa died from severe blunt force head trauma; Richard’s cause of death could not be determined due to the condition of his remains.
Joyce C. Hess: (October 18, 1974). Fifty-four-years-old.
Marion Vinetta Nagle-McWhorter: (October 1974, Tigard). Twenty-one-years-old. According to McWhorter’s sister, she had been traveling before she disappeared around the Western part of the US. Her body was finally identified in September 2025, but the case remains unsolved.
Leslie Michelle (seven-years-old) and Geoffrey Lyman (five-years-old) Brown. Murders took place on February 22, 1975 and both victims were found on March 12, 1975 in McIver Park, Estacada.
Margo Nerline Ascencio-Castro: (March 1, 1975, Eugene). Twenty-two-years-old. Found stabbed in a motel room, possibly involved with a local motorcycle gang.
Ceceilia Louise Hostetler: (March 26, 1975, Eugene). Last seen leaving the Embers restaurant getting into a vehicle with another person whom she appeared to know. On October 30, 1998, an unidentified deceased female was found burned and stabbed in the forest near 24243 Bolton Hill Road in Lane County, Oregon; it was later identified through dental records as Ceceilia Hostetler.
Caroletta Spencer: (May 20, 1975, Sauvie Island). Seventeen-years-old. Spencer’s was a sex worker whose body was found on a gravel road on Sauvie Island in Oregon. She had been shot four times and most likely had been killed earlier that morning, as she was last seen at Fred’s Place Bar in Portland around 2:20 AM.
Wanda Ann Herr: (June 1, 1976, Government Camp). Nineteen-years-old. Few details about Herr’s life are available, but according to family members, she grew up in Gresham, Oregon, but did not live with her siblings and reportedly ran away from home multiple times as an adolescent. Herr was last seen alive sometime around June 1976 and may have been living in a group home when she disappeared; her upper skull and some miscellaneous bones were discovered on August 2, 1986, near two roads off of Highway 26.
Tina Marie Mingus: (October 1975, Salem). Sixteen-years-old. Murdered, body recovered.
Cherril Sue Miller: (October 12, 1975, Portland). Twenty-eight-years-old. Few details are available in Miller’s case, but she had two children, whom she had left in a neighbor’s care that evening. One of her teeth in the front of her mouth is discolored or capped and she wears eyeglasses with thin bone rims.
Camille Karen Covert-Foss: (October 17, 1975, Hillsboro). Twenty-five-years-old. Found shot in her vehicle at her POE, in a Southwest Portland-area shopping center.
Deborah McNoise-James: (October 28, 1975, Klamath County). Found deceased at the 97 Trailer Court with lacerations to her head, neck, arms, and leg, as well as trauma to her larynx.
Betty Johnson: (November 1975, Estacada).Nineteen-years-old. Not much is known, I only happened to stumble upon her name when searching for a different Oregon woman (Marion McWhorter).
Kim Charleson: (January 7, 1976, Cannon Beach). The twenty-two-year-old had been in college and may have been carrying a small amount of Canadian currency when she disappeared.
Julie Ann Beardslee: (June 30, 1976, Astoria). After Beardslee failed to attend a regularly scheduled Bible study class in Astoria her vehicle was found on July 1, 1976, at Fort Stevens State Park. Her body was discovered by hikers on July 12, 1976 near Coffenbury Lake in Clatsop County, Oregon; she had been stabbed, and her throat had been cut.
Sharon Ryan: (December 16, 1976, Portland): Seventeen-year-old. Vanished going to buy eggs, her body was found near a parking lot in Portland.
Roxanne Marie Sims: (January 1, 1977, Portland). Eighteen-years-old.
Sandra Renee ‘Sandy’ Morden: (1977) Approx sixteen-years-old, her partial skeleton was found in Washington in 1980 and it’s believed that she died in the late 1970’s; she was identified in October 2019.
Karen Jean Lee: (last seen alive, May 26, 1977, Cornelius). Lee ran away with a male companion, fourteen-year-old Rodney L. Grissom. Her possessions and clothes were found by a logging crew sometime in November 1977 however her remains were never recovered. Grissom’s clothes and belongings found in same area, roughly a quarter mile away from Lee’s in November 1982; his remains have also never been found. (Thank you to my friend Ryan AuClair for this information).
Lliana Gay Adank: (June 1977). Sixteen years-old. Was found shot to death along with seventeen-year-old Eric Shawn Goldstrand at the remote Broken Bowl Picnic Grounds near the Fall Creek Dam located about twenty-five miles southeast of Eugene.
Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Ann Roberts: (July 25, 1977, Roseburg). Found August 9, 1977, formerly known as ‘Precious Jane Doe.’ Roberts was identified on June 16, 2020.
Margie Ann Fernette: (January 24, 1978). Fifteen-years-old. Found in Fairfield Elementary School.
Ann Marie Ellinwood: (April 15, 1978, Corvallis). Twelve-years-old, last seen walking alone ‘during daylight hours.’ Possibly a victim of Earl Patrick Chambers.
Stephanie Ann Newsom: (April 19, 1978, West Salem). Eleven-years-old. Remains found on April 25, 1978 near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge: possibly a victim of Earl Patrick Chambers.
Elana Jacobs and Teresa Krause: (May 21, 1978, Astoria). Both girls were enrolled in the Tongue Point Job Corp. They were known to go into town to ‘party and socialize,’ which is most likely why they left the compound the night they were last seen alive; their remains were found near Del Rey Beach, Krause’s on December 3, 1978, and two days later Jacobs were discovered; they were most likely stabbed and/or strangled to death.
Finley Creek Jane Doe: (found August 27, 1978, Elgin). The remains of a pregnant woman between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five-years-old; detectives strongly believe she died between 1970 and 1975 and was six to eight months pregnant at the time of her death; fetal remains were found with her. She was found buried face down under a log, and evidence at the scene, including a coaxial cable, suggests she may have been strangled.
Diana Marie Kuhn*: (December 10, 1978, Portland). Twenty-years-old. Remains found in in West Linn, OR.* Thank you for Diana’s cousin Donna Mollema for informing me about her.
Janie Landers: (March 9, 1979, Salem). Eighteen-years-old; she slipped away from the Fairview Training Center in Salem, a residential facility for those with developmental disabilities and mental health problems.
Mary Jo Templeton: (April 1979, remains found on April 30, 1979, Redmond). Forty-nine-years-old. In April 1979, she was renting a room at the El-Rancho Motel when she disappeared; her remains were uncovered in several parts over the time period of a month in Mirror Pond and near the Newport Avenue Dam in Bend. The first remains (a thigh) were found by a utility worker raking intake grates at a dam on April 30, 1979. She had been dismembered with what detectives called a ‘surgical precision,’ leading to theories that her killer may have had experience as a hunter, butcher, or surgeon, butcher (or a combination of the three); she was eventually identified through dental records.
Daisy Motley: (May 8, 1979, Portland). Motley was a sixty-four-year-old, unemployed female who lived alone that had no apparent enemies. Someone anonymously called the manager of her apartment complex to her death and asked them to check on her because they heard a ‘disturbance’ coming from her residence. The last time Daisy was known to be alive was when she talked to her daughter at approximately 9 PM on May 7th.
Lisa Danein Boggs: (June 13, 1979, Salem). Boggs and her boyfriend, Randolph Robertson, left their home state of Missouri on May 7, 1979 and arrived in Salem, Oregon, on May 9, 1979, and lived at a transient camp on property near the KOA at 1595 Lancaster Drive. On June 7, 1979, Salem police were called to the KOA for a homicide, where they discovered that Randolph Robertson, had been killed by two shotgun blasts; Boggs was nowhere to be found. On June 13, 1979, her’ body was discovered in a creek 17.5 miles up Little North Fork Road off Highway 22E in Marion County, Oregon. Her cause of death was drowning, even though she had also sustained a blunt-force injury to the skull behind her left ear. She was found lying on her back, with her head submerged in eleven inches of water; it had been held in place by a large rock
Irin Marie Meyer: (July 20, 1979, Brookings). Twenty-nine-years-old.
SherylWright: (no additional information at this time).
A very helpful Websleuth’s user compiled a list of missing/murdered women from Oregon in the time frame right after I did.The second part of the Websleuth’s post about the missing women from Oregon in 1978 to 2005.
Deborah Lee Tomlinson was born on October 15, 1957 in Bitburg, Germany to Arthur and Sandra (nee Roup) Tomlinson.Arthur Vernon Tomlinson was born on September 22, 1937 in Modesto, California, and Sandra Lee Roup was born on December 31, 1939 in Livingston, Montana. According to the Tomlinson family tree, the couple had three daughters together: Deborah and her twin sisters, Jean and Joyce (b. 1958). At some point they divorced, and Mr. Tomlinson was briefly married again in 1968 (they quickly parted ways; he went on to have a relationship with Sally Morphisand in 1969 they had a son together named Daniel. He got married to Shelley Williams on August 30, 1975 in Orange, CA but their union also didn’t last long, and they split up in February of the following year. Mr. Tomlinson was married for a fourth time, and the couple had a son together. Sandra got remarried to Henry Nelson on May 10, 1963 in Billings, Montana.
After their parents parted ways Deborah, Jean, and Joyce went to live with their father and stepmother in California, and Sandra relocated to Oregon. Because of their parents’ divorce the girls were separated from their mother at a very young age, which Joyce felt prevented them from forming a strong bond because she wasn’t given a chance to raise her own babies.
According to most reports online, Deborah Lee Tomlinson disappeared from Creswell, Oregon** on her sixteenth birthday on October 15, 1973.Creswell is an incredibly small town with only one high school, and according to the 1970 census the reported population was made up of a mere 1,199 people (it went up to 5,031 in 2010). Referred to as ‘Debbie’ by family and friends (per Joyce, she hated being called ‘Deb’), Tomlinson had brown eyes, stood at 5’5” tall, and weighed 140 pounds (Joyce felt she may have been slightly heavier); she wore her golden-brown hair at her shoulders and had a ring of moles around her neck. In the initial days following her disappearance investigators strongly believed that she was a runaway,whichmost likely explains why I couldn’t find any newspaper reports or media coverage on her. One of the only other real takeaways I could find regarding her case was that she disappeared with an ‘unidentified teenage friend.’
** After I initially wrote the article on Deborah in April 2024 I was contacted by her sister Jean, and more recently Joyce. Both sisters were kind enough to help fill in some of the gaps in their family background and were able to provide me with some of their thoughts regarding her disappearance. According to Jean, their Aunt Helen told them in more recent years that Deborah had ran away from Eugene, not Creswell, and at one point the family had been contacted by a friend that claimed they had seen her in Santa Rosa, CA with ‘a black guy,’ which was a big deal as their father didn’t approve of people of color (Joyce also said she was there visiting a friend named Lyn). The family member also volunteered that they thought she may have been pregnant at the time as well, but nothing ever came out of that. About this alleged sighting, Joyce doesn’t feel it’s true, as that’s where their grandmother lived and Deborah would never have left the area without paying her a visit, especially if she had been pregnant (the two were especially close).
According to Jean, after their parents split up the girls were raised by their father in California, but because Deborah’s didn’t get along very well with their stepmother she had moved to Oregon to live with their mother (who she also clashed with). She also said that at the time her sister disappeared she seemed mostly happy but had been in a bit of a transition period in her life and may have been under the impression that moving out of state may have resulted in more lenient rules, but that wasn’t the case.
According to Joyce, Debbie was simply acting like any other teenager, doing things like sneaking out at night and smoking: one evening in a quick moment of anger their dad announced that he was pulling a ‘Pontious Pilot’ and was ‘washing his hands of her.’ When she left home Joyce said somehow she knew it would be the last time that she ever saw her, and to this day she struggles with her feelings towards her father about that event. Additionally, she strongly suspects that a missing person’s report was never filed in the days after she was last seen, as she never came across one after contacting local Oregon law enforcement. Because of this, I strongly feel that Debbie didn’t disappear exactly on October 15, 1973, and most likely vanished sometime around it.
Jean shared with me that in the years following her sister’s disappearance neither one of their parents wanted to talk much about her, as it brough up too many painful memories. Because of this she told me that she doesn’t know as much about her as she would like to, but she does know that Debbie loved rock n ’roll music and had gotten caught sneaking out at night several times while she still lived with them in California.
Shortly after Deborah disappeared Joyce told me that their stepbrother had reached out to let her know about a formerly missing woman had been found murdered that happened to have some moles around her neck in a pattern similar to Debbie’s (which she said appeared to be ‘almost like a spaced apart, like a necklace’); it obviously turned out not to be her.
When I asked if perhaps Debbie had run off with a guy, Jean shared with me that was what most likely happened, despite the fact the sisters weren’t allowed to date until they were sixteen. Regarding her feelings on the recent ‘genetic genealogy’ craze and if she thought it could help solve the mystery of what happened to her sister, she said that she has never been contacted by LE about it, however at one point she was told by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that any records possibly related to Deborah were destroyed in a fire.
In 1984 Joyce and her husband took a road trip with their grandkids to visit their great-grandmother and Hank, and while there her stepfather shared that he caught Debbie sneaking out one night and she had been smoking marijuana. He told them that this freaked him out and he tried to do a ‘scared straight’ type intervention and had reached out to the local county sheriff (who had happened to be a friend of his), who had come to the house and had a conversation with his teenage stepdaughter; Debbie disappeared shortly after that.
At the time Tomlinson disappeared in October 1973, Ted Bundy was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue Northeast in Seattle, and where it was a five-hour drive (one way) from his residence to Eugene/Creswell, we know he had no problem with traveling long distances to look for prey. Despite being in a long term, (supposedly) monogamous relationship with Liz Kendall, while on a business trip with the Republican Party to California in the summer of 1973 he rekindled his romance with one time girlfriend Diane Edwards. Ted’s former flame visited him in Seattle on multiple occasions in the latter part of the year, and the couple at one point were even briefly engaged… but the happy times didn’t last long, and in January 1974 he abruptly and without reason cut off all contact with her.
On top of juggling two women, in September 1973 Ted enrolled in law school at the University of Puget Sound, and according to the ‘TB MultiAgency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ on Monday, October 15, 1973 when Tomlinson disappeared, he was in class. Additionally, at the time he was in between employment: in September 1973 he was the Assistant to the Washington state Republican chairman and remained unemployed until May 3 of the following year when he got a position with the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia.
In addition to Ted Bundy multiple other serial killers roamed the Pacific Northwest in the early to middle 1970’s: the first one (aside from Ted) that popped in my head was Warren Leslie Forrest, a double murderer that has been sentenced to two life terms in prison for the murders of Krysta Blake and Martha Morrison in 1974; he is also considered the prime suspect in at least five additional murders and disappearances going back as far as 1971. He has been in police custody since 1974 and on February 4, 2023 he was convicted on another murder count after DNA linked him to the murder of Martha Morrison.
On June 8, 1961, Portland police received a call from a housewife whose dog had returned home with a human foot in a paper bag, and when detectives went to her home the animal came back with a hand. Upon investigating, LE found several additional body parts around the woman’s neighborhood, and all of the appendages were deemed to be fresh and were completely drained of blood. Police went through local missing people’s reports and came across the file of twenty-three year old Joan Caudle, a housewife and mother of two that had recently been reported missing by her husband (who of course was an immediate suspect).
Joan’s husband told detectives that where she wasn’t normally a big drinker she had been a bit depressed recently because her mother had been sick, therefore there was a chance she had been at a bar having a few. Police then tracked down a barfly that had a string of arrests for public drunkenness and she told them she had been in a bar on the night of June 7 and met a man going by the name Marquette. The pair had seemingly hit it off when a woman approached them and stole his attention away, and when detectives showed the eyewitness a photograph of Joan Caudle, she said that was definitely the same woman from the bar.
Upon his arrest Marquette admitted that he raped and murdered the Portland housewife then he drained her blood, dismembered her body, and left her head to rot in the woods. Despite being found guilty of first degree murder the jury recommended leniency, and Marquette was sentenced to life in prison.After serving only eleven years of his sentence (during which he was described as a model prisoner), he was released on parole in 1973.
Not even two and a half years after Marquette was released on parole in April 1975, a fisherman discovered a mutilated corpse floating in a Willamette River slough in Marion County, Oregon; it had been bled dry and had been dismembered. Detectives determined the remains were those of thirty-seven-year-old Betty Lucille Wilson (one report said she was thirty-five), a North Carolina native who led a life of extreme poverty and had seven children since marrying her abusive husband at the age of 16. At the time she was killed she was living in an abandoned school bus.
While he was confessing to Wilson’s murder, Marquette also shared with detectives that he killed a second woman in a similar fashion sometime in 1974, and he led them to two shallow graves where he had disposed of the bulk of the remains. Unfortunately because the head was never found, there was no way the victim could be identified, and Marquette admitted that he didn’t know who she was. Her identity remains unknown.
Within a five-month period in the latter part of 1973 five young women went missing in Oregon, and three more were found murdered: first was Rita Lorraine Jolly, who disappeared on June 29 while taking a nightly walk in her West Linn neighborhood; her remains have never been found. On July 9, 1973 the body of Laurie Lee Canaday was recovered in the middle of the road at the intersection of Southeast Scott Street and McLoughlin Boulevard in Milwaukee,OR. Next was seventeen-year-old SusanWickersham from Bend on July 11; her body was discovered in January 1976, only five miles south of her hometown; she had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Additionally, sometime in July 1973 fifteen-year-old Allison Lynn Caufman of Portland died as a result of head injuries after she was shoved from a car moving at a high rate of speed.
On August 20, 1973 twenty-four-year-old Illinois transplant Vicki Lynn Hollar was last seen getting in her black 1965 Volkswagen Beetle (with the running boards removed) after she left her place of employment at the Bon Marché in Eugene, where she had been working as a seamstress for about two weeks. It’s thought that she was headed home to her apartment, as she had plans of meeting up with a friend to attend a party in her neighborhood later that evening (she never showed up). Friends shared with police that she had a habit of picking up hitchhikers; her VW and personal belongings have also never been recovered. Just three days later on August 23, 1973, Gayle LeClair was found stabbed in her apartment in Eugene, OR. The twenty-two year old had recently moved to the area after she got a job at the Eugene City Library.
Just six days after Deborah Tomlinson was reportedly last seen, thirty-two-year-old VirginiaErickson disappeared from Sweet Home on October 21, 1973; although it’s never been proven, evidence points towards her husband being her killer and that it most likely took place while the two were ‘out on a hunting trip.’ Lastly, we have twenty-three-year-old divorcee Suzanne Justis, who went missing on November 5, 1973. From Eugene, Justis had hitchhiked to Portland (despite owning her own car), and had called her mom from a payphone outside of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum to let her know that she would be home the next day to pick up her son from school; she never showed up. Not one case has been solved.
Strangely enough, there was another young woman with the same first and last name as Deborah that had been brutally killed a little over two years after she was last seen in Colorado: nineteen-year-oldDeborah Kathleen Tomlinson was murdered in her apartment complex on Belford Ave in Grand Junction on December 27, 1975. In the days that followed her murder, detectives quickly exhausted all leads and the investigation quickly went cold. Forty-five long years went by. In an article published on December 3, 2020 by the website ‘WesternSlopeNow,’ the Grand Junction PD announced a break in the case: they had partnered with a DNA Technology Company calledParabon to analyze the unknown semen and blood that had been found with the victim at the original 1975 crime scene.
About the process, Parabon’s Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore said that they analyze ‘the DNA, so we can look at 850,000 genetic markers that will allow us to predict relationships that are distant.’ Also, just as a side note, Moore is the scientist that helped solve the 1971 murder of Roman Catholic schoolteacher Rita Curran out of Vermont (who up until recently was also an unconfirmed Bundy victim). After the samples that were collected from the original 1975 crime scene were processed, Parabon built a family tree using public records in an attempt to identify the unknown person-of-interest, and it was concluded that a man named Jimmy Dean Duncan killed Deborah K. Tomlinson. As ofApril 2024, law enforcement has found no connection between Duncan and Tomlinson, but found that he had a family member that lived close to the college she was attending at the time of her death. Detective Sean Crocker from the Grand Junction Police Department commented that ‘we believe Mr. Duncan visited this relative, and that’s how possibly he could’ve encountered Ms. Tomlinson.’ Jimmy Dean Duncan passed away in 1987.
Arthur Tomlinson died at the age of sixty-four on January 29, 2001 in Las Vegas, NV. Deborah’s mother Sandra Lee Nelson passed away from lung cancer at the age of sixty-three on February 2, 2003, and according to her death certificate, she had been the owner/operator of a café. Sandy’s husband Henry died on March 16, 1994 at the age of 54, most likely in a medical facility in Spokane, WA. Deborah’s brother Daniel Sean Tomlinson died in 2022 at the age of fifty-three in California.
Deborah’s sister Jean retired after almost twenty years in the RV Business in November 2023, and she currently lives in Henderson, Nevada with her husband of almost twenty years, Dave. In 2019 Joyce retired from the Bureau for Child Support Enforcement with the State of West Virginia, and was married to the love of her life until he passed away on May 26, 2003. She currently resides in St Thomas, Pennsylvania. If Deborah was anything like her sisters, she was a kind, compassionate person that would have done a lot of good in this world.
In the years following Deborah’s disappearance the twins remain close, although Jean admitted her disappearance has been incredibly hard on their family. She also confessed that a small part of her always thought her big sister would reach out to one of them when they were adults, after everyone had grown up. More than anything they want closure, and at the very least wish they had a body to properly lay to rest so their sister could be with the rest of their family. Debbie would have been an aunt and great aunt multiple times over, and it’s heartbreaking to think of her never getting to meet either of her brother-in-laws, or nieces and nephews. As of October 2025, Deborah Lee Tomlinson’s case remains open and she would be 68 years old. Joyce said that the family’s DNA is on file with the NCMEC website.
* In October 2025 I finally came across the Tomlinson family’s Ancestry page, which helped give me a lot of background into Deborah’s family life and background. I also updated the article with information from an interview that I did with her sister Jean in February 2025 as well.
A missing persons poster for Deborah.The girls standing with their dad and Aunt Jean, who Joyce said they were all especially fond of; sadly right after this picture was taken she moved to Virginia. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.The three sisters in a picture during their time in the Bethlehem Lutheran Church Chancel Choir that was published in The Rohnert Park Cotati Clarion on June 26, 1968.Deborah (on the far left), Joyce, and Jean. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Some members of the Tomlinson family; it looks like Deborah and her sisters are in the front. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Tomlinson before she disappeared in 1973.What Debbie Tomlinson might have looked like at the age of 53 using age progressing technology, photo released on July 21, 2011.What Debbie Tomlinson might have looked like at the age of 58 using age progressing technology, photo released on June 28, 2016.According to the ‘Ted Bundy MultiAgency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ on October 15, 1973 when Tomlinson disappeared Bundy was supposed to be in class at The University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. Bundy’s fall 1973 law school schedule from the University of Puget Sound.Bundy’s route from where he lived at the Rogers Rooming house to Creswell, OR.Warren Leslie Forrest.A more recent picture of Warren Leslie Forrest.Warren Leslie Forrest’s van.Richard Laurence Marquette.A list of some other missing girls from Oregon from 1969-78. Tomlinson isn’t even listed.A comment on a Websleuth’s page about Deborah’s disappearance made by Joyce Sparks on October 16, 2013.A comment on a Websleuth’s post about Deborah Tomlinson made by user ‘Caring1.’A Websleuth’s comment on a post about Deborah made by a user named ‘theshadow45’ on August 27, 2017.A Websleuth’s comment on a post about Deborah made by a user named ‘Alleykins’ on August 27, 2017.Deborah Kathleen Tomlinson.An article about the murder of Deborah Kathleen Tomlinson published by The Daily Sentinel on January 14, 1976.The Tomlinson family tree, courtesy of Joyce Tomlinson.Deborah’s grandmother Nora and her father, Arthur. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Deborah’s father, Arthur Vernon Tomlinson. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Deborah’s mother listed in the 1940 census.Arthur Tomlinson from the 1951 Westwego High School yearbook.Deborah’s father listed in some Baptism’s that took place in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1951.An article about Mr. Tomlinson’s time in the military in Great Falls, Montana published in The Malmstrom Minuteman on May 25, 1956.A passport log for Deborah’s mother Sandra dated August 5, 1959.A passport log for Deborah, dated August 5, 1959.A passport log for Deborah’s sister Joyce dated August 5, 1959.A passport log for Deborah’s sister Jean dated August 5, 1959,Arthur Tomlinson in a list of people applying for a marriage license published in The Press Democrat on January 11, 1968.Mr. Tomlinson’s address; according to this, he was employed at Sonoma State Hospital at the time.Arthur Tomlinson and his second wife listed in the CA Divorce Index, 1966-1977.Jean and Joyce Tomlinson. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Some of the Tomlinson family at Jean’s wedding. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Some members of Deborah’s family at Joyce’s wedding. Photo courtesy of the Tomlinson family archives.Mr. Tomlinson’s second wife, Shelley.Henry Nelson’s obituary published in The Montana Standard on March 17, 1994.Deborah’s mothers death certificate.Deborah’s half-brother, Daniel Sean Tomlinson.Deborah’s half-brother, Daniel.Deborah’s baby sisters, Joyce and Jean.Deborah’s sister Jean and her husband, Dave.
Another Bundy Blog. 