Camille Karen Covet was born on September 25, 1950 to Wilfred and Delores (nee Essley) in Portland, OR. Mr. Covert was born on March 12, 1927 in Medford and her mother was born on July 3, 1931 in Portland. The couple had three children together (Camille, William, and Adele) but divorced on July 20, 1972, and Doris got remarried to a man named Herman Crane on May 10, 1974. Camille attended Centennial High School in Gresham, and after graduating in 1968 she went on to briefly attend the University of Oregon and got a job at a nearby Sears. A tall young woman with the looks and figure of a runway model, she stood at 6’1″ and had deep chocolate brown eyes and shoulder length brunette hair.

Camille’s husband, Myron Charles Foss (who went by Chuck) was born on July 24, 1949 in Hazen, North Dakota. At some time in Chuck’s adolescence the Foss family relocated to Portland, and after graduating from Franklin High School in 1967 he went on to join the US Air Force, and was stationed in Okinawa. After Chuck returned home from Japan the couple were married on July 10, 1971 in Portland.

On October 17th, 1975, Ms. Covet-Foss was last seen alive leaving her job at Sears-Roebuck in Washington Square at 5 PM to drop off a check at the bank. The twenty-five-year-old had been employed with the department store for seven years, and had only come to that location from the main branch in Portland about three months prior to her murder (she was the stores head cashier).

Roughly an hour after Camille was last seen at 6:00 PM the bank called Sears to make sure the deposit was on its way, as they were getting ready to close. Later that same day at 9:30 PM a security guard for the Southwest Portland-area shopping center named Claudia Shaw found her body in the front seat of her light olive green 1969 Chevrolet Impala, which was parked between the main Sears store and the Sears Automotive Center, south of the shopping center’s buildings. According to an article published in The Capital Journal on October 18, 1975, despite the incident taking place in the middle of the day on a Friday Multnomah County Sheriff’s said that no shots were reported. According to Sergeant Michael O’Connell with the Washington County Sheriff, law enforcement received numerous leads and tips from the public, but no one reported anything helpful.

Oregon state ME Dr. William Brady said Covert-Foss was shot twice: a bullet grazed one of her thumbs before penetrating her neck, and the other hit her chest. The wounds were inflicted by a large-caliber handgun that was fired at close range (either a .38 or 357-magnum revolver) and Dr. Brady said she had also been beaten in the face. When the investigation was reopened in 2005, Sergeant O’Connell said ‘it’s bizarre that somebody could get away with this in a parking lot. It was busy and not completely dark. There’s a large-caliber gun that makes a lot of noise.’ Detectives said nothing appeared to be missing from the scene, including the bank deposit.

Law enforcement cleared Camille’s husband almost immediately and said that she showed no signs of being sexually assaulted. Two weeks before her murder Adele told investigators that her sister shared with her that while she was escorting an older woman to her car she chased a flasher down the stairs of the Lloyd Center parking garage, yelling and waving her umbrella at him in a successful attempt to scare him away. She told her ‘Camille, you shouldn’t do that. You don’t know what could happen,’ but she was too busy worrying about how scared the woman was to care about much else.

In August 1976 it was reported that Camille’s husband Chuck filed a wrongful death suit against Sears Roebuck and Company for $1.5 million dollars: $500,000 in general damages and one million in punitive damages, plus an additional $1,239 in burial and memorial costs to lay his wife to rest. Foss alleged that the company was negligent and exposed his wife to ‘armed and dangerous persons’ in making her take money to the bank without any form of security. I was unable to find any information about the outcome of the lawsuit.

In an article about reopening the case published by The Oregonian on October 18, 2005, Adele said of her sister: ‘in her honor, I just have to give this one last try. I’m just asking for help because her life was worth so much.’ Fifteen years later, in a November 2020 interview with KATU reporter Katherine Kisiel, Bostwick said ‘I think this person didn’t just kill my sister, it did kill my father and my mother. My father took his own life just as he turned 60, and a few years later my mother died of pancreatic cancer, which is the only cancer proven to be related to depression. I do feel like I should have been there. Nobody was there with her, and I just need to do everything I can to make sure how she died isn’t forgotten.’

Most of the women I write about from Oregon were most likely not victims of Ted Bundy, and that includes Ms. Covet-Foss… but, because this is a blog about him I do feel the need to mention that we know he wasn’t responsible for her death, as he was just beginning his legal troubles in Utah and was tied up at the time.

William Covert died on March 15, 1988 at the age of 61, and Camille’s mother died at the age of sixty on September 13, 1991. Chuck Foss died at the age of sixty on December 14, 2009 in Salem, OR. He worked for Stark Vacuum in Portland and Business Machines in Gresham before going to work for his dad at the Portland Glove Company; he later purchased the business but in 1993 he sold it due to his declining health. Mr. Foss enjoyed playing pool and music, and especially loved The Beatles. According to his obituary, he was in a long term relationship with a woman named Beverly Ball and in an article published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on October 18, 2005, he didn’t stay in touch with Camille’s family in the years after her death.