Virginia Mae Erickson was born on April 26, 1941 to Joseph and Virgie (nee Lee) in Mazama, WA. Mr. Ackley was born on February 1, 1910 in Montesano, and Virgie was born on a houseboat on June 12, 1912 in Empire, OR. The couple were wed on March 18, 1928 in Buxton, Oregon and had eight children together: Virginia, Lawrence, Maxine, Joseph, Charles, Jean, David, and a daughter named Joyce that died in childbirth.
On October 18, 1958 seventeen year old Virginia married twenty-one year old David Erickson in Montesano, WA; Erickson was born on May 31, 1937 in Tigerton, Wisconsin. After relocating to Sweet Home, OR the couple had six children together: two boys and four girls. Ginny was a petite woman, and only stood at 5’1” tall and weighed 125 pounds; she had green eyes and curly chestnut hair she wore at her shoulders. She was a devout fundamentalist Christian and dedicated stay at home mother, and played the piano during church service every Sunday morning while her daughters would sing in the choir; on occasion, David would join her and play the guitar (when he attended). Virginia was also very close to her parents who lived in Washington, and she spoke with them frequently and would usually visit every six weeks or so (give or take). Ginny’s younger sister Maxine said she ‘could not go for more than six weeks without going to see her folks and she always had the kids with her. She would not have gone that long without seeing her kids or seeing her mother.’
Virginia was last seen alive by her children in their home on 48th Avenue in Sweet Home on the morning of October 21, 1973: David woke up their oldest child Rachel and told her they’d be going to church without them that Sunday because he was taking their mother out hunting. This immediately struck her as being incredibly unusual and out of character for her mother, but she got up anyways and helped get her brothers and sisters (who ranged in age from six to thirteen years old) ready for service. Ginny and David’s sixteen year old nephew Jimmy picked the kids up that morning and took them to Sunday School, and their son David (who goes by Michael) said of the memory: ‘I just remember momma staying home, and she was crying when she was cooking something on the stove, and she gave us hugs goodbye, and she just told me she was sick. My cousin Jimmy picked all of us kids up and took us to church, and my mom never showed up at the church to play the piano, and I thought that was kind of weird, and it was my Uncle Jim and Aunt Shirley’s little church.’
Before leaving for church, Virginia pulled Rachel aside and said to her, ‘if I’m not here when you get home, you feed the kids and take care of them.’ The (then) 13 year old said that she remembers her mother was dressed in a bathrobe but the parts of her that were visible were covered in bruises and that it was almost as if she was trying to hide what was underneath; she also said that her breathing appeared to be labored and almost strained. Rachel said that she remembered her mom being afraid of her dad and that lots of other people were as well, but she also said that he was a sweet talker that could be very charming and manipulative.
When they arrived at church Rachel found her Aunt Shirley and told her about what happened at home; Shirley immediately got in her car and drove towards the Erickson residence, which was just down the street, and where she cannot say for 100% certainty Rachel strongly speculates she drove to her family’s house to see what was going on between her parents. According to a comment made by Amber Erickson on the website for the ‘Vanished’ podcast about her grandmother, when Shirley went to the Erickson home that Sunday morning David met her at the door with a gun, and threatened not only her but her children as well. When the service was over Jimmy took them home and the kids came back to an empty house, and when their father came home at around 2/2:30 PM he was by himself without Virginia.
Rachel and one of her sisters immediately asked David where their mother was, and he told them that she had simply ‘ran away.’ She was aware that her father had multiple guns, including hunting rifles and high powered pistols, and knew that day he took his .22 with him when he left the house. Later that same day Rachel was able to go back to the church to confront her aunt, and when she cornered her in the nursery Shirley slapped her across the face and said, ‘your mothers dead, don’t ever speak of her again.’
Assuming David was telling them at the very least some partial truths, the children began looking through their mothers personal belongings to see if anything was missing, but everything was left behind, even her shoes. According to Michael, ‘I remember helping Rachel look for missing stuff because I remember Mom and Dads bedspread was gone, and Rachel was screaming that ‘mom would never leave without her glasses. And why are her rings still here? Why are her clothes all still here? She didn’t even wear her shoes.’’
Almost immediately after Virginia disappeared David gave away all of her personal possessions, including her clothes, books, and jewelry, and Michael even saw her set of green and cream colored encyclopedias at his Aunt Shirley’s house (she denied they belonged to his mother). According to him, ‘a whole bunch of church people came into our house the next day, or really soon after mom left that I came home from school and a lot of church people were there taking everything. They took the washing machine, all of her books were gone, a lot of the cooking stuff was gone. Me and Eric were sleeping on the floor, the front room furniture was gone. The TV was gone. So I always thought that was kind of weird.’
According to Rachel, the day before her mother disappeared her parents were arguing about Denise, one of her twelve year old twin sisters, who the day prior had told Virginia that she was no longer menstruating. She remembers hearing her say to their father, ‘I’m bringing Denise to the doctor on Monday and everyone will know now, for sure, what kind of man you are and what you’ve done.’ In response to this, David (who was a golden glove boxer in Wisconsin) screamed at her that she ‘wouldn’t live until Monday’ if she told anybody, then slammed her against the wall and began ‘hitting and punching’ her. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for her father, and Rachel said that on multiple occasions her mother tried telling people about the abuse he inflicted upon his family, but no one had believed her. According to Michael, the Erickson home wasn’t the only place that the children were exposed to sexual abuse, and at their uncle’s church (called The Pentecostal Church of God) a Sunday School teacher named Dale also preyed on the boys; it was later found out that he was caught and served six years in prison for the sexual abuse of a minor.
Eventually the girls told family members (specifically their dads brother Albert, a Pentecostal preacher) about Denise’s pregnancy and the sexual abuse, and the police were eventually notified. Even though everyone in the Erickson family knew that Virginia was missing nobody did anything about it, and the children were gaslite and told their mom ‘ran away.’ Rachel and her brothers and sisters knew she would never run away on her own, and she certainly wouldn’t cheat on her husband and leave her children behind. According to an article published in The Albany Democrat-Herald on May 9, 1997, the sheriff’s department received an anonymous postcard on April 29, 1974 suggesting that they look into Erickson’s disappearance (Rachel later said that it was her grandfather that sent the correspondence). Former Sheriff Dave Burright said in an April 1996 interview that ‘we highly suspect she’s been killed and the husband has been a strong suspect from the very beginning.
In one of the very few newspaper articles I found about Virginia’s disappearance that was written in May 1996, The Albany Democrat-Herald interviewed Denise, who said the family briefly relocated to California after her mother disappeared. In the same interview she also admitted that she had been pregnant with her fathers baby at the time and that the child was stillborn in February 1974; in the months that followed, the family returned to Oregon.
According to The Albany Democrat-Herald, the sheriff’s department received an anonymous postcard on April 29, 1974 suggesting that they look into Erickson’s disappearance (Rachel later said that it was her grandfather that sent the correspondence). Even though he was aware that his father was a bad man, it was still scary for Michael when police came to his house to arrest him: ‘the only thing I remember is the policeman, they came and took Penny out, and she was sitting in the police car in the backseat and when we were walking past the dining room table they had dad bent over that with handcuffs on him with all three of his guns laid out, and some knives on the table. When we walked by, and they were trying to make it so that we couldn’t look, putting their hands by our faces. And then I remember going into the police car, which I thought was kind of strange because me and Eric went in one and Penny went by herself in another. I could see her crying , but we couldn’t get out to help or do anything. We all ended up at the police station, the three youngest kids were together and they were giving us snacks and talking to us and making sure we had something to do. It was terrifying trying to figure out what I was in trouble for, but they wouldn’t say nothing.’
By this time over seven months had passed since Virginia was last seen alive, and David Erickson was arrested September 1974 on three counts of first degree rape for three of his daughters (specifically ‘two thirteen year olds and a 14 year old,’ even though Rachel was only 13). After their fathers arrest the four Erickson daughters were completely removed from the area so that he couldn’t track them down before he was sentenced, an event that took place on Rachel’s fifteenth birthday: January 6, 1975. On February 8, 1975 he began his ten year sentence at The Oregon State Penitentiary; he was paroled after less than six years on November 28, 1980. According to Virginia’s granddaughter Trinity, before David went away he had a baby with a local woman that had a crush on him, but it didn’t take long before she left him. After David was sent away most of the six children were shuffled off to different foster homes (although they attempted to keep the two brothers together), although Rachel was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Washington.
The abuse in the foster homes was so horrific that Michael ran away to his Aunt Shirley’s house, who he lived with for a period of time before becoming legally emancipated. Unfortunately his aunt was incredibly abusive to her sons, and even though she didn’t do much to him beyond yelling at him on occasion he still had a hard time accepting the kind of person she was inside of church versus inside of her home. Most of the Erickson children (and grandchildren) strongly believe that she knew what happened to Virginia, and they always hoped that some form of the truth would ‘slip out’ when they spent time together.
About his Aunt Shirley, Michael Erickson said ‘I know she was abusive. She was loud. She would scream, and she wouldn’t think twice to start swinging at anybody, or anything. But at the same time it was ‘thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus…’ It’s like I said, that she went to church and that kinda stuff, but Shirley ran us out when we were 16. She ran all of us kids out of her house because she had a lot of, not adopted but but adopted kids going through the house all the time. But I never got her to say anything about mom but she did tell her son Jimmy just a few months ago that God has forgiven her for what she’s done. So, we have no idea what else she’s talking about.’
In October 1973 when his wife disappeared David Erickson worked as a contractor with the federal government cutting logging roads in Linn County, and according to Rachel, ‘he was the guy that made all those back roads up there, up into the mountains by Sweet Home. So he had a full forest that he could have stuck her in.’ She also said she has a good feeling as to where he may have left her mother but due to the vastness of the area she would need a place to start, and was looking for ‘a place that he liked to go to.’
In April 2023 Michael’s daughter Trinity reached out to ‘The Vanishing’ podcasters Marissa Jones and Amanda Coleman and expressed interest in having her grandmother featured on the show. She said that she suspects her grandfather took Virginia to Green Peter Lake and one of two things most likely happened: he either put her body under a tree then filled in the area around it, or he cut her up with his chainsaw and then threw the pieces into the water.
At the time Virginia disappeared, Rachel was thirteen years old, followed by ten year old twins Tammy and Denise then came Michael, Eric, and Penny. She along with Michael remembers their mother as being a warm and loving person and a doting wife that adored her family and loved being a mom. According to Rachel, ‘she loved God, she loved going to church all the time. She played piano at the church, she was a very loving mom. I did have a mom that loved me and that I was so close to. I’d sit with her at the piano all the time, and I wanted her to teach me how to play the piano and right before she disappeared she was teaching me the chorus but I couldn’t really put my hands together yet. I would sit for hours with her at the piano, then after she disappeared (this may sound kind of weird to most people) but the Sunday after she disappeared, that night after I got home from Church I sat there and I cried and I said, ‘Jesus, if you’ve taken my momma away to be with you, then please put her hands in my hands so that I can play the piano.’ And ever since that day, I’ve been able to play with my hands together and play anything by ear.’
Another person that may have witnessed quite possibly Virginia’s last moments on earth was her nephew Jimmy, and although he has never spoken publicly about what happened that morning in October 1973 ‘The Vanishing’ podcasters were able to obtain some correspondence between him and another family member that helps shed some light into what he may have seen. In more recent years Jimmy said that he has gone out in the woods surrounding Sweet Home and looked in the places that he felt that David could have left his aunt, but with no success, and that he ‘has ideas, but no facts.’ He also brought up John Arthur Ackroyd, who was born and raised in Sweet Home, but looking into him he didn’t start killing until 1977 and Virginia doesn’t fit into his MO.
At the end of the email Jimmy said he had ‘given suggestions to investigators as possible locations, but because of the generalizations that I had I’m sure that nothing was ever found. I have went to look in those places too, poking around in places that my intuition sent me. But I’m not a searcher. Not even a little. I haven’t hunted in years. I used to go looking, even drew a circle around how far he could have carried her and made it back in that time frame that he was gone. It’s possibilities are a huge circle. Looked at possible gravesites where he could have put her body under another body to be buried on the following Monday. Still nothing. And there were a few in the circle.’
One theory that has recently been floated around the Erickson family is that David had the help of a neighbor and close friend of disposing of Virginia’s body, and according to Rachel in October 2023: ‘the recent thing that I heard about was this was weeks just before Covid hit, I had heard from my cousin that he heard from a friend that there was a guy, he lived right across the street from us. He was my dads friend and from what I heard from this guy that just recently told my cousin that he helped my dad get rid of my moms body, and wrapped her body around an engine block with a chain and threw it in the Green Peter Dam, in one of the deepest areas. And I’d always known something about Green Peter Dam, and the detective said that it would need to be scheduled to get approved because it was a dam. Then he said he would try to get them to go and look and stuff and then Covid hit and it shut everything completely down. And I haven’t heard anything.’
About the neighbor, Mike said ‘he was crazy, he was drinking all the time and beating his kids all the time. And I was over there one time and he had seen an elk on TV, and he shot the TV. He was in and out of prison all the time, and then dad and him were in prison at the same time. So they were pretty close.’ The Erickson children have been unable to track down the origin of the story and don’t know where it came from.
The Ericksons remember their mom trying to leave their father multiple times over the years, but she always came back. This makes sense, as it was the 1970’s and there weren’t a lot of resources available for a stay at home mom of six with no money and limited education. Mike also believed that his mother didn’t have a strong support system to fall back on, as her own father would tell her to go back to her husband after an argument and ‘figure things out.’ Most of the people in Virginia’s life felt the issues between her and David were ‘husband and wife business,’ and when a fight would occur he would say that she wanted to ‘run off with another man’ and they believed him, so when she disappeared it made it all the more easy to believe that she left willingly.
When his father was released from prison Michael decided he deserved another chance, and reached out to him in an attempt to re-establish a relationship with him, a decision he deeply regrets and that still haunts him to this day. After getting out of prison Erickson wasn’t rehabilitated, and he went on to molest multiple granddaughters and other members of the family: ‘he tried to put things back together, when dad was down at the penitentiary. I thought I could make a go at it with my dad, and then he ended up molesting my daughter Trinity. It made me feel like I failed.’ Michael always said he suspected his father was responsible for his mothers disappearance, and that he ‘asked my dad several times if he’d killed my mom, and he always said no. So I don’t know if he made her shoot herself, like the Russian roulette stuff or if he did kill her… you know, one cop told me it was a nobody homicide, that’s kind of what it went under,’ … ‘ he said they were going hunting, and they got in an argument and he let her out of the Foster store, the little store down the road in between Sweet Home and Foster, which they’re all one, so he let her out then he went hunting is what he told me. But at the same time, my dad was pretty strong but to try to deadlift her… I think he could have done it, I always thought he put her in an old pick up that he had , and drove her into Green Peter Lake up above Foster Lake. I’ve always had that feeling, but I’ve never been able to get anyone to go out there and dive and stuff like that for her. But then all of the sudden he had his brand new Land Cruiser and that pick-up was gone. It’s not like he traded it in or anything like that. But it was just gone.’ … ‘He did tell his brother Albert Erickson, ‘this time she’s not coming back.’
There are two large bodies of water in the Sweet Home area: Green Peter Lake and Foster Lake. Rachel figured out that her father could have traveled roughly forty-five miles on the morning Virginia disappeared before he would have had to turn around and be back by 2/2:30 after church, and both lakes fit into these parameters.
The day he got out of prison, Linn County Detectives questioned Erickson about Virginia’s disappearance on the first of several occasions, and just like he did with his children, he changed his story multiple times, and none of his reasoning fully explained what may have happened to her or where her body could be. On one occasion, he said his wife changed her mind about going hunting because she had a headache and he went without her, and she was gone when he returned. Another time, he claimed they had left the house together but after only making it one block away Virginia asked to go to a store to buy candy, and while inside she used the pay phone to call her boyfriend, then walked back to the house to meet him. A third story involves Ginny leaving him and their family to be with a truck driver from Madras, OR. Erickson also volunteered that he’d seen her a few months after her disappearance and she was ‘fine,’ a sighting that has never been confirmed by investigators.
Someone reported to police that they saw Virginia in Bend, OR and gave them the vehicle’s license plate. Sheriff Burright said that they ‘ran that one down and one of the people looked like her. We’re sure it was a case of mistaken identity.’ According to Burright, three things seemed to be consistent in the case: ‘that Erickson vanished on a Sunday, that she was a devout Christian and would never miss church, and she was very close with her mom and dad.
In the years before his death Denise hounded her father, asking him over and over again what happened to her mother and what he did to her, and on one occasion after telling him that she thought he was responsible for her disappearance he responded, ‘well, I don’t know what to say about that.’ David Erickson died of congestive heart failure and lung cancer at the age of 67 in Lebanon, OR on April 20, 2005, taking all of his secrets to the grave. According to his obituary, he had one more child named Angie and he loved hunting and fishing. The brief write-up also mentioned that he ‘loves his grandchildren,’ and knowing what we do know now about this disgusting creature, it just makes me sick. In 2005 when David died members of the Erickson family were so thankful that they went to his funeral just to make sure he was really gone, an event they were kicked out of. According to Rachel, there’s a few people out there that she feels may know what happened to her mother but refuse to come forward and talk.
Before her grandfathers death Trinity remembers an incident that made her lean towards him being responsible for Virginia’s disappearance: ‘I am 100% sure that he killed her. When I was around 18, I heard him talking, and I thought he was talking to someone. And I heard him.. And he was just sitting there going, ‘I had to kill her, that whore, she would have ruined my life. I had to kill her. I had to put her out. She would have ruined my life.’ And I was like, ‘what?’ and was on the other side of the wall. So I got up and I came out of my room to go to the bathroom and he was in there by himself. He had just been talking to himself.’
Virginia’s daughter Penny declined to do an interview with The Vanishing podcasters, but she did send the girls an email: ‘things I remember: I remember believing they (dad and mom) went hunting. Dad came home without mom. I know we went to church before they left. My dad has told me many different stories on why she didn’t come home. 1) He dropped her off at the end of our street. 2) he dropped her off at Glenns Market. 3) She wanted a candy bar and he dropped her off at the hilltop store. 4) She ran off with a boyfriend. Later cops confirmed she did not. 5) She left us. Those are the ones I remember. I remember one time he was abusing me, sexually, and he said he thought he heard my mom so he made me jump up and get my clothes on and go check to see if she came back. It wasn’t her, and when I came back into his bedroom he noticed in my haste that I had put my clothes on inside out and he told me that I needed to be more careful. I now just realized how cruel that was. I know he knew she was dead. He also told me once that when you bury someone without embalming them the ground does something weird, for the life of me, I can’t remember what he said though. Sorry. My earliest memories are of him manipulating me to play with him. He was mentally and sexually abusive to me. He was all those things and physically abusive to my sisters. My dad on the outside of our house was funny and loving. He would give anyone his last few dollars if they wanted it. He was a habitual liar. Oh, and also I remember one day he said we were going to go find our mom. He started to walk us up a hill near our house then suddenly changed his mind. I don’t know why he ended with that action, but either way it was cruel. I always wondered if he was going to attempt to kill us all or if he was just playing some sort of twisted mind game. I also remember him taking off all he could on the Jeep and washing it. I was the only kid home because all my siblings were in school, I think. I don’t know. Maybe they were in the house, or I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know if they remember that or not.’
Michael Erickson also shared some horrifying stories about growing up with his father: ‘the worst thing that dad made me do with my momma was, he would tie her to the kitchen chair and then make me play Russian roulette with her. So I’d be crying and everything and he’d hold his hand up underneath my hand and point the gun at her face, and move it down to her chest, then move it down to her belly and stuff like that. But every time I pulled the trigger it would never go off. Sometimes we had to sit there for so long and it wouldn’t go off and I remember one time he put two bullets in it, this was about when I was seven, and I still wouldn’t go off, and it was a .22 revolver, and he was really mad and he grabbed my arm and told me to get outside and my momma, she was just crying for mercy, not wanting to get killed. But thank God the gun wouldn’t fire on her. Then I’d see her with a few bruises and stuff after. But I remember her standing at the sink and crying a lot. When she was at the sink cleaning dishes, I’d give her hugs on her legs.’
Rachel remembers the Russian roulette incidents and other atrocities that her father had inflicted upon her and her brothers and sisters when they were small. She said that one time ‘he wanted to have sex with me one day and I didn’t want to and I was trying to fight him and I went running outside and he kicked me through a barbed wire fence and I have a big ol’ gash on the back of my back from it. He didn’t stop just with us, he molested some of my nieces, and it was like he didnt care what age they were.’
Rachel said that her mothers disappearance split the family generationally, and most of her extended family told her to leave it in the past and to let it go. These are the same people that called David a ‘good Christian man’ that could do no wrong despite the fact that he was convicted of raping his three young daughters. She also said there are two detectives from the Linn County Sheriff’s Department that are currently working on the case, Caleb Riley and Randy Voight.
When the creators of ‘The Vanishing’ podcast asked the Linn County Sheriff’s Department for Virginia Erickson’s case file their request was denied, citing an ‘open investigation,’ and sadly this doesn’t surprise me. The Thurston County Sheriff’s Department in Washington refused to even give me the name of a victim they’re still investigating, and the murder took place in the mid-1970’s.
Despite multiple requests over the years Shirley refused to tell her nieces and nephews what she knew about the disappearance of their mother, and she took what she knew with her to the grave, as she died on December 17, 2023. But one thing is for sure: to this day the extended Erickson clan remains devoted to David, not Virginia, and smears her name every time she is brought up in favor of his. When asked why he still remains so high in the family’s favor, Michael said that he could ‘smooth talk anybody and that he helped a lot of people and things like that. He was always telling jokes, and pulling practical jokes.’
Rachel went on to lead a very successful life: she spent twenty-eight years working as a MWR Program Chief for the US Coast Guard before retiring, and is happily married with two daughters; after living in Kodiak, Alaska for many years she relocated to Woodstock, Georgia. Michael went onto get married and have two beautiful daughters of his own, Trinity and her sister.
Virginia’s father Joseph Ackley died on February 15, 1978 in Bend, and Virgie passed away at the age of 76 on February 9, 1989 in Hoquiam, WA. Her brother Charles died on September 9, 1993 in Montesano, WA, and her other brother Richard died on March 10, 2008 at the age of 80 in Casa Grande, AZ. Her twin daughters Tammy and Denise have both passed away as well after struggling with substance abuse.
As of February 2024 Virginia is considered missing under suspicious circumstances and would be 83 years old. Her children strongly believe that their father murdered her, and detectives investigating the case also suspect he was involved in her disappearance but were never able to gather enough evidence to charge him.
Works Cited:
Amanda Coleman and Marissa Jones, The Vanished Podcast, Episode 411: Virginia Erickson
Taken January 26, 2025 from thevanishedpodcast.com/episodes/2023/10/2/episode-411-virginia-erickson
Chappell, Sky. ‘Virginia Erickson, The Forgotten Sweet Home Woman.’ (October 25, 2023). Taken January 26, 2025 from sweethomenews.com/virginia-erickson-the-forgotten-sweet-home-woman/
The Charley Project: VIrginia Erickson. Taken January 26, 2025 from charleyproject.org/case/virginia-ackley-erickson
Another Bundy Blog. 