Criminology - The Cowden Family Murders

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

In 1974, the Cowden family disappeared on a camping trip in Oregon and eventually their bodies were found. It quickly became evident that they were murder victims. But who killed the Cowden family and why? Despite a strong suspect in the case, it remains unsolved 50 years later. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Cowden family murders. One man on the mind of authorities as a possible suspect was Dwain Lee Little, an Oregon resident, though he had spent some of those years at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Dide Dwain Little murder the Cowden family or was it someone else? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 297 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morf. How you doing, man? I'm doing good other than the fact I'm going through a little bit of insomnia we were talking about before we started recording. And it's something that I've had before, but it's, you know, it lasts a couple days for whatever reason and it goes away. And I'm hoping that happens this time.

But I don't want to complain too much. But that's what I'm dealing with. How about you? No, I'm doing pretty good. But I will say, sleep. And when your sleep cycle gets messed up, you really feel it more so than I think a lot of things. Sleep just really kind of jacks you up when it's not what it's supposed to be. Yeah, it definitely throws you off course for the rest of each day because you're not working under normal schedule.

don't have the energy and I'm trying to cut out coffee, which I love at night. So I'm sort of dealing with it, but hopefully I'll be back on track real quick. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Tony Leslie James, Trifa, Abdullah, and Amy Beverly. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time and support the show.

It really helps us out. And for anyone else that would like to, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology to get signed up. All right, buddy, it's time to get into this week's episode. And we have an older case that made shocking headlines when it first happened. But in the decades since, it's kind of gotten lost in the shuffle of countless other high-profile cases. In 1974, the Calden family disappeared on a camping trip in Oregon. And eventually their bodies were found.

It quickly became evident that they were murder victims. But who killed the Cowden family and why? Despite a strong suspect in the case, it remains unsolved 50 years later. On August 30th, 1974, the Cowden family headed off for an impromptu Labor Day vacation. 28-year-old Richard Cowden, a logging driver, had planned to use the long weekend for some home improvement projects. His main task would be fixing their driveway at their home in White City, Oregon, which required him to haul gravel to their home. But his plans went awry because the truck he was going to borrow from his boss, loss was having sudden mechanical issues. So with a holiday weekend of downtime, he and his wife,

22-year-old Belinda, decided to drive up to the Sisku Mountains in Oregon in their Ford pickup with their kids, their daughter of five-month-old Melissa, and David, who was Belinda's five-year-old son from her previous relationship. The Cowden's destination was in Copper, a town that no longer officially exists. Six years after this camping trip, copper was intentionally flooded in order to create Applegate Lake. At the time of the Cowden's camping trip, Blinda's mother, Ruth Grayson, was living in Copper. So this was one of the family's favorite spots to camp because they could visit with her while they were there. When the family got up into the mountains, they chose a campsite along Carberry Creek, about a mile away from Ruth's home. It was just the four of them. It was just the four of

them there, along with their dog, a basset hound named Droopy. We don't know much about what they did that day after they arrived, but it seems that they likely set up camp and had some fun. The next day, Saturday, apparently was not eventful as far as we know. At around 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, Richard and David walked up to the copper general store about a mile away from the campgrounds in order to buy a quart of milk. From what happened next, we can generally assume that Richard and David made it back to the campsite and the family had breakfast using some but not all of the milk. They also probably changed into their bathing suits and planned ongoing swimming. Exactly what happened after that remains a mystery to this day.

So to me, Morph, this sounds like a pretty fun getaway. You know, a little camping trip, you got the whole family, you've got the dog. There's a little general store that they can walk to to get, you know, some supplies if they need to. but it sounds pretty fun. And it seems like it's a place they've been to before they're familiar with. So it's not like they're going into uncharted territories. The Cowdens had plans that evening to go to Ruth's house, just a short trip away from the campsite to have Sunday dinner with her on their way back to White City.

But they never showed up. Ruth got worried and went over to the campsite to check on them to see if everything was okay. At the time, she thought the worst case, scenario was that, you know, maybe they were having car trouble and she could help them out. Richard had been worried about the truck battery recently. When she got to the campgrounds, their truck was parked there, but none of the Caldans were nearby. The keys to the truck were on the picnic table next to an unfinished carton of milk.

Belinda's purse was also on the table next to a plastic dishpan full of cold water. What really concerned Ruth is that Richard's wallet was a little bit of. on the ground next to his pricey watch. There was money in the wallet, $23, the equivalent of about $140 today. That's a lot of cash to leave behind unattended, especially on the ground. It appeared that all of their clothing was still in their truck except for their bathing suits. Droopy, their dog, didn't come when Ruth called. There was no sign of him.

Ruth waited for a while in case the family was just swimming nearby, but she couldn't overcome the feeling that something was wrong. Melissa's diaper bag was still there, so they shouldn't be too far away. But when she called out to them, no one answered. The family was very predictable. It would never keep her waiting after she cooked a big special meal just for them, one that they were excited to come over for. They hadn't even started to pack up their campsite despite being very late for dinner. Their camp stove was still set up. The more Ruth thought about it, the more she thought something happened to them. She was sure of it. She left the campgrounds and went straight to her home to notify the authorities.

She called Jackson County Sheriff Dwayne Franklin's office directly. Though she reported the family missing, there was no real search effort on the part of police, at least not right away. And it seems like we talk about this all the time. For whatever reason, in the 1970s and 80s, when someone disappeared,

especially an adult, there was a delay in the search because it was assumed that the person would come home or they just didn't want to. want to be found. Times have definitely changed, as we know now that the first few hours after a disappearance case are really the most crucial. When it comes to gathering evidence and figuring out what happened, former Oregon State Police Detective Richard Davis, who investigated this case in 1974, told K-O-B-I-5.com, it was very common among police agencies at that time, that with missing persons, they don't do anything for 24 hours.

He added, I believe that policy has changed. I would hope so. But this wasn't simply a case of a single adult deciding to take off or a teenager who was out partying with friends and lost track of time. This was an entire family that was missing, including two very young children. And I do think a lot of this has changed for the better. But when you think back to, you know, cases that we've done in the 70s and 80s and, you know, around that time frame, it does seem as though there was kind of a waitancy attitude a little bit on the part of authorities. And the one thing that is kind of always grabbed my attention was that it seems as though the police didn't always kind of weigh the scenario. Okay, you have one adult who no one knows where they are. You have a kid who's late, a teenager. They assume maybe they're out partying. Like I said here, though, this is an entire family. And when you look at kind of the scenario, and I'm sure Ruth would have relayed some of these

details, you've got the diaper bag. You've got, you know, small children. This seems to me, if you just look at it on the surface to be something that you should look into, right away. Yeah, even if it's not a case of foul play, it could be something as simple as they got lost or somebody got hurt. I think either way, they should have jumped into action sooner in case they could provide some kind of help. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's pretty easy to say here. But I don't know. It's just strange to me that it doesn't seem as though authorities looked at the situation. It was almost like that was a, uh, kind of a standard answer.

Well, let's wait 24 hours, everything, you know, this person or these people will show back up. And I'm sure they did in some scenarios. But unfortunately, in a lot, we know they didn't. Early on Monday morning, Labor Day, a dog was scratching at the door of the copper general store. It turned out to be droopy, Cowden's Basset hound. He had made his way back to the general store alone. This was when it really became clear that the Cowden family, had met some type of harm, and the authorities scoured the Cowden's campsite for clues,

but they didn't find many. There were no footprints, no tire tracks, no blood, no ransom note. All they really had was droopy, the dog, left the fend for himself, and whatever he knew, he wasn't sharing. This all changed the urgency for authorities, and they felt the family were victims of an abduction. Richard Davis told K-O-B-I-5, they were abducted during the day between 8 o'clock and 5. That's an assumption that I make because I doubt they would have left willingly. He added, we got some of the strangest and most bizarre calls, tips where they were and what they were doing.

They were seen in Seattle. They were seen in San Francisco. They weren't. None of the leads or tips police received panned out. Okay. So authorities are into it at this point and they're getting a lot of leads and tips. and it sounds like sightings. And this is another thing that fascinates me in cases where, you know, people call in,

and I'm sure a lot of these people mean well. And they believe what they're telling the authorities. Now, a lot of times it turns out to be incorrect. But, you know, Seattle, San Francisco, these are not real close together. And I think the police had to at least check them out to see if the sightings were credible. but at the same time, how likely would it be that the family would just take off on foot, leaving all their belongs, their car, or everything else behind, and wind up in one of these other cities far away? It just doesn't seem like it would be very likely at all.

No, it doesn't seem like it, but that's kind of the double-edged sword, right? You want, as the police, all of the tips you can get. unfortunately you have to check tips out and that does take away from maybe doing other things. Please try it everything to find the Calden family. Even things that seemed somewhat pointless, areas were searched and then researched, even places where it seemed that it would be difficult for a family on foot to get to. Richard Davis told K-O-B-I-5, searchers would go up on the Applegate and look for buzzards because buzzards will lead us to a body.

This was in January. Buzzards are migratory birds. There hadn't been one in the Rogue Valley, Applegate Valley, since early November. If the buzzards weren't around at all, they wouldn't be able to lead anyone to the Calton family. The lack of any buzzards was both a relief for police and a problem. It could mean that the family was alive,

but if they were out there dead someplace, perhaps searchers had missed the right spot. On April 12, 1975, almost eight months after the Cowden family vanished, and about seven miles from their campsite, two men on a hike to prospect for gold came across a human skull, laying out in the open. There was no mistaking what it was. As they scanned the surrounding area for the rest of the remains,

they spotted a headless body tied to a tree. At that moment, they raced to get police. After getting the news, Detective Davis didn't waste any time calling and reinforcements. He told K-O-B-I-5, Right then, I mobilized everyone I can get. I need help. I'm one man. I can't search the forest. I need help. About 100 feet away in a cave, searchers found three more bodies, a woman, a child, and an infant. The bodies had been hidden inside the cave, which had been sealed off from the outside with large rocks. In the minds of police, these were clearly the bodies

of the missing Cowden family, and later a medical examiner would confront. affirm that. And this happens a lot in some of the stories that we do where, you know, people are going along doing something and they stumble across human remains. And I think most of the time people would call that in, obviously, to police and say, hey, here's what I found. But I think this scenario is very much different. When you find remains that are tied around a tree, I think right away, you know that something really bad happened. And it always seems that it's hunters, prospectors, campers, people that are sort of out of the way where people usually don't go.

They're the ones that find these bodies and makes you wonder how many other bodies are out there that somehow just people never stumble across. But, you know, in these cases where there are remains found, it just so happens that the people are in the right area. Yeah. Well, the chances of me finding a dead. body are pretty slim. I don't do a lot of hiking. I'm not a hunter, so I'm not going to be most of the time in out of the way places. Five-year-old David had been killed by a 22 rifle,

and so had his mom, Belinda. Whoever had attacked the Cowdens apparently couldn't bear to shoot an infant and instead chose to brutally bludgeon baby Melissa. It was unclear how exactly Richard died, but the fact that he had apparently been left tied to a tree certainly paints some vivid pictures of what could have happened to him. The medical examiner, although he couldn't prove it, felt that Richard was likely shot and that later his head was removed by scavengers. Police were left to consider the clues in the crime scene. This area was seven miles upstream from the family's campsite along Carbury Creek. Had they walked there or been driven there? Police didn't know.

One 22-caliber bullet was recovered from the scene. This was the only clue investigators had to work with. The bullet had been fired from a Marlon Brand rifle. After news of the discovery was made public, authorities received a call from one of the volunteer searchers, who was adamant that in the weeks after the Cowdens were murdered, that he had searched that very cave or the bodies were located and found it empty.

The search area was vast, something like 25 miles, and most of it was wooded. there were bound to be a few caves that searchers encountered. So police thought maybe the searcher was mistaken. However, investigators wanted to rule out any possibility of yet another unknown crime scene. So they asked a volunteer searcher to show them the precise location he was talking about to see if he indeed had searched the same cave in the an rule book, but I trusted you in other true cases. Lieutenant Mark Kieser, lead investigator on the case said,

I asked him to take us to the cave he meant to make sure we were talking about the same thing. And he did. He brought them to the cave where the bodies were found. So now police had to wonder whether the Calden family's killer had moved their bodies to where they were found sometime after searchers had looked in that area. If there was another crime scene out there someplace, finding it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. While police didn't know where exactly the Cowdens had been killed, they had some idea about who may have done it. One man on the mind of authorities, as a possible

suspect, was Dwayne Lee Little, and he was a lifelong Oregon resident, though he had spent some of those years at the Oregon State Penitentiary. In 1966, Little was convicted of murder. On November 2nd, 1964, when he was just 15 years old, he killed 16-year-old Orla-Fay Phipps in Cedar flat east of Springfield, Oregon. She went out to ride her horse like she did daily, but she hadn't returned by the evening in time for dinner, which made her parents worry that she may have gotten hurt during a ride. Her parents and neighbors started to search for her along the route she would normally ride in the woods. Twenty-one-year-old Roy Stucky, a neighbor, found her horse, but there was no sign of Orla. Her parents went to the police who sent a search party.

Stucky continued to search with them, and he was the one who ended up finding her body. She was lying on her back, still clothed, but with many rips in her clothing. She had been stabbed multiple times, and her throat was violently slashed. The medical examiner determined that Orla had been sexually assaulted after she was killed. After Orla's murder, the authorities canvassed the area and asked for samples of blood from the men living in the neighborhood. This included the Little family and 15-year-old Duane, whose mother allowed him to provide the sample.

Little and Orla's brother had once been friends, but they had fallen out of touch and stopped hanging out. At the time of the murder, he attended Springfield Junior Academy just outside of Eugene, Oregon. On November 18, 1964, Duane Lee Little was arrested and placed it to Skipworth home for juvenile offenders. Two days later, a grand jury indicted him, and he was charged with murder. His trial was delayed as he was a minor at the time. Eventually, the Supreme Court of Oregon ruled that he could be tried as an adult. His parents and his grandparents began to sell their belongings and assets to help pay for a proper defense for him.

His girlfriend, who was just 13 years old, when Orla was killed, still supported him too. Her family gave the little's $1,500 for his defense. that's a lot of money back then. It's like handing someone $14,000 today. So no doubt, you know, Little had quite a bit of support. You know, his parents and his grandparents were in his camp. And, and that's pretty normal, right? You're going to support your child, your grandchild. But his girlfriend's parents giving what back then was a lot of money to help in his defense, they must have supported him as well. Yeah, what I find interesting is that they rounded up a suspect pretty quickly, and we don't know all of the details and all the evidence against Little, but it seems like they were looking at his blood type.

Obviously, they didn't have DNA back then. So maybe all they had was a blood type. And it seems like just based on that little bit of information, it was enough to sort of make a case against him. What seems strange that they would be able to make a case just on blood type alone. I'm not ruling it out. But like you said, the facts about his case are pretty hard to find. I did find it interesting that his mother allowed him to provide the sample. My thought is she probably had no idea or thought, yeah, let's rule him out because

obviously my son wouldn't have done this. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door. and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Little was actually interrogated, though, by a psychiatrist and a physician, not by detectives. After he was injected with sodium pentothal, one of the many drugs also known as a truth serum. Despite the large sum of money donated to him,

none of it helped Little at all. On February 10, 1966, he was found guilty of the murder of Orla Phipps. One day later, he was sentenced to life in prison by Lane County Circuit Judge Roland Rodman. He was 17 at the time, the youngest prisoner ever inside the facility. Those at the prison, both staff and other prisoners,

actually looked out for him due to his young age. When Little was just seven years old, he was in an accident where he was hit in the head with a baseball bat. He was badly injured and left with a permanent indentation in his skull. He had to wear a special head gear for five months after he was released from the hospital following the accident due to the possibility of another injury to his brain. He was not allowed to play any sports while he was growing up. He didn't ever fully recover from the injury caused by the baseball. bat, he suffered from severe headaches and he had a lot of difficulty in school, especially with language tasks like writing and spelling words properly. His IQ is apparently estimated to be between

89 and 94, but it's of course unclear how much of that was related to the injury. The rest of his upbringing was rather unconventional. He and the rest of his siblings were taught how to use firearms at an early age, as young as five or six years old. So we've talked a lot more about head injuries. They seem to come up in a lot of cases because it is thought to be a contributor or maybe a reason behind why people do some of the things that they do. This sounds like a pretty bad head injury. I mean, if you're hit in the head with a bat so hard that it's,

leaves a permanent dent. Okay. That's pretty rough. And the other thing that jumped out of me was, you know, using a firearm at the age of five or six, that is very young. I understand, you know, all families are different. You know, I'm sure fathers take their, their kids hunting, teach them how to use firearms. But five or six seems very young. to me, almost unheard of. Yeah, we're not talking the 1800s on a ranch or something like that where, you know, the families would have to survive and maybe had to hunt or, you know, fend off attackers, things like that.

And children had to learn at a younger age. This is, you know, well into the 1900s. So it is pretty unusual. Little's parents were afraid of retribution from a neighbor as well as from Little's paternal uncle over separate feuds. This caused the family to be required. inclusive and paranoid. They also started collecting their own water out of fear that someone had poisoned the main supply of water leading to their home. Eventually, their home burned down,

and nothing was able to be recovered from the ruins. Two years before this, Little's mother was charged with arson after the home of one of her friends burned down. The charges were dropped, and she wasn't investigated for the fire at the Little Home. In 1956, Little's father was shot in the groin area by a child they were fostering. Though, Some reports and rumors claim that it was actually Little's paternal uncle, not a child. He was pretty badly injured and lost some of the function in his right leg. Well, I'm just going to say it right now. If it was a child, it's probably because you're allowing five and six-year-olds to handle firearms.

It's a good chance you might get shot in the groin. Yeah, where they could shoot themselves accidentally. And then either way, it doesn't seem like a safe situation. Later, a tree fell on Little's father, and he suspected that it had been cut down on purpose to harm him. He never recovered from that incident. Soon after this injury, a large fire destroyed over $30,000 worth of the little family's logging equipment. By 1961, nine of their cows and two of their dogs had been poisoned, and another two cows had been shot to death. Also in 1961, little's father shot and killed his brother, little's paternal uncle, the one the family had been afraid of for so many years.

His father was subsequently sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. In 1963, he escaped from the hospital and the family fled from Medical Lake Washington to Tennessee. Eventually, they moved to Oregon. And the one thing that I couldn't help but think of as, you know, we were going through. the research was that there was a lot going on with this family. You know, you've got a feud with a paternal uncle. And it sounds like they were pretty paranoid about that. The mother was thought to be an arsonist. They were collecting their own water for fear that the main water supply was going to be poisoned. There was just a lot of strange things happening inside this family. And if you're a child growing up

in that environment and you're seeing all that stuff and experiencing it and you've got a head injury on top of that, you know, you have to wonder how does that affect somebody's long-term outlook? Well, my thought is it, it's not going to be great. The effect, right? It can't be good on a young kid. Now, is it going to make them murder? And that's kind of the thing that we always get into, you know, a bad childhood, bad home life, abuse, all of these things can be contributing factors to someone doing what they do later on in life. But we also know that there are a lot of people that go through some of the very same things and don't grow up to hurt people. It's part of the fascination with true crime, right? Why do people do what they do?

and oftentimes you have to look into their childhood and kind of examine it, and that's what we're doing. Despite Dwayne Little's life sentence, he spent just eight years at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem before he was released on parole. He slowly began the process of rehabilitation, first by starting the upward-bound educational program in 1967, which he attended for a full year. He was granted field trips outside the prison after he joined the Lifers Club. one prison staff member monitored him during these trips, specifically to observe his relationship with women, and said he treated all persons with respect and understanding. According to Anne Rule's book,

they also thought very highly of little and felt that he was fully rehabilitated. One prison staff member wrote, I am certain of his remorse for the offense that he committed, and the girl he killed. I would welcome him as a next door neighbor. And that's pretty high praise, in my opinion, because to me the litmus test is kind of always that, you know, would you want this person living next door to you?

You know, you can say great things about someone. You can believe that they've been rehabilitated. But if you're okay with them living right next door to you, to me, that says a lot. Yeah, that's a prison staff member talking that, talking that way, saying that stuff. So, you know, this is somebody that would see this person first. hand and know what's going on with him in this day to day of day life. And for them to feel that comfortable, then it, you know, it seems to be a pretty good endorsement of him. On February 6th, 1974, little was moved to the Portland Men Center. So he could participate in their work

release program for months. He worked at a concrete factory for just $2.50 an hour. He was granted parole on May 24th, 1974. But he was barred from visiting Lane County or Benton, County, both in Oregon. By the fall of 1974, Little was living with his parents in Jackson County, Oregon. It's about a half an hour away from the campsite the Calden family chose, just up Upper Applegate Road. He began working for a steel company in Medford and made $4.75 an hour, $28 an hour today. In his free time, he often swam in the Applegate River with his friends. And that kind of jumped out of me four dollars and seventy five cents an hour in nineteen seventy four seems like pretty good money yeah i think when it started working minimum wage is three thirty five and that was like

nineteen eighty six yeah i was i was thinking in the late eight eighties early nineties i was making five bucks an hour or something yeah on august 30th the same day the cowden family started off for their vacation dwayne little was delivering a load of steel to a work site in crescent city california just over the border from Oregon. Little is also spotted at a restaurant near Copper on August 31st at around noon. It's believed by some that after he completed the job of hauling the steel, since it was a long holiday weekend, he stopped off near the campgrounds on his way back home. When he did, he saw the Cowden family, or at least one of them. The most compelling theory and the one that fits in with his criminal history is that Little Saw Belinda and Baby Melissa while they were alone. This probably would have been while David and

Richard right at the general store. Little probably wouldn't have seemed threatening at first, parking near their campside or walking up to the creek. But if it was him, then he would have had a rifle. And it's likely that Belinda was holding Melissa. He would have been able to threaten baby Melissa to get Belinda to comply, maybe hoping to buy some time thinking that Richard, the husband would be returning any minute. And when Richard did arrive back to, at the campsite. He would have been surprised, and little could have threatened all three of Richard's family members in order to get him to comply. In the admiral book we mentioned earlier, Richard's brother Wes said, I'm sure things were out of control before he even knew there was a problem. Richard was likely forced at gunpoint to take off his watch, toss his wallet away from himself, and surrender the keys to his truck if they hadn't already been sitting out. while he and David walked to the general store. In this theory that Little was the perp,

he then probably forced the family into his own pickup truck with Richard driving. One elderly couple driving that day recalled seeing a pickup truck that matched Wayne Little's pickup with two men inside and a woman sitting in between them. The truck was memorable to the couple. The female witness told K-O-B-I-5 news. The reason I remember it is the road was very narrow, and we were going slow and she looked to be crying. the witness didn't manage to remember the license plate number or anything else about the truck or the people inside of it.

It's possible that this could have been Richard driving Little's truck, with Belinda terrified and crying in the middle. Little would have been the man in the passenger seat holding his victims at gunpoint. Belinda was likely holding Melissa in her lap, and David was probably behind them, and the elderly couple just couldn't see him in the truck. Once they had driven far enough away, Little probably forced him out of the car and up the hill at gunpoint. The order of things is, of course, unknown. But tying Richard to a tree strongly implies that he was either forced to watch the rest of his family being killed, left for dead afterward, or both.

And to me, this is a very terrifying prospect. Being forced to comply under, you know, threat of your, your wife, your kids, your family. And then possibly being tied to a tree and having to watch. terrible things done to them. To me, that's unimaginable. And you can see how wanting to protect them, he would have complied and figured maybe if I do what he's saying, then they'll let me go.

But in the other hand, you could see how maybe in that situation, once you're tied up, anything can happen. So maybe you're better off trying to make a defense and hopefully they're able to run away. You have to make all those choices in a split second. So it probably wasn't easy.

No, it never is. And a lot of people in the cases that we cover are confronted with this type of decision. You know, whether it's, it's a woman who's been abducted, you know, do I fight? Do I flee? You know, in this case, it's Richard. Do I comply and hopefully save my family that way? Or do I make a stand? and maybe give my family time to get away, not easy decisions to make because you don't know how things are going to play out. For one, you don't know what's in the mind of a perpetrator. Have they already made the decision that they're going to kill? And that's a big question that people don't know the answer to. In this case, though, it's pretty obvious. At a certain point, The perpetrator made the decision that they weren't going to leave anyone a lot.

One family of tourists from Los Angeles that had stopped at the copper campgrounds later that evening was tracked down in interview. They did remember seeing something very similar to what the elderly couple had reported. In the Ann Rule book, the father and the family of witnesses said two men and a woman pulled up in a pickup truck, they acted like they were waiting for us to leave. and frankly they made us nervous, so we moved on. This sighting would have been right near, if not at the campsite to Calden's shows, but it's not believed to be the Calden family that these witnesses saw. Instead, it was possibly Dwayne Little and his parents.

The truck they saw matched the description of Little's parents' pickup. To many people, the possibility that Dwayne Little and his parents were there at the crime scene together following the abductions and murders may not sit well. Because it's hard to imagine a guy that just commits such a terrible crime and brings back his parents to the scene. But Duane Little's mother always stood by and supported her son. In the Anne Rollbook, she's quoted as saying, As long as he tells me he's innocent, I will believe him.

She called him her perfect boy, even while he was behind bars. One clue that may solidify the little family being there is that the Little's, Dwayne and his parents, had all signed the guest book at a cabin up Sturgis Fork, about half an hour from the campsite and about an hour from their home, placing them in the area. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset. This season, let therapy be part of your spring cleaning.

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Visit growtherapy.com slash book now to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash book now. Grotherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. At the time the Caldans were murdered, Dwayne Little would have been 26 years old. Investigators brought him in for questioning, but he claimed to know nothing about the disappearance of or murder of the Calden family. He claimed that he had taken the longest route home.

from Crescent City, conveniently avoiding the shorter direct route that went straight through copper. When investigators realized that Little's mother had purchased a Marlin 22 caliber rifle, the same kind of rifle used to kill the Cowdens, they got a search warrant for her home. The rifle was not there. They also searched the Little's pickup truck and found nothing, though they felt that it was too clean, as if he had spent a lot of time cleaning it out, perhaps to get rid of evidence.

In January 1975, Dwayne Little was arrested for having possession of a firearm. His girlfriend had gotten upset with him over suspicions of cheating and decided to inform the police that she had not only seen Little with a 22 caliber pistol, but that they had used it together to go target shooting. This arrest was the only way investigators could think of to be able to speak to Little again. he refused to cooperate with the investigation into the Cowden family murders. Detective Davis told K-O-B-I-5 News. I told him, you take a polygraph, and I had a polygraph examiner standing by,

and you take a polygraph on account of the murdered Cowden family, although the polygraph I can't use in court. You take the polygraph, I'll dismiss this gun charge, and he said no. He was basically presented with a choice between being sent to prison for the firearm violation or cooperating by taking. taking a polygraph examination, and in exchange, having the felon in possession charge disappear. Still, Little refused. His parole was revoked in May 1975, and he was sent back to prison for the violation. While in prison, as he was the first time behind bars, he was a model

prisoner. And I think, Morph, you know, you have to take a look at this deal and then ask the question, why wouldn't Dwayne Little take this polygraph examination? I mean, this is a good deal. All you have to do in order to not go back to prison is take a polygraph. Well, it kind of makes people think there's only one reason why he wouldn't want to take the polygraph and it's because he knew that he was going to fail. and he would rather have his parole revoked than give the authorities, you know, ammunition against him for these murders.

Yeah, he had to be worried about what that polygraph test would reveal in relation to the Cowdens if he was willing to go back to prison over it. Yeah, because we see time and time again, you know, most people are willing to do anything, including committing very serious crimes just to avoid going back to prison. And here, all you have to do is take a test, a polygraph. So I think that it tells you something. Now, does it mean conclusively that he was the killer? No, absolutely not.

But when you put all these things together, it's pretty easy to see why many people point to Dwayne Little. as the most probable suspect. In 1976, another inmate who was housed with Little contacted authorities to tell them that Little had confessed to him that he had killed the Calden family. Most jailhouse informants aren't believed, but this one not only passed a polygraph test, but he also offered to lead investigators to a hidden stash of weapons that were going to be used in an upcoming prison break.

This would obviously come at a great risk to the inmate who would be trapped with the men he snitched on. There was really no reason for him to lie. Authorities expected to be able to take this new information to a grand jury in Jackson County and hoped that they would return an indictment so that little could be arrested in charge with the Caldon family murders. It's unclear whether no indictment was returned or, or whether the case was ever even presented to a grand jury,

but Little was never charged with the four Calden family murders. On April 26, 1977, Duane Little was granted parole again. Little got married in 1975 and would live with his wife and her family in Hillsborough, Oregon, where he had a job lined up at a potato chip factory. So, you know, I want to take a step back here, Morph. And we talked about, you know, Dwayne refusing to take the polygraph. Well, it turns out that he didn't even do two more years in jail. So was it that bad of an idea not to take the polygraph? This is assuming that, you know, he was guilty. He was involved in the murders. And then the other thing is that he gets married in prison. He comes out after.

parole with a wife, a place to live, and a job. This guy seemingly had no problem finding job. It seems like a perfect opportunity to have a second chance and get back on the right track. And it seemed he really dodged a bullet in not being indicted by this grand jury they were trying to set up because he easily could have been, you know, battling a murder charge had that happened. And that takes me back to my original.

question, which was maybe it was smarter than we originally thought, not to take the polygraph test. The one thing I wonder is if Dwayne Little himself decided not to take that polygraph or if he was given that advice by another inmate or his attorney, either way it seemed to have been to his benefit not to take that polygraph. Yeah, it absolutely does. And I thought that he was really, you know, taking a big chance. But, okay, less than two years, additional in prison. Maybe it did really work out in his favor. On June 2nd, 1980, a 23-year-old woman given the pseudonym Margie Hunter in Annal's book was experiencing car trouble.

She was broken down on the side of the road near Portland when Dwayne Little spotted her. Margie, who was pregnant at the time, gratefully accepted his help and his offer of a ride. They were both living in Tigard, Oregon at the time. When she was inside his vehicle, Little attacked her, beating her, and attempted sexually assault her. He also had a knife which he used to cut her arms and legs during the attack, but she was able to escape him by jumping from the moving car. She survived the jump and the fall down the embankment on the side of the highway. Her unborn baby also survived the ordeal.

She was able to go for help and report the attack to police. Thankfully, Margie was also able to identify her attacker. Dwayne Little was arrested in charge with attempted murder. And this is one thing that I wanted to touch on, but I wanted to wait till we got to this point. You know, we kept talking about, you know, people saying that Dwayne Little was a model inmate. And maybe he was. But maybe that's because, you know, there was nothing for him to really do in prison. And by that, I mean, you know, he wouldn't have had the opportunity.

to attack or sexually assault any women in prison. And so therefore, what was he going to do? He could essentially be a model prisoner because there was no opportunity for him to get in trouble the way that he could on the outside, at least using his Emma of attacking women. But it does seem as though, you know, as soon as he gets out or not long after he gets out, he's back at it again. And we see that time and time again. And then the other thing that I was struck by was, and we talked about it just a little bit

earlier, right, someone having to make the decision, whether or not, you know, to fight. And in this case, this woman had to decide, do I jump out of this moving vehicle, knowing that, you know, that, I'm pregnant. And that's the decision she made. Thankfully, it worked out for her. She survived. Her unborn baby survived. These descriptions of people making the decision to fight or, you know, to jump out of a car. I mean, it gives me chills thinking what this woman went through and what she ultimately did to survive. It was later revealed that. that this attack on Margie Hunter may not have been completely random. Little may have been stalking Margie and waiting for a situation like this,

just waiting for her to be helpless and stranded so he could, quote, unquote, rescue her. A 1979 Christmas card from the company Margie worked at, Metalcraft, featured a photo of all of the company's employees. Standing directly next to Margie was Duane Little. investigators believe he'd become interested in her at work and began learning about her, including where she lived and would often drive. He apparently had no reason to be driving on Old Highway 99, the day Margie's car broke down. Dwayne Little was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years for kidnapping, 20 years for sexual assault,

and another 20 years for attempted murder. Each of the sentences carried a 10-year minimum. This time, Dwayne Little had to be sentenced. at 30 years minimum before he could hope to try and earn parole. At sentencing, the judge said sternly to Dwayne Little, two victims are enough, Mr. Little, and I'm not going to chance a third victim. It's not clear how many victims Little does actually have.

Many consider him the killer of the Cowden family, which would bring the known total of his victims to six, including Margie Hunter, who lived. But there could be more. When talking about Little to K-O-B-I-5 news, Detective Davis said, people's lives, other people's lives to him are absolutely of no concern. He wants what he wants. And if I have to kill her to get it, that's the way it is. At one point, Davis contacted convicted murderer Russell Obrimski, who was at the Oregon State

Penn with Little to see if he had heard anything or if he had any ideas on how to make Little talk about his crimes. Detective Davis said Obrimski was open about other things. But when I got to Duane Little, he says, you're wasting your time. Dwayne Little is going to say nothing to anybody. Never. He doesn't say nothing to nobody. Although Detective Davis, who retired in 1992, could never officially solve the Calden family murders, he never forgot about them, telling K-O-B-I-5, I am ashamed. I am sorry. The Calden family did not get justice. And I was a part of their not getting justice. And it haunts me. And I do think that, you know, this is pretty rough on a lot of investigators, a lot of detectives. I mean, Detective Davis is saying it here. He was ashamed. He was sorry.

This case haunted him. And I think that happens to a lot of people where, they firmly believe in their gut that they know who committed a murder, a sexual assault, whatever it may be, but they can never put together enough evidence. And, you know, ultimately the years go by, they retire, but the case never leaves them. That has to be really tough. And it's sad because it's not usually a lack of effort or putting in time or, you know, trying to build a case. It's just that one clue, that one smoking gun piece of evidence that you need to conclusively close the case. It just sometimes isn't there no matter how hard you look for it. But I don't know if you have many other professions where, you know, you'd kind of have that same

thing? Would you really be haunted by something that, you know, you weren't able to do at work? Most people would never experience that. But I think detectives, investigators, they do. It appears that Dwayne Lee Little is still alive and being held at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He will turn 76 this year. Although most people believe he did kill the Cowden family, as far as we know, there's no physical evidence connecting him to the murders. Back in the 1970s, police couldn't have known about DNA, so finding a fingerprint that matched or something else that connected Little to the crime scene would have been the best police could do at the time.

Perhaps a re-examination of the evidence in the case may officially close the case, and Dwayne Little, or whomever killed the Cowdens, can be exposed once and for all. The murders of the members of the Cowden family, Richard, Melissa, Belinda, and David, are still unsolved, and police consider it in an open and active case. if you have any information in the case, you can call the Jackson County Sheriff's Office at 541-776-7-206. So Morp as we wrap this one up, you know, going back to the crime scene or, you know, the crime that unfolded the murders of the Calden family, I can't help but think how awful it must have been in their final moment. You know, we don't have all the details, but

the fact that Richard was tied to a tree leads you to believe that he most likely had to witness some very awful things happening to members of his family. Yeah, and then to either be killed or left there just to die, you know, either way, just a terrible, terrible death after presumably seeing what he had to see. And there's no way for us to know for sure if Dwayne Little, was the culprit in the murders, but you would have to say that he makes for a very compelling

suspect, you know, given all the things that we talked about, his proximity to the campsite, his refusal to take a polygraph test and go back to prison. And then, you know, his M.O. And his track record, it's kind of hard not to think that, you know, he may have had something to do with it.

One thing that jumped out to me in this case was that whoever is responsible, Duane Little or anyone else, why they wouldn't take the money and the watch, Richard's watch was valuable, the result of cash, it was a pretty good amount. If you're going to go to the trouble of murdering this family, then why not take the cash and the jewelry that's laying right out in the open as well? So that makes it seem like, you know, something, other than robbery was the motive here and the person wasn't even concerned about financially benefiting. Yeah, that was my thought, you know, for some of these individuals, whether it's the sexual component to a crime or whatever it is they're getting out of the murders, does it almost cause them to not think about certain things?

Yeah, there's some money there. There's a nice watch, but that's not what, you know, I'm interested in at all. I'm here to do X. Now, X is terrible. We know that. But that's a thought that I have that they're so focused on that part, the part that they want to do, the part that they derive, whatever you want to call it, satisfaction, you know, whatever term I use sounds horrible. But there is something that these people are getting out of committing these awful acts. And then a little, you know, some money and a watch to them just doesn't really have anything to do with it. Maybe. Yeah, I just, I hope there's something left behind in the evidence that maybe fresh eyes, fresh technology, they can comb over that stuff, whatever they still have in evidence and look for clues, DNA, things that might point to somebody once and for all, whether it's Dwayne. little or anyone else, it would be nice to have a name after all this time. Even if that person's

dead or in prison for something else, it would be good to close the books on this case and know who was responsible. Yeah, I think that's what, you know, we're wanting to see in any of these unsolved cases that we do. Unfortunately, I think in some, it's much harder. Now, we know they had his blood at one time, but, you know, was it saved? Was it preserved? And what did they collect from the crime scene? You know, you said it. This goes way back before DNA. So at the time they were collecting things, they certainly weren't thinking about the technology that we have today and what it would be able to do. And unfortunately, I do think that's a large part of these much older cases. they didn't have the knowledge of what was to come.

So I think sometimes the collection techniques may have been lacking or obviously they're not this. They weren't the same as they would be today. And the things that they would collect and keep. You think about not being able to do anything with a piece of evidence. So was it even kept? because it may have had no value whatsoever at the time. Now, today it could be a gold mine of information,

but back then it could have essentially meant nothing. And then it comes down to even if its cap was properly stored, or did it degrade over time and it couldn't even be used today to look for evidence. Yeah, so a lot of hurdles, right, in some of these older cases for sure. And that's why they go so long without being solved. but I agree with you. Man, just to get a name, to get, you know, some finality in some of these cases. And we are getting them in a lot of cases.

It's amazing. But that's it for our episode on the Calden family murders. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends. that word of mouth about to criminology podcast really helps us out. If you want to find us on social media, run X with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast.

And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike. And morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.