1888
The town is named for Israel F. Eddy, the postmaster in 1888.
about 0:06:27The story
Dorothy Ann Biggs was born in Minnesota in 1935 and became a registered nurse, graduating from the University of Oregon School of Nursing in Portland in 1972. By 1984 she was in her third marriage, to Dwight Biggs, and had two sons and three daughters of her own. In 1979 the family moved to Eddyville, a logging settlement of about 30 people in Lincoln County on Oregon's central coast, where Dorothy took over the Little Elk Store, the only shop for miles, and the family lived in the apartment above it. She also worked shifts at the New Lincoln Hospital and Care Center in Toledo and was known around the town as generous, extending credit to neighbours and taking in stray cats.
His teachers said his grades collapsed and his attitude changed, and a joint meeting with his mother ended with Dorothy blaming the school. He was pulled out at 16, sent to Portland to live with relatives, then to a drug rehabilitation programme in Eugene, which he kept running away from. Friends and neighbours described a sad, eager boy who wanted to be liked, who had bruises on his arms and lumps on his head that he said came from his mother, and who repeatedly said he wanted to kill her.
On 6 July 1984 a two-bedroom wooden house on the family's property behind the store burned down.
According to the account he eventually gave police, he followed her to the top of the stairs after she complained about loud music, kicked her down the stairs and then beat her with his fists, his feet and a baseball bat before strangling her. He said she kept telling him she loved him, and that he came to with his hands around her neck and squeezed until she stopped breathing. The two of them cleaned the blood in the apartment and on the bat and drove the body to a pull-off on US 20 near Klein Hills Summit, planning to send the car over the embankment with the accelerator weighted down. The car caught near the edge and stayed there.
A relative raised the alarm that afternoon when Dorothy could not be found at the store or the hospital, and the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department was called. In the early hours of 4 August a passing motorist found the car 15 feet from the drop, engine racing, with Dorothy dead in the driver's seat, her face battered and bloodied, her arms fastened under the seat belt and dressed in men's clothing that did not fit her. The autopsy found she had been strangled with a ligature about an inch and a half wide, after a sustained beating. Police said the death had happened at the store, not at the car.
Troy described the killing and his own part in moving the body. He was 17, 5 feet 11 and about 240 pounds.
In January 1985 Troy Biggs was placed on five years' probation for hindering prosecution, ordered to pay $585, do 200 hours of community service and work towards a GED. The prosecution called it a torture killing and sought aggravated murder.
Dorothy's store reopened in October 1984, run by her daughter Michelle Dempsey, Deborah Dempsey and Deborah Crawl. He had told each that the other woman in his wallet was his sister. The two became friends and went into business together.
In May 2020 he tested positive for COVID-19, described a burning in his lungs and hours of coughing before he was given medication, and testified before a federal judge as one of seven at-risk inmates suing the Oregon Department of Corrections and the governor.