1883
Ontario was founded in June 1883 by Bill Morfit, Mary Richardson, Daniel Smith and James Virtue, all developers rather than settlers.
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FILE 503 / 20 June 2024 / 166 MIN / full
We are in Ontario, Oregon, very far eastern Oregon, on the Idaho border, in Malheur County, which is spelled MALHEUR. about 0:05:56
Ontario was founded in June 1883 by Bill Morfit, Mary Richardson, Daniel Smith and James Virtue, all developers rather than settlers.
about 0:06:31In March 1984 Richard "Dick" Welch started a post office for the area, and it was named after Ontario in Canada.
about 0:06:53Two months later James Morton applied for a post office of his own about a mile away and wanted it called Morton.
about 0:07:09Gold miner and lumberman James Virtue bought a great deal more land, so his post office won the name.
about 0:07:22Ontario was founded in June 1883 by Bill Morfit, Mary Richardson, Daniel Smith and James Virtue, all developers rather than settlers.
about 0:06:31In March 1984 Richard "Dick" Welch started a post office for the area, and it was named after Ontario in Canada.
about 0:06:53Two months later James Morton applied for a post office of his own about a mile away and wanted it called Morton.
about 0:07:09Gold miner and lumberman James Virtue bought a great deal more land, so his post office won the name.
about 0:07:22Everyone knew the railroad was coming, so people wanted to move there.
about 0:07:40By the Second World War Ontario became a place for Japanese Americans moved inland from the west coast.
about 0:07:48Mayor Elmo Smith said it would be downright cowardly to take any other stand than to move Japanese aliens and nationals inland.
about 0:08:07There were about 134 people in the city then, and recruiting farm workers during the war pushed the number to about a thousand.
about 0:08:42The town motto is Where Oregon begins, because it sits right on the border.
about 0:06:2158%
Biggest faith: Catholic, 25.7%
about 0:13:37White 52.7% · Black 0.4% · Asian 2% · Hispanic 42.8%
Ethnicity can overlap race.Property crime
▼ two and a half times the average
Violent crime
▲ only slightly above the national average
Two-bedroom, one-bath trailer, 924 square feet
about 0:16:02Four-bedroom, three-bath house, 2,906 square feet
about 0:18:13"two and a half times the average"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:24:25
"only slightly above the national average"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2024 about 0:24:51
"11,465"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:59
"52.5%"
Comparison: "way out of whack of the normal". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:59
"about 34"
Comparison: "a little lower than normal". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:59
"52.7%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:59
"0.4%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:59
"2%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:27
"42.8%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:27
"58%"
Comparison: "way more than normal". Direction: above.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:37
"25.7%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:53
"second largest faith"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:56
"about average"
Comparison: "rest of the country". Direction: about the same.
As told in 2024 about 0:14:27
"$42,568 a year"
Comparison: "about $70,000 in the rest of the country". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:14:30
"80"
Comparison: "100 is regular on the scale". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:14:40
"$278,400"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:14:43
"$39,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:16:02
"$89,000"
Comparison: "after repair value of $210,000". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:17:51
"$430,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:18:13
3.3 / 5 · average of 3
“Grew up there all their life, prefers small rural towns, calls it comfortable and quiet, close to Boise and to camping, hiking and fishing; people keep to themselves but will help.”about 0:09:03
“Would plant more trees and get homeowners and businesses to take more pride in their yards; there is quite a bit of trash and litter, and they found a stranger in their backyard at 1 a.m. and now lock doors, windows and vehicles.”about 0:09:54
“Lived there all their life and has seen the crime rate go up; the prison has made it worse for people to live there and the local swimming pool has been closed for four years.”about 0:11:34
His mother, Linny Laverne Hendrix, was 21. In 1974, after about seven years of marriage, Linny decided to leave him. She was at a restaurant in Bend, Oregon, when he turned up in the parking lot and shot her in the chest with a .22 handgun.
As a teenager he ran over a neighbour's barking dog with a pickup truck and buried it in a single scoop of a post hole digger.
After high school he joined the Marines and spent three years in Guam as a military policeman, guarding a stockpile of nuclear weapons, earning two ribbons for good conduct. He said his best friend, another Marine called Michael, stepped on a land mine and was killed, a story he told repeatedly for years. He married Norma Jean Gogo in April 1988, left the service in 1989, was divorced, and moved to Oceanside, California.
There he met Rosa Carrasco, who was 23. Rosa found him handsome, charming, hard-working and sober, although he rarely spoke about his mother's murder. Their son Emilio was born in 1993. Eventually he left them and returned to Oregon to work as a truck driver.
She told her family that if she was not back in a couple of hours something was wrong. She got into his Dodge pickup with three-year-old Emilio. On the road he said, "change of plans", and drove 15 hours to his brother Monte's house in Baker City, Oregon. They stayed eight weeks in a rented trailer on the property. Rosa found a collection of newspaper clippings about men who killed their wives and got away with it. He took her and Emilio to a pay phone before sunrise and seemed to believe he was talking to his dead friend Michael. He became abusive, threatened her with a .22 rifle kept in the truck and once choked her.
Rosa planned an escape with her brother Javier for 26 March 1996. He pulled over; Rosa jumped out screaming, and he pointed the rifle at Emilio's head to make her get back in, then bound both their wrists to the seat belt and said that if she left him he was going out in a blaze of glory. At Monte's house Javier was waiting. After a ten-hour standoff his cousin, deputy Jim Hilderbrand, talked him down.
A state psychiatrist said he was merely depressed; a private psychologist said he heard his mother and his dead friend and probably had bipolar disorder.
There he settled in and became the hospital's contraband dealer, running loans and selling porn CD-ROMs. In 1999 he incited a riot. Within a month he was on conditional release again. He dated a fellow patient, Roberta Chandler, whose apartment burned down in a fire he blamed on a halogen lamp. By February 2005 there had been three more property fires, and later that year he served about 90 days for stealing $3,000 of scrap metal from a sawmill. He met Katy Gill at a welding class at Treasure Valley Community College, married her and had two children, then divorced. In spring 2009 his case worker supported a full discharge, but the board refused.
He then met Anita Harmon, a Walmart cashier, and pursued her through MySpace. She was born in 1976, had bipolar disorder and two children, and lived in an apartment her parents had built on their property in Weiser, Idaho. They ran a scrap metal business, Northwest Materials Management Services. In August 2010 the Hypel family hired them to clear metal in Grant County, and the Hypels later said they had been cheated out of about $13,693, with roughly 250 tons removed and less than half accounted for.
The board discharged him.
Anita, meanwhile, had found a medication that worked and was doing well. They argued on the plant floor, where he threatened to release sexual videos of her, and she went to human resources and asked not to be put on his shift. They met at McDonald's on 30 December 2016 and it did not go well. He was living at Monte's house in Emmett, Idaho, and staying with a new girlfriend, Nicole Prill. On 8 January 2017 he changed his Facebook status to "in a relationship" and wrote to a friend, "time to enjoy life and be happy". He had not been sleeping well since Christmas.
At about 4 a.m. on 9 January 2017 he told Nicole he was going to Monte's and drove off. At about 5.30 a.m. a neighbour saw the truck parked on a side street. Anita's Toyota 4Runner was later found in the middle of the road half a mile from her home, headlights on and keys in the ignition. The attendant, 70-year-old Vietnam veteran Michael McIntyre, saw Anita with her wrists bound to the seat belt with zip ties and had the clerk call the police. He got the door shut, drove through a snowbank and headed into Ontario.
A patrol car saw him pass an intersection at a normal speed near Rusty's Pancake and Steak House. He turned onto a two-lane highway and accelerated to 90 miles an hour on icy roads, phoning Nicole to say he had hurt Nita pretty bad. A Ford Excursion coming the other way was driven by David Bates, 38, with his wife Jessica; both worked at St. Alphonsus Medical Center and had decided to drive together because of the snow. David was killed at the scene. Jessica survived with a concussion, three broken ribs, a fractured hand, a collapsed lung and brain damage.
A search of the truck found latex gloves, zip ties, duct tape, rope, binoculars and the bloody knife. On 20 June 2017 he was sent to the state hospital for a fitness assessment. Dr Octavio Choy interviewed him for six hours and found he had exaggerated his impairment. On 11 January 2018 a judge found him unable to aid and assist and sent him to the hospital. On 19 December 2018 the hospital reported him fit, and in January 2019 the judge agreed.
January 2017 / St. Clair gas station in Ontario, Oregon, and a two-lane highway outside Ontario
As told in the episode, on 20 June 2024.
Accused
March 1996 / a parking lot in Oceanside, California, and Monte Montwheeler's house in Baker City, Oregon
As told in the episode, on 20 June 2024.
Accused
1974 / a restaurant parking lot in Bend, Oregon
As told in the episode, on 20 June 2024.
Accused
Public places are marked on the map.
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