The Woman Who Reported Jesse Calhoun to Police Before She Vanished

Tony Brueski (0:01)

Portland, Oregon, sells itself as one of the most livable cities in America. Green space, craft coffee, a progressive streak a mile wide. But Portland has another face. Tent cities along the Willamette River, an open-air drug market in the downtown core, and a growing population of women living on the streets who can disappear without anyone filing a report for weeks.

On February 19th, 2023, someone found a body in the woods in Pleasant Valley, a quiet neighborhood in southeast Portland. She was identified as KristinSmith, 22 from nearby Gresham. Her family had reported her missing two months earlier.

That was the first. Over the next three months, four more women's bodies turned up in rural, wooded locations, scattered across a hundred-mile radius, near state parks along creeks, in an abandoned barn across the state line in Washington. All young women, all left outdoors. And authorities would soon learn that even before KristinSmith was found, two more women had already vanished, and one of them had gone to the police with his name.

Jesse Lee Calhoun was born on March 19th, 1985

He grew up in Toutdale, a small city in Portland's eastern suburbs, along the Columbia River Gorge. He dropped out of high school before turning 18 His adult criminal record begins the same year. A third degree assault conviction in Baker County in 2003 More followed, harassment, theft, drug possession. In 2009, he went to prison on an assault conviction and served two years. In 2018, Moldmoth County deputies arrested him with methamphetamine, multiple firearms, and more than 500 rounds of ammunition. The Sheriff's Office publicly labeled him a prolific thief and career criminal. In 2019, he was convicted on four concurrent charges, unauthorized use of vehicles, first-degree burglary, assaulting a public safety officer and interfering with a law enforcement animal. During his arrest, he allegedly tried to choke a police canine. He was sentenced to 15 months.

The system knew JesseCalhoun well. Two decades of arrests, a documented escalation from theft to assault to weapons, and then something happened that put him back on the streets of Portland more than a year left on his sentence. In September 2020, Oregon suffered the worst wildfire season in its history. 700,000 acres burned. The state was overwhelmed. Oregon's Department of Corrections deployed inmates to fight the blazes, and JesseCalhoun was one of them.

On March 5, 2021, Governor Kate Brown issued conditional commutations for 41 of those inmate firefighters, cutting the final 12 months from their sentences. Record show Calhoun met the Department of Corrections and Department of Forestry Criteria for joining a fire crew. He had a record of good conduct while incarcerated. The Multnomah County DA's Office have been given the list of names for review, a process that normally takes a month. In this case, they had one week.

On July 22, 2021, Calhoun walked out of the Columbia River Correctional Institution. His original sentence would not have ended until June of 2022, 16 months later. Prosecutors allege the first woman died. Prosecutors allege Calhoun killed six women between November 2022 and April 2023 Their ages ranged from 22 to 32 Most were experiencing homelessness in or around the Portland metro area. According to documented NDA press conferences, this is the alleged timeline. Elizabeth Libby Gibson, 32, a Portland resident. Friends describe her as kind, creative and funny, someone who welcomed everyone with love. Prosecutors allege Calhoun killed her on November 18, 2022, making her the first alleged victim. A friend reported her missing in March of 23 Her body has never been recovered. She was not charged until September 16, 2026 And the charge is first-degree manslaughter, not murder, because prosecutors allege he recklessly caused her death under circumstances showing extreme indifference to human life. The lower charge reflects the evidentiary challenge of a case with no remains.

Then there's KristinSmith, 22 From Gresham, she went missing November 19, 2022 According to court documents, Calhoun killed her on or about November 20 Two days after Gibson allegedly died, part of her remains were found three months later in a field in southeastern Portland.

And then there's the detail that haunts this entire case. In November 2022, the same month Gibson and Smith allegedly died, 22-year-old Ashley Real showed up at her father's Portland home in Tears. According to her father, Jose Real, later told the Associated Press and the Oregonian she had marks on her throat. She told him Jesse Calhoun had choked her. Her father called the police. He took her to the hospital. A police report was filed. Then, the case was transferred to another jurisdiction, and according to law enforcement source cited by the Oregonian, it stalled there. No action was taken against Calhoun.

Ashley Real disappeared the following March. She would be found dead two months later.