Into Thin Air

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Speaker 16 It was evening, dark and cold, in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, when the call came into Dispatch, a mother reporting a missing daughter.

Speaker 13 Oh, there's an adult or child, a child. Okay, that's her runaway.
I want to think a little bit different.

Speaker 19 Strange, the immediate assumption a 12-year-old must be a runaway.

Speaker 1 So began the long, strange tale of what happened to Ashley Pond.

Speaker 13 Okay, we've got an officer on its way out there.

Speaker 18 Not with a bang, but a whimper, as it dawned on a young mother what terrors could lie ahead.

Speaker 22 Let me have my baby back.

Speaker 24 Lori Pond's daughter, Ashley, had simply vanished.

Speaker 4 Gone,

Speaker 17 or so it seemed, on her way to school in the town of Oregon City, January 2002.

Speaker 26 It was very upsetting. A 12-year-old child had disappeared.

Speaker 26 You know, this is a child.

Speaker 5 Linda O'Neill is a member of Ashley's extended blended family.

Speaker 19 Linda's husband was once married to Ashley's grandmother.

Speaker 3 Not exactly a close relationship, but Linda certainly knew about Ashley.

Speaker 29 How would you describe her as a little girl?

Speaker 26 She was kind of known as having an attitude.

Speaker 6 But Linda was not just family.

Speaker 30 She was also a licensed private investigator.

Speaker 1 And in those first days, her experience told her Ashley was probably okay.

Speaker 26 My first thought would would have been that she probably ran away.

Speaker 11 Police in Oregon City apparently agreed.

Speaker 28 But then a whole week went by.

Speaker 17 No sign of Ashley anywhere.

Speaker 19 Runaways inevitably contact someone.

Speaker 7 She didn't.

Speaker 11 And so now local officials thinking abduction called in the FBI.

Speaker 34 One of the problems with the case is that there was

Speaker 34 a wealth of suspects.

Speaker 10 Jim Redden is a veteran crime reporter who worked at the Portland Tribune at the time.

Speaker 2 Ashley, he soon learned, had disappeared from an apartment complex that was a mulligan stew of troubled souls.

Speaker 34 It had a lot of welfare cases. It had a number of mentally ill people that would be placed there by the county, a lot of single mothers who attracted a lot of really bad boyfriends.

Speaker 3 In fact, police searching for suspects found no fewer than 90 sex offenders living within a mile of the complex.

Speaker 31 One possible suspect was Ashley's own biological father.

Speaker 23 He had been convicted of sexually abusing her during one of her visits.

Speaker 29 Had he taken her?

Speaker 3 And if not him, who?

Speaker 32 As weeks passed, a terrible realization began to set in around town.

Speaker 14 Ashley's little group of best friends knew it.

Speaker 23 Everybody seemed to sense it. Something awful had happened to Ashley.

Speaker 38 It's really hard to believe that Havana friends or something.

Speaker 36 Her name is Miranda.

Speaker 7 As she spoke to a television reporter from KATU-TV in Portland, she had no way of knowing that fate had its eye on her, too.

Speaker 40 In the weeks that followed, the task force would chase hundreds of leads.

Speaker 10 They would, according to newspaper reports, watch Ashley's mother and her mom's boyfriend.

Speaker 18 Investigators even began tailing a couple of male neighbors from the apartments.

Speaker 27 No one, it seemed, knew anything.

Speaker 24 It was as if Ashley Pond had disappeared into thin air.

Speaker 31 And then, two months after Ashley disappeared, this girl, yes, the one interviewed earlier, the girl named Miranda, unbelievably, turned up missing too.

Speaker 19 Two girls from the same apartment complex, the same school, even the same dance team, vanished within eight weeks of one another.

Speaker 26 When the second girl disappeared, it caused panic, absolute panic. They were afraid that there was a serial killer among them.

Speaker 17 In a suburb of Portland, Oregon, everyone could feel the chill. The disappearance of 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis was a sickening reminder of the way 12-year-old Ashley Pond vanished two months before.

Speaker 33 Now the FBI ramped up its investigation and called in scores of agents.

Speaker 17 Soon, more than 60 of them were working on the case.

Speaker 40 A true task force assigned to find the answers about Ashley and Miranda.

Speaker 19 Linda began to turn down other work to work on this case full-time.

Speaker 2 A little crazy maybe given the size of the official investigation, but remember, Linda felt a real family connection with Ashley.

Speaker 14 This was personal.

Speaker 42 What made you think that you could help solve this crime?

Speaker 26 The FBI would say we have no suspects, we have no crime scene, and we have no

Speaker 26 clues.

Speaker 26 So it appeared that they needed a little help.

Speaker 8 But where to start?

Speaker 32 Suspects were no problem.

Speaker 5 Narrowing it down was.

Speaker 19 Some on the list, a former neighbor on the wrong end of a restraining order taken out by an ex-girlfriend.

Speaker 17 Miranda's father, once convicted of abusing two minor girls.

Speaker 16 And that was just for starters. So Linda decided to start with a name she'd heard from Ashley's aunt.

Speaker 26 I asked, who are the people in Ashley's life? And she told me about Ward Weaver.

Speaker 17 Ward Weaver was a neighbor, a family friend, whose home was right next to the apartment complex in which which Ashley and her mother lived.

Speaker 14 Weaver did have a criminal record for assault, but it had been 16 years before.

Speaker 32 Now he seemed like a hard-working single father raising a daughter, Ashley's age.

Speaker 23 And police had already checked out his alibi and sent several teams of officers and dogs to search his house and property and found nothing.

Speaker 1 And after all, there were so many suspects.

Speaker 42 Why would Ward Weaver stand out in that group?

Speaker 26 Because Ashley had complained that he had sexually molested her.

Speaker 27 And yet, as Linda learned, those allegations had apparently been investigated and no charges had been filed.

Speaker 17 But she decided to run a computer check on Weaver, and she was stunned.

Speaker 26 I get this information: Ward Weaver is on death row.

Speaker 20 Death Row?

Speaker 45 Yes. But you've got Ward Weaver in your town.

Speaker 26 This fellow on death row for serial murder was Ward Weaver's father.

Speaker 7 Strange, but true.

Speaker 17 Weaver's father had been on California's death row for two decades.

Speaker 16 But surely, just having a father who was a killer wasn't reason enough to suspect the son, was it?

Speaker 17 Then, just about the time Linda was contemplating that question, a second private investigator offered to help.

Speaker 45 This all work, right?

Speaker 1 Harry Oakes is a bit of a maverick.

Speaker 8 He runs a for-profit search and rescue center.

Speaker 5 At the time, his partner was a 12-year-old pound-rescued mutt named Valerie.

Speaker 33 Many police departments don't like him, said Harry.

Speaker 8 Don't use him.

Speaker 39 But in this case, he waived his fee, did some background work, showed Valerie some of Ashley's clothing, and went to work.

Speaker 49 A track led from the apartment complex up the road, the staircase, to Ward's property.

Speaker 21 That name again, Ward.

Speaker 41 Ward Weaver.

Speaker 44 Go to work.

Speaker 19 Harry, with his Valerie now excited and on the chase, knocked at Weaver's door and asked for permission to search the house.

Speaker 49 He said, I don't have any problem with you searching. They've already brought in seven different search dog teams.
I have nothing to hide.

Speaker 49 During the search of the house, she gave me a death alert on Ashley's scent in Ward's hallway.

Speaker 45 Did a Valerie alert anywhere else?

Speaker 49 Yes, when we went outside to the back area,

Speaker 49 there was a slab that had been poured.

Speaker 28 Concrete slab?

Speaker 20 Concrete slab.

Speaker 49 Where the slab met with the grass, the dirt, where they came together, My dog was smelling Ashley's scent coming out of there.

Speaker 42 Did you call 911?

Speaker 49 I made a report and turned it into Oregon City Police Department.

Speaker 15 A record of Harry's report shows it was indeed turned into police on March 20th, less than two weeks after Miranda disappeared.

Speaker 18 Was there any reaction from the police?

Speaker 49 They basically ignored us.

Speaker 18 What about the FBI?

Speaker 49 Ignored us.

Speaker 16 But not long after, Harry's report found its way to the desk of Private Eye, Linda O'Neill.

Speaker 25 What did his report say to you as an investigator?

Speaker 26 It said Red Flag, his dog, had alerted a death alert over a freshly poured concrete slab in our Ward Weaver's backyard.

Speaker 23 And something about that slab resonated with Linda.

Speaker 5 Remember when she was digging into the background of Ward Weaver's father, the serial killer on death row?

Speaker 27 She found out what he had done with one of his victims.

Speaker 26 Buried her in the middle of his backyard and then covered it with concrete.

Speaker 8 A concrete slab?

Speaker 26 Yes, a concrete slab.

Speaker 51 And Linda's suspicions were about to grow.

Speaker 45 Over the next few weeks, teachers, dance coaches, even Weaver's ex-wives would tell her stories of disturbing and inappropriate behavior.

Speaker 45 There was the teacher who saw Weaver drop Ashley off at school, and here was this man in his late 30s locked in a passionate kiss with 12-year-old Ashley.

Speaker 45 There was the family friend who said Ashley spent weeks at a time at Weaver's house, often sleeping in his bed with him.

Speaker 45 There was the girlfriend who said that Weaver was angry with Miranda because she had been telling girls in the neighborhood, stay away from Weaver's house. He might molest you.

Speaker 17 By June, Ashley, now gone six months and Miranda three months.

Speaker 40 The story had hit the cover of People magazine.

Speaker 28 But it seemed to reporters that the FBI wasn't anywhere close to closing the case.

Speaker 34 It was very much, we have a range of suspects, maybe six to eight different men. The entire impression that I got was that they had not, in fact, focused on any particular individual.

Speaker 18 The reporter didn't know it, but he was about to play a key role in the case.

Speaker 11 And Linda O'Neill says she was about to get the scare of her life, returning home one day to see see her son working on his car with a stranger.

Speaker 26 I came face to face with Word Weaver.

Speaker 18 He's with your son.

Speaker 26 He's with my son. What did he say to you? He said, kids are so naive, aren't they? And I said, Mr.
Weaver, I don't think that my family is any of your business.

Speaker 26 And he said,

Speaker 26 Ms. O'Neill,

Speaker 26 that's what I came here to tell you.

Speaker 26 I dug out my gun and loaded it and put it in my purse.

Speaker 42 Did you really think he might be coming after you or your family?

Speaker 26 I thought that he was capable of anything.

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Speaker 17 By June 2002, Ashley Pond had been missing for six months, Miranda Gaddis for three.

Speaker 28 All of Oregon City seemed to be clinging to faint hope.

Speaker 23 Their dance team.

Speaker 45 We love them. We're praying for them all the time.

Speaker 5 Their mothers.

Speaker 53 I mean, we can't wrap our arms around them.

Speaker 53 I mean, whoever did this took that away from us. And hopefully they're going to give our babies back so we can do that again.

Speaker 18 FBI canines were dispatched once again to sniff around the apartment complex where the girls lived.

Speaker 4 even around Weaver's house, but apparently found nothing.

Speaker 19 An FBI spokeswoman continued to insist the agency had no suspects and virtually no clues.

Speaker 31 But this private eye disagreed.

Speaker 42 She must have been going nuts.

Speaker 26 I couldn't think of anything else.

Speaker 17 Remember, Linda O'Neill was part of Ashley's extended family and had been working the case for months.

Speaker 17 And she believed the FBI should by now have focused on Ward Weaver, a 39-year-old single father who lived in a house near the apartments.

Speaker 26 I was getting very upset and nervous about what was going to happen next. Who was going to be next?

Speaker 27 Linda thought it was time to take what she knew to the FBI.

Speaker 42 Did the FBI understand that you were a recognized private investigator who was calling them?

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 37 What did he say to you?

Speaker 26 He said, we really don't need help from private investigators. You know,

Speaker 26 we're the FBI. We really don't think that Ward Weaver is a suspect.

Speaker 27 We don't think Ward Weaver is a suspect?

Speaker 26 Something like that.

Speaker 42 How did you feel when you got off the phone?

Speaker 26 Devastated.

Speaker 1 More on the FBI's version of that phone call later.

Speaker 10 Still, whatever happened on that call got Linda so mad, so angry, and so hurt that she got in touch with reporter Jim Redden.

Speaker 34 She thought that she had legitimate information that they should be interested in and they weren't responding the way she thought they should.

Speaker 6 They'd kind of blown her off.

Speaker 20 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 34 She said, have you ever heard of Ward Weaver? And at that point, I had not heard of Ward Weaver.

Speaker 51 The private eye and the reporter came up with an idea. What about an interview with Ward Weaver?

Speaker 51 And so one Sunday morning the reporter got up early and drove over to Weaver's house and knocked on the door and wonder of wonders, Weaver invited him in for an interview that would lift law enforcement's shroud of secrecy on the case and put one name in the spotlight for the very first time.

Speaker 25 Did he seem to you at all like a potentially a sociopathic killer?

Speaker 34 He really seemed like a very normal kind of guy. The more he talked, the more nervous he got.
And that's when he said, I'm the FBI's prime suspect.

Speaker 44 What was your feeling as you sat there talking to the man?

Speaker 34 Well, he was coming across to me as sort of honest and candid.

Speaker 17 The reporter's gut feeling.

Speaker 3 Put Linda back on her heels.

Speaker 26 Jim Redden said to me, you know, he seems like an okay guy.

Speaker 18 Maybe you were the crazy one.

Speaker 26 Sardiv was looking that way.

Speaker 31 But the reporter wrote the article, putting Ward Weaver's name in print for the first time.

Speaker 17 Weaver was now the center of attention, and he seemed to be enjoying it.

Speaker 45 And just days later, what did local police and the FBI do?

Speaker 45 They launched a huge raid, executing a search warrant, towing away vehicles that might contain suspicious materials, and informing the target of all this attention that he had failed a polygraph test.

Speaker 45 The surprise?

Speaker 45 Well, the surprise was in the man's name.

Speaker 20 It was not Ward Weaver.

Speaker 55 They started saying, you know,

Speaker 55 I'm the number one suspect and, you know,

Speaker 55 they think that I did it.

Speaker 4 Another prime suspect?

Speaker 33 A neighbor of the girls, who denied any role in the murders, said he had been interviewed five or six times, questioned about a camping trip he took the day Miranda disappeared, and his friends had been warned stay away from him what no one knew is that the big break was about to occur and it would come not from the FBI task force or from local police but from a woman a teenager at the time who'd never before spoken about what happened to her or how she somehow found the strength to survive

Speaker 36 By August 2002, seven months had passed since Ashley Pond disappeared, more than four months since Miranda Gaddis vanished, and still Oregon City police and the FBI appeared to the public to be no closer to an arrest, even though neighbor Ward Weaver had told whoever would listen that he was the prime suspect.

Speaker 2 And though Ashley's step-grandmother Linda O'Neill firmly believed there was enough probable cause to search his property for the two bodies, police did not appear to her to be interested.

Speaker 1 No search warrant was asked for or issued.

Speaker 2 By early August, Linda learned Weaver had apparently had enough media attention.

Speaker 26 He told people he was going to Mexico or Idaho. He had emptied his entire house of all of his possessions.

Speaker 5 But with his house empty and apparently ready to move out of Oregon, Ward Weaver made a move that mystified everybody involved.

Speaker 53 He was a nice person to be around. He fooled people, I guess.

Speaker 5 That's the voice of Randy O'Nida, who was the girlfriend of Ward Weaver's son, the mother of Ward's grandchild.

Speaker 48 When we spoke to her, she had never before revealed publicly what happened that day in August 2002 when, at the age of 19, she got in the car with Weaver, a man she assumed she could trust.

Speaker 53 All the way to his house, he wasn't acting different.

Speaker 42 And then you walked into the house.

Speaker 53 That's when he snapped. That's when I noticed a different face.

Speaker 43 He threw her to the floor, tore off her clothing, and raped her.

Speaker 52 She couldn't talk about the worst of it, she said.

Speaker 19 And her body seemed to stiffen at the memory.

Speaker 5 Do you remember the look in his eye?

Speaker 53 He was possessed. It wasn't him.
It looked like Satan was inside of him, but the second he stood up off of me, his like face went back to normal.

Speaker 42 And then you ran.

Speaker 53 Yeah, I had pushed him with my feet, pushed him back, and I ran.

Speaker 2 On the way out, she grabbed a tarp covering the concrete slab in Ward's backyard, and then she ran, naked and trembling, after a savage sexual assault, into the street, where she flagged down a passing car.

Speaker 2 And within hours, Ward Weaver was arrested, booked, and behind bars, charged with rape.

Speaker 28 Mr.

Speaker 50 Weaver, you have any knowledge about the disappearance of Ashley or Miranda?

Speaker 34 That was the moment that I really thought this is the guy.

Speaker 17 Linda O'Neill says she'd known it for months, known in her gut that Weaver was a violent man who'd killed Ashley and Miranda.

Speaker 30 And they had him in custody now for a violent rape, so she felt sure the FBI would move quickly to charge him in the disappearance of Ashley and Miranda.

Speaker 27 Well, once he was in custody, was a search warrant issued for his property?

Speaker 26 There was a search conducted that had everything to do with the rape, with the crime that had occurred that day. But then they took down the yellow crime tape and they left.

Speaker 41 And without crime scene tape or a steady police presence, Weaver's house became kind of an open house.

Speaker 28 After weeks of people seeing Weaver's name in the papers, of seeing him on the news, sitting near that freshly poured concrete slab, and hearing of his arrest for rape, many of the locals had come to the same conclusion as Linda.

Speaker 32 What was the FBI waiting for?

Speaker 20 I'm out here to say they should dig it up.

Speaker 9 In mid-August, in the days after Ward was arrested for raping his son's girlfriend, protesters gathered at the property and left their accusing signs lying around the unexamined backyard.

Speaker 42 Find those girls.

Speaker 26 They may not be there. Prove us wrong.

Speaker 6 How long was it between the time Ward Weaver was arrested and the time somebody got a search warrant to look into his property?

Speaker 26 Well, he was arrested August 13th,

Speaker 26 and it was August 23rd when they got the search warrant.

Speaker 11 Then, with crowds gathering again as if they knew what was to come, the FBI showed up in force, erecting two white tents, bringing in dozens of agents, tons of equipment.

Speaker 31 And hours later, the first discovery, a box in a shed behind the house.

Speaker 57 The Oregon State Medical Examiner has positively identified the remains discovered as the body of Miranda Gaddis.

Speaker 14 The following day, another vigil, another discovery.

Speaker 17 Investigators finally dug up that concrete slab.

Speaker 37 the very spot at which that search dog had issued a death alert five months before.

Speaker 17 And there beneath it, they found another body.

Speaker 45 These remains have been identified through dental records as those of Ashley Pond.

Speaker 26 It was very sad news because I think you always hope

Speaker 26 until there's a body, you always have hope.

Speaker 26 And even though I always believed the bodies were there, the reality of it was difficult.

Speaker 26 These two beautiful young girls

Speaker 26 were gone forever.

Speaker 39 During all those days, weeks, months of anxiety and hope, the long investigation, the scores of officers, the bodies of two little girls were right there all along in Ward Weaver's backyard.

Speaker 31 And Weaver himself, at first, he claimed he had not a thing to do with it.

Speaker 12 I personally have no clue how she got there.

Speaker 39 In the end, Ward Weaver, without explaining how or why, simply pleaded guilty and was sentenced to remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Speaker 54 I think everyone probably shares in the hope that there is a special place in hell for people like you.

Speaker 5 How could Ward Weaver have gotten away with it so long?

Speaker 37 And how could the FBI have seemed so well off? Especially when others seemed to have figured it all out so neatly.

Speaker 23 So there was sadness, yes, for the loss of those two girls, but also now anger.

Speaker 34 Her headline was, why did it take so long? And that was the question that we were trying to get answered.

Speaker 1 Although there's no evidence that a faster investigation might have saved Ashley or Miranda, the question remained.

Speaker 17 What about Randy, the young woman whose presence of mind and physical strength in the face of rape and maybe something worse saved her own life?

Speaker 42 You know better than anybody else on earth what Ashley and Miranda went through, don't you?

Speaker 28 If you hadn't had the abilities you had, what would have happened to you?

Speaker 53 That would be exactly where Ashley and Miranda are.

Speaker 20 Are you angry?

Speaker 53 Yeah, I'm very angry.

Speaker 42 What does that anger feel like?

Speaker 53 It's anger, frustration that, you know, this happened to me. It could have been stopped.
I really believe that it could have been stopped.

Speaker 52 Who could have prevented it?

Speaker 53 I think the FBI, the Oregon City Police.

Speaker 26 If they were watching Ward Weaver,

Speaker 26 how did he move all all of his possessions out of his house, give notice,

Speaker 26 and rape and almost kill one more girl?

Speaker 35 How, indeed?

Speaker 33 We wondered how the police and the FBI would respond to allegations that they had taken too long or bungled their investigation.

Speaker 41 What could they say to Randy Oneida?

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Speaker 19 After all the waiting, the investigating, the discovery of the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, and the arrest and conviction of their killer, Ward Weaver.

Speaker 17 That's when the questions really began. A question splashed in a banner headline.

Speaker 19 Why exactly had it taken so long?

Speaker 18 Police and the FBI agreed to answer their Portland critics.

Speaker 19 Were they, in some way, ashamed of their investigation?

Speaker 17 Well, as a matter of fact, absolutely not.

Speaker 61 This was a very, very successful investigation.

Speaker 18 Robert Jordan was special agent in charge of the FBI's office in Portland when we sat down with him.

Speaker 39 He came to Portland after the murders were solved. Gordon Harris was the chief of the Oregon City Police Department at the time.

Speaker 41 Their two agencies made up the task force on this case, and they bristled at suggestions that they didn't move as quickly as they should have.

Speaker 49 The investigators involved were driven to solve that case.

Speaker 56 They put their heart and soul in that case. They would have arrested someone just as soon as they had probable cause to make an arrest in that case.

Speaker 51 There are those who believe, though, that probable cause existed long before the rape of Randy O'Neill.

Speaker 61 People who are not associated with the investigation.

Speaker 36 People like Linda O'Neill, who later co-wrote a book detailing her investigation called Missing the Oregon City Girls.

Speaker 37 Remember, it was Linda who said she called the FBI in June 2002, two months before Weaver's arrest, to outline what she said was solid circumstantial evidence that Weaver was the killer and that the girls' bodies were buried on his property.

Speaker 1 Information, it turned out that was true.

Speaker 7 Linda said the FBI agents he spoke to wasn't interested in her opinion, and reporter Jim Redden confirmed Linda told him the same story.

Speaker 2 But the head of Portland's office told Dateline no record of such a call exists.

Speaker 61 The first

Speaker 61 and only documented contact our investigators had with the author

Speaker 61 was

Speaker 61 in March,

Speaker 61 March 27th, and she said that she had a tip she wanted to pass on.

Speaker 61 The tip was a psychic tip, and that is the only documented contact this investigation had with the author.

Speaker 33 But we wondered, could an agent have spoken to Linda, heard her allegations about Ward Weaver, without keeping a full record of the call?

Speaker 56 Absolutely.

Speaker 61 We had over 4,000 tips that came into us. But, yet, many people wanted to tell us Ward Weaver did it.

Speaker 61 But all those people were interviewed, and none of those interviews provided us with a witness or something we could put in an affidavit for probable cause to arrest Mr. Weaver or search his property.

Speaker 6 The FBI said Weaver was always among the top three suspects, especially after flunking a polygraph.

Speaker 61 Our polygrapher followed him out to his car, literally haranguing him, trying to get him to confess, and he wouldn't. Now, this is the United States of America.

Speaker 61 We don't have any physical ways to make somebody confess.

Speaker 2 And so the investigation continued, said police, until Weaver was arrested for raping Randy O'Nida.

Speaker 2 And Weaver's own sons came forward with incriminating information that allowed prosecutors and the task force to agree that finally, 10 days after the arrest, they now had probable cause to search his property.

Speaker 61 We were working an investigation to try to, A, find the girls, and if we couldn't find them safe and alive, find out who did it. And we did that.
That's a successful investigation.

Speaker 18 Is that what you'd say to Randy Onita?

Speaker 61 No, I don't think I'd say that to Randy Onita.

Speaker 25 What would you say to her?

Speaker 61 Well, she was at risk. There's no question about it.
She was at risk from Ward Weaver.

Speaker 20 And as for Linda and her book, the task force came out swinging.

Speaker 16 The FBI saying the book was not credible and pointing to an author's note that tells of reconstructed conversations, composites of characters, and the fact that some names have been changed.

Speaker 61 The book is fictionalized in some manner.

Speaker 34 So

Speaker 61 what's fiction, what's real? It's hard to say.

Speaker 26 Well, I was offended.

Speaker 43 Linda said she made it quite clear that while some names and narrative details were altered, her story is a true telling of events from her own perspective.

Speaker 25 Did they have some point that it's easy for you to say we could have moved quicker, but you weren't part of the investigation, so how would you know what went on?

Speaker 26 I wasn't part of their investigation. I was on my own conducting my own investigation, and all I know is what I did and what I found out.

Speaker 4 We contacted Ashley Pond's mother for comment on our original report.

Speaker 36 She said that she will be forever grateful to the FBI and all the police agencies who worked on the case and that any criticism of their efforts is unfair.

Speaker 35 So, should Ward Weaver have been stopped sooner than he was?

Speaker 48 The question for Randy Oneida was altogether too personal.

Speaker 9 What has he done to you?

Speaker 53 He's ruined me. I really believe that they could have stopped him before he gone as far as he did.

Speaker 32 Around Oregon City, Oregon, the disconnect has lingered.

Speaker 35 Bitterness among some who believe it took too long to solve the murder of two little girls. And among police, satisfaction for a job well done.

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