Death Of A Landlord

[June 11th, 2008]

Plenty of people want to kill their landlord. Not many are accused of actually doing it, hacking him to pieces, offing a roommate at the same time, then dumping both bodies 30 miles away in the sticks.

But when police in 2006 found the bodies of landlord Francis Weber, 72, and David Copeland, 64, on the side of Highway 26 near the exit to Vernonia, a trail of evidence led them to the gray clapboard house in Southeast Portland the two victims shared with Frank Hudson.

Hudson, 64, is set to stand trial for the double murder starting June 16 in Multnomah County Circuit Court. The jury could choose the death penalty if it convicts him on multiple counts of aggravated murder and corpse mutilation.

Prosecutors still aren’t sure why Hudson allegedly killed both men. He has no prior criminal record. He claimed he’d recently landed a job at a home-remodeling company. And a rent receipt signed by his landlord on Nov. 4, 2006, the day before the bodies were found, was in Hudson’s wallet.

In letters to prosecutors from Inverness Jail, Hudson describes himself as the innocent victim of a “seemingly corrupt system.” In court filings, prosecutors say Hudson killed his landlord and Copeland, the roommate, “for reasons known only to him.”

On Nov. 5, 2006, neighbors along Highway 26 reported two bodies left overnight in a rural driveway just past the Vernonia exit.

Weber had been shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds. His legs and arms were chopped off, his body cut in half, three large pieces of skin were missing from his chest, and he was partially decapitated. Only his head and upper torso were in the driveway. Copeland’s body was next to Weber’s, with six gunshots and one stab wound.

Police found a bloody pair of jeans strewn along the highway with a spent bullet in the pocket, a pair of boxer shorts, bloody towels and a butcher knife. When Portland cops arrived at the house at 6738 SE 62nd Ave.—directly across from Brentwood Park—and ordered Hudson outside, he turned to lock the door behind him, saying, “Francis would kill me if I left it open.”

Inside police found high-velocity blood splatters by the front door and in an upstairs TV room, plus hair and blood in the bathtub. Weber’s maroon 2000 Ford Windstar van was parked less than a mile away, with Weber’s missing body parts wrapped in a comforter inside.

In court filings, prosecutors say Hudson killed both men and used Weber’s van to ditch the evidence on Highway 26. Hudson’s attorneys plan an alibi defense, claiming on the day of the murders their client was at a bar at Southeast 41st Avenue and Holgate Boulevard. The bar then was called Grandma’s Place but is now the Hutch.

Friends and family of the victims told police Weber took on roommates two years before, after his wife died. Weber was in poor health, used a walker and needed the extra money, they said. All three men shared the house.

Weber and Copeland got along fine, but Hudson had become a problem because he was late paying rent and “just sat around all day,” according to Weber’s family.

Hudson told the cops he last saw the victims on Nov. 3, 2006. But police found a fresh two-inch cut on Hudson’s left forearm and matching blood smears on the van’s armrest. DNA from the van and several items left along the highway matched Hudson and the victims. The gun was never found.

Hudson told police that years before, Weber had been attacked by Mexicans in Woodburn who had hung Weber beneath a bridge, castrated him and vowed to take further revenge someday. But Weber’s body had its genitals intact.

In court filings, prosecutor Pat Callahan says Hudson ditched the bodies then “tried to brazen it out with police by ignoring what blood spatter remained after his cleaning efforts, putting a bandage over his knife cut, and by telling police a tall tale designed to mislead them into looking for nonexistent Mexican mutilators in Woodburn.”

The trial is expected to last three to six weeks.