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On July 17, WW revealed that law enforcement officials suspect Jesse Lee Calhoun, 38, in the deaths of four women whose bodies were found in the Portland metro area this year. Making that report more explosive is the fact that Calhoun was one of 41 inmates whose sentences were commuted by former Gov. Kate Brown for fighting Oregon wildfires in 2021 (“Criminal History: Jesse Lee Calhoun,” WW, July 19). WW later broke the news that one of the women found dead this year, Amber Real, had filed a domestic violence and strangulation complaint against Calhoun four months before she went missing (see this story). Here’s what our readers had to say:
fifth_doctor, via wweek.com: “F*ck sake. Are there any agencies in this state that actually function?”
PacSanity, via Reddit: “Holy shit, our unhinged Redditors were right all along. They caught the Rip City Ripper.”
Diablo Jo, via the website formerly known as Twitter: “Sigh. The way this will be used by the right is already exhausting.”
Joshua Marquis, via wweek.com: “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Virtually any forensic psychiatrist or psychologist will attest to that.
“This guy has established himself as a dangerous, violent man. It does not take a fortune teller to have predicted he would do something violent. Clemency is supposed to be an extraordinary, rarely granted interference in the judicial process. “Kate Brown (and her allies) proved themselves to be allies of violent criminals, not victims or the general public.”
Roger Lindsley, via wweek.com: “His scheduled release date was July of 2022. The first woman was killed in February of 2023. Getting out 11 months early didn’t make him a serial killer. Just like 11 years of education didn’t make you good at deductive reasoning.”
TK, via wweek.com: “Kate Brown should have predicted this and given them all preemptive life sentences just in case something like this happened! I feel so empowered by this newfound righteousness I’m going to pretend to act incredulous by this lapse in foresight!”
Kanen McReynolds, via what was Twitter: “I would say on balance the release of prisoners with good behavior who did firefighting is a good thing. At the same time, already being the worst governor and now having six deaths indirectly on your hands…I hope she has a good foreign consulting job.”
globaljustin, via Reddit: “Everyone is wrong on this I’ve seen so far. Clemency didn’t cause this, two years wouldn’t have changed this person. “Weak sentencing is the actual problem here.
“Fifty months is just over four years, for a case where he resisted arrest and injured a cop and police dog….The problem is we let these horrible repeat offenders off with little time over and over and over and over. That’s the problem, we refuse to put the forever repeating offenders away for good.”
oatmeal_flakes, via Reddit: “We really just gift wrap material for Fox News.”
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