Robert King Must Now Win His Freedom in Two States

Robert King was convicted of murder conspiracies in two states, Washington and Oregon. But Washington paroled him in 1995, and he’s spent the past three decades trying to get the Oregon Board of Parole to do the same.

Now he’s back to square one.

Last week, Washington’s Indeterminate Sentence Review Board suspended King’s parole, citing “new information” received since December. He was convicted of two life sentences and later paroled in that state for robbery and a murder conspiracy, and is now serving a life sentence in Oregon for contracting the murder of a Lake Oswego woman, Julie Salter, in her home. Both crimes occurred in the early 1980s.

The Oregon parole board is holding a final “exit interview” tomorrow and is expected to decide soon whether to grant King’s release. If it does, Washington is demanding he be put right back behind bars, pending a hearing before the Washington board.

That reversal follows a January WW cover story outlining King’s crimes—and the stories of people who fear he might kill them too if he’s set free.

In recent weeks, the convicted murderer’s family has come out in protest of his plans to move back to Alabama. King has submitted a 1994 letter from his family promising him a job at the family law firm, signed by his father and two brothers. Now, the veracity of that letter is in dispute.

His two brothers who signed the letter, Daniel and Thomas, deny offering King a job and evidently fear for their safety if he returns.

King’s other brother, James, wrote a letter to the board saying King sent a man named Richard to kill him and his father in the late 1990s. That claim is backed up by another letter submitted to the board by the local sheriff.

Besides Alabama, King has offered to either go live with a close friend in Tennessee or stay in the Portland area. He’s submitted a letter from the Iron Tribe Network in Gladstone offering him a place to live at their “clean & sober housing.”