Paper Says Deputies Find 2 More Bodies

Two more bodies have been found in the investigation into the killing of a 6-year-old boy, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The bodies were found Saturday 300 to 400 yards from where the body of Gaylen Michael of Hermiston, Ore., was buried a few miles west of this Columbia River town, the Tri-City Herald said.

Benton County Sheriff Jim Kennedy, Coroner Floyd Johnson, and Prosecutor Andy Miller all refused to comment on the newspaper report, which quoted an anonymous law enforcement source.

“The only thing I can tell you is this: We have no comment other than the one little boy. That’s the only one, the only thing we can talk about,” Kennedy said.

Ernest Lee Taber, 70, of Pendleton, Ore., is being held for investigation in the boy’s death. His sister and legal guardian, Marie Hayes, told the newspaper that Taber was questioned by police several years ago in the disappearance of a woman and her son.

Hayes described her brother as mentally retarded and illiterate.

Undersheriff Bill Morey said Taber admitted killing the boy, possibly in a fit of rage, and burying his body in a shallow grave along the river about 20 miles south of the Tri-Cities.

Taber, who apparently had befriended the boy and his mother, Tamara Michael, 30, led authorities to the body late Friday, investigators said.

Sheriff’s investigators said Taber drove the mother to work Friday, then took her son fishing along the Columbia River below McNary Dam. Shortly after noon, he told authorities he had been assaulted by three Hispanic men who took the boy and demanded ransom.

Later he changed his story, saying the boy might have fallen in the river and drowned. Divers were summoned but found nothing.

A few hours later, Taber told Umatilla County, Ore., sheriff’s deputies he killed the boy, Morey said.

Hayes said Taber was generally quiet, passive and easily confused.