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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fugitive in Portland kidnapping, torture case arrested in Mexico

Michaelle Dierich of Coeur d’Alene heard the news early Tuesday morning after she finished her long graveyard shift at a production plant.

The fugitive wanted for kidnapping and raping her in 1988 had finally been arrested.

And it may have never happened without Dierich’s persistence and courage in telling her painful story again and again.

“This was my mission,” she said. “I’ve been very relentless.”

Paul Erven Jackson, 45, had been at large since 1991. Mexican immigration authorities, working with the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested him Monday at a hotel in Guadalajara. He was apprehended on his way to work at an electronics store.

Dierich said she began getting urgent phone calls while still at work early Tuesday but hadn’t checked them. When her husband Mike picked her up from work, he said he had news that would change her life.

“I thought maybe he got my car fixed or won 20 bucks on a scratch-it ticket. It doesn’t take much to make me happy,” she said.

When she learned Jackson was in custody, “I fell apart. I fell apart with tears of relief and gratitude — and love for my husband, who has supported me through all of this.”

Jackson apparently had been living in Mexico for years under the name Paul Bennett Hamilton, U.S. Marshals spokesman Eric Wahlstrom said. Authorities received a tip on his whereabouts after CNN in July aired an episode of “The Hunt with John Walsh” that featured the case.

Dierich is one of at least two women Jackson and his half-brother Vance Roberts were accused of abducting in the Portland, Oregon, area.

Dierich, who first told her story to The Spokesman-Review in 2007, said the men held her in chains for a week in 1988 in Roberts’ single-level rancher in Hillsboro, Oregon. They repeatedly raped, sodomized and abused her before letting her go, she said.

Dierich was 20 at the time — a crack-addicted prostitute living a lifestyle that made her a prime target for the two brothers trolling the streets of downtown Portland for victims, she said.

“I’m afraid,” she said in 2007. “I have nightmares of people abducting me, taking me away, strangers hurting me.”

The brothers also abducted 17-year-old Andrea Hood in 1990. Like Dierich, Hood has spoken out about her ordeal.

Dierich said investigators told her they believe the brothers may have assaulted at least 10 other women based on evidence found in the home.

Jackson and Roberts were arrested in 1990 but vanished after their mother bailed them out. Roberts surrendered in 2006 and is serving a 108-year prison sentence.

“I know there won’t be any future victims,” Dierich said Tuesday. “My heart is heavy for any survivors that may feel uncomfortable coming forward.

“This isn’t really about me anymore.”