Fear Follows Murder Of Gay-Rights Activists

Friends of two gay-rights activists who were found murdered in this Southern Oregon city are being increasingly cautious due to the fear that the slaying was motivated by hate.

“The truth is are we afraid? Hell, yes,” said gay and lesbian supporter Brenda Brown. “Are we going to hide under the shadow of that fear? Hell, no … I think there is intense and extreme fear in the community, but we are rallying together and choosing courage.”

“I didn’t think something like that would happen here but you never think something like that would happen where you live,” said Wendy Byrne, a lesbian who lives with her partner in Medford.

“Everyone here, straight as well as gay and lesbian, is pretty stressed out. Everyone is sort of looking over her shoulder.”

Local and state police continued to gather evidence in the murders of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill, whose bodies were discovered Thursday.

Autopsy results released Saturday showed the women died of gunshots, said Sgt. Mike Moran of the Medford Police Department. Moran declined to say where the women were wounded or to give further details regarding their deaths.

“The reason behind this is releasing too detailed amount of information could actually harm the investigation,” Moran said in a recorded message. “We’re asking for the public’s understanding on this.”

Moran discounted rumors that the victims had been decapitated. He also said there were no obvious signs of sexual assault or torture.

Moran said he was addressing such speculation “to try to help allay some of the concerns in the community and hopefully some of the rumors will die down and people will be able to concentrate on their good memories of the victims.”

The bodies of Ellis and Abdill were found in Ellis’ pickup truck in the parking lot of an apartment complex in southeast Medford. They had been missing since Monday night, after Abdill went to meet Ellis to help her jump start her car near a rental duplex in northeast Medford.

Police are searching for a man who was seen in both areas on Monday.

He was described only as a “person of interest” in police broadcasts and teletypes. The man was believed to be driving a late model sedan with California plates.

Speculation by many in the community - and one of the leads police are pursuing - is that both women were killed because of their activism in gay-rights issues.

In addition to their co-ownership of a Medford property management company, Ellis and Abdill were domestic partners who were open about their relationship.

That may have made them targets for violence, though members and supporters of the gay and lesbian community are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“We are suggesting that no one come to conclusions,” said Brown. “Clearly it was a crime born out of hatred, but what is the root of that hatred, we don’t know.”

Brown urged people to remember the hundreds of people touched by the lives of the victims.

“They were a stunning model of how you can be a community member and active and involved and proud to be gay,” Brown said.

Ellis’ daughter, Lorri, told the Medford Mail Tribune she last saw her mother Monday morning when she went to meet a potential customer at a duplex.

Normally, Lorri Ellis said, there would be a record of the customer’s name, but this time there was none. Later on Monday, she received a call from her mother saying she had to do some shopping, but in retrospect, she said, her mother seemed subdued in the call.

Police said Ellis called Abdill about 5 p.m. and said she needed a jump start on her pickup at the duplex. They were never seen again until police searched the pickup that a cable company installer had discovered.

After their disappearance, dozens of volunteers helped search for them, posters were put up throughout the area in southern Oregon and a candlelight vigil was held.

Medford police said there had been vague threats against the victims in the past.

Byrne described Medford as fairly homophobic and said anti-gay feeling had been more visible since the anti-gay rights Measure 9 campaign.

Measure 9 failed statewide by 57 to 43 percent, but passed in 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties. The measure would have defined homosexuality as abnormal and perverse and required state and local governments to discourage it.

Jackson County, in which Medford and Ashland are located, voted for both Measure 9 and a local ordinance sponsored by the conservative Oregon Citizens Alliance that prohibited any government recognition or promotion of homosexual rights.

The Oregon Legislature, however, voted in August to invalidate it and similar local ordinances in Medford and seven other municipalities.

Two memorial services for the women have been planned, one today at the Medford Congregational Church at 2 p.m., and a second at 2 p.m. Wednesday at First United Methodist Church.

Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays has established the Abdill-Ellis Memorial Fund to develop a safe house for gays and lesbians.

MEMO: Donations, which should indicate Abdill-Ellis Memorial Fund, may be sent to PFLAG, P.O. Box 13, Ashland 97520. Donations are tax-deductible.