Rape is latest in rash of violence against women in Oregon

PORTLAND – The abduction and brutal rape of a McMinnville woman this week is just the latest in a rash of violence against women in Oregon.

Over the weekend, a woman disappeared from the Portland motel where she lived and worked. Her body was found Sunday in a blackberry thicket. On May 24, Brigham Young University student Brooke Wilberger was apparently abducted from a Corvallis apartment building and has not been found since.

Lt. Ron Noble of the Corvallis Police Department said it was hard to tell whether there was actually an increase in violent crimes against women or whether they were just getting more publicity, making people more aware of them.

“Is it because I’m more in tune with it, or are they actually increasing? It’s hard to know,” Noble said.

Corvallis police are taking a look at the McMinnville case for similarities to the Wilberger case. But right now, they don’t appear to be related other than the two women are blonde, he said.

“As their case develops, we will take a look and see whether it relates to Brook’s disappearance,” Noble said.

In the McMinnville case, the woman was forced at gunpoint from the group home where she was working into her attacker’s truck and driven to a rural wooded area in Yamhill County where she repeatedly was sexually assaulted before being choked to unconsciousness and left for dead, District Attorney Brad Berry said.

When the 18-year-old woman woke up, she found her way to a logging road, where a log-truck driver found her and took her back to McMinnville, Berry said.

Police are looking for a short male, 5-foot-5 to 5-foot-7, with a stocky build, dark crew cut hair with a blemish on the right side of his face. He was operating a midsized extended cab pickup truck that is red or burgundy and had a bed liner.

In Portland, Ilaben Patel, 45, disappeared from her family’s northeast Portland motel on Friday.

Relatives said she had been working at the motel’s front desk when she went to a vacant room to pick up some cleaning supplies. When the woman’s husband went to the room, he found the cleaning supplies but no sign of his wife.

Police said there was no sign of a struggle. Patel left behind her purse, car keys and heart medication.

An autopsy was unable to determine the cause of her death. The medical examiner sent blood and urine samples to a state lab for additional tests, but results are not expected for two to three weeks, said Deputy Medical Examiner Brian Applegate.

Police are still looking for leads into Wilberger’s disappearance, Noble said. “We haven’t made any big breaks in the case, but we’re progressing,” he said.

No one has been charged in Wilberger’s disappearance.