Jury finds man guilty of torture kidnappings

After two decades of living in fear, Michaelle Dierich said she feels like a new woman now that one of the two men who abducted and raped her finally will go to jail for his crimes.

The 39-year-old Hayden woman traveled to Hillsboro, Ore., last week to testify against Vance Roberts. On Tuesday, a jury deliberated just over an hour before finding Roberts guilty of kidnapping Dierich and another then-prostitute off the streets of Portland in the late 1980s.

Both young women were held captive and sexually tortured for days by Roberts and allegedly his brother, Paul Jackson.

Roberts and Jackson were arrested shortly after the crimes but were released on bail and fled in 1991 as their trial was about to begin.

Roberts turned himself in last October.

Jackson remains on the run, but authorities say they received promising tips after the story was aired on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” this spring.

Dierich was uncertain at first if she wanted to face Roberts in court.

Now, she’s glad she did.

“I was thoroughly disgusted at the things I had to say,” she said about her experience at the hands of the two men, noting the drastic changes she has made in her personal life since the days she spent as a crack-addicted prostitute.

She cried on the stand when they showed her pictures taken while she was held captive, in bondage.

“I broke down. Three ladies on the jury broke down,” she said. “I pulled it together. That son-of-a-gun’s looking right at me. There’s no way I was going to cave.”

She lauded the detectives and prosecutors who spent years on the case. Dierich hopes the publicity in the case will help bring Jackson to justice. “There’s still one nut out there,” she said.

The trial began with testimony from the victims on Thursday. Dierich and Andrea Hood did exceptionally well on the stand, said Jeff Lesowski, Washington County’s senior deputy district attorney.

“They were able to recount all these terrible things these men did to them,” Lesowski said.

Jurors were shown 107 exhibits, including whips and chains, handcuffs and pornographic photos of the victims, Lesowski said.

Roberts told jurors the women had been hired for $200 a day and had concocted the stories “to appease their pimps.”

“It was way out there,” Lesowski said of that defense. “Obviously the jury didn’t buy a bit of it.”

Roberts was convicted of 24 separate criminal counts. Most are punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Lesowski said it will be up to the judge whether those sentences are to be served consecutively.

Sentencing is set for Aug. 3.