PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — George Nulph has spent most of his life in prison. But if he’s let out of prison, the woman he attacked in 1986 is confident he’ll strike again.
Virginia Carlonson, who was 18 at the time Nulph raped her, told KOIN 6 News she’s fighting his possible release for the community’s safety and in memory of the woman Nulph murdered in 1976.
“The public needs to be aware that he is a monster,” Carlonson, now 49, said.
Ten years before she was raped, Nulph forced Frances Christians, a mother of 2, into his car at gunpoint in Cannon Beach.
“Then I drove to a secluded area in the woods above Cannon Beach and raped and then shot her to death,” Nulph said at a parole board hearing on January 10.
He was convicted of murder but spent just 9 years in prison before the Oregon State Corrections Division released him in 1986.
Two months later, he raped Carlonson — his Portland neighbor — at gunpoint, victimizing her for hours before she managed to escape.
“I feel like the system has failed us,” she told KOIN 6 News. “And when I say us, I mean not just me but the woman who was murdered.”
Carlonson is doing everything she can to try and make sure Nulph doesn’t get out of prison again, a message she delivered at the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem — where Nulph went before the parole board.
“He should not be let out, that he is a danger to the community,” she said.
After the 1986 rape, Nulph was sentenced as a dangerous offender. After decades, he’s now up for possible release and told the parole board he’s a changed man since the violent attacks in both Portland and Cannon Beach.
“I can just simply tell you that 40 years later I’m not the individual that I was then,” he told the board.
He also offered an apology to Carlonson
“I can’t begin to express how badly I feel for her and what I’ve done,” Nulph told the board, “but I hope that she can feel some sense of my sincerity in my apology to her and that I am terribly, terribly sorry for that.”
Carlonson didn’t accept it.
“I believe his apology was fake and he said what he needed to say thinking that he could get out,” she told KOIN 6 News. “It meant nothing to me. If he’s sorry about anything, it’s about getting caught so that’s what i truly believe.”
She also doesn’t think he’s changed.
“In fact he’s the same person that kidnapped me and held me hostage for 8 hours. He has no empathy, he has no remorse. He takes blame for nothing. Everything else is always someone else’s fault, from his mother to his wife to everyone in his life.”
District attorneys for Multnomah and Clatsop counties, where the crimes happened, also spoke at the hearing against his release.
It’s now up to the parole board to decide, and they’re expected to make a decision within 30 days.
“Now,” Virginia Carlonson said, “we’re back here again hoping the system does not fail me along with another innocent woman.”
