PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — After 40 years, local detectives are closer than ever to proving a Clark County man is a serial killer of women and girls on both sides of the Columbia River.
Warren Forrest has been behind bars since 1978, serving a life sentence for his conviction in the 1974 murder of Krista Kay Blake.
Now detectives are asking the Clark County prosecuting attorney for double murder charges against Forrest for the murders of Carol Valenzuela and Martha Maria Morrison.
“They write ‘Today we have formally submitted our investigation,'” Starr Lara read from the letter to the families of victims associated with Forrest.
Lara’s sister Jamie Rochelle Grissim, disappeared after going to school in 1971 and has never been found. Detectives believe her sister was Forrest’s first victim.
DNA recently tied Forrest to Morrison and Valenzuela’s murders. The Washington State Crime Lab found Morrison’s DNA on evidence from an attack, which Forrest admitted to, on a woman who survived 30 miles away.
Detectives have long believed Forrest used his blue van to kidnap girls and women and he was responsible for the deaths of Blake, Valenzuela, Morrison, Gloria Knutson, Barbara Ann Derry and Grissim, whose body has never been found.
Two survivors include then-15-year-old Norma Countryman, who in 1974 was tied to a tree in the forest near Battle Ground.
New victim
Detectives have also listed a potential seventh murder victim, Diane Gilchrist, who was 14 when she disappeared after leaving her Vancouver home in 1974 and has never been found.
Detectives said the circumstantial evidence against Forrest includes the fact that he had family that lived near her.
The new revelation comes after Forrest failed to convince a parole board he’s no longer prone to violence from extreme stress.
“The distraction was deviant fantasies and my crime was living out of those fantasies,” Forrest said during that appeal.
Forrest has never mentioned other murders or said if he knows where Grissim’s body is.
“If he really changed, he would tell what he knows,” Lara said. “He needs to answer to what he did.”
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office told KOIN 6 News it will take the prosecutor several months to charge Forrest with double murder because the case is so complex.