Five dead bodies found at rural Oregon home in suspected murder during response to car fire

Five dead bodies have been found on a rural property outside of Portland, Oregon, in what police are treating as a quintuple murder investigation. 

Firefighters made the discovery while responding to a 911 call about a vehicle fire outside Forest Grove, around 48km west of Portland, at around 5am on Saturday morning. While putting out the fire, they discovered two dead bodies. 

“We do have a deceased victim here. We are going to need law enforcement,” a firefighter said in dispatch audio obtained by ABC affiliate KATU. ” Another added: “We need a police unit, or a sheriff’s office unit code 3 at the scene. Just in case, we have two victims here.”

Credit: Google Maps

“This is some suspicious circumstances certainly. So we’re going to take our hoses and get out of here, and let the sheriff’s office clear this,” a third firefighter said. 

Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies searched the property and found five dead bodies, as well as “multiple” deceased pets. The home is very rural and surrounded by “a lot of vegetation,” police said. 

“I will say that in my 22 years here, I have not been a part of, or witnessed, a scene quite this complex, involving this type of an investigation,” Sheriff Caprice Massey said at a press conference on Sunday. “And I’m just going to lead in and say that I recognise that this incident is deeply concerning to our community. Our investigators are working to determine what happened, and we have dedicated every available resource to this case.”

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Credit: KATU News

Detectives identified a 36-year-old man, Benjamin Charles Parker, as a suspect in the killings. However, he was found dead inside his car in Enumclaw, Washington. “Officers from the Enumclaw Police Department located Parker’s vehicle and found him deceased inside,” the sheriff’s office said on Sunday. “It is believed he died by suicide. Detectives do not believe there is a danger to the public.”

A link between the suspect and victims has not been revealed, but police don’t think the quintuple homicide was random. Massey said they believe Parker “was known to the subjects”. 

“Any time you have one person deceased, let alone five, that’s a logistical challenge,” Detective Shannon Wilde said at a news conference on Sunday. She said it’s a “very active investigation with a lot of moving pieces” and investigators are still working to identify the victims.

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Featured image credit: Google Maps and KATU News