In the winter of 1994, a 20-year-old man named Tyrom Walter Thies vanished from Gresham, Oregon. He was last seen on February 10, 1994, and has not been heard from since. Thies was a tall man, standing at 6 feet 4 inches, with a slender build, brown hair, and brown eyes. He had a noticeable cowlick in the middle of his hair and a distinctive tattoo of a black clawing leopard, sometimes described as a panther, on his stomach.
When he disappeared, he was reportedly wearing a black leather thigh-length jacket. His disappearance, however, was not that of an ordinary young man; it was the beginning of a decades-long manhunt.
Thies's disappearance occurred just three weeks after a shocking crime that took place at the Leathers Oil Company gas station in Gresham where he had previously worked as a station manager. On January 17, 1994, three female employeesï Virginia Kay Endecott, 47; Rosealie Fey-Girtz, 51; and Mary Beth Carey, 25ï were found shot to death, execution-style, in a storage room on the premises. The gas station had been robbed of approximately $9,000. The investigation quickly focused on Thies, who had been fired from the station in August 1993 for theft. An informant's tip on February 10, 1994, the same day Thies was last seen, pointed law enforcement in his direction. Shortly after, a Multnomah County judge issued a warrant for his arrest on three counts of aggravated murder, followed by a federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, with authorities believing he may have fled to Idaho.
Two of Thies's associates, his cousin Lawrence Scherf and a friend, Lori Ann Stephens, were later arrested and convicted for their roles in the robbery and murders. They both served prison sentences after reaching plea agreements that required them to testify against Thies should he ever be captured. Despite the convictions of his accomplices and the case being featured on national television shows like 'Unsolved Mysteries' and 'America's Most Wanted,' Thies has managed to evade capture for decades. The Gresham Police Department continues to investigate the cold case, and authorities believe it is possible that Thies is still alive and living under an assumed identity somewhere in the United States. The case remains a painful and unresolved chapter for the families of the three women who lost their lives, a triple homicide for which the main suspect vanished into thin air, leaving a trail of questions that have lingered for years.Last Seen: Feb 10, 1994
