Account
Apr 15, 2010
Jan 08, 2024
Walter
Ackerson
51
16
67 inches
128 lbs
White / Caucasian
Male
In the spring of 1990, a 16-year-old male named Walter Thomas Ackerson was finding his way in a new environment, hundreds of miles from his home in Puyallup, Washington. He had enrolled in the Angell Job Corps facility in Yachats, Oregon, a decision made with his mother's support in the hopes of providing him with a structured setting to earn his GED and learn a trade. Walter, who had faced challenges with bullying and truancy in traditional school, seemed optimistic about this new chapter, choosing to pursue the culinary arts. The regular phone calls to his mother and grandmother ceased after March 20, 1990. Four days later, on March 24, Walter left the Job Corps campus without permission, in the company of three older students. The group hitchhiked 25 miles to Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon. This would be the last time Walter was seen. The three companions who had accompanied Walter to Nye Beach returned to the Job Corps facility the next day without him. They claimed that after a day of drinking, Walter, who they said was heavily intoxicated, had been standing on a bluff overlooking the beach while they were playing football below and then simply vanished. Initially, the Job Corps administration treated Walter's disappearance as a runaway case, a conclusion his mother, Karen Hull, never accepted. There was a significant delay in officially reporting him as a missing person, and his family grew increasingly frustrated with what they perceived as a lack of urgency and misinformation from both the Job Corps and law enforcement. A rumor from another student suggested that Walter had been in a fight and was thrown off a bridge, but this lead was not aggressively pursued at the time, as authorities believed a body would have washed ashore. For nearly two decades, the case remained cold, leaving Walter's family with unanswered questions and lingering grief. A major breakthrough finally occurred in August 2009, when one of the men who was with Walter on that fateful day, Troy Culver, confessed to his murder. As part of a drug treatment program that required him to make amends for past wrongs, Culver admitted to beating Walter after becoming irritated with him. He stated that after the beating, he and the other two individuals, Eric Forsgren and Geoff Calligan, threw Walter's body off the Yaquina Bay Bridge. It remains uncertain if Walter was alive when he was thrown from the bridge. Following Culver's confession, Forsgren and Calligan also admitted their involvement and were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony. In October 2010, Troy Culver pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of Walter Ackerson, initially dismissed as a runaway, was ultimately solved through a long-awaited confession that brought a tragic resolution to his family. Despite the convictions, Walter's body has never been recovered and is believed to have been carried out to sea.
Mar 24, 1990
Yachats
Oregon
Lincoln County
No
26356
Lincoln County Sheriff's Office
Newport
Oregon
Lincoln County
97365
David Boys
Detective
225 West Olive Street, Oregon
5412654277
County
Law Enforcement
90S-00967
Lincoln County Sheriff's Office
Blond/Strawberry
Blue
Blue
06/04/2026
