Charmel Ulrich, 14, a white female, set out with a 13-year-old friend to walk a rural road near Scholls, Oregon, on August 10, 1980. A car carrying three men pulled over and asked for directions; in an instant, the men shoved Charmel into the vehicle while her friend escaped and later gave descriptions that led investigators to circulate composite sketches. The abduction set off a frantic search across Washington County and beyond.
Days later, guided by information from one of the men who began talking after his arrest, authorities found Charmel’s body in remote coastal timber east of Waldport; she had been stabbed to death. Her headstone records her dates as July 8, 1966–August 10, 1980.
Detectives quickly focused on three suspects whose short, violent crime spree straddled Oregon and Washington that summer: William Perry “Pete” Jackson, Gary Allen Smith, and 18-year-old Michael Anthony Butler. The trio had been drifting and committing burglaries and assaults in the weeks before the abduction. After Butler was taken into custody in Forest Grove, he led investigators to the burial site and implicated the others; by August 22, 1980, all three had been arrested and charged in Charmel’s kidnapping, rape, and murder. Contemporary newspaper accounts report that the men used an older white station wagon in the abduction and that Butler’s statements were pivotal in locating the body and building the case.
Court records and later summaries describe how the men drove Charmel toward the coast after forcing her into the car. On the way, she was sexually assaulted in the back seat; at one stop she was forced to place a phone call to her friend’s mother, and then was taken to a secluded area where she was stabbed and left in the woods. A federal appellate decision recounting Butler’s challenges to his convictions notes the separate criminal objectives of kidnapping, rape, and murder, and affirms his aggravated-murder conviction because the killing occurred in the course of the rape under Oregon law.
All three men were ultimately convicted and received life sentences in Oregon. In the immediate aftermath of their arrests, prosecutors considered seeking the death penalty, but the Oregon Supreme Court’s 1981 ruling against capital punishment foreclosed that option; Jackson remained incarcerated on multiple life terms, and Smith and Butler likewise received life sentences for their roles in Charmel’s murder and related crimes. The case endures in public records and archives as one of the most shocking acts of violence in rural Washington County’s history, its details preserved in court opinions, newspaper reporting, and later profiles of the offenders.
