Who murdered Deaustin Duckett in 2002? Deaustin Duckett, 20, a Black male, was found shot to death in Portland, Oregon, on the morning of November 15, 2002. At about 8:10 a.m., officers discovered him inside a plum-colored sedan parked in the lot behind 508 NE Graham Street, the quiet of the early hour broken by the stark stillness of the car and its single occupant. The detail of the vehicle’s unusual color and its placement in a back-lot frame the scene with an intimacy that suggests someone chose the spot carefully, leaving few
immediate clues beyond the body and the car itself.
In the days leading up to his death, investigators learned that Duckett had last been seen on the afternoon of November 13. That same evening, around 7 p.m., the car believed to be connected to him was noticed in the lot; witnesses later recalled two men walking away from the area not long after the vehicle appeared. Their description—two African-American men moving off from the parking lot—gave detectives a thin thread to follow, but no names and no certain trail.
Detectives also documented information that Duckett had been involved in illicit drug sales, an element that broadened the possible motives while complicating the pool of people who might have wanted to find him, or silence him. Yet even with that context, the case yielded no definitive breakthroughs. No arrests were announced, and no suspect has been publicly identified, leaving the investigation to stand as an enduring cold case on the city’s rolls and the questions of who and why still unanswered.
