Do you know who murdered Anthony Lesina in 1992? On the early morning of May 25, 1992, a passerby in Portland, Oregon, made a grim discovery. Thirty-one-year-old Anthony Lesina, a male, was found lying on the ground near a phone booth at 1925 N. Interstate Ave. He had sustained a single, fatal gunshot wound. A witness reported seeing a Black male leaving the scene in Lesina's maroon car, which was later recovered by authorities.
The details of the car's recovery have not been publicly disclosed.
The investigation into Lesina's death revealed it was not an isolated incident but part of a violent crime spree that had cast a shadow over the Memorial Day weekend. Just three days earlier, on May 22, Fou Saechao had been shot and killed while stocking shelves at a market on N. Interstate Ave. Later on the same day that Lesina was murdered, another man, Kevin Waldner, was shot in his home on N. Borthwick. Waldner, however, survived the attack. He told police that an unknown African-American man had entered his home. After a brief struggle over a weapon that resembled a sawed-off rifle, the intruder shot Waldner in the stomach and fled.
Detectives believe that a single suspect is responsible for the murder of Anthony Lesina, the murder of Fou Saechao, and the attempted murder of Kevin Waldner. Evidence recovered from each of the crime scenes links the three violent acts. The suspect is described as an African-American male, between 5'6" and 5'9" tall, weighing 140 to 160 pounds, and estimated to be in his late teens to early twenties at the time of the crimes. He was reportedly wearing a long black athletic jacket and a black baseball cap with white letters. Despite the description and the connected cases, no arrests have been made in the decades since the violent weekend. The case remains an unsolved cold case, leaving the question of who killed Anthony Lesina unanswered.
