Do you know who killed Michael Blair in 1986? Caucasian/White male Michael Blair, age 35, was found shot to death in the early morning hours of May 5, 1986, in the parking lot of the Rose Manor Motel near the intersection of SE McLoughlin Boulevard and Holgate Boulevard in Portland, Oregon. A passerby discovered him at approximately 6:15 a.m., bringing police to a scene that offered few certainties beyond the violence itself.
Blair, described as friendly and easygoing, managed a franchised 7-Eleven in nearby Milwaukie and lived openly as a gay man at a time and place where that visibility could carry risk.
In the hour before he was killed, Michael Blair, age 35 and male, made an ordinary stop: at about 5:00 a.m. he was seen at the Semaphore Restaurant, buying a cup of coffee. Not long after, witnesses in the area reported hearing gunfire around 5:15 a.m., and two individuals—described as possibly white—were seen running from the motel lot. The timeline is stark in its simplicity: coffee, shots, flight, and, within an hour, discovery.
Investigators publicly detailed those fragments—his last stop for coffee, the approximate time of gunshots, the two figures seen fleeing—and asked anyone with information to come forward. Despite the attention and an appeal through Crime Stoppers that included a reward offer, the case remained unsolved according to the city's cold case listing, and authorities did not announce any arrests. The portrait that survives is that of Michael Blair, age 35 and male, moving through a quiet predawn routine before crossing paths with someone prepared to kill, and of a city waking to a mystery that, over the years, has refused to yield a name for the gunman or gunmen.
