Do you know who murdered Gwendolyn Fulce and Delores Thompson? On a September afternoon in 1973, a grim discovery was made inside a home at 527 N. Ivy Street in Portland, Oregon. There, the bodies of two young African-American women, 21-year-old Gwendolyn Fulce and 24-year-old Delores Thompson, were found. The two friends had been brutally beaten to death in what would become a haunting and unsolved double homicide.
Gwendolyn, a student at a local beauty college with no criminal record, had been visiting her friend Delores at her rented home.
The scene was discovered by Roy Lee Jernigan, Delores Thompson's partner, when he arrived at the residence to pick up his two-and-a-half-year-old son. Upon entering the home, he found Gwendolyn's body in the living room and Delores's in the bedroom. Miraculously, his young son was found unharmed inside the house. The brutality of the crime shocked the community, and the police were immediately called to the scene.
Investigators began the arduous task of piecing together the events that led to the deaths of Gwendolyn and Delores. They conducted numerous interviews, but a clear motive for the vicious attack remained elusive. In the initial stages of the investigation, no suspects were publicly identified, and no arrests were made, leaving the case to grow cold over the years. The Portland Police Bureau's Cold Case Homicide Unit has since revisited the case, but it remains one of the city's most tragic and enduring mysteries. The families of Gwendolyn Fulce and Delores Thompson, along with Delores's son who was present in the house at the time of the murders, have been left to grapple with unanswered questions for decades. Despite the passage of time, law enforcement continues to encourage anyone with information to come forward, hoping to one day bring closure to the loved ones of the two young women whose lives were so violently cut short.
