On December 4, 1995, Michelle Abdill, a 42-year-old woman, and her partner Roxanne Ellis, 53, were brutally murdered in Medford, Oregon. The events leading to their deaths began when Ellis went to an appointment to show an apartment to a 27-year-old man named Robert Acremant. Ellis had allegedly called her daughter, Lorri, at 4:00 p.m. to inform her that she was going shopping, but it is believed that this was a ruse, and she was actually meeting Acremant.
Abdill left her office at 5:00
p.m., telling her colleagues that she was going to help Ellis jump start her car, as Ellis had reported that her car would not start. However, when Ellis's daughter drove to the apartment complex where her mother was supposed to be, she saw her mother's pickup truck but was unable to follow it as it pulled away. This marked the last time either Ellis or Abdill were seen alive.
Their bodies were discovered four days later, on December 8, 1995, in the back of Ellis's pickup truck, which had been parked in a nearby lot. The bodies were bound and gagged with duct tape, wrapped in drapes, and covered by cardboard boxes. Both women had been shot in the head execution-style.
The investigation into the murders was significantly aided by Acremant's mother, who recognized her son from a composite sketch released by the police. She contacted the authorities, expressing her suspicion based on her son's behavior and the resemblance to the sketch. She also provided police with labels from cardboard boxes used during their recent move to Medford, which matched the boxes used to cover the victims' bodies.
Robert Acremant was subsequently tracked down to a motel room in Stockton, California, where he was arrested on December 13, 1995. Upon his arrest, Acremant confessed to the murders, initially claiming that his motive was robbery. He stated that after Ellis and Abdill refused his demand to write checks from their business account, he shot them in the back of the head.
Acremant's statements about his motives, however, have been inconsistent. While he claimed the murders were part of a robbery scheme to obtain money to spend on a stripper he considered his girlfriend, other evidence suggests that robbery may not have been the sole motive. For instance, Acremant left the victims' purses, wallets, jewelry, cell phones, and money at the scene, which undermines the robbery motive. Additionally, interviews and media reports indicate that Acremant knew the women were lesbians and had shown a particular interest in their personal lives before the murders.
Acremant was convicted of aggravated murder in 1997 and sentenced to death for the execution-style slayings, kidnapping, and robbery of Ellis and Abdill. During his trial, which focused on the penalty phase after he pleaded guilty, a jury sentenced him to death. Acremant was also linked to another murder in California, where he had killed Scott George, the son of his mother's boyfriend, just two months before the murders of Ellis and Abdill.
Throughout his imprisonment, Acremant displayed a lack of remorse for his crimes and made threats against his defense team and even his own family. He was described by investigators as having a 'real disconnect' and being devoid of remorse for the carnage he inflicted. Acremant spent the remainder of his life on Oregon's death row until his death on October 26, 2018, at the age of 50, during a routine bed check at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
