On February 15, 1981, 18-year-old Julie Ann Reitz was brutally murdered in her Beaverton, Oregon home. The events leading to her death are closely tied to the activities of Randall Brent Woodfield, a serial killer and rapist known as the 'I-5 Killer' or 'I-5 Bandit.'
Woodfield, who had met Reitz while working as a bouncer at The Faucet, a bar in Portland, arrived at her home around 2:00 a.m. on the day of the murder.
The investigation revealed that Reitz had interacted with her attacker, as evidenced by a glass of wine and preparations for coffee found at the scene. A package of instant coffee was discovered on the kitchen counter, and water in a kettle had been left to completely boil away, indicating that Reitz had begun to prepare coffee for her guest.
The murder was part of a series of violent crimes committed by Woodfield along the Interstate 5 corridor in Oregon and Washington. Woodfield's modus operandi typically involved concealing his identity with a hoodie, a fake beard, and a strip of athletic tape across his nose to obscure his features and prevent victims from identifying him in a police lineup. His crimes were often sexually motivated, and his victims were usually killed via gunshot.
The investigation into Reitz's murder was part of a broader effort to apprehend the 'I-5 Bandit,' who had been committing a string of robberies, sexual assaults, and murders in the region. By February 28, 1981, the focus of the investigation had shifted to Woodfield, following several key pieces of evidence. Detectives in Marion County assembled a call log showing that Woodfield had placed calls via calling cards at payphones near the murder sites around the times they were committed. Additionally, Lisa Garcia positively identified Woodfield in a photo lineup on March 5, 1981.
Following Garcia's identification, Woodfield's apartment in Springfield, Oregon, was searched by warrant. Inside, law enforcement found a spent. 32 shell casing inside a racquetball bag and a roll of tape that matched the tape found on the victims. These findings, combined with positive identifications by several Oregon robbery victims, led to Woodfield's arrest on March 7, 1981.
Woodfield was subsequently indicted for multiple crimes, including murder, rape, sodomy, attempted kidnapping, armed robbery, and illegal possession of firearms, from various jurisdictions in Washington and Oregon. Despite being officially charged with only one murder and one attempted murder, police suspect that Woodfield was responsible for the deaths of 18 to 24 people, including Julie Ann Reitz, Darcey Renee Fix, and Douglas Keith Altig, among others.
The connection between Woodfield and Reitz's murder was further solidified by new DNA technology in 2015, which linked him to her death, as well as to the murders of Fix and Altig, and other victims in Oregon and California. However, due to Woodfield's existing life sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary, prosecutors from Multnomah, Washington, and Shasta counties did not plan to file additional charges against him.
