On what should have been a festive Thanksgiving Day in 1980, the lives of two young people were brought to a brutal and tragic end. Douglas Keith "Doug" Altig, a 24-year-old White male and a student at Southern Oregon State College, was visiting his friend, 22-year-old Darcey Renee Fix, at her home in north Portland. The two had been childhood sweethearts and had remained close friends over the years.
Altig had driven up from Ashland the previous evening, planning to spend the holiday with his family, as was Darcey with hers.
The morning of November 27, 1980, took a horrific turn when Randall Woodfield, a former college acquaintance of Darcey's, arrived at her residence. Woodfield, who would later become known as the notorious "I-5 Killer," had intended to assault Darcey. Finding Doug Altig present, Woodfield proceeded to bind both of them. In a cold, execution-style slaying, he shot them both. Altig was shot in the head, and Darcey was shot multiple times. The grim discovery was made later that day when Darcey's father, a local surgeon, went to her home after she failed to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner. He found both his daughter and Doug on the living room floor.
The initial investigation was perplexing for police. There were no signs of forced entry into the home, and the murder weapon, a. 32 caliber revolver belonging to Darcey, was missing. Neighbors in the quiet residential area had not heard any gunshots. Due to his acquaintance with Darcey, Randall Woodfield was questioned by police, but there was not enough concrete evidence to link him to the double homicide at the time. Though he was a suspect, his deceptive answers and a mismatch of his blood type with evidence from other crime scenes he was suspected of committing initially allowed him to evade direct implication in their deaths.
For decades, the case remained officially unsolved, a painful chapter in Portland's history. It wasn't until 2012 that a breakthrough finally provided definitive answers. Advances in DNA technology allowed investigators from the Portland Police Bureau's Cold Case Unit to match Woodfield's DNA to evidence found at the 1980 crime scene. By this time, Woodfield was already serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of another woman and was a suspect in numerous other murders and sexual assaults along the I-5 corridor. While he was officially named as the killer of Douglas Altig and Darcey Fix, authorities decided not to prosecute him for their murders, as he was already imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole.
