Her family hasn't heard from her.
Authorities don't have any new leads.
[reporter 2] State police say
they're gonna continue searching
as long as necessary for her.
[interviewer on tape]
The girl's body was found just a short distance after this growth.
[Marlene] If the police would have listened to me.
none of this would have ever happened.
I hear I'm the only frickin' survivor!
[narrator] In the wooded heart of Central Oregon
there's a road that winds through the pine-studded mountains,
Highway 20.
Picturesque and striking.
Many find comfort here.
But across three decades
hiding in plain sight
a predator...
hunts this trail.
Some still think of this monster,
dragging away the innocent like prey,
from all that they knew.
But others think of the victims,
who they could have become
if anyone had stopped to listen,
to see them.
For only the woods,
their witnessed all the lost women.
[Noelle] I'm a long-time reporter in Oregon,
covering crime.
The editor of The Oregonian came over to my desk one day
and said, "I have a story I wanna talk to you about.
"Uh, it's about a serial killer."
There's a cluster of missing girl cases,
you know, unsolved cases, cold cases,
on and around Highway 20,
a coast-to-coast highway.
It starts in Boston and ends in Newport, Oregon.
It was very intriguing.
Who is this guy?
How have we never heard about him?
And who are these women?
I thought, "Well, I'm gonna start
"with the unsolved disappearance
"of this young girl, Rachanda Pickle."
[phone ringing]
[man speaking]
[woman speaking]
[narrator] On July 10th, 13-year-old Rachanda Lea Pickle
disappeared from her home
near the State Highway division maintenance complex
just west of Santiam Pass.
She was reported missing on the 11th.
[Byron Pickle] Santiam Junction, I think the best way
to describe it would be put five maybe six houses
with a few people living in
camp trailers out in the middle of nowhere...
and make a community out of it.
If someone wants to look on the map, look at where Highway 20
and where Highway 22 meet,
and that's where the Santiam Junction is.
We're probably about 23, maybe 26, miles
from Sisters, Oregon, which was the nearest town.
Forty-five, to 48 miles from Sweet Home,
where we went to elementary school at.
My sister and I, we were definitely close at a very young age.
We were up there at the Junction, there was no one else.
It was us against the world.
And then, have you seen one of these?
-[Michelle Seiber] It's been a long time. -Yeah.
I was in, um, third grade, when I met Rachanda
at school.
I remember that day.
She looked exactly like Punky Brewster.
She did.
Literally the first day
on the playground I've seen her,
we clicked.
[Byron] Before the word diva, I would express her now
definitely as a diva, as somebody who was into the latest fashion
pop music and stuff.
[Michelle] Hair style never changed.
It was always in a little floof,
dangly earrings,
the '90s bangs, um...
the bigger they are, the better they are.
[Byron] And goofy. she was funny.
I mean she was like, truly, truly funny.
She was just a goofball.
[Jennifer Persinger] She would make me laugh until I cried.
And she'll do another little thing
and set me off again.
Start laughing my butt off.
She could be friends with anybody at school.
Being so little and just having such that
presence about her, you know...
[sobs]
Excuse me.
[Byron] On July 10th, I remember getting a call from my mom, you know,
"Hey, has Rachanda gotten ahold of you?
"Well, she's missing."
I'm like, "Well, did you look for the note?"
'Cause we'd always leave notes and stuff, ju-- if, you know-- around in the case that
Mom or my stepfather, John, came home.
"No, there's no note."
I'm like, "Did you go look for her BB gun?
"Maybe she's out shooting her BB gun."
"No, her BB gun's here."
So, it-- it just didn't make sense.
I was trying to rationalize stuff, you know.
I knew that she wouldn't go off in the woods alone by herself
Rachanda found the woods very scary and intimidating.
'Cause the Junction is out in the middle of nowhere.
And then I was like, "Well, did you call the cops?"
"They say we got to wait 24 hours."
The morning of July 11th
is when my mom called the law enforcement.
[woman speaking]
[Linda speaking]
[Jennifer] My aunt Linda married Steve Pickle
and she had two kids with him,
Rachanda and Byron.
There's a picture there of my mom
with my dad Steve, with me,
and I'm, you know, I'm looking at them now, and I'm like,
"Oh, my gosh, you guys were babies,
"having babies." I mean...
Holey-moley, they were just so young.
My mom had to be either 18 or 19 in the picture
and my dad had to be 20 or 21, maybe.
They definitely did not get along well.
I mean, my parents, both of them
were very vindictive to each other.
As kids, we were definitely used as their little pawns.
And of course, my mom would always remind me
how much I did look like my dad, Steve, so.
[Jennifer] They got divorced.
Linda was struggling to make it on one income.
I think I was seven years old,
when my mom and John first got together.
John was a mechanic
for the State Highway Department.
We grew up there in the Sweet Home area.
John was my favorite uncle.
John would actually make you feel
special.
My 16th birthday, John and I, we went to Arby's,
and I must have had four roast beef and cheddars.
After that, we went to the drive-in
And he gave me $50.
That was really nice.
A fun-- fun day.
My mom asked my sister and I
to come talk with her and John.
And they asked what we think about moving to the Junction.
And at that point, I was like, "Oh, this is getting serious."
Rachanda was six,
I think, when Linda married John.
Linda ended up quitting her second job
'cause John was so well off.
[Byron] From where we were at to where he was at,
I mean, it was believed some balance financially.
I remember the first time that he pulled $5
out of his wallet and handed us,
I was like-- That was the most cash
I've ever had in my hands at that point in time.
I felt like, I mean...
That might as well have been a Benjamin.
Some of the people in the family
couldn't even read or write well.
And then you have this guy who graduated high school
He had a great career, a previous military guy.
This guy was my dad.
Taught me how to hunt. Taught me how to fish.
Actually spent time with me
Definitely heavy-handed, but he was a good dad.
You know, my dad, Steve, wasn't around.
I knew who he was,
but really didn't get to know who he was.
[horn honking]
It was 1990, during the spring time.
I'm 14, Rachanda is 13.
I can't remember if I came up with it or it was Rachanda's idea,,
we wanted to get know our biological father.
We called up, my grandmother
on the phone, with the pay phone,
put the quarter in and called her and said,
"Hey, I wanted to go spend the summer with my dad.
"Do you have his phone number, so I can give him a call?"
My mom was like, "Absolutely not.
"Why would you even wanna go see that guy?"
I really wanted to know who he was
so I could form my own opinion.
My dad came and picked us up from the Junction.
We had the windows open, you know, standing by and stuff.
And my stepfather, John, came up.
Looked at me, put his finger right at me.
He's like, "You remember what I told you."
I was like, "Yeah, I remember what you told me."
Never to leave my sister Rachanda alone
with our biological father, Steve Pickle.
[Jennifer] Members of my family kept their distance
at an arm's length from Steven.
You give Steve an inch, he'll take a mile.
And that's saying it loosely.
[Byron] We drove to Medford.
Big change from Santiam Junction.
Steve was living in a manufactured home park.
But the awesome thing about it was it had the tennis court,
it had the basketball court, it had the swimming pool.
Had tons of kids to play with and stuff that were our own age.
We ended up having a blast.
There was a big field with that tall grass and stuff.
So we were gonna go play hide and seek with a bunch of other boys and girls.
But my dad thought it was a ruse, you know, to go have sex.
[chuckles] That's taking a big jump, man.
Looking back, I think my dad had some mental illness problems.
Everything was sexual with my dad. Everything was sexual.
That was not even a thought to me.
Having sex at that point, I just--
You know, they were just kids.
Then he started screaming at Rachanda,
which made her cry.
I mean, you got your biological father basically calling you a whore.
And she was like, "I wanna go home."
She never wanted to see Steve Pickle again.
My sister went back.
And I stayed there.
in Medford,
with my dad, Steve.
'Cause I figured it was just only about a week or two
and then we were gonna see each other again.
I wanted to give her a hug but she was already in the back of the truck
and I didn't wanna call her back out of there.
Rachanda came back because her dad was asking her inappropriate innuendos.
And I said, "Like what?"
And she said, "I don't wanna talk about it."
My aunt married a pedophile.
She didn't know.
I never said anything about the sexual assault
from...
Steve Pickle.
But it happened
numerous times.
I didn't say anything because...
who would believe a little girl?
Well, that next morning, Linda came down
to pick up Rachanda.
And she took Rachanda up to the Santiam junction.
I waved at her.
And I told her, "I will see you next weekend."
[Michelle] We were in a foster home.
And we were summoned into the house.
And detectives were asking if we'd heard from Rachanda.
[Mandy] Your friend Rachanda's gone missing.
I'm like, "What?"
Like, it just-- It was like a kick in the stomach.
I'm like, "Missing? What do you mean missing?"
"Do you know where she is?"
"Have you guys had any contact with her?"
We're like, "No."
They thought we might have something to do with it
because we ran away so much.
Maybe that she'd found her way to us.
[Mandy] "Do you think she could have run away?"
"No, she's not gonna run away."
Where was she gonna go?
She lived in the middle of a mountain.
There's nowhere to go.
[Michelle] We knew something must have happened to her.
[Mike] I get quiet
until, you know, I cross over the mountain limits.
It's just a dark place along Highway 20.
[narrator] Rachanda has been missing for 24 hours.
Her disappearance spurs people to action.
They just hope it isn't too late.
[Mike] The day she goes missing,
Rachanda had been at home
with her mom and stepdad, John Ackroyd.
Linda and John had left to go work.
Byron was not home at the time.
[Noelle] Rachanda is told by her mother
"Please, you know, empty the dishwasher,
"vacuum, and take out the frozen hot dogs for dinner."
[Mike] John picked up Linda.
And they came back home.
And Rachanda was not home.
They started getting a little bit concerned about 10:00, that night.
They believed that they had to wait 24 hours to report her missing,
so they waited until the next day to call.
You're just going through
all those basic who, what, where, when, why, how questions.
"Did she have any friends in the area?"
"Was she unhappy?"
You wanna kinda check out
what the general family dynamic is.
She's a young girl. I'm a dad of four daughters.
When I looked at the pictures of her bedroom,
nothing was missing.
Her brush, all of her, you know, hygiene products,
were still in the room.
If a 13-year-old's gonna run away from home,
she's gonna take her stuff with her.
[reporter] Her mom, Linda, was also convinced
she didn't run away from her home in Santiam Junction.
Rachanda is a very responsible little girl.
She wouldn't go wandering out by herself.
Usually, if she goes off it's with her brother, Byron.
[Noelle] Byron turns to his father, Steven Pickle,
and says, "I gotta go back there.
"You know, we gotta go look for her."
And the father is like, "No, we're gonna see how this plays out."
And, you know, Byron, all of 14,
is like, "No, I'm not gonna do that."
You know, "Something is wrong."
[reporter] The search area covers 50 square miles
of rugged, wooded country near the Hoodoo Ski Area.
This morning, search and rescue teams
from seven different counties were here,
to find the teenager.
Everybody was convening at the shop office.
And some were all like, "Well, I mean, where should we go look?
"We should start searching."
[Jennifer] There is umpteen million people searching
John was the head of the search team.
He was telling all the searchers where to go.
If anybody knows this area, Ackroyd knows this area.
Stand forward!
John was the greatest resource that we had.
This was in his backyard.
John knew those woods very well.
Probably one of the most extensive searches
in Linn County history.
[officer] We're gonna go up to the end of the road,
Linn County is gonna take one side, we're gonna take the other.
About 10-15 feet apart.
Then we'll come back down here.
[Mike] There was multiple agencies.
Multiple man hours searching for her.
Everywhere.
[Byron] My mom was convinced that somebody kidnapped Rachanda.
Somebody parked on the highway and came down,
see Rachanda, chance of opportunity, snagged her.
And that was the only thing that did make sense.
People were accusing others
over the disappearance of Rachanda.
yeah, if you're out there, Rachanda, at least call your mother.
Let 'em know you're alive.
We love you and miss you very much.
The family situation wasn't good.
It was a very dysfunctional situation.
[John speaking]
[Byron] So, we go talk to John
and he's emotionally distraught.
I see tears up in his eyes.
and the first thing that comes out of his mouth is,
"I'mma kill the son of a bitch who did this."
[narrator] As they search for Rachanda,
Hope turns to resignation.
What they don't know is,
that the rot is more than a decade old.
Just a few miles away, in Camp Sherman,
the monster has taken another.
[Gary] It was a summer's day.
And I was down here, working at the store.
The news was on.
[reporter] She's been missing for a week now.
Her family hasn't heard from her,
authorities don't have any new leads.
So, searchers are resigned to the fact
that they aren't going to find any good news here.
[Gary] I wasn't really paying attention.
And then, on the news on TV,
I hear this voice saying that,
"I was the last one to see her alive."
Same tone, same inflection, same everything.
And I thought, "Holy smoke.
"I know that voice."
And it's just like Christmas Eve of '78.
And I hollered at Chrissy, I said, "That son-of-a-bitch did it again."
[reporter] She went for a jog. Kaye Turner never returned.
[Gary] When I said, you know, to Chrissy,
"The son-of-a-bitch did it again,"
I was angry.
We knew the guy that did it
because everybody knew about the murder,
back in '78.
Because he got away with it.
So...
Camp Sherman is a vacation-type resort community,
along Highway 20.
We came in '78.
Such an idyllic spot.
I mean, it's almost rainbows and unicorns.
I mean, it's that perfect a place.
The type that there's just one store.
Back then, we were the pulse if you need to know what's going on.
And when people were lonely,
or had cabin fever,
they'd head to the store.
So, we see everybody.
So, the penny candy's always been here.
The folks that had the store before us had penny candy,
we have penny candy.
Now these are charge accounts.
Most all of these are summer home people.
But there are locals, too.
And when they'll come for a weekend, or a week,
rather than pay each time, we run a tab.
Who else does charge accounts anymore?
The store was a gathering point.
It's just a perfect place to grow up,
perfect place to raise your family.
You know, and up until the incident, super safe.
You know, so...
[reporter] Christmas Eve morning, 1978.
35-year-old Kaye turner of Eugene
was vacationing in this cabin at Camp Sherman, Oregon.
She went for a jog on this road.
Kaye Turner never returned.
Christmas Eve started out foggy and cold.
And then the sun came out and it was super warm.
So, I got up, we opened the store.
I just walked through and Chrissy's talking to this guy.
And I came in and she said, "Did you find her yet?"
And he said, "No."
And I said-- The way he said "no", I said--
I asked him, "So, what kind of dog did you lose?"
And he said, "Oh, no, I lost my wife."
I said...
"Whoa!"
"When'd you last see her?"
He said, "Oh, between 8:00 and 8:30."
I said, "Oh, my God."
He was from Eugene, he was new to the area.
Didn't really know anybody here.
We didn't have a search and rescue team in Camp Sherman, at all.
We just never had to have one.
So, I said, "Well, let me just take a drive."
I just hopped in the Reagan,
made a quick loop,
expecting to find a gal with an injured ankle.
I never once suspected foul play.
It never even entered my mind.
This is Camp Sherman. Nobody dies in Camp Sherman.
[Ardith] Her husband, Noel, called.
And then-- And it was a short conversation.
He wanted to know
if Kaye would be likely, when we were running together,
to head off into the trees.
"She always stayed on the road.
"She never went bounding off
"into the trees.
"If she went out to run and she hasn't come back,
"somebody's grabbed her."
I'm sure those were almost my exact words.
I think, by the time we hung up,
I was already crying.
[Gary] I called Jefferson County.
Just told 'em we had a missing jogger.
And, you know, "What should we do?"
'Cause we never had that happen before.
And they said, "Well, get some people together, we'll be right over."
"Okay."
To kinda show what community it is,
I made three calls or four calls,
and yet 15 or 20 four-wheel drives
were in my parking lot in 20 minutes.
Christmas Eve.
Some people left diner to come right over.
[Mark] There was no law enforcement in Camp Sherman, at the time.
Because the statistics, the crimes,
didn't add up
[Gary] We wasted an hour or so of daylight.
But we were told to wait.
And so they got here and they said, "Okay, so what do you want us to do?
"We'll just fan out and drive the roads."
We could have done that in daylight.
[searcher] Kaye!
[Gary] We went until about-- I think about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
So, it was-- Yeah, it was a difficult-- Difficult time.
the next day, my husband and I went up and participated in the search.
I remember calling out her name.
Now wanting to find what we were looking for.
You didn't wanna find a body.
But at the same time, you wanted to.
So, it was just...
push-pull.
It was so surreal.
[Gary] The police set up a command center
in the restaurant across the river.
[Ardith] At that time, I remember thinking
everything was so disorganized.
People were just taking off in the woods.
And every woods looks the same.
It was just chaos.
I stayed away from the command center, completely.
because it was chaos.
And it wasn't even organized chaos. It was just a mess.
"Well, let's do this."
"Well, I know she must be there."
It was like this, you know.
It was nuts.
Well, the initial thinking of the initial deputies
who were on that scene,
is that Noel, Kaye Turner's husband,
did her in and just dumped her in the woods.
[Noelle] As far as they were concerned,
the husband was the last person to see her,
there were signs that the marriage was on the rocks.
[Mark] And they spent a lot of time not searching for her
but questioning him,
expecting he would crack.
They thought that he's come out to some small community
to do his dirty work.
Figuring that nobody'd catch him that way.
[Noel] I met Kaye in college.
We both finished school in 1966.
And decided we would-- we'd get married.
We moved to, uh, Eugene.
Kaye grew as a person
as she transitioned from having taught high school
into becoming an interim director
of the Planned Parenthood facility in Eugene.
We met because she was the director of Planned Parenthood.
and I was in charge of family planning for the county.
So we worked closely together.
Everybody knew who Kaye Turner was, it seemed like.
You know, she was independent.
She was a feminist.
As though she cared--
But she didn't act like she cared what other people thought.
She had kind of a Princess Diana quality about her.
She was like a butterfly
when she kind of--
I'm coming up with all these things.
I never thought of her that way, but...
people really were attracted to her.
Eugene was really the center of this new movement around running.
And she was infected by that.
It was almost like a lifestyle to her.
She was running in-- in marathons, in races, and...
was really a serious runner.
Nike had just come out with its first running show for women.
And she had a pair.
[Ardith] Kaye and I ran, the two of us, a lot.
I didn't think I could ever run on my own, without stopping.
And she did.
So, i decided, "Well, if she can do it, I can do it."
She was my mentor, I guess.
[Noel] We were real busy in our respective work environments.
There were--
There were areas where we should have communicated better
with one another instead of maybe assuming
that we were on the same page.
Investigators find, in her office, her calendar.
Which showed that Kaye had relationships outside of her marriage.
It was a surprise to Noel when investigators told him.
He was aware that she was unhappy.
But unaware that she was, um...
You know, that she was seeing men outside of their-- of their marriage.
[Noel] And they asked me if I'd take a polygraph test.
I didn't have any qualms about doing it.
But it was not a-- a comfortable experience.
[Ardith] I mean, I guess they have to do that
'cause it's always the husband and the wife
or the--
He's so unlike...
I don't know what the typical killer is, but...
You know, Noel is one of the gentlest men I've ever known.
[Noelle] He passed.
There was nothing that linked him to his wife's disappearance.
And the case just kind of didn't really-- Didn't really go anywhere.
Not only had no suspect emerged,
they still had no idea what had happened to Kaye.
It was like she just vanished.
[Noel] Sometime in the week after Christmas,
it was a feeling of hopelessness
for everybody that was participating in it to...
to come to that conclusion.
That they'd...
...gone over that area as much as they...
...thought they could have. Um...
When you've... You know, you gotta...
You gotta stop
stop doing this at some point.
And...
And so...
And I-- I don't remember who said-- talked to me.
And they said...
"Until you leave...
[sobbing]
"none of these people are gonna leave."
So, then... [clears throat]
Then shortly after that,
I said, "Well, I gotta go home."
[Noelle] Months pass.
There are no suspects.
You got the sense from the friends
that there was this kind of frustration
about the scope and scale of the search.
[man 1] This area was searched once before, wasn't it?
[man 2] Parts of it was.
And other parts weren't searched hard enough.
And we wanna see... We wanna look at it another time.
We were getting frustrated 'cause we know something must have happened.
So, we thought about a reward
to kinda jumpstart the situation.
[Noelle] Kaye's friends put up a $1,000 reward.
Thinking that the suspect would come out to claim this reward.
And that's exactly what happened.
[Gary] A few months later, I'm doing something in the back.
Chrissy says, "Gary, there's a guy at the counter
"that wants to use the phones.
"Says that he found some clothes in the woods."
And I said, "Okay."
So I went out.
He says, "I was out rabbit-hunting with my dog,
"and I found some clothes in the woods."
Well, that's a red flag to me 'cause there's really no rabbits here.
And he says, "Well, I found a pair of short, a shirt and a sweatshirt."
And I say, "You know what? Probably not our jogger.
"She didn't have a sweatshirt."
And he just looked at me.
He didn't say a word, he just looked at me.
So I called the State Police.
And I said, "Hey, we got a guy here that found some clothing."
"He says, "I wonder if I get any reward for this."
And I say something like, "Well, it's just clothes,
"you know. No."
So I'm filling up this propane tank behind the store,
and Chrissy comes back
and tells me, "Gary, this guy just told me he was
"the last one to see Kaye Turner alive."
So I didn't even talk to him.
I went back to the phone, I called the cops and I said,
"Would it make any difference to you folks
"if I told you he just said he was the last one to see her alive."
They said, "We're sending more people."
[siren blaring]
Boom.
Who says something like that?
The guy that killed her.
Right?
The last one to see her alive.
[narrator] If a tree falls in the woods, an no one hears it,
does it make a sound?
The real question is
What does it mean to exist?
To be seen?
If the tree is a woman, like Kaye Turner,
and she screams,
does her voice matter?
Sometimes, a fallen tree can tell the story of what happened.
But it can also be a warning of what will happen again.
And in 1990, Santiam Junction,
that is exactly the case with Rachanda Pickle.
[reporter] Even with all the manpower,
authorities say there is just too much ground to cover here.
They think Rachanda met with foul play
Her family hasn't heard from her.
Authorities don't have any new leads.
So, searchers are resigned to the fact
that they aren't going to find any good news here.
[Byron] It was horrible,
knowing how she'd get homesick, you know.
And how dependent she was upon my mom.
I knew...
I knew something bad happened.
As bad as it sounds, I was hoping she got kidnapped and we would find her.
[Mike] You are hoping for the best, like, "Oh, she's lost."
But mentally, a detective's preparing himself for worst-case scenario.
Especially if we don't find the child within 48 hours.
Especially up in the woods...
[Mark] The statistics show that 88% of the time
the victim knows their assailant.
So, you look at people closest around someone
when they disappear.
[Mike] Sometimes it may be offensive to parents
when we ask some of the questions we have
but, you know, the parents were the last one to see 'em.
We gotta ask certain questions
to rule them out and move on,
or to other people.
We interviewed many people,
including Rachanda's mother, Linda Ackroyd.
[tape clicks]
[officer speaking]
[Linda speaking]
[Mark] I felt like Linda was just...
laying out what she knew.
And she was very pen and forthright.
I don't think she was lying about it.
I think she just really didn't know what happened.
[John speaking]
[officer speaking]
[Noelle] Some people in the family thought
maybe Steven Pickle was to blame.
We know, from court records,
he had sexually abused another child.
Children are not safe in his care.
His own daughter didn't feel safe in his care.
Well, that's kind of what I thought Rachanda was running away from.
[Steve speaking]
He was not in the area during the time in which Rachanda went missing.
He was in Medford, a long ways away,
with his son.
But John could not account for his time.
[John speaking]
Well, she thought that I did something to Channy
I loved Chandy. I did not do nothin' to Channy.