Second victim comes forward

Danielle Tudor doesn't believe rapist has changed

By Mara Stine

The Gresham Outlook, Jul 3, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Danielle Tudor didn’t want to reveal herself as another victim of serial rapist Richard T. Gillmore.

She grew up in East Multnomah County, still lives in the area and knows a lot of people who, quite frankly, she isn’t wild about being privy to such personal information about her.

Not even her two grown sons knew that as a teenager, a man broke into her East County home and tried to rape her on the floor of her parents’ bedroom.

That seven years later, the same man ambushed a 13-year-old girl named Tiffany Edens in her Troutdale home and raped her.

That when police arrested Edens’ rapist they discovered he was the notorious “jogger rapist,” who later admitted to sexually assaulting seven other women — including Tudor — in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

The other rapes were not prosecuted because the statute of limitations had passed.

But a judge took into account Gillmore’s prior victims and sentenced him to 60 years with a minimum of 30 years in prison for Edens’ rape. He could be held as late as Aug. 11, 2024, but with good behavior could be released earlier.

So when Multnomah County District Attorney Russ Ratto invited Tudor on Saturday, June 21, to testify before the parole board at Gillmore’s parole hearing, Tudor instinctively said no.

“I don’t think I need to get involved,” she said.

At Gillmore’s hearing on Tuesday, June 24, Edens made an emotional plea to keep Gillmore, now 48, in prison. Ratto told the board he’d managed to contact two of Gillmore’s other victims, but neither would testify.

That evening, Tudor saw Edens’ weary face on the television news. Now 35, Edens was the only woman with enough courage to face her attacker.

“It just pulled something in my heart,” Tudor, 45, says. “I thought, ‘Gosh, she’s out there on her own and she has the courage to put herself out there.’ ”

Why should Edens have to bear the burden of representing all eight women Gillmore sexually assaulted for the greater good of protecting the community? Tudor thought.

So Tudor picked up the phone and called the district attorney’s office. “What can I do to help?” she asked and agreed to go public.

This is her story.

Nov. 11, 1979

It was 7 p.m. when Tudor, a 17-year-old senior at David Douglas High School, was in the den watching “The King and I” on television. Her parents had just left the house near Powell Butte to visit a friend, and her four older brothers and sisters also were out for the evening.

She heard a noise, but dismissed it as the East County wind.

Suddenly, a man kicked in the door to the den from the garage and barged into her home.

“We both froze,” she says, adding that at first she thought the man was a friend of one of her brothers. They looked a lot alike. But after getting a closer look at his uncovered face, she realized he was a stranger.

Just as that realization set in, the man turned and ran away.

Tudor ran upstairs to her parent’s bedroom and dialed 9-1-1. While on the phone, she heard the family poodle growl. The man had returned, this time with a bandana covering his face. He was armed with a 3-and-a-half-foot stick he’d grabbed from the garage.

Seeing her on the phone, Gillmore yanked it out of the wall, kicked over a lamp and demanded to know who she was talking to.

She lied and said her brother.

Gillmore punched her in the stomach, slammed her up against the wall and threatened her with the stick. Then he scooped her up and threw her onto her parents’ bed.

Tudor fought like hell. The struggle landed her on the floor, where he attempted to rape her.

She pleaded with him not to hurt her and told Gillmore she was a virgin. He called her a liar and tried, but failed, to penetrate her.

Then, they heard a noise downstairs. Thinking quickly, Tudor said she heard someone coming.

After rifling through a dresser drawer looking for cash, Gillmore took off.

Tudor grabbed a bathrobe and ran out the front door just as the police arrived. Although she’s not usually a detail-oriented person, Tudor gave a very accurate description of her would-be rapist to a police sketch artist — because he so closely resembled her brother’s friend. She was the only victim to see his face.

A short time later, a sheriff’s deputy patrolling the Powell Butte area noticed a motorist who looked like the man in the composite drawing. He stopped and questioned the man, but had no further reason to hold him. But he jotted the man’s name on the back of the sketch. It was Richard Troy Gillmore.

Rapist is captured

Seven years later, when Gillmore raped Edens, Gresham police recognized the name on the back of that sketch as someone who’d applied to be hired as a police officer. Another officer, a neighbor of Gillmore’s who’d recommended him for the job, realized the true nature of his interest in evidence collection and rape cases.

Police used fingerprints Gillmore submitted as part of the hiring process to connect him to the Edens’ rape, as well as another. They arrested the Troutdale man when he was on his way home from work at a local tire shop.

Tudor remembers seeing Edens and the other victims at the trial. The girl was practicing her dance steps in the courthouse hallway. “Every single one of them was still a mess,” Tudor says of Gillmore’s victims. “We were all afraid to be home alone. It was very sad to see.”

At that moment, Tudor made the conscious decision to not live in fear.

“Otherwise you’re continually violated,” she says. Between the fear and isolation rape victims feel, “It holds you prisoner, it really does.”

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t hyper aware of her surroundings. Tudor is not only on high alert in parking lots, she works out just in case.

Will her resolve to live without fear change if Gillmore is released?

Tudor thinks long and hard.

“I really don’t know,” she says.

What she does know is Gillmore needs to remain locked up. She echoes what Edens, Deputy District Attorney Ratto and the three psychologists who’ve examined say — he’s still dangerous and is likely to rape again.

In fact, at last week’s hearing when a board member pointedly asked Ratto if he thought any of Gillmore’s testimony was truthful, Ratto flat out said, “I don’t believe a thing he says.”

Neither does Tudor.

“It’s not just one victim. It’s not over a short time span. It’s a pattern,” Tudor says. “That is what is so crucial here. … It’s not right, the fact that they (parole board members) are even considering letting him out.”

And although Gillmore claims to have been rehabilitated, Tudor doesn’t believe that’s possible.

“Are we as a society willing to take that chance?” she asks. “Are you willing to take that chance with your daughter? I think the answer has got to be no.”