Third victim steps forward against rapist

Courage of other women inspires

By Mara Stine

The Gresham Outlook, Jul 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

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Serial rapist Richard Troy Gillmore lied to the parole board during his parole consideration hearing Tuesday, June 24, when he said Tiffany Edens was the only child he raped.

On Monday, July 7, another victim – who like Edens was 13 when Gillmore broke into her home and violently raped her – came forward.

Colleen Kelly, 41, of Southeast Portland is telling her story in the hope of inspiring other victims to come forward and to convince the state’s parole board not to release Gillmore, 48.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” she said regarding the board’s decision last year to grant Gillmore parole. “He’s just a walking time bomb. If he does get out and does it again, he’ll take it to the next level. I think he would kill his victims instead of leaving them alive.”

Kelly is Gillmore’s third victim to speak publicly. Last week, Danielle Tudor, 45, of East Multnomah County shared her story in part to support Edens.

Now 35, Edens is the only one of Gillmore’s eight victims to face him while testifying against his parole.

Gillmore broke into Edens’ Troutdale home and raped the girl on Dec. 5, 1986. During the investigation, police discovered Gillmore was the notorious “jogger rapist,” who’d sexually assaulted seven other East Multnomah County residents – including Tudor and Kelly – in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

While Gillmore admitted to these rapes, he was only prosecuted for raping Edens.

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 in prison with a minimum of 30 years in prison for Edens’ rape.

However, a year after Gillmore’s conviction, the parole board reduced his minimum sentence to 15 years.

Last fall, the parole board approved Gillmore’s request to be released but failed to notify Edens of the hearing. When the board held a second hearing, at which she testified, it once again approved Gillmore’s parole despite expert testimony that he’s still dangerous and likely to re-offend. As a result, Edens and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office sued the board to overturn the parole board’s decision.

A judge in January ordered a third hearing, which was held Tuesday, June 24. After seeing Edens’ emotional testimony on the news, Tudor and Kelly decided to come forward.

The three have a lot in common.

As Gillmore described the girls and women he targeted to the parole board, they were all young, attractive and home alone.

Edens, Tudor and Kelly also were legally considered children – the oldest, Tudor, was 17 when Gillmore attacked her. And all saw their lives spiral downward in the wake of the sexual assaults.

Kelly’s nightmare

Kelly was an eighth-grader at what now is Alice Ott Middle School when Gillmore removed the screen from her parent’s window and crept into her apartment on the northern edge of Powell Butte on Monday, Oct. 27, 1980.

She’d spent the evening with a friend baking a birthday cake for her mom. A little before 10 p.m. Kelly’s sister called their mom for a ride home from work. Her dad was working swing shift at Boeing, so Kelly, cozy in her nightgown, curled up on the living room couch to channel surf and flip through a magazine.

She heard a strange noise like someone jiggling the front door followed by what she thought were garbage cans rattling. With Halloween just days away, she attributed it to neighborhood kids pulling a prank.

But she then heard another noise in her parents’ bedroom. She got up and looked down the hallway toward the room, but again, thought it was nothing.

After sitting back down on the couch, a man suddenly appeared standing in front of her. He was wearing white running shorts with blue trim, tube socks and a hooded sweatshirt drawn up over his head. A nylon stocking obscured his face.

She tried to run, but the man grabbed her, pinned her arms to her sides and clamped a hand over her mouth. He picked her up, dragged her into her bedroom and attacked the girl.

“For a 13-year-old, I fought him off as hard and as long as I could,” she said.

But he was too strong.

The man held her on the floor and repeatedly punched her lower back, threatening to continue if she didn’t stop screaming.

“One more blow to my lower back and I would have been in a wheelchair is what they told me,” she said. The assault shifted her spine inward. She still suffers from muscle spasms.

Eventually, he rolled the girl onto her back and climbed on top of her. She reached for a nearby hammer she’d used to hang some posters but couldn’t grasp it.

Then, when she kept her legs crossed after he ordered her to open them, he punched her in the stomach.

“From there, I just kind of blanked out, went limp, just numb,” she said. In desperation, she told the man her mother was due home any minute.

She said Gillmore threatened to rape her as well.

They heard her mother’s key in the front door and the man fled out the window he came in through.

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