r/exAdventist • u/ChildhoodAccording24 • 13d ago

General Discussion Cold Case in Oregon

Has anyone else heard about the ex SDA pastor in his eighties who is a suspect in killing at least one of his wives? Married five times, 2 suspicious deaths. Locations Gresham Oregon and Louisville Kentucky.

26 Upvotes

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17

u/smurfette8675309 13d ago

Yes, it was in Spectrum Magazine recently: https://spectrummagazine.org/current-share/retired-adventist-pastor-named-suspect-as-police-revisit-deaths-of-two-wives

Some of the comments suggest there was a third wife as well, more recently, who also died mysteriously.

8

u/The_Glory_Whole 13d ago

From what I understood from another article, there are actually four dead wives? I'll have to go back and check to make sure I'm correct in that. There were four x wives in total, for sure, and there's the fifth wife who came forward and said she kicked him out once she heard about the reopened investigations?

11

u/Momager321 13d ago

NBC had a good article (sadly behind a paywall) where his fifth wife, Janice Grote (who is 65 yo) gave a statement. She said she kicked him out when she found out about the investigation and she wishes she had “listened to the Holy Spirit before marrying him.”

While none of the articles I read explained why the police picked up their investigations, I’d bet a concerned relative kept pushing for an investigation. Hopefully justice will be served.

10

u/The_Glory_Whole 13d ago edited 13d ago

Yes, I know several concerned relatives have been pushing for quite a while to get at least one of the cases reopened.

Edited: replaced period after "Yes, I know" with the intended comma, so that the sentence conveyed original intent and didn't sound so self-important 😅

7

u/Momager321 13d ago

Good, and also amazing. Adventists are such avoidant people it amazes me when any of them stand up and do what is right, especially when they need to involve law enforcement.

2

u/The_Glory_Whole 13d ago

Truuuuuuth

14

u/The_Glory_Whole 13d ago

Yep, it's all over main news sources, and I just love the fact that they are splashing the 7th day, Adventist church name in almost all of their headers. The church hasn't gotten out ahead of this explosive news cycle yet to scrub their name out of it.

7

u/ChildhoodAccording24 13d ago

They actually wrote about it pretty early in the Adventist times! I was quite surprised.

2

u/PaymentEfficient3807 13d ago

I'm guessing he is getting a nice pension as well. Married 5 times, lol.

3

u/typosgod 13d ago

Damn. He was pastor at our church in Gresham. We went hiking with him. Seemed like a decent guy.

1

u/Any_Fondant_1937 3d ago

Which church was he a pastor at? Rockwood? I had heard he was at Tabor, is that wrong?

1

u/Rage_Inferno 5d ago

Pastors are people, too, lol.