What the private eye knew

By August, seven months had passed since Ashley Pond disappeared; more than 4 months since Miranda Gaddis vanished. Still, Oregon City police and the FBI appeared to the public to be no closer to an arrest, even though neighbor Ward Weaver had told whoever would listen that he was the prime suspect.

And though Ashley’s step-grandmother Linda O’Neal firmly believed there was enough probable cause to search his property for the two bodies, police did not appear to her to be interested.  No search warrant was asked for or issued.

By early August, Linda learned Weaver had apparently had enough media attention.

Linda O’Neal, step-grandmother and private eye: He told people he was going to Mexico or Idaho. He had emptied his entire house of all of his possessions..

But with his house empty, and apparently ready to move out of Oregon, Ward Weaver made a move that still mystifies everyone involved.

Randi Oneida, girlfriend of Ward Weaver’s son: He was a nice person to be around. He fooled people I guess.

Oneida is the girlfriend of Ward Weaver’s son, the mother of Ward’s grandchild. Never before has she revealed publicly what happened that day in August 2002 when at the age of 19, she got in a car with Weaver, a man she assumed she could trust.

Oneida: All the way to his house, he wasn’t acting different or anything.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: And then you walked in the house, and..

Oneida: That’s when he snapped. That’s when I noticed a different face.

He threw her to the floor, tore off her clothing, and raped her. She couldn’t talk about the worst of it, she said. Her body seemed to stiffen at the memory.

Morrison: Do you remember the look in his eye?

Oneida: He was possessed. It wasn’t him. It looked like satan inside of him, but the second he stood up off of me, his face went back to normal.

Morrison: And then you ran?

Oneida: Yeah, I pushed him with my feet, pushed him back, and I ran.

On the way out, she grabbed a tarp covering the concrete slab in Ward’s backyard.  And then she ran naked and trembling after a savage sexual assault— into the street, where she flagged down a passing car. And within hours, Ward Weaver was arrested, booked, and behind bars, charged with rape.

Portland Tribune reporter Jim Redden: That was the moment that I really thought, "This is the guy."

Linda O’Neal says she’d known it for months. She had known in her gut that Weaver was a violent man, who’d killed Ashley and Miranda. And they had him in custody now, for a violent rape, so she felt sure the FBI would move quickly to charge him in the disappearance of Ashley and Miranda.

Morrison: Once he was in custody was a search warrant issued for his property?

O’Neal: There was a search conducted that had everything to do with the rape, with the crime that occurred that day, but then they took down the yellow crime tape and they left.

And without crime scene tape or a steady police presence, Weaver’s house became a kind of open house. After weeks of people seeing Weaver’s name in the papers, or seeing him on the news, sitting near that freshly poured concrete slab, and hearing of his arrest for rape, many of the locals had come to the same conclusion as Linda: What was the FBI waiting for?

In mid-August, in the days after Ward was arrested for raping his son’s girlfriend, protestors gathered at the property. They left their accusing signs lying around the unexamined back yard...

Morrison: How long was it between the time Ward Weaver was arrested, and the time somebody got a search warrant to look into his property?

O’Neal: Well, he was arrested August 13, and it was August 23 when they got the search warrant.

Then, with crowds gathering again as if they knew what was to come, the FBI showed up in force, erecting two white tents, bringing in dozens of agents and tons of equipment.

Hours later, there was the first discovery: a box, in a shed behind the house, with remains. The Oregon state medical examiner positively identified the remains of the discovered body of Miranda Gaddis.

The following day, there was another vigil and another discovery. Investigators finally dug up that concrete slab. It was the very spot at which that search dog had issued a “death alert” five months before.

And there beneath it, they found another body — Ashley Pond’s.

O’Neal: It was very sad news because I think you always hope, until there’s a body, you always have hope. And even though I always believed the bodies were there, the reality of it was difficult. These two beautiful young girls were gone forever.

During all those days, weeks, months, of anxiety and hope… the long investigation, the scores of officers, the bodies of the two little girls were right here all along in Ward Weaver’s backyard.

And Weaver himself? At first, claimed he had not a thing to do with it. But in the end, Ward Weaver, without explaining how or why, simply pleaded guilty and was sentenced to remain in prison for the rest of his life.

At his sentencing, the judge said: “I think everyone probably shares in the hope that there is a special place in hell for people like you.”

How could Ward Weaver have gotten away with it for so long? And how could the FBI have seemed so, well, off?  Especially when others seemed to have figured it all so neatly? There was sadness, yes, for the loss of those two girls— but also now, anger.

Redden: Our headline was “Why did it take so long?” And that was the question that we were trying to get answered. We still don’t know.

Although there’s no evidence that a faster investigation might have saved Ashley or Miranda—the question remained, what about Randi? The young woman whose presence of mind and physical strength in the face of rape— and maybe something worse— saved her own life?

Morrison: You know better than anybody else on earth what Ashley and Miranda went through.

Randi Oneida, Ward Weaver's victim: Uh-huh.

Morrison: If you hadn’t had the abilities you had, what would’ve happened to you?

Oneida: I would be exactly where Ashley and Miranda are.

Morrison: Are you angry?

Randi: Yeah, I’m very angry.

Morrison: What does that anger feel like?

Oneida: It’s anger, frustration that this happened to me. It could have been stopped, I really believe that it could have been stopped.

Morrison: Who could have prevented it?

Oneida: I think the FBI, the Oregon city police.

O’Neal: If they were watching Ward Weaver, how did he move all of his possessions out of his house, give notice, and rape, and almost kill one more girl?

How indeed? We wondered how the police and FBI would respond to allegations that they had taken too long or bungled their investigation. What could they say to this young woman?

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