William Joseph Dean was 22 when he was found shot to death inside the living quarters at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon. His body was discovered on August 17, 1974; some records say he may have been killed several days earlier. Dean is recorded as dying August 17, 1974, in Multnomah County and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Astoria, Oregon.

Attention quickly focused on the church’s maintenance worker, Thomas Eugene Creech, because Dean’s body was found in the room Creech used. Creech left Portland shortly after the killing and disappeared from the city. He was arrested later in 1974 on unrelated charges, and investigations across jurisdictions connected him to Dean’s death. In a Portland courtroom on August 3, 1979, Creech was convicted and received a 99-year sentence for Dean’s murder.

Mark’s in the summer of 1974?