Charmel Ulrich was 14 when she was abducted on August 10, 1980, while walking a rural road near Scholls, Oregon, with a 13-year-old friend. A car with three men stopped and, according to the friend’s account, the men shoved Charmel into the vehicle; the friend escaped and later provided descriptions that produced composite sketches. Investigators searched Washington County and beyond. Days later, after one of the men began talking following his arrest, authorities located Charmel’s body in remote coastal timber east of Waldport; she had been stabbed to death.

Detectives focused on three suspects: William Perry Pete Jackson, Gary Allen Smith, and 18-year-old Michael Anthony Butler. The trio had been drifting and committing burglaries and assaults in Oregon and Washington in the weeks beforehand. After Butler was taken into custody in Forest Grove, he led investigators to the burial site and implicated the others. By August 22, 1980, all three had been arrested and charged with Charmel’s kidnapping, rape, and murder.

All three men were ultimately convicted and received life sentences in Oregon. Prosecutors considered the death penalty initially, but a 1981 Oregon Supreme Court ruling against capital punishment removed that option. Does anyone have memories of the search or the road near Scholls in 1980 that could add context to this case?