In the summer of 1980 a young White man was found dead along Interstate 5 near Woodburn, Oregon. The victim had been drugged, sexually assaulted, and strangled, his pockets turned inside out, and his belt and bootlaces were missing. At the time he remained unidentified and was treated as a John Doe for decades.

Recent forensic genetic genealogy produced a match: the man has been identified as Larry Eugene Parks, a 30-year-old Vietnam veteran who had last been seen by his family in Pensacola, Florida, in 1979. Parks’ family had lost contact with him after 1979 and did not know what had happened until the identification. Evidence from the case was examined during the 1980s in connection with the arrest and prosecution of Randy Kraft; in 2024 an investigator in Orange County developed a DNA profile from preserved blood and helped locate relatives whose DNA produced the positive ID.

Oregon State Police have named Randy Kraft as the sole person of interest and are continuing to process evidence to try to definitively link him to Parks’ murder. If anyone knew Larry Parks, his movements after 1979, or anything about that stretch of I-5 in July 1980, please share what is known.