Nineteen-year-old Cody Faye Myers of Lafayette, Oregon, was reported missing after failing to arrive at a planned trip to a jazz festival in Newport over the weekend of October 1, 2011. A multi-agency search ended when his body was found in a wooded area in the mid-Willamette Valley on the night of Tuesday, October 4, 2011. An autopsy determined he died from gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

Investigators linked Myers’s death to fugitives David Joseph Pedersen, 31, and Holly Ann Grigsby, 24, who were already wanted in the September 29 killing of Pedersen’s 69-year-old stepmother, Leslie Pedersen, in Washington State. Authorities believe Pedersen and Grigsby carjacked Myers, shot him to eliminate a witness, and took his vehicle during a cross-state flight later described by an official as a vicious, vile reign of terror. A California Highway Patrol officer north of Sacramento recognized Myers’s car from a BOLO, stopped it, and arrested Pedersen and Grigsby; loaded handguns and rifles were found inside.

The pair’s flight is also tied to the killing of Reginald Clark in Eureka, California, another carjacking homicide. Anyone with information about Cody Myers or who saw him in late September or early October 2011 is asked to come forward.