A woman who identifies herself on a video recording as the girlfriend of a 38-year-old “person of interest” in the deaths of four Oregon women says he had ties to at least two of them.
In the video posted on YouTube, an unnamed woman said Jesse Lee Calhoun also sold fentanyl and had sex with other women during their relationship.
Lavelle Howard, 45, who goes by “Velly Ray” on YouTube, said he did the interview and posted the video. Howard doesn’t identify the woman on the video and doesn’t show her face, but he told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday that she is the girlfriend of Calhoun.
The Oregonian/OregonLive could not independently verify the woman’s claims.
Calhoun was arrested June 6 and returned to prison after investigators linked him to the cases of four women found dead within three months and 100 miles of each other this year in and around Portland, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement sources.
He is being held on a parole violation and hasn’t been publicly charged in any of the deaths. The District Attorney’s Office hasn’t released details of the multi-agency investigation except to say detectives had identified a person of interest.
Howard said the woman who had been living with Calhoun most recently reached out to him because he was posting videos, photos and information about women found dead or missing in the region. Howard said he grew up in Southeast Portland and makes videos about how his neighborhood and the city are affected by fentanyl and homelessness.
Howard said he recorded an interview with the woman on July 14 in her Milwaukie apartment, more than a month after police arrested Calhoun in Milwaukie.
On the same day as Calhoun’s arrest, police raided the woman’s apartment, where Calhoun also lived, according to a neighbor and the woman in the YouTube video.
In the video, the woman said Calhoun has ties to two of the four women whose bodies have been found in rural areas since Feb. 19.
The statements by Calhoun’s recent girlfriend posted on YouTube are the first public characterization of a connection alleged between Calhoun and two victims.
Investigators wearing special full-body suits spent up to three days searching the 43-year-old girlfriend’s ground-floor unit at the RiverView apartments off Southeast River Road in Milwaukie, the neighbor told The Oregonian/OregonLive. They cut out a piece of a couch and the carpet in the apartment, according to the neighbor.
In the video, the self-described girlfriend said she spent three days at a hotel while police searched her apartment for belongings of two of the women found dead, cut a patch from her carpet, couch and from her car, took her floor mats, her sex toys and all electronics from the unit.
Police also seized about 30 fentanyl pills from her apartment and examined footage from two security cameras in her unit, including one that is pointed out her front window, according to the video. She said police later obtained her DNA.
Police asked her, “Did it seem like he lived a double life?” she said on the video.
Investigators left paperwork behind related to two search warrants, one from the Clackamas County sheriff’s investigation into the death of 22-year-old Ashley Real and another from the Polk County sheriff’s investigation into the death of 31-year-old Bridget Leann Ramsey Webster, the woman said.
She said on the video that she learned Real had a sexual relationship with Calhoun when Real sent her a text message, messaged her on Facebook and called her last year to inform her she was having sex with her boyfriend.
When she said she confronted Calhoun, he first denied it but then admitted he had sex with Real, she said.
Later, the woman said she discovered a video on Calhoun’s cellphone of him with another woman in a car who was topless and holding a needle in her hand, saying she had just “quit shooting up.”
At first, she said she didn’t recognize the shirtless woman. But after Calhoun’s arrest and the search of her apartment, she went online to learn more. She said she recognized Webster, once her photo was in the news, from the video of the shirtless woman on Calhoun’s phone, according to the YouTube interview.
“My heart sank when I saw Bridget,” she said.
Webster’s body was found April 30 on Harmony Road near Mill Creek in northwest Polk County. Little has been released about the circumstances of her death, though authorities have said it’s suspicious. She was last known to have lived in an apartment in Clackamas County.
Real, of Portland, disappeared March 27 in Southeast Portland; her remains were found May 7 in the Eagle Creek area of Clackamas County. Investigators have said her death is suspicious.
The woman who lived with Calhoun said she was in the red and black Chevrolet HHR car with Calhoun on June 6 in Milwaukie when unmarked police cars surrounded it as they were at a gas station off Southeast McLoughlin, putting air in a tire about 2 p.m. Police with guns drawn ordered them to put their hands up and get of the car, she said on the video.
Calhoun taunted police, saying something like, “What are you going to do?” and put his hands up and then dropped them, she said on the video. She stepped out of the passenger side after she said something was fired at the car. The Clackamas County SWAT team was involved in the stop and, if anything, fired a 40 mm less-lethal round, a source familiar with the investigation told The Oregonian/OregonLive. Calhoun jumped into the nearby Willamette River before he was cornered by police.
The woman said she first met Calhoun on Facebook when he messaged her at a time when she was homeless, according to the video. They then met in person outside a Plaid Pantry and were inseparable since then, dating for about a year and a half, according to the videotaped interview. She described him as 6-foot-4 and about 260 pounds. Calhoun is listed as 6-foot-4 and 266 pounds in court papers.
Since Calhoun’s arrest, she said on the video, they have talked by phone and that Calhoun cried during their initial call and told her, “Baby, they got me.” She said in the interview that she understood Calhoun to be referencing his frequent attempts to get away from police, noting he had fought with a police dog in the past. Calhoun has prior convictions for burglaries, car prowls, assault on an officer and interfering with a law enforcement animal.
The woman said she believed Calhoun had multiple sexual relationships with other women during their time together.
The woman who was living with Calhoun did not return messages left at her apartment, on her phone or on her social media.
The other two cases that Calhoun is a “person of interest” in are Charity Lynn Perry, 24, of Vancouver, whose body was found April 24 in a culvert at East Historic Columbia River Highway and Northeast Tumalt Road, near Ainsworth State Park in east Multnomah County, and Kristin Smith, 22, of Gresham, whose remains were discovered Feb. 19 in a wooded area near Southeast Deardorff Road and Flavel Street in Southeast Portland’s Pleasant Valley neighborhood.
Calhoun also has domestic violence-related assault convictions. The mother of one of his children obtained a restraining order against him in 2005, noting in her petition that he “gets angry very easily,” yells, would “punch holes in the back of the bedroom door” and had left bruises on her arm by grabbing her forcefully and pushing her out the door. They had lived together from December 2002 through October 2004.
A police report from his violation of a restraining order in March 2005 indicated Calhoun has a tattoo of the word “Pimp” on his left hand.
Gov. Kate Brown commuted Calhoun’s 2019 sentence of four years and two months for multiple burglaries on June 23, 2021, about a year before his projected release, according to the state Corrections Department. His involvement in a prison wildfire firefighting program was a key factor.
On July 3, Gov. Tina Kotek revoked Calhoun’s commutation after Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt wrote to the governor’s office that day that Calhoun “has been involved in criminal activity currently under investigation by Oregon law enforcement.”
Video of Calhoun’s arrest last month, when he ran across the street and dove into the Willamette River, showed him getting handcuffed by officers near a boat launch, wearing an American flag-decorated tank top.
Calhoun is housed at the Snake River Correctional Institution on a parole violation.
