Humiliation, Torture & Murder

The sky glared hot and blue over Portland, Oregon, on Sun­day, July 20, 1986. Cecil Hoyette Higgs Jr., 41, peered out from the fash­ionable, comfortably air-conditioned department store where he worked in the southeast corner of the city. Even though he loved and excelled in his work, he was clearly bored on this par­ticular day. He yearned to make the two- hour drive to the beach for a much-needed break from the store's tailoring department where he was the assistant manager. It was a trip he had been plan­ning to make for some time.

The temperature must have been near 100 degrees when Cecil walked out of the store and headed for his car, a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which he usually parked in a far corner of the mall's lot designated for employee vehicles. He had left the windows open a crack, but it hadn't helped much. No sooner had he slid behind the wheel than beads of per­spiration began to pop out all over his face. As soon as he started the engine, he turned the air conditioning on high and headed for home, a small Southeast Portland apartment he shared with an­other man, Bruce Gagnon, who had been his roommate and friend for the previous five years.

Bruce was home when Cecil arrived. Cecil promptly told him that he was going downtown for a few hours later that evening, just to do something sim­ple to relieve his boredom. He asked Bruce if he wanted to go with him, but Bruce politely declined and told him to have a good time without him.

Cecil then took a cool shower, changed clothes, and prepared a small meal for himself. When he had cleared his dinner dishes he said goodbye to his roommate, unaware that he would nev­er see him again. It was shortly after 8:00 p.m. when he finally left the apart­ment for the last time.

When he arrived downtown, Cecil spent only a few minutes in the area. He walked around a bit and. finding that there wasn't much happening on a Sun­day night and seeing no one that he knew, headed back to his car.

Unknown to him, however, he was being watched by three young men who followed a short distance behind him. It wasn't until he reached out to open the door of his car that they attacked him, taking him fully by surprise.

But Cecil wasn't the type to become anyone's victim easily, at least not with­out putting up some type of resistance. He struggled angrily with his attackers, who'd made it clear from the outset that they intended to do him bodily harm, but he didn't fight with them.

Cecil, by his very nature, simply wasn't a fighter. Aware of their inten­tions he broke away and ran. But the young men chased and caught him, knocking him down only a few yards from his car. He got to his feet and ran again, only to be caught and knocked to the asphalt once more. Their knives drawn, they demanded that Cecil turn over his keys. When he complied, one of them opened the trunk and together they forced their terrified victim inside, and then sped away from the scene in Cecil's car.

When Cecil didn't return home that night, Bruce naturally became a little worried. But since Cecil was planning to go to the beach the next day Bruce decided, incorrectly, that his roommate must have left town a day early. He thought little else about Cecil's absence until two days later.

On Tuesday, July 22nd, a farmer in North Portland was walking toward one of his cucumber fields, looking towards the ground to check the progress of his labor, when he saw what appeared to be a small picture of someone encased in plastic. It was lying in the grass and, upon closer inspection, he could see that it was someone's Oregon driver's license. When he picked it up he noticed another plastic card nearby, a membership card to an athletic club. Both bore the name Cecil Hoyette Higgs Jr.

The farmer thought it was a bit strange that these two pieces of identi­fication should be found on his farm. This prompted him to pick them up and place them in his pocket. When the farmer had finished his day's work he thought over what he might do about the mysterious identification. Although he had never heard of Cecil Higgs, he felt it was his civic duty to at least try and get the identification back to its rightful owner.