PORTLAND, Ore. — It was late on a Friday night in November 2007. Jesse Calhoun had been drinking with his girlfriend at the local Stockman’s Bar in Baker City when the 22-year-old man suddenly exploded — jealous and angry. Calhoun grabbed his girlfriend by the throat with one hand, squeezing so tight that she couldn’t breathe. When he finally let go, red finger marks were still imprinted on her throat.
The young couple drove home, but Calhoun wasn’t done. Just two miles from the bar, Calhoun punched his girlfriend in the head and arm as she sat in car.
The young woman shook and cried as she described the beating to a Baker City police officer later that night. “It hurts really bad,” the woman told the officer, according to court documents.
The violence didn’t stop.
Roughly six months later, Calhoun knocked the same woman off a bicycle — then dragged her 50 feet across a parking lot, according to investigators. She suffered head injuries.
Fifteen years later, Calhoun is reported to be a person of interest in the deaths of four Portland women over the past six months. He’s back in prison after being arrested in early June for unrelated parole violations.
Criminal history
Court records indicate Calhoun has a lengthy criminal history in Oregon, stretching over the past two decades. The charges and citations include aggravated theft, burglary, resisting arrest and assaulting a public safety officer.
Several of the incidents involve violent outbursts, but the two assaults involving a former girlfriend may provide the most vivid example of Calhoun’s escalation of violence, particularly violence toward women. Descriptions of both incidents were based on court documents and police reports.
KGW is not identifying the former girlfriend because she was the victim of domestic violence. Court records indicate the couple had a child together. The woman has since married and moved out-of-state. She couldn’t be reached for comment.
Calhoun’s first brush with the adult criminal justice system came when he was 18 years old. Police arrested him for assaulting a man in rural Baker County in July 2002. Calhoun was convicted of felony assault in the third degree and sentenced to ten days in jail and three years of probation. He ended up back in jail briefly after violating probation for using illegal drugs, failing to stay at his reported address and failing to follow the directions of his parole and probation officer.
Calhoun was also arrested in March 2005 for violating a restraining order after he allegedly threatened and harassed a woman that he had a child with.
Then came the violent outbursts involving his girlfriend in Eastern Oregon.
Eastern Oregon incidents
On December 1, 2007, Baker City Police arrested Calhoun for assaulting his girlfriend at the bar and during the drive home. He was charged with assault and strangulation. Calhoun later pleaded guilty to a single count of misdemeanor assault. A judge sentenced him to probation.
In June 2008, he violated that probation when he assaulted his girlfriend — for the second time. Baker City police arrested Calhoun for assault and kidnapping after dragging his girlfriend across a parking lot. In that case, he pleaded guilty to felony assault and was sentenced to three years of probation.
Court records indicate Calhoun violated conditions of probation by not showing up for a work crew, hanging out with known drug users and violating a no contact order with his girlfriend — the same woman he’d assaulted twice.
In a report, Calhoun’s parole and probation officer asked a judge to send him to the Oregon Department of Corrections for failing to comply with probation and not staying away from his girlfriend.
“His two previous encounters with (the victim) have resulted in assault charges and Mr. Calhoun shows an escalation of violence with his continued contact with (his victim),” the parole and probation officer wrote.
In January 2009, a judge ordered Calhoun’s probation be revoked and he was sent to prison for three years.
Following his release, Calhoun was in and out jail on a variety of charges involving drugs, stolen cars and guns.
In 2019, Calhoun was sentenced to state prison on burglary and stolen vehicle charges. He was released on July 22, 2021, after then-Oregon Governor Kate Brown commuted the sentences inmates who helped fight wildfires in 2020.
The commutation shortened Calhoun’s sentence by about one year. Without it, he likely would have stayed in prison until mid-2022, then been released several months before the women went missing.