A US army veteran was charged at the beginning of November with killing two teenagers and arrested. The murders occurred almost 50 years ago in Washington County in Oregon when the man was only 17 years old.
The veteran was later convicted of the murder of his commanding officer.
Steven Paul Criss, now 65, is accused of murdering Donny Barton, 16, and Pete Zito, Jr, 18. He shot them in the parking lot of a recreational center in October 1974.
After decades and several mistakes by the police, authorities announced that they had finally arrested Criss.
The bodies of the boys were found by a newspaper delivery driver the morning after the murder. Barton was found slumped over the hood of his 1956 Oldsmobile, which he apparently had been working on it when he was shot. Zito was found near Barton, next to the driver’s door.
The Washington County Sheriff’s office said that a .22 caliber handgun had been used in the murder.
A press release from the Sheriff’s office on Friday, November 4, 2022 said that Criss was one of the first suspects in the case when he got arrested for stealing, about two months after the double murders in 1974. He became a suspect when a police officer found a .22 caliber handgun in Criss’ car.
The gun was tested, but the bullets used to kill the boys did not match Criss’s gun, so Criss was taken off the list of suspects in the murder case.
Jim Spinden, a deputy at the time of the murder, and who later was elected as the Washington County Sheriff, was the first officer on the scene at the Oak Hills Recreational Center, where he found Zito and Barton.
One of the victims, Barton, had worked with Criss at a restaurant in Hillsboro, but they did not get along. Although the police knew that Criss had had issues with Barton, they pursued other leads and arrested another suspect, Joseph Amir Wilson, and charged him with the double homicide. Wilson insisted he was innocent. Wilson had been seen allegedly assaulting another man the previous night at the recreational center, which led some police officers to believe he might have killed the two boys in a case of mistaken identity.
In 1975, the police dropped the case against Wilson.
Criss was released when police discovered the ballistics in his gun failed to match the murder weapon.
Two years later, Criss shot his commanding officer, Sgt. Jacob Kim Brown, five times in the head, with the same gun, at the Fort Lewis US Army base in Washington, after an altercation.
Criss was sentenced to 35 years for the murder of Sgt. Brown. He only served 12 years.
Police reopened the cold case of the high school students, nearly 50 years later, and rechecked the ballistics on Criss’ gun. This time, the results came back as a positive match to the murder weapon.
Criss was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.