I talked to the former lead detective on the Cowden Family Murders, and he gave me a number of other unsolved murders they circumstantially linked to the main suspect.
Here's a quick refresher for those unfamiliar with the story.
The Cowden Family went camping deep in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon on Labor Day Weekend, 1974. The family included 28-year-old Richard Cowden, his 22-year-old wife Belinda, their 5-year-old son David, and their 5-month-old baby, Melissa.
Belinda's mom heads out to the campsite on the evening of September 1st, 1974, but the family is nowhere to be seen.
The State of Oregon conducted a massive search with helicopters, planes, USFS personnel, the National Guard, and more. But no signs of the family.
Seven months later, two gold prospectors walk up a steep hill when one sees a human skull in the middle of the trail. About 30 feet up the hill, he sees a skeleton tied upright to a tree.
The gold prospectors do a 180 and head out of the mountains to alert authorities.
That's when Detective Davis headed out to the site to recover the remains. The next morning, his team found a woman and two young children stuffed into a small cave a few hundred yards from the tree. The woman was shot, while the children had their skulls smashed in with rocks. The Cowden Family had finally been found.
Detective Davis already had a suspect.
At the time, Richard Davis was a "Junior Detective," but he was also one of the few officers in the area who had formal homicide investigation and forensic training.
And during this training, he remembered learning about "Sexual Sadists", or these sorts of criminal predators who find tremendous sexual pleasure from inflicting violence and humiliation upon nonconsenting people to fulfill their sexual needs.
They used a 1964 murder case from Springfield, Oregon, as an example. 15-year-old Dwaine Lee Little had murdered his 15-year-old neighbor, Orla Fay Fipps. Not only did he hunt her down while she rode her horse alone through an apple orchard, but he raped and severely mutilated her corpse.
The crime was so violent that the young boy would be tried as an adult and become the youngest person ever sentenced to life in Oregon Prison.
But Dwaine Little wouldn't spend life in prison; he would serve ten years before being paroled in 1974 at the age of 26.
That's when Detective Davis told me things the public had never heard before.
Dwaine was paroled on May 24th, 1974. His parents were supposed to pick him up and take him home with them to Southern Oregon. But instead, the Littles headed north from the penitentiary in Salem, OR, to Littlerock, WA, for a family reunion.
Dwaine spent the weekend with family, but after a few days he asked to borrow his dad's pickup truck so he could go for a little drive to get some fresh air. After 10 years in prison, straight to a family reunion, they figured Dwaine could use some time alone in nature.
That day was the last day 14-year-old Brenda Joy Baker was seen alive, hitchhiking and getting into a pickup truck. Her body was discovered less than a month later in a state park, about 6 miles away from the Little Family Reunion.
Brenda's case remains unsolved to this day, but it has always been tied to Ted Bundy by internet sleuths due to her being in Washington at the same time. Ted Bundy explicitly denied being involved in Brenda's case before his execution.
Dwaine Lee Little would then move in with his parents in Southern Oregon in June 1974, and the Cowden Family were abducted and murdered less than 4 months later.
Since I've already written so much, I will keep the rest brief.
Detective Davis gave me a laundry list of circumstantial evidence and witnesses that put Dwaine in the area and made him very suspicious; but, as is so typical, they lacked physical evidence that undoubtedly linked him to the crime.
Police were able to get him on a parole violation, and he went back to prison for a few years. But he was paroled again in 1977. Detective Davis then tracked his movements over the next two years, and they could place him in the area of a couple murdered while camping near Eugene in spring 1978; later that year, they could place him on the same road at the same time that another couple was murdered while hitchhiking near Klamath Falls, OR. But besides being in the immediate area and having the opportunity, they had no physical evidence to pin on him.
(*Important note - Unlike the Brenda Baker case, these four murders in 1978 were declared "solved" in very recent years. I put "solved" in quotations because the police named suspects with no criminal pasts, who happened to be dead and unable to defend against the allegations.)
Dwaine would eventually be caught in 1980 when he saw a pregnant ex-coworker on the side of the road and pulled over to give her a ride. But instead of taking her home, he just drove to a secluded area where he raped her and tried to cut off her limbs. He thought he had killed her, but he didn't; she was able to get out of her shallow burial and flag down a passing car. Her first words were "Dwaine Little, Dwaine Little did this".
Dwaine Little would have his parole revoked in addition to facing a slew of new attempted murder, rape, and kidnapping charges. This would be the crime to lock him up for good.
But just for good measure, he did catch another attempted murder charge when he almost killed the police officer transporting him. he would've done it if the other prisoners didn't intervene to stop him.
I'll leave it here for now, but I learned so much other crazy stuff. Like how Dwaine was suspected of murder as young as age 7, because a classmate of his disappeared and Dwaine started wearing his clothes months later.
If you're curious and want to hear what Detective Davis told me, I uploaded the interview here; I also went out and filmed at various locations, like the cave where the family was found.
Oh yeah, I even chatted with Dwaine's former neighbor, a young girl who talked to him a few times on the day the Cowdens were abducted.
While it's no secret that Dwaine Little is a murderous piece of crap, I think the true scope of his crimes and evil is far beyond what we originally thought. I think he may belong up there with any of the other serial killers who tormented the Pacific Northwest during this time.