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| Description: In 1977, Terri Jentz and Avra Goldman, a pair of undergraduates from Yale, decided to spend the summer going on a cross-country bicycling trip. On July 22, they stopped at Cline Falls State Park in a remote area of Oregon to camp for the night. However, both women were suddenly awakened by a pickup truck which came barreling into the campsite and crashed into their tent. The two women initially assumed this was an accident, but they were shocked to see a man in a cowboy hat emerge from the truck with an axe. He used his weapon to attack Jentz and Goldman before climbing back into his truck and driving away. Both women were seriously wounded but still alive. Jentz managed to stumble to a nearby road and flag down a passing car for help. After a teenage couple stopped and went to the campsite, they saw the lights of another vehicle approaching them. It came to a brief stop before turning around and driving away. They suspected the pickup truck driver had returned to finish the job, but he fled the scene after seeing other people there. Jentz and Goldman were both taken to a hospital and wound up surviving the horrific attack. The investigation eventually uncovered a suspect named Dick Damm who was a known violent offender in the community. In 1995, while being detained for another crime, Damm was questioned about the Cline Falls State Park attack and given two polygraph tests. He showed signs of deception, but the results were inconclusive since he had illegal drugs in his system and there was no evidence to link him to the crime. Even if the axeman is identified some day, he cannot be prosecuted since Oregon’s statute of limitations for unsuccessful murder attempts has since run out. |
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