Man convicted in Portland murders to be released Friday

Scott William Cox makes a court appearance prior to being sentenced to 25 years in the murders of two women in Portland. Cox will be released from prison today and some law-enforcement officials are concerned.

Ken Summers was shocked when he learned the news.

Scott William Cox, a Newberg man convicted of two Portland murders in 1993, was going to be released.

"Everyone thought he would be in for much longer," said Summers, who was a detective with the Newberg Police Department in the 1990s.

Summers said he has "very serious concerns" about Cox's release, which is scheduled for Friday.

Summers has moved on professionally. Right now, he's the interim police chief in Cornelius. But he remembers clearly helping investigate Cox's role in the murders of Reena Ann Brunson, 34, and Victoria Rhone, 32.

Rhone had been a student at the University of Portland and Grambling State University in Louisiana when she was younger, but was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1980s and started living on the streets, said sister Lysette Myrick in 1992.

Little information could be found about Brunson's background.

Cox was convicted for the murders of Reena Ann Brunson, left, and Victoria Rhone.

But as police investigated both deaths, it appeared that Cox came into contact with both women because he believed them to be prostitutes.

Brunson was stabbed in a Safeway parking lot in Northeast Portland and died of a single wound on Nov. 24, 1990.  Rhone was found strangled in a truck trailer in

on Feb. 19, 1991.

Cox was sentenced on Sept. 15, 1993, to 25 years in prison by Multnomah County Circuit Judge Harl Haas, with a lifetime of post-prison supervision after his release. He was 28.

Cox served 20 years of his sentence in the Department of Corrections, with time off for good behavior and time served in a county jail prior to his conviction, said Elizabeth Craig, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

One year after Cox was sentenced for the murders, Oregon voters approved

, which established mandatory minimum sentencing. If Cox had been convicted of the same crimes in 1995, he would have been sentenced to a minimum of 50 years.

"I'm appalled that this man should be released from custody," said Carl Stein, a detective who used to work for the Lake County Sheriff's Office in California, where Cox was considered a person of interest in a homicide case there. "I personally don't believe the man should ever walk free again."

Scott William Cox, now 49, will be released from the Oregon State Correctional Institution on Friday.

Most recently, Cox, now 49, has been in the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem. He was to be transported to the Yamhill County Jail on Friday, where he will live in subsidized jail housing.

He'll be monitored by GPS, said Ted Smietana, community corrections director for Yamhill County. He'll have to check in with his probation officer daily, and he'll have to keep a log of his activities.

He has to leave the jail by 8 every morning and return by 8 p.m. He'll be expected to look for work, but Smietana said, with his history, that's going to be a challenge.

If Cox violates any of his conditions, Smietana said, he will face the state parole board. It would determine a new sentence for him, with the ability to put him back in prison for life.

Cox did not reply to a request for a phone interview earlier this week.

A number of other agencies in Washington and California were looking at Cox as a person of interest before he was convicted.

In 1991, more than 50 homicide investigators from multiple states and British Columbia met in Seattle to compare cases that might have been linked to Cox, who worked as a truck driver and didn't stay in any one place for long.

The Newberg police chief at the time, David G. Bishop, said it became "obvious" that there were similarities between the homicides. When Cox was sentenced, Summers said, many of those other agencies decided to close their case files on him, possibly because of how expensive it was to run DNA tests at the time.

Dan MacKenzie, a detective who works for the Mountlake Terrace Police Department in Washington, said since hearing of Cox's impending release he has been re-examining the files on a homicide where Cox was considered a potential person of interest.

Police told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2003 that they considered Cox their only suspect in the 1990 death of Tia Hicks.

"Just based on what I've read so far, this fits his M.O.," MacKenzie said. "But there's no proof."

Hicks' death was never officially ruled a homicide. Her body was too badly decomposed for the medical examiner to determine the cause of death.

MacKenzie said it's possible that the Mountlake Terrace police will run some tests on drops of blood and a fingerprint that was lifted at the scene of Hicks' death.

"We're reviewing the case and just seeing if anything stands out for us now versus back then," MacKenzie said.

Smietana said he hasn't had a case like this in his 30 years of work in the corrections department, and that preparing to deal with Cox has been a bit of a learning experience.

"He served his time and he has the right to be free now in the eyes of the law," Smietana said, "but that doesn't mean we're not going to be monitoring him as closely as possible."

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