Randall Brent Woodfield (born December 26, 1950) is an American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, robber, burglar, and former football player who was dubbed the I-5 Killer or the I-5 Bandit by the media due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corridor running through Washington, Oregon and California. Before his crimes, Woodfield was best known for having played for the Green Bay Packers. Before his capture, Woodfield was suspected of multiple sexual assaults and murders.

A native of Oregon, Woodfield was the third child of a prominent Newport family. He began to exhibit abnormal behaviors during his teenage years and was arrested for indecent exposure while still in high school. An athlete for much of his life, Woodfield played as a wide receiver for the Portland State Vikings and was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 1974, but was cut from the team during training after a series of indecent exposure arrests.

In 1975, Woodfield began a string of robberies and sexual assaults on women in Portland, which he committed at knifepoint. Between 1980 and 1981, he committed multiple murders in cities along the I-5 corridor; his earliest-documented murder was that of Cherie Ayers, a former classmate whom he had known since childhood, in October 1980. After committing numerous violent crimes, Woodfield was arrested in March 1981, and convicted in June of the murder of Shari Hull and attempted murder of her co-worker, Beth Wilmot. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 90 years. In a subsequent trial, he was convicted of sodomy and improper use of a weapon in a sexual assault case, receiving 35 additional years to his sentence.

Woodfield has never confessed to any of the crimes of which he has been accused or convicted. Though he has only been convicted of one murder and one attempted murder, he has been linked via DNA and other methods to numerous unsolved homicides in the ensuing decades. Authorities have estimated his total number of killings to be as many as 44. CBS News named him one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. He is currently incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Early life

Childhood

Randall Woodfield was born on December 26, 1950, in Salem, Oregon, the third child of an upper-middle-class family. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was an executive at Pacific Northwest Bell. though his parents forced him to attend therapy after the incident. At Portland State, he was active in Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical Christian student group, and lived in an apartment located on the South Park Blocks. Woodfield tried to establish himself with the Packers during Coach and General Manager Dan Devine's last season, but could not shake his problems with a trip across the country. He signed a contract in February 1974 but was cut during training camp, failing to make the team's final roster.

After being cut by the Packers, Woodfield played the 1974 season with the semi-pro Manitowoc Chiefs and worked for Oshkosh Truck. In early 1975, several Portland women were accosted by a knife-wielding man, forced to perform oral sex and then robbed of their handbags.

During Woodfield's prior four-year imprisonment, he and Ayers had corresponded via letters. Suspecting Woodfield's involvement in Cherie Lynn's murder, Ayers' family provided his name to law enforcement. He was questioned but refused to sit for a polygraph test. Wilmot testified against him in the trial and was a key witness for the prosecution. A centerpiece of Woodfield's defense was casting doubt on the physical evidence linking him to the crime scenes, although under cross examination by Van Dyke, a defense witness conceded that the hair evidence was damning. On June26, after three-and-a-half hours of deliberations, Woodfield was convicted on all counts. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 90 years on October 12, 1981. The judge in the case denied counsel's request, along with a request to hypnotize a prosecution witness in an effort to determine if that witness had been influenced by the media coverage. In October 1983, he was injured by a fellow inmate during a prison disturbance. the author who had written The I-5 Killer, an account of Woodfield's life and crime spree, in 1984. The Federal Court in Oregon dismissed the lawsuit in January 1988, citing that the statute of limitations on such a lawsuit had expired. In 2001 and 2006, DNA testing linked Woodfield to two additional murders in Oregon that occurred from 1980 and 1981.

During his time in the penitentiary, Woodfield has married three times and divorced twice. Some letters he wrote from prison were sold online as a collection titled The Serial Killer Letters and published by The Charles Press. and most curiously, a strip of athletic tape across his nose.

Jim Lawrence, a detective for Portland's cold case unit, noted Woodfield's lack of remorse or responsibility in his crimes, saying: "If you’re talking about somebody moving toward some form of rehabilitation, they had to at some point acknowledge they are responsible for their own behaviors. That is not Randy Woodfield."

; December 21: Unnamed woman (25): Assaulted at gunpoint in a Seattle restroom, forced to masturbate Woodfield; survived. was an acquaintance of Woodfield's through his job as a bartender. However, after Morrison's remains were identified, law enforcement reached out to the public in an effort to encourage people to come forward with tips. In August 2017, a bloodstain on a pistol owned by a longtime suspect, Warren Forrest, was matched to Morrison through DNA testing.

During the spring of 1980, Marsha Weatter (19) and Kathy Allen (18) vanished while hitch-hiking from the Spokane, Washington, area to their hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska. Their bodies were found in May 1981, covered by several inches of ash from the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Serial killer Martin Lee Sanders was later connected to their murders, but as of 2018 the case remains unsolved.

In 2011, Woodfield was the subject of a Lifetime television film Hunt for the I-5 Killer, based on Ann Rule's book. In the film, Woodfield is portrayed by Canadian actor Tygh Runyan.

See also

  • List of Portland State Vikings in the NFL draft
  • List of serial killers in the United States
  • List of serial killers by number of victims

References

Works cited

  • Excerpts of letters by Woodfield published in The Serial Killer Letters (1998)

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