PRAIRIE CITY, Ore. — Auto mechanic Ingo Wedde happily pushed an 800cc Yamaha motorcycle through the big double doors of his Prairie City Motors shop.
“That,” Wedde said last Sunday, “is the one Dean gets to ride when he’s here.”
He was referring to convicted cop killer Sidney Dean Porter, a long-time pal and fellow motorcycle enthusiast who was scheduled to leave the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem Friday after 21 years behind bars.
Wedde also had a dirt bike waiting for Porter, should the big man get the urge to ride off-road in the shadow of the craggy Strawberry Mountains. And he’d repaired an old pickup for Porter that belonged to his late father and mother. Meanwhile, Anthony Steele, Porter’s nephew, had planned to be at the penitentiary bright and early Friday with still another motorcycle for Porter to ride, a Honda VTX 1300.
“When you’ve been in a cage,” explained Steele, 48, “it makes the wind in your face pretty therapeutic.”
Wedde’s and Steele’s plans were dashed Tuesday, when the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision announced its decision to cancel the 53-year-old ex-logger’s June 7 release. Porter will remain in prison pending a new parole hearing in September.
The decision was triggered by a firestorm of objections to his release by prosecutors, police, the victim’s family and Oregon lawmakers who’d gathered in Salem a week earlier to challenge the parole decision. Prison, they said, is where Porter belongs. The parole board reversed itself after Gov. John Kitzhaber on Monday asked members to reconsider.
Yet many in remote Grant County had eagerly anticipated Porter’s return to this big, sparsely settled livestock and timber county. Some say Porter’s crime was a product of a bygone era of hard partying and brawling in the county. Some say the officer Porter killed should have taken more precautions.
“He sure is welcome back home,” said 82-year-old Clay Claughton of John Day, who logged with Porter. “He was a good man, a good hand to get along with.”
Porter has been behind bars since April 8, 1992, when authorities say he beat to death John Day Police Officer Frank L. Ward with a chunk of firewood. He pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, described the incident as “indescribably violent.” John Day Police Chief Richard Tirico, who was on duty as a patrolman the night of Ward’s death, said he was beaten so badly he was unrecognizable.
But the parole board decided in February to release Porter. He made plans to work on a relative’s cattle ranch near Monument.
“I have no fear about him coming back to our community,” said Jennifer Medico, 53, former John Day City Council member and Chamber of Commerce president. “I’m afraid of what everybody is saying about him will do to him as a person.”
“I think this whole cop-killer gang-up on him is unfair,” said registered nurse and Grant County native Nina Hill, 57, of Forest Grove, the widow of late Grant County Sheriff Fred Reusser.
Ward, she said, was a newcomer to the county when he was killed and “should have known what was there, a bunch of ranchers and loggers. They work hard and play hard.”
Porter was a high school football and basketball star who drag-raced cars on the empty roads of Grant and Harney counties and made money cutting and selling firewood during his teen-aged years, say his friends.
Supporters disagree with police accounts of what happened on that fateful night that Ward died and Porter was arrested.
Ward, 39, had responded to a complaint of loud music and screaming at the couple’s home, say police. After going inside, Ward pepper-sprayed Porter and then was overpowered by the 6-foot-5, 225-pound logger. Police say Porter punched Ward repeatedly and then fractured his skull with a stick of firewood.
But some people who favor Porter’s release say Ward shared some of the blame for his own death because the police officer rushed into the home without waiting for backup.
“He shouldn’t have went in there alone,” said Claughton, the logger.
Porter’s account to friends and the parole board was that he believed he was protecting his family from an intruder. He knocked Ward backward, Ward’s head struck a wood stove and then he collapsed into a stack of firewood, he said. That, say friends, is how blood got on the chunk that Porter was accused to attacking Ward with.
Porter’s ex-wife, Terri Porter, said in an interview with The Oregonian on Sunday that she was in another room during the 1992 incident and never saw Porter pick up a stick of wood.
“When I came in, I told Dean, ‘It’s a police officer,”‘ she said. “He was so drunk and messed up, he may not have known.” She ran to call 911 as the two men fought, she said. “When I came back out, it was done,” she said.
She said Porter wasn’t himself.
“Our hearts have always gone out to the Ward family,” she said. “There is no winner.”
Some Porter fans believe that what happened needs to be viewed through the prism of Grant County as it was 20 years ago.
“In the ’80s and early ’90s, it was kind of crazy here,” says Medico, the former city councilor.
In those days, loggers and sawmill workers were judged by how hard they worked and how they handled themselves in an alcohol-fueled bar fight, said several.
“You’d go to a dance and get in a scrap, and next day you are friends,” said Monte Gibson, 53, son of retired John Day Police Chief Smokey Gibson.
Summer softball games were never complete without a couple ice chests of beer, people here say.”It wasn’t just a bunch of chest-thumping loggers in those days,” said Steele, Porter’s nephew. “It was a bunch of chest-thumping cops, and they’d drink at the bar with us.”
All that began to change in 1990 as 17 sawmills and 1,200 sawmill jobs began disappearing on the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur and Umatilla national forests, say locals. Then came crackdowns on drunken driving and longer prison sentences for certain violent crimes, increasing the risk for barroom brawlers.
“Had this not happened,” Steele said of Ward’s death, “Dean could have been the poster boy for the good old days.”
Retired logger Thor Pattee, 57, a longtime friend, had a similar view.
“He liked to fight,” Pattee said, “and he wasn’t afraid of anybody.”
