January 1987 rape-kidnapping

After arriving in Washington state, O'Neall reconnected with a former high school classmate who was living there. O'Neall was encouraged to stay and found an old duplex in Puyallup, before acquiring truck-driving job in Tacoma. While on his way to Portland, Oregon, during the evening of January 17, 1987, O'Neall spotted a fourteen-year-old teenage girl walking on a freeway to a convenience store. O'Neall drove past her a second time, then parked his truck and waited for her to leave. When she left with soda and candy, O'Neall abducted her, threatening with a knife and an unseen Ruger revolver to kill her if she screamed or tried to fight or run. Driving her to a secluded unpaved location while she was tied and gagged in the sleeping compartment, O'Neall stripped, raped, and sodomized the girl for several hours. O'Neall eventually released the girl, driving her to a spot where she could reach home easily and left her on the side of the road. She went straight to a truck stop, where an employee drove her back home. A rape exam was conducted to collect evidence, and the girl was questioned for a description, but O'Neall had already fled. He changed his appearance and moved to Edgewood, Washington, where he found work as a laminator under the alias Herb Johnson.^[1][2][3][4]

Murder of Robin Smith

O'Neall met Mary Barnes in March, eventually beginning a relationship with her. O'Neall would eventually want to target another woman, heading to Baldy's Tavern in Puyallup with Mary on the 27th. When it was past midnight, he saw 22-year-old Robin Smith, who was with her fiancé Larron Crowston. Wanting to get Smith alone, O'Neall made Barnes declare an "after hours party" at their apartment to the patrons present. Crowston left the apartment before Robin did to go fishing, and after Barnes left the apartment for a few hours, she returned to see O'Neall and Smith weren't there any longer. Smith's family friend Jim Chaney later questioned O'Neall, and a witness there at the time stated that he saw a leg in the trunk with a purple and white sock.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Crowston returned from his trip and slept, waking up to realize Smith still hadn't returned. After calling her mother Edna, who replied she wasn't at her home either, they reported her disapprearance to the Pierce County Sheriff's Office. After Smith's family and acquaintances gave a description of her to police detectives, they searched Barnes' apartment, where O'Neall had taken various supplies. An arrest warrant was issued for O'Neall on charges of evading justice, and his description was disseminated across the country and to nearby police departments.^[1][5]

Two days later, a hospital took in a patient matching O'Neall's description, covered in cuts and other injuries from his face downward. They remembered he had a teardrop tattoo next to his eye and "JUNE" across his knuckles. O'Neall left without treatment. A flagman later saw O'Neall try to get past roadwork near Mount Rainier, stop his car on the side of the road for a half hour, then turn around; investigators believed he was finding a place to dispose of Smith's dead body. The day after, on March 30, the car O'Neall was seen driving was found abandoned at a rest stop north of Everett, Washington by a state trooper, covered in blood and human remains. Smith's bloodstained jacket was additionally discovered. A seller at the impound lot the car was taken to soon called the police when reading a news report on O'Neall and the car. The Chrysler was revealed to have been stolen from a truck driver in Nampa, Idaho, who met O'Neall when he was hitchhiking under the alias of Jerry Zebulun Macranahan in 1986.^[1][5][7]

Edna Smith led months of searches through Greenwater, Washington, where Robin Smith was buried. Dozens of volunteers combed through the wilderness in the area. On May 25, hikers eventually found bones in the woods across an area near a stream. As police were understaffed and low-funded at the time and needed Smith's full skeleton to identify her, Edna Smith herself contributed efforts and found and collected the rest of the skeleton she could find that would later be confirmed to be her daughter's remains. Smith couldn't be identified easily through forensics, as her blood type wasn't registered, and dental records were difficult to locate since she hadn't seen a dentist in years, but the clothes she was wearing when she disappeared were found folded at the scene, and her wallet and ID were found inside a nearby tree. Forensic anthropology analyses revealed Smith was killed by blunt-force trauma, and a rusty hammer was found in a nearby stream, confirmed as the weapon O'Neall bludgeoned Smith to death with. An arrest warrant was issued charging O'Neall with first-degree murder in Smith's death.^[1]

Around the same time, the teenage girl O'Neall previously kidnapped and raped was tracked down when police were scouring additional offenses across Washington and nearby states in hopes of following O'Neall's movements. The girl positively identified O'Neall out of a photo lineup without hesitation, and O'Neall was charged with the crime.^[3][2]

Disappearance of Wendy Aughe

On April 24, O'Neall appeared in Bellingham, Washington under the alias of Mike James Johnson, finding work as a bartender at the La Paloma restaurant. He went on a date with 29-year-old Wendy Aughe, a single mother of two children. Aughe disappeared after she and O'Neall left the restaurant the next early morning. Aughe's mother went to her home soon after her daughter's babysitter said she never arrived and found an undisturbed scene of blood all over Aughe's bedroom, prompting a police investigation. Aughe's wallet, keys, and car were also gone. There were also traces of blond hair that wasn't Aughe's, an acrylic nail from when she went to a salon before the date, and dried semen. Spatters of her blood with growing velocity heavily conveyed she was attacked and presumably killed from repeated strikes. Her clothes she wore that day were folded and wedged between her bed and an adjacent wall.

The restaurant owner revealed O'Neall just wrote information down for his application on a placemat, which was taken as evidence along with Wendy's bed. He worked at the restaurant for two days, ending his time with clearing the cash register and making off with the money and a bottle of liquor. The listed address on the placemat was the city Lighthouse Mission homeless shelter, where O'Neall was alleged to be moving in with a woman he met. O'Neall drove off in Aughe's car despite not having it beforehand. After releasing an all-points bulletin, a United States Customs showed O'Neall crossing back into America from Canada at Oroville, Washington, alone in Aughe's car. The car was found ditched in a tavern parking lot in Eugene, Oregon on May 2, where O'Neall was also spotted trying to sell a gold necklace. Prints on a Burger King hamburger box found in the car and on the placemat were identified as O'Neall's, and clothing in the car were found to have been loaned to him from Lighthouse Mission. FBI Agent Dell Orris was assigned to the investigation when the Pierce County police placed a call to the bureau.^{[1][5][8][9][10]}