Man found underneath a house
Photo caption Oregon State Police, Capt. Kyle Kennedy, right, speaks to reporters during a news conference at Grants Pass police headquarters on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, in Grants Pass, Ore. Kennedy, and Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman, left, recounted the series of events in recent days that led to an armed standoff with a suspect in a violent kidnapping in Oregon who died after shooting himself, authorities said.. (Scott Stoddard/Grants Pass Daily Courier via AP)
(AP) - Police in rural southwest Oregon were on high alert: A man with a history of kidnapping and torturing women in two states was on the run in their territory.
When a tip came in from a cab company that had given him a ride, they went house-to-house to check on residents. Peering through a window of one home, they found a gruesome scene: the bodies of two men who had been beaten to death.
The discovery Tuesday near Grants Pass, Oregon, was a bloody link in a chain of dramatic events that ended hours later with the suicide of the wanted man, 36-year-old bartender Benjamin Obadiah Foster. The finale, played out on a normally quiet residential street in Grants Pass, marked an end to the largest manhunt in the state in recent memory and brought relief to terrified residents in the region of forested mountains.
Authorities in Grants Pass say none of this would have happened if authorities in Nevada hadn’t been so quick just over a year ago to release Foster from prison, where he was serving time for holding his then-girlfriend in Las Vegas captive for two weeks and torturing her. And a Grants Pass woman would not now be in a hospital, comatose and in critical condition, they say.
It’s “extremely troubling,” Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman said.
In the 2019 incident in Las Vegas, Foster broke seven of his girlfriend’s ribs, gave her two black eyes, choked her to the point of unconsciousness and forced her to eat lye before she managed to escape, authorities said. Foster already had a suspended jail sentence on a concealed-weapons charge and was awaiting trial in another domestic violence case.
In a plea deal with prosecutors, Foster was sentenced to one to 2 1/2 years. He was set free on Oct. 21, 2021, the same day he was transferred to a Nevada state prison because he had already served 729 days in jail for the crimes before he was sentenced, according to a Nevada corrections official.
Fifteen months later, Foster was living in Oregon and in a relationship with the Grants Pass woman. On Jan. 24, her friend grew concerned because she hadn’t been seen for several days. The friend went to the woman’s house, where she was found bound and beaten to unconsciousness.
The case rattled the town of 40,000, which has seen high unemployment and poverty rates and public safety layoffs with the decline of the timber industry. Law enforcement authorities said they were bringing all their resources to bear to find Foster.
On Jan. 26, police, sheriff’s deputies, an Oregon State Police SWAT team and federal agents carried out a raid in Wolf Creek, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Grants Pass, after receiving word Foster was there. Agents seized his car, but Foster had vanished.
The next day, police announced that Foster was using dating apps to find people who could help him avoid the police or find new victims. Authorities offered a $2,500 reward for Foster and set up a tip line.
Police went around checking homes. Police searched houses, but didn’t find anyone. Then they sent a sheriff’s department robot to a crawlspace and found signs that Foster was burrowed deep underneath the home. His presence was confirmed by a camera. The fugitive had water and other supplies stashed there, apparently in hopes he could wait out the police presence undetected.
The officers expected a gunfight. Instead, Foster shot himself in the head, Hensman said. Police found Foster still breathing, unconscious and holding a .45-caliber pistol. Officers had to cut into the floorboards to extract him.
Foster was taken to a hospital, where he died .