02:26 PM PDT on Thursday, September 23, 2004

By KGW and AP Staff

SALEM -- Ending a saga that began with the January 2002 disappearance of a 12-year-old Oregon City girl on her way to school, Ward Weaver was at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem Thursday awaiting a decision from state corrections officials as to where he'll serve two life prison sentences without parole.

State of Oregon/kgw.com Ward Weaver's booking photo at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Weaver, 41, pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing two of his daughter's friends. With the plea, he avoided the death penalty and brought an end to a case that has riveted Oregonians and prompted changes in the state's child welfare system.

In total, Weaver pleaded guilty to 17 counts, including rape, sex abuse and abuse of a corpse.

Speaking in a hoarse whisper, hunched over and looking down, Weaver told Judge Robert Herndon he had come to court on "medications" but agreed that the plea agreement was a product of his "own free will." It was not clear what the medications were for.

During the sentencing, Herndon told Weaver, "I hope there is a special place in hell for people like you."

Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote told reporters that Weaver's lawyers had approached his office with the offer for a plea deal after the judge denied their request to change the venue of the trial.

News of the plea deal upset residents in Clackamas County, many of whom said they thought Weaver should have faced the death penalty.

But Lori Pond, the mother of 12-year-old Ashley, the first of the girls to disappear, said Wednesday that the plea bargain brought "closure" to her family.

"A death sentence and years of appeals would not bring closure," she added.

The Weaver case opened with the disappearance on a blustery January morning of 12-year-old Ashley, a friend and neighbor of Mallori Weaver, Ward Weaver's daughter.

Two months later, another of Mallori Weaver's friends, 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, also disappeared, touching off a nationwide FBI search that brought tips from as far as Florida.

Investigators focused on Weaver, whose modest rental home was just steps from the school bus stop where both girls were last seen. He responded by inviting KGW and other television crews into his home to videotape him proclaiming his innocence, giving interviews on top of the concrete slab in his back yard under which investigators later found Ashley Pond's body.

Weaver was arrested on Aug. 13, 2002, after his son's girlfriend ran from his home, naked except for a tarp, screaming that Weaver had tried to rape her.

After that arrest, FBI investigators cordoned off his back yard with chain-link fence and searched for the bodies of Ashley and Miranda. They found Ashley's in a barrel under the concrete slab, and Miranda's in a box in Weaver's tool shed.

On Wednesday, the mothers of the two girls wept in court, leaning for support on the shoulders of friends and family members.

Addressing Weaver in an emotional statement in court, Lori Pond broke down in tears, saying, "I know I have the memory of my daughter for the rest of my life. That cannot ever be taken away."

Weaver did not make eye contact with Lori Pond as she continued, "I just know that I am going to live, continue on. I may have to do this without my daughter, but I have other children I need to be strong for. I really don't have much more to say, except to thank you for justice."

Weaver showed the most emotion when members of the two families referred to his own daughter, as when a friend read a statement on behalf of Miranda Gaddis' mother, which said, "What makes you think you'll get to talk to your child, if she is even willing to talk to you? When I want to visit with Miranda, I have to go to a gravesite."

Since his arrest, Weaver had shuttled between the Clackamas County Jail and the Oregon State Hospital, proclaiming his innocence while psychiatrists evaluated his mental fitness to stand trial. Earlier this summer, the judge found that Weaver was fit for trial.

During his time in the Clackamas County Jail, Weaver had maintained his innocence. In interviews with KGW and other media outlets last year, before the judge imposed a gag order, Weaver proclaimed he would be acquitted at trial.

"I really don't care what people think or what they believe," Weaver said in the jailhouse interview. "I know what's in black and white, and what is coming to me. And that's all I care about. I'm getting out of this mess, and getting my baby girl back," he said, referring to his daughter, Mallori.

"When a jury comes back with not guilty, I'm going to be the first one out that door and say 'kiss my butt,"' he said in February 2003.

Weaver's father, also named Ward Weaver, sits on death row in California. He was convicted of murdering a woman and burying her body in his backyard, below concrete.

The Weaver plea marked the second such agreement to avoid trial in a high-profile murder case in Oregon this week. On Monday, Edward Morris of Portland pleaded guilty to killing his pregnant wife and their three children and accepted a life sentence without the possibility of parole.