10/02/2002

By KYLE IBOSHI and ABE ESTIMADA, KGW Staff

A Clackamas County grand jury is close to handing down an indictment against Ward Weaver, the chief suspect in the deaths of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, sources tell KGW.

For the last week, witnesses have filed into the Clackamas County courthouse in Oregon City to give testimony. Now, sources tell KGW that an indictment is expected by the end of the week.

Ward Weaver. (Police/KGW Photo)

Weaver has been in Clackamas County Jail since Aug. 13 on a charge of raping his son’s fiancé. A week and a half later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and police found Miranda’s remains in a box inside a shed behind Weaver’s rental house in Oregon City.

They found Ashley’s corpse inside a barrel buried beneath a concrete slab in Weaver’s backyard.

The rape case is scheduled to go to trail on Oct. 10. Clackamas County prosecutors say it’s too early to discuss courtroom strategy.

But if Weaver is also indicted for the homicides of Ashley and Miranda, prosecutors will have to decide how to handle both the different cases, said a Willamette University School of Law professor.

“It really is a time when a prosecutor makes his money by deciding how these cases ought to be structured,” said Jeffrey Standen, the law professor.

With Weaver’s consent, prosecutors could delay the rape case until the murder trial is over, or the district attorney could try to combine all the cases.

“To join cases together is a real advantage to prosecutors because he gets to tell a rape or murder jury that this person is a person who is also a rapist or a murderer,” Standen said.

The risk, he says, is that Weaver could appeal and argue that the two cases should’ve been heard separately.