Jesse Andre D'Breeze, the alias used by a Portland-linked man who confessed to killing multiple women decades ago, has died in state custody while serving a life sentence for murder. He was 76 and died Sunday while receiving hospice care at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla.
The Oregon Department of Corrections said in a press release that D'Breeze "passed away in the infirmary while on hospice care," according to KATU. The department did not provide additional details about his medical condition or the specific cause of death.
Confession and Plea
D'Breeze was the name used by Jeffrey Cutlip, a predatory sex offender who, while living in Texas in 2012, contacted police and admitted to killings in Oregon before being extradited to Portland. He pleaded guilty in 2013 to the murders of Marlene Claire Carlson, Julie Marie Bennett and Nielen Loribell Doll and was later sentenced to life in prison without parole, as reported by the Associated Press.
Victims and Case Details
Authorities say Cutlip admitted to killing four women, though investigators were able to link him only to three confirmed deaths; Carlson and Bennett were killed in the 1970s and Doll in 1993, per reporting by KATU. For detectives and families, his eventual confession and conviction brought a measure of closure after years in which the cases sat cold.
Legal Fallout
The guilty pleas spared prosecutors a death-penalty trial and resulted in three consecutive life terms, a sentence victims' families said brought a hard-fought sense of finality, according to the Associated Press. Cutlip remained in Oregon Department of Corrections custody until his death.
For the families of the victims, news of his passing closes a grim chapter that stretched across decades, even as some questions linger about other unsolved cases from that era.
