The immediate legal issue in the five murder cases against Jesse Calhoun is whether they will proceed in a single trial. The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office is seeking consolidation, while Calhoun's defense has asked the court to cancel a trial date previously scheduled for 2027, according to KGW.
Calhoun has pleaded not guilty to five counts of second-degree murder and four counts of second-degree abuse of a corpse. The charges involve Kristin Smith, Charity Lynn Perry, Bridget Webster, Joanna Speaks and Ashley Real, according to KATU.
The standard for combining charges
Under Oregon law, multiple offenses may be charged and tried together when they are similar, arise from the same transaction or are connected by a common scheme or plan. A court may order separate trials if joining the charges would cause substantial prejudice to the state or the defendant, according to ORS 132.560.
How the charges accumulated
A Multnomah County grand jury indicted Calhoun in May 2024 in connection with the deaths of Perry, Webster and Speaks. Charges involving Smith were added in August 2025, and prosecutors announced the fifth murder charge, involving Real, in May 2026. Calhoun entered not-guilty pleas to those charges, according to OPB.
The district attorney's office also plans to hold a news conference about the case. Prosecutors have not disclosed what they intend to announce, and KATU plans to livestream the event, the station reported: KATU.
The deaths named in the case
The five women's bodies were found from February through May 2023 in secluded locations across Oregon and Washington. Smith, 22, of Gresham, had been missing since November 2022 before she was found in Multnomah County in February. Perry, 24, of Longview, Washington, was found near Ainsworth State Park in April, and Webster, 31, was found later that month near Mill Creek.
Speaks, 32, died from blunt-force trauma to the head in Portland, and her body was later found near an abandoned barn in Ridgefield, Washington, on April 8, according to CBS News. Real, 22, was found in a pond near Eagle Creek in Clackamas County in May, according to KATU.
Investigation and court history
Authorities initially said they lacked enough evidence to connect the deaths. In July 2023, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office said investigators had identified Calhoun as a person of interest in cases involving Smith, Perry, Webster and Real, according to Willamette Week.
Before the murder indictments, officers arrested Calhoun on unrelated parole warrants on June 6, 2023, after he tried to escape by jumping into the Willamette River at a park in Milwaukie. He was booked in Clackamas County, transferred to Multnomah County and later returned to state prison, according to reporting cited by Going West: True Crime.
