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News (Media Awareness Project) - US OR: Murder Probe Reveals Teens' Secrets
Title:US OR: Murder Probe Reveals Teens' Secrets
Published On:1999-06-05
Source:New York Times (NY)
Fetched On:2008-09-06 04:40:22
MURDER PROBE REVEALS TEENS' SECRETS

WOLF CREEK, Ore. (AP) -- They grew up without telephone, television or
Internet, in a home they helped their parents carve from 52 acres behind
locked gates deep in the southern Oregon mountains.

Always together, usually on their dirt bikes, Josh Cain and half-brother
Trevor Walraven were known around town as good kids who helped in the family
business and did odd jobs for neighbors.

They were so well-regarded that when authorities charged the teens with
murdering a popular lodge owner and riding around in his sport-utility
vehicle last summer, many thought it was a cruel joke.

But the evidence that's come out as the case moves toward its first trial
Tuesday pulls back a curtain from a seemingly sheltered existence and
reveals elements of teen-age life in 1999 that are frighteningly familiar:
drugs, guns and the violent lyrics of Marilyn Manson.

In the cabin the boys shared outside their parents' house, detectives found
marijuana bongs and letters from Josh, 19, asking 15-year-old Trevor to send
him some pot, LSD and methamphetamine when Josh was away from home.

There was also a copy of lyrics, apparently in Josh's handwriting, from
Manson's song "Portrait of an American Family":

"Dealing with insanity, smoking pot, hating this (expletive) world, murder
is the answer, I only kill to know I'm alive."

Detectives focused on the brothers after they were seen driving the vehicle
owned by Black Bar Lodge owner Bill Hull, who disappeared July 26 after
attending Sunday church services.

His decomposing body was found almost a week later covered with brush in a
remote forest clearcut less than 8 miles from his home. An autopsy revealed
he'd been shot once in the top of the head with a copper-jacketed,
hollow-point .38-special bullet.

Eileen Zink, who knew the boys as director of the Wolf Creek Teen Center and
is the mother of Trevor's girlfriend, firmly believes their explanation why
they were driving Hull's 1997 Chevrolet Suburban: They'd found it parked on
an isolated logging road not far from their home, a key in the ignition and
a wallet in the glove compartment.

"Even if God stepped down here today and said, `Eileen, those boys did
that,' I would question God himself because he was trying to trick me," Zink
said.

Josh goes on trial for murder Tuesday. No trial date has been set for the
younger Trevor, accused of pulling the trigger and charged as an adult with
aggravated murder.

They lived 10 miles down Grave Creek, a tributary of the Rogue River dotted
with mining claims dating back to the Gold Rush.

The boys' parents, Karen Cain and Doug Walraven, began building their home
in 1983, going no further than cash on hand, living first in a trailer then
a small cabin. It was 1997 before the main house was well enough along for
the parents to move in, and the boys took over the cabin.

Both were home-schooled most of their lives. Josh attended 10th grade at
Glendale High School, where he signed up for football. Rather than finish
high school, he got his equivalency diploma and enrolled in 1997 at the
University of Oregon.

When Josh went to school, so did Trevor. His junior high teachers described
him as bright, a bit of a class clown, but a boy the other kids looked up to.

If he wore a particular bracelet, they all wanted one just like it. He liked
skateboarding and shaved the sides of his head, leaving the top long enough
for a pony tail. His only brush with the law was for riding his motorcycle
on the freeway without a driver's license.

Their parents made their living traveling to swap meets to sell antique gas
station paraphernalia and Raggedy Ann collectibles. When the boys were
young, they went along. As they got older, they earned money helping other
people set up booths.

Last summer, when their parents hit the road, the boys stayed home.

When the parents returned after swap meets in Idaho and Portland last July,
the boys told them home intruders had stolen Josh's .357 Magnum, an earlier
Christmas gift from his mother, along with Trevor's .22-caliber revolver.
Some rifles and a shotgun in the gun safe in the main house were untouched.

When Hull was reported missing, investigators heard reports his Suburban had
been seen around Grants Pass and Wolf Creek. Investigators tracked it to
Josh and Trevor and were waiting to talk to them when they returned from a
three-day joy ride to Eugene and Reedsport.

They claimed a friend from California had let them use it. When that story
unraveled, they said they'd found it a couple miles from their house. On a
hunch, sheriff's Detective Fred Barbero had a search team go over the area.
They found Hull's body a mile and a half up the road.

Barbero testified at a pretrial hearing that the fatal bullet was the same
brand and type found at the boys' house. He added that .38-special bullets
can be fired from a .357 Magnum.

Karen Cain testified that she didn't mind her boys smoking pot, but didn't
believe her sons were using other drugs or were interested in violence.

Nick Haynes, a friend along on the joy ride, told investigators that while
sitting on a front porch in Eugene, Trevor suggested they mug a pizza
delivery man for gas money to get home.

Barbero testified that Trevor also told Haynes how the Suburban's owner had
picked him up and Trevor had forced him at gunpoint into the hills, where he
shot him in the head.

Zink said the brothers' arrests were a terrible blow to other kids in town.

"Here these boys are known as good kids," she said. "They had motorbikes and
spending money, a two-parent family, a nice place in the country.

"I had so many kids say to me, `If this can happen to them, there's no hope
for me.'"
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