This might be one of the more difficult posts to write, mainly because I’m not a huge fan of writing about myself, and to be very honest, this project is far more about bringing Karen and Rodney home than anything to do with me personally. I am asked on occasion why I am searching for them, and I figured I can summarize it here.
What started this for me was watching the documentary that Noelle Crombie and the staff at the Oregonian made for the “Ghosts of Highway 20” project. I had read the brief account about Karen and Rodney in part 5 of the series. In the documentary however, they interviewed Karen’s mother, Violet Gillmore, about her daughter’s disappearance. Her grief, even after the decades had passed by, was so strong that it quite frankly pulled at me. I help out with an organization that serves kids a lot like Rodney and Karen. I could see the kids I work with in the two photos of them that I had. I started to become curious about Karen and Rodney, and I wanted to know more about them and what may have happened.
Another interview that struck me, for different reasons, was the interview with now retired LCSO Detective Mike Harmon. He recounted how not recovering Karen, Rodney and later Rachandas’ remains have affected him. I remember him saying something to the effect that when he drives through the Santiam Pass, he wonders where Rachanda is, and if Karen and Rodney are with her. As a former soldier, I know a bit what it is like to have something gnaw at you; maybe you could have done something different and there might have been a different outcome. There’s a part of me that wants to resolve this for him as well.
Thankfully, the team at the Oregonian had provided a major assist. As part of the project, they published a footnoted PDF of the complete series. The footnotes were linked to source documentation from police, prosecutors, archived news articles, and interrogation transcripts. Included in that document haul was a summary of the LCSO case file about Karen Jean Lee and Rodney L. Grissom. That case file summary has been the single most important document to inform this search. Since this is still an open homicide investigation, LCSO did not release the full case file, but the gaps in the summary informed other research, and the summary became the standard to evaluate other information against.
That summary also personalized it for me, in a way I was not expecting. It listed the location where their clothing was found as “Upper Soda, Section 19”, and that was a brick of information hitting me. I’ve been going to the Middle Santiam Wilderness almost since I arrived here and Soda Fork Rd is the main way to access the trail head. It is one of my most favorite places in Oregon, where I go to fish, camp, hunt, hike and generally find some peace when I need it. When I came out for the 15 May 2023 Site Survey, I realized that I had changed a blown tire at the Grissom Site two years earlier. On my first visit, in 2017, I ended up fishing about 200’ from where I am now searching for Karen.
The final “why” so to speak, is that I have a professional background that is adjacent to this type of work. I was a Sensitive Site Exploitation SME a lifetime ago. What’s that? We used a mix of biometrics, forensics and other techniques as a tool during the Global War on Terror. I also volunteer for my County’s Search and Rescue team. Not only did I know the area, and feel a moral compunction to act, I also had the ability to do so.
That’s why I’m out there, searching.
The Search for Karen Jean Lee and Rodney L. Grissom 