Cold Case

  May 9th, 2006,

  Author: Don DuPay        

Three Portland Police Chief's were made aware of the homicide of Zebedee Manning. Why was it kissed off as a suicide in 1975 and never investigated? I know it was a homicide. I was the case detective.

Phil Stanford wrote again in the Portland Tribune about this cold case, the drug execution murder I investigated in 1975 as a Portland police homicide Detective. 16-year-old Zebedee Manning was shot in the forehead with a .22 cal sawed off rifle and laid out in his upstairs bedroom, straight in the bed, hands folded over his chest and a sawed off .22 rifle laid on top of him.

You see, one problem was that Zebedee could not have reached the trigger. It was impossible for Zebedee to have shot himself. He couldn't have reached the trigger. Besides the neighbors said they heard three shots. I found one hole in the bedroom wall and one hole in the ceiling and one hole in his head. "They" the killers were looking for several bags of heroin stashed in the room, (a fortune in smack in the '70' s but the heroin was never found by the police. It was found by the dead boy's mother Annamae Miller, in a crawl space in the bedroom and flushed down the toilet.

After I was kicked off the case and returned to Burglary detail, two plain closed cops (narcs or detectives) went to the 'joint' to interview the dead boy's sister who was doing time on an unrelated case. "Where's the dope. Where did it go. What happened to it?" the cops asked. Of course she had been in prison and didn't know what the cops were talking about.. (And what dope?) I was kicked off the case...what dope and how much were the two cops looking for? And then there is the "white" man's voice that calls and tells the dead boys mother that there will be more deaths if the police aren't called off. The boys mother eventually left Portland in fear and moved down south.

Phil Stanford asks the question...we know it was a drug execution murder over a lot of heroin. The investigating detective Don DuPay, now running for Sheriff of Multnomah County, knows it was a murder. Yes it was kissed off as a suicide by a homicide Lieutenant who knows more than he is saying.

Finally Charlie Mackenny, Vera Katz chief of staff was the last city official I make aware that Zebedee Manning was murdered. I laid out my detective case and Charlie Mackenny was the last person in office to kiss off the case. Phil Standford of the Tribune thinks that the pdx homicide detectives will reopen this cold case.

But they won't!  Says Don DuPay, for Sheriff, because they would be opening their own little stink bag of corruption and murder.

I, Don DuPay,  was the homicide detective assigned to the case. I know it was a drug execution murder; I think the police were involved in it.

Because why does one cop stop another cop from investigating a murder unless they are stinking too?

Don DuPay