Opinion ID: 2590211
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Murder of Lance Taggs

Text: About 10:45 p.m. on December 8, 1982, Lance Taggs, 19 years old, five feet seven inches in height and 160 pounds in weight, left his home in Tigard, Oregon. Taggs had no car and sometimes hitchhiked. Taggs carried a blue nylon tote bag, printed with Kaneohe, Hawaii, into which he had packed his surfing clothes and his distinctive set of nunchakus. Having previously lived in Hawaii, Taggs possessed some clothes with Hawaii printed on them and a Hawaii state identification card. A body, later identified as Taggs, was found the next day several feet off a road a half-mile east of Interstate 5 between Wilsonville and Canby in Oregon, less than a quarter mile-from the location where Brian Whitcher's body had been found (see ante, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d at p. 31, 5 P.3d at 95). The words Local Motion and Hawaii were printed on the red shirt Taggs was wearing. There were no shoes or socks on the body, which had been ejected from a moving vehicle. The cause of death was asphyxiation from the obstruction of the airway by a foreign object (an orange sock had been stuffed down Taggs's throat). The waistband of the swimming trunks Taggs was wearing was unsnapped, and it appeared he had been redressed, as the inside of the swimming trunks was dirty. Taggs's blood contained alcohol (0.07 percent), diazepam and nordiazepam (a metabolite of diazepam). Defendant claimed reimbursement from his employer, Lear-Siegler, for expenses incurred in Portland, Oregon, on December 8 and 9, 1982. Taggs's tote bag and nunchakus were found in the search of defendant's house. The prosecutor argued to the jury that the entry PORTLAND HAWAII on defendant's list referred to Taggs. The defense tried to show that another person was responsible for Taggs's murder. Robert Hayes, the former proprietor of a security business in Wilsonville, Oregon, testified that in the early evening hours of December 8, 1982, he had encountered Taggs hitchhiking by the freeway near Wilsonville. Hayes told Taggs to get out of the area, as a couple of murders had occurred there. Some disreputable persons, including one Lloyd Hawes, frequented a rest stop south of Wilsonville. That same evening, Hayes saw Hawes and three other men near where Taggs had been hitchhiking. The next day, Hayes learned Taggs's body had been found between one and two miles from where Hayes had seen Hawes's truck. Thereafter, Hayes quietly approached Hawes's pickup truck through some woods. As he did so, he heard Hawes state: That one sure bounced a long way last night, didn't he? Later, Hayes, accompanied by a deputy sheriff, secretly searched under Hawes's camper shell, finding some clean Hawaiian shirts and a clean pair of blue jeans that would not have fit anyone in Hawes's group. These were unlikely items to find in Hawes's camper, as Hawes was a cruddy, greasy, dirty-looking person one could smell ... a block away.