by Ann Rule
In 1956, old records indicate, Stone Little was shot by a foster child, and he lost one testicle, part of his penis, and partial use of his right leg. Between that time and 1961, the Littles reported that nine of their cows were poisoned, other cows were shot, and two of their dogs were poisoned. Someone—apparently the mysterious Si Hopkins—had deliberately felled a tree on Dwain’s father, crippling him for life, and that was followed by yet another mysterious fire that destroyed $32,000 worth of their logging equipment.
Stone Little cried as he described his misfortunes to a Lane County social worker, and explained why it was no wonder that his family had lived in fear for years.
Stone was committed to Eastern State Hospital in Washington State in 1961 after he shot his brother, Jackson, fatally. He was diagnosed as criminally insane with “paranoid reaction, paranoid state.”
Some versions of the Little family history say that it was Jackson who shot Stone in his genitals, and not a “foster child” at all.
Whether all of this bizarre series of events actually occurred, state workers didn’t know. They wrote, “Regardless of the source, it has been experienced by all of this family as real.”
Jackson Little was shot to death, and Stone had been committed, and for a spate of time there was relative peace in the family. But two years later, Stone Little escaped from Eastern State Hospital, gathered his family together, and fled to Tennessee. He was arrested and jailed there, awaiting extradition to Washington State, but nothing came of that and he was freed!
Dwain Lee was glad; he hated the time he spent in Medical Lake, Washington. Being the son of a patient of the mental hospital brought a stigma with it, and he was taunted by schoolmates. He didn’t like Tennessee much, either. But most of all, he said he had missed his father.
The Little family had moved to Oregon to start over in 1964.
Somewhat ironically, a social worker assessing the family that November wrote with vast understatement: “The family reports that the past year in Oregon has been the most secure, happiest year of their lives. Since being shot and having a tree fall on him, Mr. Little has been handicapped with a lame leg and has experienced considerable recurrent pain but rarely complains and has managed to hold a steady job.”
Dwain Lee’s mother, Pearl, had her health problems, too. She told a court worker that, before she married Stone in 1946, she had suffered from childhood arthritis which developed into Legg-Calvé-Perthes syndrome in her hip. She was hospitalized when she was ten and was placed in a body cast and traction for nine months. When she was released, she had to wear a brace from her armpits to one foot, to keep her affected leg stiff. This went on for several years.
When Pearl became pregnant with her daughter, Vivian, she had to wear a brace again, and recalled that she was paralyzed for some time after Vivian’s birth. When she was expecting Dwain, she had had a kidney infection. Throughout her life, she’d undergone several surgeries for “female problems” and “tumors” and was on crutches when Dwain Lee was arrested.
According to her family, Pearl Little never complained either.
Pearl grew up on a farm in Arkansas and had only a third-grade education, although she could read quite well. She was self-educated and “small, friendly, outgoing,” according to her interviewer.
Pearl told social workers that her family “is my whole life. All the threats and tragedies we’ve suffered have just brought us closer together than families usually are.”
Vivian was not Stone’s child, but he had accepted her, and they didn’t tell her about her real parentage until she was sixteen.
Pearl admitted that she had always felt closer to Dwain than to “Vivi,” probably because her daughter was rebellious. According to Vivian, Dwain always did what their parents said.
Pearl outright spoiled and babied Dwain, and people said he was tied to her by her apron strings. She gave him a baby bottle until he was four years old. He recalled carrying it in his hip pocket until he got disgusted with it and threw it away. Pearl never allowed Dwain to be away from her for any length of time, and had an anxiety attack when they were once separated for a whole week. The Littles never left their children with babysitters.
Dwain, “the good child,” obviously hadn’t done well with all the “smother love” and the constant threat that some sort of disaster might be just around the corner. Whatever feelings of resentment and inappropriate thoughts he might have held were hidden deep within him until that day in November when he found himself alone with Orla Fay.
With Dwain under arrest for first-degree murder and locked away in detention, his mother was beside herself with worry. She visited him whenever she was allowed to, and correction workers noted that not only did he kiss her hello and good-bye, they exchanged kisses frequently all during their visits.
Their physical connection didn’t seem normal; Pearl asked her son, who was now sixteen, to sit on her lap, and she held his hand, ruffled his hair, and even caressed his leg. Observers saw that this was sexually arousing for him, which embarrassed him—especially when the other boys in the unit teased him about it.
(This inappropriate behavior between mother and son was also noted in psychiatric studies of Gary Ridgway, the Green River serial killer, who confessed to more than four dozen murders of young women.)
Dwain Lee seemed to see himself as an extension of his parents; he told them everything he thought and felt, even to the point that he shared sexual jokes with his mother.
But he told psychologists that he was closer to his father than his mother. While his affect was almost always flat and without empathy for other people’s feelings, he cried when his father had to leave Lane County to find work.
His reactions to other situations were strange. When he had entered detention, having been charged with murder a few hours earlier, he was smiling and friendly, seemingly oblivious to what would have shocked most teenagers. A few days later, a detective came to the detention facility to interrogate Dwain about Orla Fay’s murder. He showed Dwain a color photo of the nude dead girl, marred by blood and terrible wounds, and said, “You did that! Look what you did!”
The detective was shouting and could be heard at the far end of the corridor. He next showed Dwain a knife that was identical to one the teenager owned, but Dwain calmly denied any connection to the homicide.
When the investigator left the interview room, Dwain shook hands with him and thanked him. He was completely unruffled and said the detective was only doing his job.
And when he was told that his parents and grandparents were selling almost everything they owned to pay for his defense, he appeared to have no emotional response. He simply changed the subject and didn’t seem to understand that this was a crisis for his closest family members.
He seemed more an automaton or a robot than a human being—unfailingly polite and saying whatever he thought would please people, but without any feeling at all.
He told his parents the kinds of things that most teenage boys would share with each other—but he had no male friends. There was one thing, however, that Dwain Lee Little didn’t tell either parent. He would not confess to killing Orla Fay Phipps.
Stone Little told Dwain that if he was guilty of killing Orla Fay, he should reveal it to him, and Stone would see that he got away and would never be found.
Pearl Little announced that although she might have some questions about Dwain Lee’s innocence in the murder of Orla Fay Phipps, she wouldn’t believe any evidence against him as long as he said he wasn’t guilty. She believed in her “perfect boy.”
Pearl wore blinders a lot, and she clearly did not like conflict of any kind, wanting only to please and win the approval of others.
“When Stone and I argue, we always try to make up before bed,” she said. “Stone, he kind of withdraws into himself when there’s a problem and cuts himself off from people. I just feel hurt real easy and I want to make up quick.”
While he was in detention, Dwain worked hard to impress
the adults in charge. Like his mother, he seemed to thrive on approval and shrink from criticism. He would take on jobs that other inmates wouldn’t do, and he was a tattletale, reporting any misbehavior among the other boys. Some supervisors found him “almost self-righteous” at times, but most adults who met him viewed Dwain as an “innocent child” caught up in something he didn’t understand. This was especially true of women, who tended to dote on the handsome teenager.
Dwain had his supporters who vowed he was innocent—that he couldn’t do such a thing as had happened to Orla Fay. His girlfriend, now fourteen, wrote to him regularly and tried to get authorities to let her visit him. Her mother liked Dwain, too, and their family had put up $1,500 to help pay for his attorney.
As part of his pretrial evaluation, Dwain was interviewed after being injected with sodium pentothal (truth serum). His attorney agreed to that if no one was present with Dwain except the psychiatrist and one other physician. Results would be given to both the district attorney and the Defense, and to the judge.
Dr. George Saslow of the University of Oregon Medical School was given a list of questions on December 28, 1964, to try to find answers.
Who was Dwain Lee Little?
A description of Dwain Lee’s personality.
Is the nature of his personality such that it would permit the commission of this kind of crime?
Would a person with his kind of personality be more likely to commit this kind of crime than a person with a different mind or personality?
How disturbed is Dwain at this time?
Are treatment facilities available in Oregon today [1964] adequate for the restoration to community life within five years of persons found to have committed a crime such as charged in this case?
How long would a course of treatment in an institution usually require most people such as this to [be safe to release into] the community?
Would people who have committed crimes such as this usually require lifetime supervision?
How likely is a person to commit such a crime again if he does not receive treatment?
In retrospect, it was an impossible task. Who could possibly know what Dwain Lee Little might be capable of, or, indeed, if he was truly insane under the M’Naughton Rule?
In the end, a grand jury handed down an indictment charging Dwain as an adult. The jury at his trial handed down a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
On February 11, 1966, Dwain Lee Little became the youngest prisoner ever to enter the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
He made headlines for a while, and then most of the Oregon public forgot about him, reassured by the “life” sentence.
Dwain was first assigned to the prison’s garment factory, where he was under very close supervision by the staff and was also watched over by older inmates. Apparently, there were enough men who were truly concerned about the safety of a young and handsome inmate that he was not sexually exploited by predatory convicts. He attended group-therapy sessions and appeared to be benefiting from them.
After his first year in prison, advisers in the prison convinced him to go to school. He continued attending classes in the Upward Bound program until 1968.
“The reports of his activities and his attempts to help himself were excellent,” one unit manager wrote.
In 1972, he worked as a clerk in the Group Living captain’s office, and joined the “Lifers’ Club.” He was more sure of himself and relaxed, and corrections officers felt “his self-image was improving greatly.”
Now he was permitted to go on “outside trips” with the Lifers’ Club. “I have gone on trips with him,” a prison staff member noted, “specifically to observe his relationship with women. He treated all persons with respect and understanding.
“Little has learned to live with his remembrance of the antisocial behavior of his parents, of the rejection by his peers and others in the areas where he resided. I’ve watched him change from a somewhat cocky and bewildered young man into still a young man—but one who has a high level of social awareness and of his responsibility toward maintaining his place in society. I am certain of his remorse for the offense that he committed and the girl he killed. I would welcome him as a next-door neighbor.”
Many people who had met Dwain Lee in the eight years he spent in prison felt he was a prime example of a young man who would never return to captivity; instead, they expected him to become a good citizen. He had been on scores of supervised trips outside the walls and never caused any trouble.
They recommended him for work release. He was transferred to the Portland Men’s Center on February 6, 1974, and began work at a concrete products plant, where he made $2.50 an hour and received glowing evaluations.
He was allowed four passes to Portland homes, all of them sponsored by his mother and his sister. And on May 24, 1974, Dwain was released on parole. He was, of course, forbidden to carry any deadly weapon, and would not be allowed to enter Lane County—where he had killed Orla Fay Phipps—or adjoining Benton County.
By the fall of 1974, Stone and Pearl had moved to Jackson County, and Dwain was living in Jacksonville. He was doing well as a warehouseman for a steel company in Medford, earning $4.75 an hour and reporting regularly to his parole officer. He spent a lot of his free time on the Applegate River, swimming and visiting friends. Although his parole officer wasn’t happy about some of those friends and counseled him continually about the trouble they might bring him, Dwain didn’t seem to listen.
“Little’s only apparent problem at this time,” the PO wrote on September 3, 1974, “appears to be that he is not very discerning of people around him and is too anxious to accommodate others’ needs and wants above his own.”
As he wrote that, it was Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, and the Cowden family had been missing approximately forty-eight hours.
And Dwain’s parents lived in the area where they’d disappeared.
When the Oregon State Police investigators and the Jackson County sheriff’s detectives learned that Dwain Little had been in the Copper area at approximately the same time the Cowdens had vanished, they located him at his parents’ home and questioned him. He denied any knowledge of the Cowden family, said he didn’t know them, had never seen them, and had no idea what might have happened to them.
Dwain Little was only one of scores of people they talked to. His prison and work release record were spotless, and they could find nothing substantive that might link him to the crimes.
Dwain Lee and his girlfriend, Roxanne Feeney,* were living with his parents during the summer of 1974. Roxanne had a secret that she chose not to tell anyone. She had seen Dwain with a .22-caliber gun and knew he wasn’t supposed to have access to firearms. However, after Christmas, she discovered that Dwain was cheating on her with another woman, and she told police that she had personally observed him with the .22 pistol and seen him load it, and that they had used it for target shooting together.
Dwain’s parole was suspended on January 12, 1975, and revoked completely in May. He had been out of prison for one year—less one day—when he went back into the Oregon State Pen on May 23, 1975.
Once more, he set about convincing the authorities that he had changed. And that was one of his talents—the “lacquer coating” that one psychiatrist had described, smooth and impenetrable. He got his old job as a clerk back, and, again, he was a model prisoner.
Dwain Lee was married now, and he had a wife, Linda,* waiting for him on the outside. He first tried to get paroled to California, but that state refused responsibility for him, and he also considered Idaho—but he finally submitted a request to be paroled to his wife’s parents’ home near Hills-boro, Oregon. He had a job waiting for him with a potato-chip company; he never had trouble finding work.
It was surprising how many corrections officers backed Dwain’s parole. He had made a positive impression on them, and they failed to see who was behind the mask he presented to the world. He’d alw
ays been clever at hiding his emotions, and after more than a decade in prison, he had become extremely con-wise.
Oregon State Prison Warden Hoyt Cupp was not among those who believed that Dwain Little was no longer a danger to the community, nor were many of the psychiatrists who had examined him over the years. However, they had not considered him psychotic—except perhaps when circumstances made him explode.
“A person who is so unknown to himself emotionally,” Dr. Saslow wrote, “generally gives others no signals that he is about to lose emotional control, and he may lose it quickly.”
One psychiatrist thought that the only chance of healing whatever was wrong with Dwain Little would be for a mental health therapist to spend “quantities of undemanding love for the long time that it would take to convince him that it was not a trap … Without therapy, the outlook is dark.”
Most of the others feared there was no treatment that would work—inside prison walls or out. He seemingly had no conscience or empathy, and was far more likely to kill again than were most prisoners who had gone to jail for murder.
He was paroled for the second time on April 26, 1977. He now had more “special conditions” attached to his parole. He had to become involved in a mental health treatment program (at the discretion of his parole officer), he could not associate with known felons, he could not enter Lane or Jackson counties without his PO’s permission, and he would maintain an independent living situation.
He had had the same parole officer for years, and the man never lost faith in him. Although Dwain would be living and working hundreds of miles north of Jackson County, his parole officer would remain in charge of his case.
For over three years, Dwain Little evaded the eye of the law.
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