COLD CASE CLOSED

Decades-Old DNA Leads Police to Murderer of Teen Hitchhikers

Cynthia Frayer and Kirk Wiseman were found dead in rural Oregon on a frigid November day, and their case remained cold for 40 years.

Police in Oregon believe they have identified the killer who cruelly murdered two teenagers more than four decades ago, a case that had baffled investigators and haunted deputies ever since.

Kirk Leonard Wiseman, 19, and Cynthia Lynn Frayer, 17, were found dead on a frigid November day near Lake of the Woods in rural Southern Oregon in 1978. They had been hitchhiking, according to the cops. Frayer had been sexually assaulted, the coroner found, and both she and Wiseman were killed by shots to the head from a .22 caliber gun, a relatively small firearm. A person cutting firewood for the night discovered the bodies.

Former Klamath Falls Chief of Police Dan Tofell told The Oregonian, “It was a very gruesome scene. It’s not everyday you find two young people killed in the way they were... I still remember it vividly. I can still picture it.”

Authorities now believe Ray Whitson Jr. killed the pair. They were led to him after police discovered DNA on Frayer’s clothing in 2019. The 40-year-old genetic material was initially determined only to belong to “unknown male #1,” but advanced analysis fingered Whitson as the prime suspect in 2021. A laboratory that analyzed DNA in the Golden State Killer case, Parabon Nanolabs, extracted Whitson’s identity from the DNA found on Frayer.

“You could tell that whoever did it didn’t have much respect for human life, the way the bodies were disposed,” Tofell said.

Whitson, who had worked in a lumber mill in nearby Klamath Falls, died in 1996. He had no criminal record.

“If we had been just 10, 15 years earlier... we would have been able to hold that individual accountable in a way that we now cannot do. What we have been able to do is bring closure for a family,” said Klamath County district attorney Eve Costello.

She said the DNA evidence would have been enough to charge Whitson were he still alive, but she now considers the case closed.

Frayer had a letter from her mother on her at the time when she died. It’s been kept as evidence all the years the case remained unsolved, but now police will return it to Frayer’s mother along with a pair of her daughter’s earrings.

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Blake MontgomeryFormer Reporter/Editor

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