Investigators in Oregon have connected a now-deceased convicted serial killer to the murder of an 81-year-old “Avon lady” in 1992.
The Washington County District Attorney’s Office made the announcement Tuesday that Cesar Barone, whose real name was Adolph James Rode Jr — he started going by Barone when he left the US Army in 1987 because he was enamored with Italian gangsters — murdered Elizabeth Wasson in her home on September 23, 1992.
Barone was convicted in 1995 in the murders of four women and sentenced to death, but he died before the sentence could be carried out.
He was suspect in Wasson’s murder, but investigators never had enough evidence to charge him, The Oregonian reported.
Wasson’s daughter, Tracie Dahl, visited her mother on the afternoon of her death, and Wasson told her she was going grocery shopping. But when Dahl tried to reach her that night, she didn’t answer the phone. Dahl and her husband went to the house and found Wasson dead in a back bedroom. She had been stabbed and strangled.
Investigators believed that Wasson matched profile of some of Barone’s other victims — elderly women who lived alone. But until an investigators sent the dress she was wearing when she was attacked to the Oregon State Police crime lab, there was no solid evidence. That testing, done in 2023, came back with a match to Barone.
Barone died in 2009, three days after investigators visited him on his death bed, hoping to convince him to come clean about Wasson and other cases. But the convict refused and insisted not only that he had nothing to do with those murders but that he was equally innocent of the four he was convicted on.
“I made it very clear that we were looking at other cases we thought he was responsible for,” said Michael O’Connell, a since retired Washington County Sheriff’s Office detective. “And I may as well have been talking German. He wouldn’t hear any of it. He very arrogantly said, ‘No, I didn’t do any of those. I didn’t even do the ones you guys convicted me of. And I’ll be out of prison here in a couple days.’”
Barone was convicted on four murders:
- Margaret Schmidt, 61, was raped and strangled in her home.
- Margaret Bryant, 41, was shot as she left work. Barone dragged her from the car, raped her, and then shot her in the head.
- Chantee Woodman, 23, was raped and shot, her body dumped along US 26.
- Betty Williams, 51, died of a heart attack when Barone attacked her in her apartment.
He also raped and stranged three other woman who survived the attacks.
In addition to Wasson, Barone was suspected of killing his former mother-in-law.
Barone was born in Florida and had a troubled childhood and early adulthood. He raped his stepmother and assaulted a grandmother, then spent seven years in prison after raping and killing a 71-year-old neighbor.
Dahl, who took over her mother’s Avon lady status after her death, told the Oregonian she didn’t think the murder would ever be solved.
“I do know that a case like this is never closed unless it is solved,” she said. “And I just never knew whether or not it would be.”
Now that it has, she said, she has some peace.
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[Featured image: Cesar Barone/1993 mug shot and Elizabeth Wasson/Washington County District Attorney’s Office]