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FILE - 5/26/88
Property of The Portland Oregonian
Original Story by Thomas Scanto,
Oregonian Police Beat Reporter
 
KIDNAPPING VICTIM ESCAPES, LEADS POLICE
TO DEAD KIDNAPPER
 
Portland, OR &emdash; Portland authorities announced yesterday morning that a 20-year-old woman who is a chemistry student at The University of Oregon escaped a kidnapper who was holding her as a sex slave for four months in his house in a quiet Portland neighborhood.
 
The woman escaped from her captor's house on Lincoln Street early Friday morning around 5 a.m. and flagged down a passing motorist who drove her to Portland Police Bureau Ward 5, located nine blocks away from the site of the crime.
 
The woman quickly explained to the officers on duty what had happened and led them (in a convoy of three cars, a special tactics van, and an ambulance) to the house. Upon entering the house authorities found the perpetrator, Mike Schaffer, sprawled on the kitchen table, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
 
Schaffer's head was competely severed from his neck by the force of the shot, which authorities say came from a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun, which was found on the kitchen floor in front of the body.
 
The woman, whose identity is being withheld, is believed to be Pamela Haag, who was reported missing from the university the third week of Janurary.
 
The woman described a lurid tale of sexual torture that began when she was forced into the cab of a pick-up truck as she returned home from the University of Oregon library after a late night of studying. The victim lives four blocks from the campus.
 
After she was trapped in the pick-up she was knocked unconscious and awoke inside Schaffer's house, in a large plywood box measuring some twenty by fifteen feet. At the bottom of the box was a drain and in the box was found a small writing table with pens and paper.
 
Authorities will not release complete details at this time, but will say that the box was buried under the front part of the Schaffer house, in a long space extending from under the living room into the hallway. A trapdoor leading down a set of stairs and into the basement of the house was found under an armchair.
 
"It was a very elaborate set-up. . .very sickening, also," said Police Captain Roy Miller.
The box was controlled by an intricate system of ropes and pulleys that the woman says Schaffer used to torture her. Authorities also say that the box was equipped with hard-wire lighting on the sides and ceiling and electric shock voltage in certain parts of the floor.
 
A closed-circuit video camera system connected to a monitor on the ground floor was also found. The police also said they they recovered bondage materials and videotpaes of the woman's torture in a closet on the ground floor.
 
"This is one of the worst crimes. . .not just sex crimes. . .but crimes, period, that I've seen yet," said Special Agent Karl Heppler, who leads the Portland Field Office of the F.B.I., which has joined the investigation.
 
The woman, who is expected to recover in four to six weeks, was treated at Greater Portland Medical Center for various abrasions and cuts, a concussion, and third-degree burns on her arms and legs. Greater Portland Medical Center would neither confirm or deny the rumor that the woman is seven weeks pregnant, although she admitted to hospital staff that she was raped daily.
 
She also related to hospital staff that she was bathed each day, in the morning, was fed three meals every day, and was allowed to watch a television that was lowered into her box during the last month of her captivity.
 
Schaffer, who worked part-time as a independent lumber hauler, was described by neighbors as quiet and unassuming.
 
"He was really a loner. I saw him about three times all this year&emdash;and I never heard anything."Mrs. Meyer Davis, his next door neighbor told The Oregonian. "He never would look right at me because of all the cuts he had."
 
Police say Schaffer had one previous conviction&emdash;for simple assault resulting from a 1982 Portland bar brawl in which he was thrown through a window, scarring his face.

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