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- FILE - 5/26/88
- Property of The Portland Oregonian
- Original Story by Thomas Scanto,
- Oregonian Police Beat Reporter
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- KIDNAPPING VICTIM ESCAPES, LEADS POLICE
- TO DEAD KIDNAPPER
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Schaffer, who worked part-time as a independent
lumber hauler, was described by neighbors as quiet and
unassuming.
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- "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."
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- 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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