Ventura : Suspect in 1991 Slaying Arrested

The search for a man indicted last week in a 1991 homicide in Medford, Ore., ended at a public campground outside Ojai when police arrested the 36-year-old suspect without incident, authorities said.

Terry Jay Griffin, who used the name James Edward Griffin Jr. in Ventura, was unarmed when he was arrested Wednesday about 11 a.m. at a campsite that he shared with a couple he had befriended, Ventura Police Sgt. Roger Nustad said.

Griffin was indicted a week ago by the Jackson County grand jury in connection with the Feb. 8, 1991, slaying of Rosanne Marie Walter, a 36-year-old woman described as homeless, said Doug McGeary, a Jackson County deputy district attorney.

Griffin is accused of stabbing the woman repeatedly and then setting the body on fire, McGeary said.

Witnesses reported seeing Griffin with the woman at a Medford soup kitchen the day before she disappeared, he said.

Oregon authorities said Griffin was a transient in the Medford area at the time of the slaying and later moved to Ventura County, where he mostly lived in campgrounds.

He was the only suspect indicted in the homicide case.

Griffin worked at a Ventura recycling company for about a year while Ventura police kept track of his whereabouts, McGeary said.

He is being held without bail at Ventura County Jail and will be subject to extradition if he does not volunteer to return to Oregon, McGeary said.