Co-Workers Call Suspect Disruptive and Lonesome

Ward Weaver, a shipping and receiving clerk at a small tool company here, was never one of the guys. He was a meticulous worker but also cold, brusque and surly, co-workers said Tuesday.

They said his behavior went from remote to highly unpredictable after eighth-grader Ashley Pond, 12, vanished Jan. 9 on her way to the bus stop a few feet from his front door. By the time Ashley’s friend Miranda Gaddis, 13, disappeared from this working-class suburb March 8--on her way to the same bus stop--Weaver had become erratic, dashing out of the office on early spring afternoons with no explanation, or coming in when he pleased.

“He’d leave for three to four hours at a time. It was a running joke--when would Ward show up at work? 9:30? 11?” said Chuck Aaker, a salesman at the company, Manufacturers Tool Service.

Now, in late summer, as wildflowers casually wind around fast-food signs and strip malls fly back-to-school-sale banners, Weaver’s disruptive and lonesome existence makes more sense to co-workers. Remains of both girls were unearthed over the weekend in his neglected backyard, and the district attorney’s office announced that it is seeking a grand jury indictment against him, although as of Tuesday evening he had not been charged in the case.

Contributing to the bizarre impression he made at work, Weaver went on national television in early summer and declared himself a suspect in the disappearances. MTS employees said it is heart-stopping to think that Weaver, 39, worked among them while the girls lay buried in his backyard.

He was hired in October 2000 at MTS, which sells industrial tools and supplies, some of which it manufactures in its machine shop. The plant, in an industrial park a few miles from Weaver’s home, goes through several 54-gallon drums a week of coolant and chemicals for its machines. Ashley’s remains were discovered in a sealed drum, but authorities declined to say where it had come from.

So many at the factory had such serious suspicions about Weaver that one said he told a friend on the police force. These middle-aged men with children of their own said they began watching Weaver and comparing stories among themselves.

Weaver, meanwhile, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. They say that every day he wore the same gray work shirt from his previous job at the Thrifty Auto Supply store, and passed the hours inside his small, sunny office or out in the factory, packaging tool purchases for customers. All the while, he kept the radio tuned to an FM station that played “bubble gum” music, Aaker said--Britney Spears songs and the like.

“It wasn’t classic rock or heavy metal,” Aaker said.

Weaver avoided conversations with anyone at all costs. He ate his brown-bag lunch at the small desk, and answered his extension, 2664, tersely.

“He was a good worker. He was detail-oriented. But you said good morning and he would just grunt,” said MTS salesman Pat Reeves, whose small, windowed office sits a few hundred feet from the shipping and receiving bay. “He would never make eye contact with me. This spring, he was totally stressed.”

His reclusive existence was backlit by the baffling story of Ashley and Miranda, the two eighth-grade girls who went missing eight weeks apart, both on the way to the bus stop near Weaver’s one-acre property. Their disappearances monopolized water cooler chitchat, crowding out depressing news about Oregon’s shaky economy and the high unemployment rate.

Finally, the first week in August, Weaver quit, giving two weeks’ notice. “He said he was through being hammered by the FBI,” Reeves said.

FBI agents came to MTS a few weeks later to confiscate the hard drives of two computers Weaver had used to track packages. It was another step in the drawn-out investigation into the girls’ disappearance. But with a search warrant granted to the FBI on Friday and both sets of remains recovered and identified by Monday, the families of both girls believe officials have a legally sound case.

“They are not angry at all that it took this long. They understand that the police got on to the property just as soon as they legally could,” attorney Linda Beloof, who represents both girls’ mothers, said Tuesday afternoon.

In the factory’s cleanly swept parking lot, Sam Moriariu, a 29-year-old machinist, carted a dumpster with a small forklift and remembered Weaver as a guy who made it clear he wasn’t interested in making friends.

“He just came in and did his job. He had that gray shirt and blue jeans,” Moriariu said, adding that when Weaver brought his daughter to work, “they’d be all smiles.”

Weaver’s daughter, 13-year-old Mallori, introduced him to Ashley and Miranda, both of whom lived in Newell Creek Village Apartments and often walked up the gently sloping road to his house for slumber parties. If they weren’t coming over to play, they were standing 50 yards from Weaver’s front door, waiting for the school bus. Newell Creek teems with young children, and parents can move in with proof they can pay an average monthly rent of about $630.

And even though some local girls said Weaver created a safe, loving atmosphere in his tidy house, court papers and law enforcement records show there was chronic violence behind closed doors.

Both of Weaver’s ex-wives filed restraining orders against him. He has five children, and in the mid-1980s he served three years in a California prison for beating his son’s baby-sitter with a 12-pound chunk of cement. Oregon City police records show that authorities visited his house 10 times in the last 19 months, with most of those cases classified as domestic disturbance calls.

Since Weaver’s Aug. 13 arrest on an unrelated rape charge--the mother of his infant grandson says Weaver raped and tried to smother her in Mallori’s bedroom--Mallori has been placed in a foster home.

The bus stop has been moved away from Weaver’s property. He was evicted Monday night, and he sits in jail on $1-million bail after pleading not guilty to the rape charge. But the crimes he is suspected of committing against Ashley and Miranda continue to reverberate through the community.

The chain-link fence around Weaver’s former house is covered in teddy bears, angels, flowers, photographs and poems. Candles and incense burn throughout the night, and at sunset crowds swell as working parents bring their children to bear witness.

Miranda’s remains were found Saturday buried underneath a shed in the yard.

Ashley’s remains were discovered the next day in a sealed metal drum underneath a cement slab that Weaver installed in March, days after Miranda disappeared.

He said it was a hot-tub foundation.