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Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Local Issues Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage Hot Topics Most Viewed Forum Photo Galleries Video Readers Polls O-Zone Online Games Movie Preview Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad April 29, 2005 Detective looks back over long APD career Parlette heads to retirement with peace of mind By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Lynn Parlette started at the Ashland Police Department 28 years and 24 days ago. He was 21, fresh out of the U.S. Army and looking for work. Parlette had applied for positions at APD, the Medford Police Department, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and the post office. Lynn Parlette “A half-hour after the Ashland Police Department called and said ‘We want you. Would you accept a position?’ the post office called,” Parlette said. Now, during his final days on the job, Parlette thinks he made the right choice. He took the APD offer and, because of his desire to try to solve cases and a high officer turnover rate, Parlette jumped from patrol officer to detective in two years. “I was not a ticket-writer,” Parlette said. “I was more, if a case would come in, I would take it and try to solve the case. I was moderately successful.” He can recall particulars of cases he worked years ago — the names of suspects and victims, the sentences guilty parties received and the gruesome details of the crime scene — and APD Deputy Chief Rich Walsh estimates Parlette has solved 95 percent of the cases he’s been assigned to. “Losing a guy like Len Parlette will be a striking blow to the Ashland Police Department,” Walsh said. “He’s got a gift when it comes to investigative skills that’s beyond comprehension.” Years back, Walsh and Parlette responded to a potential arson in a B Street area apartment complex with communal bathrooms, where the fire was lit. Parlette saw three guys partially obscured by bushes watching the fire department douse the smoldering pile of toilet paper three blocks away. “He just walked up, took out a cigarette and said, ‘Hey, you got a light?’” Walsh remembered. Parlette, who has quit smoking since that investigation, kept the book of matches and was able to match the wood fibers of the used matches found at the crime scene to the stubs in the book where matches had been ripped off. The men were arrested and convicted of attempted arson and, later on, Parlette saw his work in a detective training session. “It’s a kick, especially when you get to the point where I’m at, where you feel competent,” Parlette said. “There’s cases I’ve never solved that have bothered me over the years, but the statute of limitations have run out on all of those, so why should I let them bother me?” In February, though, Parlette got an early retirement present when California Highway Patrol picked up a man who confessed to the 1993 murder of longtime Ashland resident Ed Krahel, an eccentric train collector and once a candidate for Ashland mayor. “I used to rib him all the time, ‘You’re not retiring until that Krahel case is solved,’” Walsh said. “He called me one day and said, ‘I’ve got news for you.’” In March, Walter Earl Jaffke plead guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court. Jaffke, now 34, had offered information to a California Highway Patrol officer when the officer pulled over a big-rig truck for a traffic violation. Jaffke was a passenger in the vehicle and listed as an endangered missing person at the time of his confession. “The Krahel case is the one that would have bothered me,” Parlette said. “We put so many hours into it.” On the verge of his retirement from police work, Parlette says he won’t miss carrying a gun at work — a standard of the jobs he’s held since he joined the Army infantry at age 18 — and thinks it might be fun to try something in the private sector to keep him busy. In fact, he wouldn’t mind taking the post office up on that three-decade-old job offer, but he says he has asked around about becoming an walking mail carrier and all he can find are jobs as rural route drivers. “They just don’t have any openings right now,” Parlette said. Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. --> Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.