Document text
Suspect in 20-year-old murder will be extradited A California man will be returned to Medford next week to face murder charges stemming from the strangulation of a teenage girl beneath the Spiegelberg Stadium bleachers 20 years ago. William Henry Allen Jr., 36, waived his extradition rights during a Friday hearing in a California courtroom outside of Oakland, paving the way for his return to the city shocked by 17-year-old Evelyn Marie Smith's murder in 1981. Medford police detectives, who arrested Allen on a murder warrant April 26 in the San Francisco Bay area, will travel to Contra Costa County and retrieve Allen some time next week, said Jackson County Deputy District Attorney Beth Heckert, who is prosecuting the case. Medford police Lt. Tim George said worries over security led him to decline Friday to reveal when and how they plan to get Allen back to Medford, his hometown. But once he is returned, he will be lodged at the Jackson County Jail, then arraigned in court the following business day, Heckert said. Allen was already a convicted arsonist and thief when he allegedly murdered Smith, whose nude and beaten body was found April 26, 1981 in a tunnel beneath Spiegelberg Stadium on the campus of South Medford High School. He was not a suspect in Smith's murder until five weeks later, when he was arrested for kidnapping and robbing another Medford teenage girl while armed with a razor, police said. Detectives were unable to make a case against him, even after a 1992 attempt to match his DNA to evidence found at the scene. But a new, more sophisticated DNA testing procedure done last November reportedly linked Allen to the crime, and Allen was indicted last month on two murder counts. Since his arrest, Allen had been held at the Contra Costa County Jail, pondering whether to fight his extradition to Oregon. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.