The neighbor charged with killing missing Oregon barista Whitney Heichel
allegedly told police he was mugged the day she went missing, according to newly released court documents.
Jonathan Holt,
24, an acquaintance and neighbor of Heichel’s, was indicted for her murder on Friday, the same day the court documents were released. They chronicle Holt’s confusing police interviews and include his confession of downloading child pornography.
Heichel, 21, was reported missing on Tuesday morning when she did not show up for work at Starbucks, which was just a five-minute drive from her home, prompting a community-wide search. That same day, Holt’s wife could not find him, according to the court records.
Holt told his wife, neighbors and police that he was mugged by two black men, and then spent the day walking around and crying until that evening, according to the affidavit. When neighbors stopped to offer Holt a ride, he initially refused. After they walked him in the house, the neighbors had to hit him to get him to tell his wife he’d been robbed, according to the affidavit.
During police questioning, Holt changed this story several times, detectives wrote.
“Near the end of the conversation, Jonathan Holt told them that it was just ‘bad timing’ that all of this happened at the same time as what was going on with Whitney Heichel,” the affidavit reads.
Holt was also observed discarding one handgun in the bushes near his work, and another in the grass outside the Gresham Police Department before he entered and confessed to the crimes.
According the police report, which was released earlier this week, Holt allegedly waited outside Heichel’s apartment for her to go to work before asking her for a ride. They lived in the same apartment complex.
About five minutes later, Holt allegedly “took [Heichel] by gun point in her vehicle” to an area near a lake and forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to the police report.
He allegedly shot her four times, according to The Associated Press. Her body was found three days later on Larch Mountain, a 40-minute drive from her home.