Randall Woodfield: the Packers draft pick who became the I-5 Killer

• BornDecember 1950, Oregon
• Full nameRandall Brent Woodfield
• Known asThe I-5 Killer, the I-5 Bandit
• ArrestedMarch 1981, Springfield, Oregon
• ConvictedJune 1981, Marion County: murder, attempted murder, sodomy; later a second trial in Benton County
• SentenceLife plus 90 years (October 1981), with more years added after the second trial
• StatusServing his sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary, Salem

Randall Woodfield was a college football player from the Oregon coast who was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 1974 and cut before the season began. In June 1981 a jury in Marion County, Oregon, convicted him of murdering a young woman and trying to kill another in an office near Salem, and he was sentenced to life in prison plus 90 years. Police and the press called him the I-5 Killer, after the interstate that runs from the Canadian border to Mexico, because of a string of robberies, sexual assaults and killings along it in the winter of 1980–81.

That one murder is the only killing he has been charged with. Decades later Portland police said DNA evidence linked him to six more deaths in Oregon and California, and prosecutors chose not to charge him because he was already serving life. He has never confessed to any of them. How many people he killed is still argued over, with figures running from seven to 44.

This account rests on contemporary reports by United Press International, later reporting by The Oregonian, KVAL, The Bulletin of Bend, CBS News, Willamette Week, KOIN and Oxygen, and the official record of the 1974 NFL draft, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the people he attacked are not named, and killings he has not been tried for are described as police and prosecutors described them.

A football star from the coast

Randall Brent Woodfield was born in December 1950 and grew up on the Oregon coast near Newport, the youngest child of a comfortable family. His father was a manager at the telephone company; his two older sisters did well at school and in their careers. He played football at Newport High School and was, by every account, a gifted athlete.

There were early warning signs. The writer Ann Rule, who later wrote a book about him, told The Oregonian that he was caught exposing himself as a young teenager and that his coaches kept it quiet; the Portland Tribune reported the same story, of an arrest for exposing himself to girls on a bridge in town.

After a spell at a community college in eastern Oregon he moved to Portland State University, where he played wide receiver for the Vikings and joined Christian student groups. While he was at Portland State and shortly afterwards he was repeatedly arrested for indecent exposure. The Oregonian counted four convictions, in 1972 in Vancouver, Washington, and in 1973, 1974 and 1975 in Multnomah County; Sports Illustrated, as reported by Oxygen, counted two.

Drafted, cut, and back in Portland

In the 1974 NFL draft the Green Bay Packers picked him in the 17th round, the 428th player chosen. He failed to make the team and was released during the preseason. Neither the Packers nor the semi-professional team he played for afterwards gave a reason for letting him go; Ann Rule said the Packers cut him after another exposure incident.

Back in Portland, in early 1975, he robbed women at knifepoint and forced them into sexual acts. Portland police caught him with a sting operation using an undercover female officer. He pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree robbery and was sentenced to ten years in the Oregon State Penitentiary. He served four and was paroled in July 1979.

The I-5 Bandit

In the months that followed his parole, the record darkens. In October 1980 a former classmate of his was found murdered in her apartment in downtown Portland. Woodfield was questioned, refused a polygraph test and was not charged; a blood test available at the time did not link him to the scene. Police later said DNA evidence did.

From December 1980, police in three states began connecting a series of armed robberies, many of them with sexual assaults, at gas stations, restaurants, ice cream parlours and small shops along Interstate 5, from Washington down through Oregon into northern California. Witnesses described a man in a hooded sweatshirt, sometimes with a false beard, who often wore a strip of tape or a bandage across the bridge of his nose. Detectives later concluded that it was meant to distract witnesses so that they would not recognise him without it. By early 1981 the press was calling the robber the I-5 Bandit, and then the I-5 Killer. In March 1981 the Marion County district attorney spoke of 26 crimes linked to him; a task force map later counted far more.

On the night of 18 January 1981 a man entered an office building in Keizer, just north of Salem, where two young women were working as evening cleaners. He sexually assaulted both of them at gunpoint and shot each of them in the back of the head. One died a few hours later. The other survived.

The arrest

Woodfield’s name came up in a separate investigation by police in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland, into the killing of a young woman there in February 1981, and investigators passed it to Marion County. In early March the woman who survived the Keizer shooting picked his photograph out of a line-up. Police searched the room he was renting in Springfield, near Eugene, and found a spent bullet casing and the same kind of tape that had been used to bind victims. The Beaverton detective later told The Oregonian that Woodfield’s landlady handed over a long-distance phone bill whose calls, plotted on a map, followed the interstate from California to Washington.

On 9 March 1981 he was charged with murder, attempted murder and sodomy over the Keizer attack. He was 30. Marion County’s district attorney, Chris Van Dyke, said there were “a number of similarities” between that case and the other crimes attributed to the I-5 Bandit, but police declined to link him to them at the time.

Two trials

His first trial opened in Salem in June 1981. The survivor of the Keizer attack testified against him, and her evidence was central to the case. Later that month the jury found him guilty of murder, attempted murder and sodomy. Van Dyke later described him as “the coldest, most detached defendant I’ve ever seen.”

On 12 October 1981 Marion County Circuit Judge Clarke Brown sentenced him to life in prison for the murder and three consecutive 30-year terms for attempted murder and two counts of sodomy: life plus 90 years. Oregon had no death penalty at the time; the judge said that if it had, he would have had “no hesitancy” in imposing it. According to The Oregonian, Woodfield made a rambling, barely audible statement maintaining his innocence.

A second trial followed in Benton County, on charges of sodomy and kidnapping over a February 1981 attack on a restaurant worker in Corvallis. The judge refused to move the trial out of the Willamette Valley despite the publicity. Woodfield was convicted, and 35 more years were added to his sentence, according to Sports Illustrated as reported by Oxygen.

The DNA cases

Woodfield went to prison without being tried for any other killing, and for years the rest of the I-5 cases stayed open. Advances in DNA testing changed that. In 2006 Portland police said DNA evidence linked him to the October 1980 murder of his former classmate. After talking to her family, prosecutors decided not to charge him, saying they would do so if he were ever considered for parole.

In May 2012 Portland’s cold case unit announced that a new DNA technique had linked him to three more killings: a young couple shot in a house in north Portland on Thanksgiving Day 1980, and a young woman shot in Beaverton in February 1981. Police said the same evidence tied him to the killing of a mother and her teenage daughter near Redding, California, in February 1981. That brought the number of deaths police say they can attribute to him to seven, including the Keizer murder he was convicted of.

Prosecutors in Multnomah, Washington and Shasta counties said they would not file charges while he remained in prison, and said the cases would be put before the parole board if he were ever given a hearing. A senior Multnomah County prosecutor called his release a very slim possibility. UPI also reported that the state’s statute of limitations at the time stood in the way of charges. Woodfield has never been tried for any of these deaths, and he has not admitted them.

How many?

The figures vary widely, and they should be read for what they are. Woodfield has been convicted of one murder. Police say DNA and ballistic evidence links him to six more deaths, for which he has not been tried. Beyond that, the numbers are estimates. KVAL reported in 2012 that police suspected 18 to 24 killings; CBS News wrote that he had been connected to 18 and may have had as many as 44 victims; Sports Illustrated wrote in 2016 that cold case detectives conservatively put the number at a dozen. A task force in 1981 mapped 25 murders and about 140 other crimes in which the attacker fitted his description, but fitting a description is not proof.

In prison

Woodfield is serving his sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. According to KVAL, the state parole board in 1983 denied him the chance to ask for a parole hearing. In 2012, Portland’s cold case detective told The Oregonian that guards described him as indifferent to the men around him and suddenly vain when female officers appeared.

Ann Rule’s book The I-5 Killer appeared in 1984 and made the case widely known. A television film based on it, Hunt for the I-5 Killer, was shown on Lifetime in 2011. In 2016 Sports Illustrated revisited the case as the story of a Packers draft pick, and his football past has been the hook for most coverage since.

Where the accounts differ

• Draft round: 17th round, 428th pick, in the official draft record and in UPI’s 1981 report; The Oregonian’s 2012 article says the 14th round.
• Why the Packers cut him: Ann Rule said it followed an exposure incident; other accounts say no reason was given.
• Indecent-exposure convictions: four according to The Oregonian, two according to Sports Illustrated.
• The gun: UPI’s March 1981 report spoke of a .22-calibre weapon; later accounts, including The Oregonian’s, describe a .32.
• The surviving victim’s age: given as 19, 20 or 21 in different reports.
• Why he was not charged in 2012: prosecutors pointed to his life sentence; UPI also cited the statute of limitations.
• The total: one conviction, seven deaths police attribute to him, and estimates from a dozen to 44.

The portrait

The drawing above is a crop of Woodfield’s coloring page in the True Crime Activity Book for Adults. The full page surrounds him with details from the case: a ball for his football career, pill bottles and a jar marked with a dumbbell, crossed pistols, a meter with clips that suggests the lie-detector test he refused, banknotes for the robberies, and a skull marked “3 – 18+”. For other case files from the same book, see Charles Cullen, Christine Falling and Andrew Urdiales.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. Former football player charged with murderUnited Press International, 10 March 1981
2. Judge refuses a change of venue for ‘I-5 bandit’ suspectUnited Press International, 24 September 1981
3. National News Briefs (sentencing)United Press International, 13 October 1981
4. ‘I-5-killer’ suspected in 1980 murderUnited Press International, 8 February 2006
5. Oregon closes book on 3 ‘I-5 Killer’ casesUnited Press International, 10 May 2012
6. ‘I-5 Killer’ connected to five more deathsKVAL, 9 May 2012
7. DNA links 3 more deaths to ‘I-5 Killer’The Bulletin (Bend), 11 May 2012
8. Serial killer Randy Woodfield’s legacy: pain, preening and pointlessnessThe Oregonian/OregonLive, 13 May 2012
9. Sports Illustrated Revisits Story of Former Portland State Football Player Turned Serial KillerWillamette Week, 11 December 2016
10. America’s deadliest serial killersCBS News, 30 October 2017
11. How Did Former Green Bay Packer Randall Woodfield Turn Into The ‘I-5 Killer’?Oxygen, 30 May 2020
12. A brief history of serial killers in OregonKOIN, 18 May 2024
13. 1974 NFL draft (round-by-round selections)Wikipedia

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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