Man accused of murdering Whitney Heichel faces new charges
GRESHAM, Ore. - A man accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and then killing a Gresham woman is now facing new charges of burglary and encouraging child sex abuse.
Jonathan Holt, 24, was arraigned in court on Thursday under the new indictment. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which are in connection with information that was discovered during the Whitney Heichel murder investigation.
Holt is also facing six counts of aggravated murder with a firearm, one count of first-degree kidnapping, one count of first-degree sodomy and two counts of first-degree robbery. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
Holt did confess to murdering Heichel but that does not make it an open and shut case because there is a tenet in the American justice system that you cannot be convicted on your confession alone. The idea is that it keeps someone from taking credit for a crime they did not commit - there has to be evidence to convict a person of a crime besides their confession.
Holt's trial is scheduled for late February.
Case Background
Whitney Heichel, 21, left for work the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 16 and vanished. Worried family, friends and members of her church quickly launched a search for the young woman who meant so much to them.
During the search, Heichel's vehicle, a 1999 Ford Explorer, was found abandoned in the parking lot of the Wood Village WalMart. A window was shattered and the inside was a mess. Then more clues turned up - her cell phone was found outside a Troutdale apartment complex and her sweater along Dodge Park Boulevard east of Gresham.
Heichel's body was later found on Larch Mountain. She had been shot to death.
Investigators soon arrested Holt in connection with the murder and details about what had happened to Heichel began to emerge. In court documents, investigators said Holt asked Heichel for a ride and then forced her at gunpoint to drive to Roslyn Lake, where he sexually assaulted her and then shot her several times. They said he then dumped her body on Larch Mountain.
Holt lived in the same apartment complex as Heichel and her husband, Clint, and was also a member of the couple's church.
The Heichels only knew Holt as an acquaintance, although Clint told detectives that the man did have a key to their apartment because Holt and his wife had at one time watered their plants while the couple was on vacation.
Holt's wife, Amanda, kept out of the media glare following her husband's arrest. She filed for divorce not long after Holt was taken into custody.
@margay1Jan 10, 2013Hmm... well, just judging by everything they're charging this guy with (so far), I'd say there's good odds of a plea deal soon to be in the works, if for no other reason than to get the death penalty off the table... Â Just an observation, but it sure doesn't seem as though many of his church's teachings rubbed off on him, does it..? Â Â (I'm NOT slamming the church; just saying that if he is guilty of even part of what he's charged with, his actions are certainly far removed from his church's professed beliefs...) Â Â I feel awfully sorry for his wife...Â
There's evil everywhere....take for instance Judas Iscariot, taught by the son of God himself; turned against Jesus Christ and turned him in for 30 pieces of silver. Â I guess Jesus' teachings didn't rub off on Judas either. Â Â
To answer some of the questions Iâve read on here. A person can be charged with 6 counts of aggravated murder just as a person who is sentenced can receive multiple life sentences â it serves no real point, the only point it serves is to make sure these people do not get out of jail. How is it possible? Because the law says it is and they need not give any further explanation. Jonathan Holt was involved in his Kingdom Hall more than anyone likes to admit. At one point he was serving and yes, you have to be a baptized member in order to serve. Likewise, you cannot marry in the Jehovahâs Witness Kingdom Hall unless you are a baptized/professed Jehovahâs Witness. (Which brings me to yet another point about a comment I just read that says burn in hell â well technically, Jonathan Holt is not concerned about that because Jehovahâs Witnesses do not believe people go to hell, just saying)
"encouraging child sex abuse"? .....Can someone tell me what this might be about? Any clues? I just don't get how this relates to the crime he committed.Â
 @Philip Marlowe Kiddie porn. Cops probably served a search warrant on his computer for evidence in the Heichel case, and found he'd been downloading a bunch of child pornography, which brings Encouraging Child Sex Abuse charges. Dude obviously has issues...
Why will this skel not just commit suicide and save humanity the grief?? Oh, I forgot that he has been wrongfully accused,,,
@boned I would love to hear your explanation for that comment.
I'm sure he is basically a good kid.
The shrinks are probably trying to figure out how to get him off and too often they are successful.  Maybe they won't be keeping a close eye on him in jail and he will do us all a favor and do himself in.Â
 @boomer Man, you beat me to it and I sometimes just comment without reading the genius below...
With Dr. Rerun in office he won't have to worry about the death penalty being carried out on him, if in fact he is sentenced to death.
 @theobserver With as long as death penalty cases - and appeals - take, Kitzhaber would no longer be in office when it came time for a death warrant to be signed. People can still be given the death penalty as their sentence, but Kitzhaber is not signing any death warrants while in office.
 @Jenni S.  @theobserver  Um-hmm... so much for up-holding the laws of our state, huh..?
What gets me is that he suports the Death with Dignity law. But will not put down a rapist or a killer. This I don't understand???????
 @margay1  @Jenni S.  @theobserver Let us all remember that Kitzgrabber is a short little man that wears lifts in his caboy boots and is a failure...
I don't understand how they decide with what to charge someone - how can he be charged with SIX counts of aggravated murder for killing ONE person?
 @katiemcc ~  I looked up the statute defining  Agg Murder - it's #ORS 163.095... It's too long to include the whole thing in this post,  but following are some examples of situations where they might use the Aggravated Murder charge:
-Â The homicide occurred in the course of or as a result of intentional maiming or torture of the victim.
- The murder was committed in an effort to conceal the commission of a crime, or to conceal the identity of the perpetrator of a crime.
- Murder-for-hire (contract killings) - can be used if the defendant did the killing OR if s/he hired someone else to do it.
- Victim was under the age of 14 years.
- Victim was a police officer.
Those are just a few of the (long) list that appears in this statute. Â Â I don't know exactly how the prosecutors determine how to construct the "counts"; I've never worked in the DA's office... but maybe this will give you an idea of where they're going with this...Â
 @margay1 I think I get the first & second degree charges but it's number of "counts" of the murder charge that confuses me.
It looks to me like they are Stacking as much against him that they can think of. They will give him a Plea deal and drop the rest to avoid a trial. I'll bet that when and if he goes to trial alot of these charges will be dropped or dissmissed when he pleads out or found guilty.
 @katiemcc ~  Yes, I know... that part confuses me too... as I said, I'm not sure just how they come up with them... sometimes,. you have to see the actual paperwork, with everything spelled out, before it makes sense...  There are probably variations in those 6 counts; IOW, they look like they're all for the same thing in this story, but there are actually variations in them... Maybe they'll have some documents later on that will give more information...
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As an example to better explain....this guy killed this sweet girl...first degree murder. Ok...so say he wanted to kill "someone"...anyone...and he killed her...that would be the intent to kill, but didn't care who they killed. So...that would be second degree murder. It goes up from there.
 @fracas ~  I'm not 100% on this, but if I remember right, it's the "predetermined intent to kill" that matters; not so much "who" their "victim-of-choice" was...  Just as an example, the shooter at CTC had every intent to kill one or more people (probably as many as he could); he went to CTC for the express purpose of killing people... but he wouldn't have known in advance which people would end up being his victims...Â
I think 2nd degree murder would be "passion killings", eg: 2 guys in a bar-room fight; one of them swings a beer bottle and hits the other guy's head and kills him. Â Even though they were fighting, there was (probably) no "premeditation" involved...Â
The two guys fighting and one dies could be considered Involintary manslaughter. That would mean he did not intend to kill the person he wass fighting with. Just another way of looking at it.
@katiemcc Margay...you can correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure I might be LOL...but a murder isn't just plain and simple. Yes...someone is dispatched someone else. But there's degrees (counts) that brought that murder about. Was there an intent to kill this person (because of some reason that justified this idiot to do what he did, at least in his evil mind) Was there a pre-plan to the murder? (I suspect that this murder was hatched weeks ahead)...what was the method of the murder...it's all the degrees that a murderer would fit into that makes the count. The end is...someone is dead. But the reasoning and methods behind it can determine just how badly this guy will be punished (life or death). Am I close Margay? LOL
Hmm... well, just judging by everything they're charging this guy with (so far), I'd say there's good odds of a plea deal soon to be in the works, if for no other reason than to get the death penalty off the table... Â Â
Just an observation, but it sure doesn't seem as though many of his church's teachings rubbed off on him, does it..? Â Â (I'm NOT slamming the church; just saying that if he is guilty of even part of what he's charged with, his actions are certainly far removed from his church's professed beliefs...) Â Â
I feel awfully sorry for his wife...Â
@margay1 Ex-wife Margay...her divorce became final a few weeks ago. Still feel so sorry for her. And actually...how into his church was he? Was he born into it and raised in it? If he entered at a later stage in his life, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference to him. I'm sure not understaning that tenet in our judicial system. If someone says they're guilt of a crime...and you're sure thru testing and observation that they're not insane...why wouldn't that mean their guilty??? And should get the punishment they deserve? And if they confess to a crime, where and who on earth WON'T find them guilty. I'm not getting it...can you explain?
 @fracas  @margay1 ~  You seem to be covering several issues here, fracas... so taking them in the order that I'm finding them:
1. Â Yes, even though she's now divorced from him, I feel sorry for what she went through at the time Whitney Heichel was kidnapped and killed... I hope she'll be OK now...
2. Â Good point about how "into" the church he might have been... I don't recall reading anything about how long he'd been in that church...Â
3. Â I didn't address the issue of a person being convicted on the sole basis of their confession, but I believe this is to prevent (as much as possible) someone from "confessing" to a crime in order to shield someone else, or even someone falsely confessing to a crime because they want the notoriety / media attention (needless to say, those people are usually not exactly mentally stable, either!)...It's not something that happens every day, but it's not totally unheard of, either...
They're not saying the person's confession doesn't matter; they're just saying that other evidence also needs to be presented... and who knows...maybe the "confession" was coerced or made under duress..? Â Not saying it was in this case, but that has been known to happen, too...Â
 @margay1 His wife took the smart road and filed for divorce from this loser.
 @scoreboard ~ Yes, I remember reading that she did... but can you imagine what a nightmare this has been for her..?   That's why I said I felt sorry for her...Â
 @margay1 Absolutely. No one should have to go through that. I have tons of sympathy for her.Â
If ever there was a fitting candidate for the death penalty. Hope he burns in H.
I hope he gets the death penalty for the horrible acts he committed.
 @JRE not to be off subject but, how can you be charged with 6 counts of murder for killing 1 person. just saying?
Â
The police are stacking the deck. More charges they pile on him the better a Plea deal will be shortly followed.I think in a Case like this they should not be able to plea out. They should go striaght to trial..
"He could face the death penalty if convicted"
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Sadly, that doesn't mean much in Oregon.
Â
 @negativerep ~ Well, if you factor in the years and years required for appeals, maybe by that time, we will have a governor in Oregon who will abide by the laws of our state... Â
We live in hope, anyway...Â
 @margay1  @negativerep To be honest, I am not surprised that he will not sign death warrants. As a doctor, he took an oath to do no harm to people, and a death warrant is definitely that. He did sign two in his last time in office and he says it haunted him to this day.
Â
With so few cases coming up with it being time for a warrant to be signed, I doubt it is going to make much of a difference anyway. The only one that has come up so far is the guy who is asking to be put to death.
Haugen, not Hagen. Sorry about that.
 @Jenni S. Jenni: with regards to your comment "As a doctor, he took an oath to do no harm to people," then what does that say for physician-assisted suicide? Are doctors not writing the scripts for the terminally ill patients to obtain the necessary drugs to OD on?As for Kitzhaber, not even sure if he's still a licensed physician? It is his personal opinion on the the death penalty and his refusing to sign the warrants.
Â
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Hagen case.
Boy, this guy is really lowers the bar for all humans. Have the checked his DNA to make sure he is human?
I don't believe a government should have the right to execute it's citizens. But I'll look the other way while this guy gets the death penalty.....not a problem.
Can we please get a firing squad?
I'd sign up for that. Heck I'd even bring my musket. Free of charge....
I hope that this guy is the first person to actually get the death penalty in years. Disgusting scum bag.
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You are being to hard on sumbags, this gut has be delegated down to POS.
 @dkgiovencoÂ
Actually there is POS, HOS, and MOS.
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Piece of, heap o, and mountain of.
Lets hope for the death sentence.
http://www.facebook.com/OregonCrimesTimes?skip_nax_wizard=true
Can we just put this sicko in the chair and get it over with?
 @scoreboard Not unless you want to see everyone's right to a fair trial, done away with.
 @felines99  @scoreboard He admitted everything he did to her.  BIG FAT DUUUHHH Â
 @meeranda  @GeauxOSU No, I think the point here is that we need to give this man all of the benefit of the doubt, to ensure that if you or I is ever wrongly accused, that we will have every chance to clear our good name. I do not for one second believe that this man is innocent. But I do insist that we give him every opportunity to defend himself, because that is the fair and right way to go about prosecuting ANYONE. And that is the ONLY way that we ensure that we will be treated with the same honesty and fairness, by the justice system in this country.
 @felines99 @GeauxOSU I think the point is here, that aside from his confession (which we ALL HIGHLY doubt was under "duress"), there is a sh** ton of evidence stacked against him. He knew exactly where Heichel was, he was caught disposing of the same gun he used to kill her, his DNA is of course ALL over the body... He also confessed to earlier breaking into the Heichel's apartment and stealing an iPod which turned out to be true. Not to mention the child pornography his computer was littered with. The guy is as guilty as they come and part of me wishes they would just release him and let the public have their way with him. I would be there to help.
 @GeauxOSU I believe that the more relevant question is, "how do you know that he did not?"
 @felines99 You present an interesting point catty one. My only question would be... how do you know he confessed under "duress"?
 @eyeonchina  @scoreboard So what??? So that makes it and open-and-shut case??? So if, under duress, YOU admit to killing someone, your right to a fair trial is dissolved???  Really???