Gunfire killed all five people found dead at a rural Oregon property on Saturday, August 22, 2026, and the man detectives identified as the killer told his mother by phone that he had planned the slayings in advance. That account came from authorities on Tuesday, August 25, when Detective Mark Povolny of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office laid out a detailed timeline of the killings at a news conference in Hillsboro, Ore.
The gunman shot five people and five household pets, Povolny said, and then tried to burn much of the evidence — and the property itself — to the ground.
Authorities identified the dead as Mary Elizabeth Kimsey, 85, of Portland; Rowan Karla Kimsey, 60, of Forest Grove; Stella Jade Kimsey, 26, also of Forest Grove; Linsey Mae Haraldsen, 26, of Portland; and Alvin Raymond Chu, 27, of Portland.
Family and friendship bound the five together. Rowan Kimsey owned the property, just outside Forest Grove and roughly 25 miles west of Portland, and she lived in one of the outbuildings. Her daughter, Stella Kimsey, shared the main home with her boyfriend, Benjamin Charles Parker, 36, whom investigators named as the suspect. Mary Kimsey was Rowan’s mother and Stella’s grandmother. Haraldsen and Stella Kimsey were best friends; Chu was Haraldsen’s partner.
A Predawn Call About a Fire
The first 911 call came from a neighbor just after 5 a.m. on Saturday, August 22, reporting a fire. Forest Grove Fire & Rescue crews rolled out, and the neighbor drove toward the glow, finding a car fully engulfed in the driveway. Flames and darkness made it impossible to see anything more.
Firefighters knocked down the car fire and a small brush fire, then found a body, and then a second — both of them appearing to have been shot in the head, Povolny said. The crews radioed dispatch and pulled back just before 5:30 a.m. A deputy reached the scene in under four minutes. Sheriff’s deputies assembled a team to sweep the sprawling rural parcel, dotted with sheds, outbuildings and other structures. All five bodies surfaced within the first stretch of that search, grouped in the driveway beside the main home or just off it.
The burned car held Chu’s body, and Mary Kimsey lay on the ground just outside it. Stella Kimsey was inside a second car parked in the driveway, Haraldsen on the ground nearby. Deputies found Rowan Kimsey on the walkway near the driveway and the home.
More than one bullet struck Mary Kimsey, Rowan Kimsey, Stella Kimsey and Haraldsen, investigators said, and they suspect Chu died in the same manner. Evidence indicated a .22-caliber gun was used on all five, and shell casings littered the ground around the bodies. The fire burned so intensely that investigators could not initially rule out that the body in the burned vehicle was Parker’s, so they focused first on identifying the dead.
Fires Lit at Each Body
After torching the first car, the suspect lit individual fires at each of the other four bodies, authorities said, among them an attempt to burn the car holding Stella Kimsey’s body. He also tried and failed to set a carport and the main home ablaze. Tarps had been draped over the bodies on the ground before the fires were lit. Melted, the material initially resembled duct tape, though investigators said no one had been taped, bound or moved.
Deputies found a dead dog and two dead cats inside the main home. They also found an injured cat, which was taken for emergency veterinary care and humanely euthanized on Monday, August 24. A second dog lay dead toward the rear of the parcel. Each of the five animals had been shot. New owners have since taken the livestock kept there.
Suspect Found Dead in Washington
Parker turned up dead on Sunday, August 23, in a pickup truck registered to victim Rowan Kimsey. The truck sat behind a Safeway store in Enumclaw, Wash., roughly 190 miles from the crime scene, and a gun was in his hand. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, investigators said, and they believe the same .22-caliber handgun was used. “It is believed he died by suicide,” the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said on August 23.
Repeated pings in Enumclaw led the sheriff’s office to track his cellphone there. Investigators turned next to license-plate camera data, which recorded the vehicle entering the city five times with no sign of it leaving. Enumclaw police said no other weapons were in the car, and evidence gathered there went to Washington County investigators.
Parker was at the property on Friday evening, August 21, and into the early hours of Saturday, according to phone records. His phone left the property at 4:42 a.m., moving south toward Forest Grove and then east.
The Suspect’s Mother Calls Detectives
Detectives were preparing a warrant charging Parker with five counts of murder in the first degree when his mother telephoned one of them. Her son had called her around 9 p.m. on Saturday, August 22, she said, and confessed.
“He said he had been planning this for a while and that it was premeditated,” Povolny said. According to the detective, Parker told his mother he had intended to kill three people, but two more died. Parker also admitted killing the animals and setting the fires, along with the attempt to burn down the property.
Domestic violence was where the killings began, investigators said. A text Mary Kimsey sent a friend about a fight between her granddaughter and Parker, logged in phone records only hours before the shootings, pointed them there. “Mary said Stella and Mr. Parker got into a horrible fight sometime during either Thursday evening or overnight into the early hours of Friday morning, and Stella told him he had to leave,” Povolny said. Haraldsen called Rowan Kimsey after Stella Kimsey stopped answering her phone. Rowan Kimsey walked over to the main home to check on her daughter and never called Haraldsen back. Haraldsen drove to the property next, with Mary Kimsey picking up Chu and following. Of the county’s eight homicides so far in 2026, five had been domestic violence cases, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said at the news conference.
Povolny said investigators were weighing how much to disclose against the need to preserve the dignity of the five people who were killed.
Investigators said at the August 25 news conference that they had been told Parker had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that they discovered “mental health related prescription bottles” with his name on them. No charges were ever filed; Parker was already dead when the warrant was prepared. The sheriff’s office said evidence processing, laboratory analysis and timeline reconstruction could take months, and it has released no further update as of September 3.
