‘Problem Child’ Murdered Eight Neighbors Including Five Children

9 min readDec 17, 2020

Youngest mass murderer in Oregon history.

Photo source: Adobestock.

Ray Martin DeFord, 11, wasn’t a popular kid. He had scruffy blonde hair and lived in a working-class apartment complex west of Portland, Oregon. Neighbors didn’t like the kid, who was known to fight with peers and threaten little ones. They weren’t fond of Ray’s parents, either.

Ray was called a hero because he was the first to see the fire as it began to engulf his apartment complex. He told his parents, who alerted neighbors. The blaze started at the bottom of the stairs in the 12-unit Oakwood Park apartments.

Ray was smart enough to figure out there was only one exit, a single stairwell that led to safety for his upstairs neighbors. And Ray DeFord may have gotten lucky, too, as the building wasn’t up to fire code.

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1996, as Oakwood Park burned to the ground, Ray had a great story: he awoke before anyone else because his rat — soon to be a meal for his pet snake, Satan — was squealing.

“My dad says I’m the hero for the day”

It took three days of arson investigation to figure out who started the blaze, but the names and ages of the victims were well-known from day one.

While many escaped the building, two families were unlucky.

Upstairs, just above Ray’s apartment, lived Francisca Aguilar, 16, and her teen husband, Patricio. He awoke first to the smell of smoke, telling his wife someone was barbecuing in the middle of the night. By the time they got up, Francisca cradling their 3-month old baby, their apartment was filled with smoke.

Patricio opened the front door but was met with tall flames. Two of their friends, Araceli and Nicholas, were spending the night. They, too, had a 3-month old baby girl. The couple took their baby, Selena, and jumped from the balcony. The two adults were injured, but survived. Selena died in the fall.

Patricio grabbed his baby from his wife. His good friend Alberto stood on ground level, shouting for him throw the baby down. Patricio looked back inside and could not see Francisca. He tossed his baby and, miraculously, Alberto caught her. Patricio could not see or hear Francisca. With third degree burns and unable to breathe he, too, jumped from the balcony.

Patricio was like many who lived in the Oakwood complex: a Mexican immigrant who’d moved north to work in the fields. That night, he lost his wife.

In the apartment next door lived a large family of six, also called Aguilar. The parents were Jeremais and Virgina, popular members of the community. They had four children — Jacquelin, Karen, Augustin, and Patricia — who ranged in age from 8 down to 5.

The second Aguilar family did not wake up and all six died that night.

Arson was the cause, but neglect fueled the flames

The fire was not an act of God. Someone had placed a stack of the free newspaper The Week at the bottom of the only stairwell connecting ground level with the third floor, then lit the newspapers with alcohol.

Whoever set it seemed to have a plan: the timing meant everyone would be asleep. The arsonist made sure to start the fire in a spot that would prevent easy escapes.

The apartment manager, Michael Eastlick, was distraught by the loss of life, remembering the victims as wonderful people. It didn’t register that night, as the building blazed, but in the next few days he told investigators this wasn’t the first fire at Oakwood.

Over the past year, he’d discovered four fires. All were put out quickly. When asked who was responsible, Eastlick described an 11-year old boy who everyone was calling a hero.

Meanwhile, Eastlick and the owners had dropped the ball when it came to making sure Oakwood Park was up to fire code. The building had no sprinkler system because it was, technically, only two stories. Landlords had installed an earth berm on the ground floor to effectively reduce the building to two-stories — specificially to exploit a loophole in the fire code.

Of the 12 apartments, only one had a working smoke alarm.

The pull-down fire alarms were in the stairwells, so out of reach. Even so, investigators found that when people tried to pull them down, they didn’t function.

The bully in apartment 25

Ray DeFord, at 11 and a half, lived with his two disabled parents. Tom Martin, 46, and Carolyn DeFord, 49, scraped by with Supplemental Security Income and collecting recyclables, but neighbors avoided the family.

Their boy was a known troublemaker who had no friends in the complex. Tom Martin was into porn and dope-smoking and Carolyn got into arguments with neighbors.

Ray’s father, a career criminal and escaped con, met Carolyn DeFord (who had an intellectual deficit) in the early 1980s. On February 13, 1985 they had a son, Ray Martin DeFord.

The kid’s childhood started out grim and never improved. The victim of a head injury inflicted by his father at one and a half, Ray had learning disabilities and chronic behavior problems due to frontal lobe damage.

After moving to Oregon in 1991, Tom Martin mostly hung out around the complex, where he could be found punishing Ray by shooting him in the legs with a BB gun. Witnesses report this abuse began as early as the age of six. Unsurprisingly, Ray grew into a bully who beat up younger kids and carried a knife.

Tom Martin taught his son important lessons, like how to make cyanide gas from bleach, detergent and Coca-Cola.

Other acquaintances, however, painted a different picture of young Ray. Some adults report him as sweet-natured, an attention seeker (who seemed starved of it), and an animal lover. A boy who shared a classroom with him in 4th grade said Ray was more often a victim of bullying than a perpetrator.

When police first approached Ray about his story of heroism, he claimed the fire was set by three neighborhood kids who wanted to jump him into their gang.

Three days after the smoke cleared and the ash settled, Ray DeFord broke down under police questioning. He admitted he was “experimenting” in the stairwell, using a combination of alcohol, newspapers, and matches. He also told authorities his story about his rat was fake. When the fire got out of control — which may have been his intention from the start — he went to apartment 25 on the 2nd floor and woke his parents.

Ray guided his mom and dad to safety.

The trial and sentencing

The trial was far less eventful and dramatic than the crime. The court waited until Ray turned 12, since he was too young to be tried in juvenile court. The police had plenty of evidence, including a confession and arson materials (two lighters, rubbing alcohol, and a squirt gun containing rubbing alcohol).

He was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to confinement until the age of 25.

In 2001, the boy’s conviction was overturned. The appellate argument centered on the pile of newspapers used to start the fire. The defense claimed that Ray had meant only to light the newspapers, which had no value, and not the building. In proving the (free) newspapers were the target, Ray’s attorneys overturned both the arson and murder convictions.

Despite the 2001 appellate court ruling, Ray was not set free. The Oregon Attorneys General Office stated that Ray Martin DeFord would remain in state custody until he reached the age of 25, gutting the intent of the ruling.

What has become of Ray DeFord?

The media stopped following his case in 2001, when his convictions were overturned. It is likely he still resides in Oregon, although his whereabouts are unknown. He is not listed as an inmate of the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Ray’s mom, Carol, died of cancer at the age of 51, just a few years after the fire. She believed to the end that the police had forced a confession from her boy.

Tom began bragging to anyone who would listen about his prison escape years earlier in New Mexico. Authorities listened, then sent Tom Martin back to finish his New Mexico prison sentence.

If Ray is still living he’ll be celebrating his 36th birthday in three months. Perhaps he is still an animal lover.