Oregon man accused of killing women and dumping their bodies is arraigned on fifth murder charge

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man accused of killing several women and dumping their bodies in the Portland area was arraigned Wednesday on a fifth murder charge.

Jesse Calhoun's defense attorney entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf in a Portland courtroom where victims' family members were present. The hearing, during which Calhoun remained silent, came after he was indicted last week on the most recent second-degree murder charge over the death of Ashley Real, 22, in 2023.

Calhoun has now been charged with five counts of second-degree murder for five victims, along with four counts of abuse of a corpse. The victims' bodies were found over multiple months in early 2023, sparking concern at the time that a serial killer might be targeting young women in the region.

Calhoun was previously indicted in the deaths of Kristin Smith, 22; Charity Perry, 24; Bridget Webster, 31; and Joanna Speaks, 32.

He remains in custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center. His defense attorneys declined to comment.

Real, Perry, Webster and Smith were found in northwestern Oregon, while Speaks was found near an abandoned barn in southwestern Washington. Their bodies were found in a roughly 100-mile (160-kilometer) radius, including in wooded areas and in a culvert.

Jose Real, Ashley Real's father, was in tears as he spoke with reporters after the hearing. He recalled memories of watching her grow up and playing with her brother.

“I never thought or imagined that my family would experience something like this,” he said through a Spanish interpreter. “She had a heart of gold.”

Masciell Real, Ashley's sister, also spoke through tears.

“I think being in that courtroom today and being able to see him, and know that he is behind bars now, it takes the weight off my shoulders knowing that he isn’t around and free to cause any harm to any other women out there,” she said. “But it also doesn’t take away the fact that my sister isn’t here anymore.”

Relatives of other victims were also present.

“We've all experienced the worst thing that could ever happen to you, and it's incredibly hard to see one of the other families hurt the way we do,” said Melissa Smith, mother of Kristin Smith.

Jose Real previously told The Associated Press that he had called police in November 2022 after his daughter showed up crying at his Portland home, saying she had been choked by Calhoun. She had marks on her throat, he said, and he took her to a hospital.

Real said at the time that an initial police report was taken but that the case was then transferred to a different jurisdiction and it was difficult to reach those overseeing it. Details of the attack were first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

His daughter's body was found in May 2023 by a man who was fishing in a pond southeast of Portland.

Calhoun was arrested in June 2023 on unrelated parole warrants and then indicted in 2024 and 2025 in the other four women’s deaths. The initial indictment came weeks before Calhoun was due to be released from state prison, where he was returned in 2023 to finish serving a four-year term for assaulting a police officer, trying to strangle a police dog, burglary and other charges.

He was initially released in 2021, a year early, because he helped fight wildfires in 2020 under a prison firefighting program. Gov. Tina Kotek revoked the commutation in 2023 when police began investigating him in the deaths.

A trial date has yet to be set.

Jesse Calhoun, left, sits in court Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Portland, Ore., as he is arraigned on a second-degree murder charge over the death of Ashley Real. (Isabel Funk/The Oregonian via AP, Pool)

Diana Allen wears a shirt showing five women, including her daughter, Charity Perry, whom Jesse Calhoun is accused of murdering, after Calhoun was arraigned on a fifth second-degree murder charge, in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Claire Rush)

Jose Real, center, and Masciell Real, right, the father and sister of Ashley Real, speak to reporters in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, after Jesse Calhoun was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge for Ashley's death. (AP Photo/Claire Rush)

FILE - Jesse Calhoun appears in Multnomah County Circuit Court for his arraignment in Portland, Ore., on June 6, 2024. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP, Pool, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday unveiled a new facility to produce nuclear bomb fuels, with leader Kim Jong Un announcing plans to bolster the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.”

Some experts still question whether North Korea has functioning nuclear missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. But the nuclear plant's disclosure implies that Kim is eager to cement his country's status as a nuclear power and has no intentions of placing his bomb program on a negotiating table.

After visiting the site on Wednesday, Kim said he and other top officials “confirmed the order of priority for implementing the ambitious future plan designed to beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

KCNA said the facility used “more sophisticated technology” but didn’t provide further details like its location. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff assessed the site as a uranium enrichment plant and said it was closely coordinating with the United States to monitor North Korean nuclear activities.

KCNA photos showed Kim walking through narrow aisles lined with dense rows of silver tubes and pipes, in what appeared to be a centrifuge hall. Another image showed him speaking with senior officials in a meeting room, where a blurred graphic depicting a cone-shaped object was spread across a table. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the graphic showed a warhead design.

It's the third time that North Korea has disclosed a uranium enrichment site. In 2024, North Korea released photos of another covert uranium-enrichment plant. In 2010, North Korea showed one at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex to visiting American scholars.

Last September, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said that North Korea was operating a total of four uranium enrichment facilities including the Yongbyon complex, and that they were running everyday.

During his plant visit, Kim said the urgency for bolstering up the country’s nuclear war deterrent, both in quality and quantity, has grown because of confrontations with “the most ferocious enemies,” an apparent reference to the U.S. and South Korea.

Kim said exercising “the position of a nuclear weapons state” is his country's “invariable” stand. He said North Korea’s nuclear materials production capacity has more than doubled compared with five years ago, a claim that cannot be verified independently.

Experts say Kim wants an international recognition as a nuclear state so that he could demand the lifting of U.N. economic sanctions. They say Kim would ultimately push for arms reductions talks with the U.S. as a way to win concessions in return for a partial surrender of his nuclear capability.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to resume diplomacy with Kim, but the North Korean leader responded the Americans must first drop its demand for North Korea to denuclearize as a precondition for talks.

Since his first round of nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019, Kim has performed a provocative run of weapons tests and vowed repeatedly to “exponentially” expand the country’s nuclear arsenal.

This led to many experts believing North Korea now likely has nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland. But some still note North Korea hasn't proved it mastered last-remaining technological hurdles to obtain such missiles, including ensuring its warheads survive the conditions of atmospheric reentry. They say North Korea also need to perfect technologies to place multiple nuclear warheads on a single missile to defeat U.S. missile shields.

A senior South Korean official told lawmakers in 2018 that North Korea was estimated to have manufactured between 20 and 60 nuclear weapons, but some experts now put the size of the North’s arsenal at more than 100 warheads.

In 2023, North Korea unveiled a type of battlefield nuclear warheads. Some analysts speculated the warhead’s unveiling might be a prelude to a nuclear test. But North Korea hasn't carried out a test, which would have been its seventh detonation overall and the first since September 2017.

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, front right, visits a new facility to produce nuclear bomb fuels at an undisclosed place in North Korea Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

FILE - In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un delivers a speech during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly at parliament in Pyongyang, North Korea, on March 23, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)