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Karen Huster, Her Mother Arreste..., LadyBug, 01:22 AM, Nov-18-00
Father's Hope Fades , Ishtar93, 07:32 PM, Nov-20-00
Greetings Ishtar , LadyBug, 10:37 PM, Nov-20-00
Messages in this discussion
1 . "Karen Huster, Her Mother Arrested !"
Posted by LadyBug on Nov-18-00 at 01:22 AM (EST)
Woman found with dismembered body to return to Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A woman found in a suburban Los Angeles apartment with a dismembered
body will be returned to Oregon to face charges of killing her missing 9-year-old daughter.
Karen Lee Huster, 41, could be extradited to Washington County within a week.
She was arrested Nov. 10 after police found body parts in two freezers in the two-bedroom San
Fernando Valley apartment she shared with 73-year-old James Cameron.
The remains have not been identified, but Cameron, a friend of Huster's father, has been reported
missing.
The Los Angeles district attorney's office has declined to file charges, saying the coroner has not
determined a cause of death.
In court papers, the district attorney's office said Huster told police she cut up the body, but only
after the man died of a heart attack.
Washington County investigators plan to try Huster for her daughter's murder, no matter what
happens with the case in Los Angeles.
Huster is accused of killing her daughter Elisabeth Anne, who was last seen Aug. 31, 1996. Her body
has not been found.
"I believe she killed Elisabeth, and this only endorses my belief," said John Stratford, the Washington
County Sheriff's Office detective who has investigated the case since 1996.
Stratford went to Los Angeles this week to search for signs of Elisabeth and to try to find anything
that could be pertinent to the Washington County murder case.
"That's our whole case, that Huster is adept at getting rid of bodies," Stratford said. "We believe she
did that to Elisabeth and was in the process of doing that with this man."
Huster disappeared from Tigard on April 12, just days before a Washington County grand jury handed
down an indictment against her for murder.
Huster had run before, almost immediately after a Washington County sheriff's deputy appeared on
her doorstep on Christmas Eve 1996 to ask about Elisabeth's whereabouts. Police found Huster with a
loaded gun in a motel in Newport in February 1997, but there was no sign of Elisabeth.
Huster was convicted of custodial interference and spent two years in an Oregon prison for refusing
to talk to authorities about her missing daughter. She has maintained that she sent Elisabeth to live
with relatives and friends in California.
Stratford said he didn't know where Huster had been before her arrest in California.
"Her whole goal was to stay out of Oregon," Stratford said. "She saw his death as a way to stay
living there and avoid detection."
http://www.modbee.com/state/story/n699.html
2 . "Father's Hope Fades "
Posted by Ishtar93 on Nov-20-00 at 07:32 PM (EST)
Father's Hope Fades After Horrific Find
Crime: His ex-wife admits dismembering a body in Canoga Park. But the discovery has yielded no
clues in their daughter's disappearance, police say.
By SOLOMON MOORE, Times Staff Writer
BEAVERTON, Ore.--Michael and Karen Huster's 18-year marriage was as fractious as the custody
battle for their two children.
But Michael Huster said he refused to believe his wife was capable of harming their daughter--even
after they divorced in Oregon and 10-year-old Elisabeth Anne disappeared in 1996. Even after Oregon
authorities issued a murder indictment against Karen Huster, and she fled.
Huster, who has acknowledged hitting his wife, said he thought Karen was just hiding the girl from
him.
Not until 10 days ago, when police found dismembered human remains of her male roommate in two
freezers in a Canoga Park apartment occupied by Karen Huster, 41, did Michael Huster say he had
begun to lose hope for his daughter.
"It's becoming more plausible to me that she has harmed her," he said of his missing daughter last
week from his home in Pleasanton, Calif.
Court records and interviews with family members, neighbors and investigators show the steady
meltdown of the Huster household, culminating in the disappearance and possible murder of their
daughter at the hands of Karen Huster.
But police in Los Angeles and Oregon say the gruesome discovery Nov. 10 in the De Soto Avenue
apartment has led them no closer to finding Elisabeth's body.
Although she has been uncooperative in the search for her daughter, Karen Huster told investigators
that she dismembered the man's body after he died of a heart attack. So far, police say, they are
inclined to believe her.
"There does not seem to be an obvious cause of death," said coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier. The
identity of the body has yet to be confirmed, but the listed tenant of the unit, 73-year-old James
Cameron, is missing.
Cameron may have been supporting Karen Huster financially, but details of their relationship are
"somewhat nebulous," said Los Angeles Police Det. Mike Oppelt.
She was arrested Nov. 10 after the body parts were found and is being held at Twin Towers jail in
downtown Los Angeles. Efforts to reach Huster or her attorney were unsuccessful.
The district attorney's office has yet to charge Huster and referred the case back to police for
further investigation. Mutilation of a corpse is a felony in California.
Cameron's stepson, Craig Faulkner, 44, of Reseda said they have been estranged and have not talked
since last year. He said he did not know Karen Huster and described his stepfather as a
temperamental widower of three years. "He was a loner, an intellectual," Faulkner said. Cameron was
a retired engineer for ITT, an avid golfer, bowler and square-dancer, Faulkner said.
"But since mom died in 1998, he was a loner," Faulkner said, adding that his father's health had
declined after a stroke last year.
Sierra Nord, who managed the De Soto Avenue property until she moved in January, said Cameron
was a "soft-spoken, quiet man." She said she never saw Karen Huster or anyone else living with
Cameron.
Meanwhile, Oregon authorities say they intend to extradite Huster to stand trial in this Portland
suburb for the death of Elisabeth.
Michael and Karen Huster met in 1978 when he was a Caltech student. They married the following
year and moved to Santa Barbara. In 1980 they had a son, Jonathan. Michael Huster says the
marriage "was tumultuous from the beginning."
"She showed herself, very quickly, to be short-tempered and moody," he said. In court papers filed in
Oregon, Karen Huster claimed Michael Huster had a long-term drug problem.
They separated for two years in the mid-1980s and Michael Huster went back to school at UC Davis.
Karen Huster, a San Fernando Valley native and Chatsworth High graduate, moved from Oregon to
Northridge to live near her father and brother.
The Husters reconciled by 1986, when Elisabeth was born, and moved to Northern California before
relocating to Beaverton in 1994.
"It wasn't until the 1990s that I got the hint that her mental state was unstable," Michael Huster
said. He recalled a time in Northern California when Karen Huster abandoned their then-13-year-old
son at a downtown store miles from their home. He also described a scene in an Anaheim diner when
his wife, frustrated by an inattentive waitress, screamed loud enough to stop every conversation in
the establishment.
Michael Huster was not the only one to mention Karen Huster's bizarre behavior. In their Oregon
neighborhood, a tidy, close-knit community of middle-class families, nearby residents talked about the
volatile mother who yelled at her daughter's playmates and never seemed to leave the house.
"Elisabeth was sweet," said Karen Thatcher, 42, who lives across the street from the Paisley Drive
home the Husters used to own. "But Karen was a little different--not someone you wanted to be
neighborly friends with." Two of Thatcher's youngest daughters, Haley and Lacey, used to play with
Elisabeth, but she said they were often afraid of Karen Huster.
Karen Huster, Thatcher said, rarely moved from a couch in front of a television. Elisabeth's hair was
usually uncombed and her clothes old and torn.
Linda Goudge, another neighbor, said, "I liked Elisabeth. She was sensitive--really nice. But my kids
were not allowed to go over there."
Once in a while Karen Huster would venture out of her house to shout at neighborhood kids for
picking on her daughter, Thatcher said.
Both Thatcher and Goudge said they seldom saw Michael Huster at the house.
Tensions in the Huster household reached a climax in the fall of 1995. Michael Huster was laid off
from hisjob as a researcher for a medical equipment firm. On Nov. 16, 1995, Karen Huster accused
Michael Huster of abusing drugs, according to court records. A terrible argument followed, all
witnessed by Elisabeth, who was 9, according to Michael Huster and court records.
"He hit me on the shoulder," Karen Huster wrote in a restraining order she filed in December 1995,
"then he spat on me, then hit me across my face. My face was swollen and bruised. It affected my
hearing and equilibrium, eyesight, it hurt badly and had dislocated my jaw. I went to a doctor."
Michael Huster, who stands nearly 7 feet tall and weighs 240 pounds, acknowledged last week that
he struck Karen Huster. She is 5-foot-4 and weighs 180 pounds.
"That was the last time I saw Elisabeth," said Michael Huster, who obtained custody of their son. He
found a job in Pleasanton and repeatedly called his wife's house, but she prevented him from speaking
to Elisabeth until the following summer. They spoke on the phone during the summer of 1996.
"I told her that we were trying to make arrangements to visit, I told her I loved her, and I gave her
my phone number and told her to hide it in case her mother was trying to keep her away from me,"
he said. "I tried not to make it into a crisis. I never thought she was in any danger."
Michael Huster filed for divorce in August 1996. About the same time Karen Huster told a friend that
she was considering killing herself and Elisabeth, according to an Oregon search warrant.
Elisabeth was last seen on Aug. 31, 1996, at a wedding in Cedar Mill Stake, Ore. Soon afterward, she
failed to attend the first day of school. When neighborhood children asked about Elisabeth, Karen
Huster told them she was visiting relatives, former neighbors said. Karen Huster told her son,
Jonathan, that Elisabeth was visiting friends when he visited his mother on Thanksgiving 1996,
Michael Huster said.
"We thought that was strange," Huster said. "She knew Jonathan was coming and would want to see
his sister."
Michael Huster reported Elisabeth missing on Dec. 23, 1996, and Washington County Sheriff's Det.
John Stratford questioned Karen Huster about her daughter's whereabouts. Karen Huster refused to
tell him where Elisabeth was.
Karen Huster fled shortly afterward and was arrested in February 1997 in the coastal town of
Newport, Ore., on suspicion of custodial interference. Among the belongings police seized was a
newly purchased .22-caliber revolver. The gun had "two expended rounds," said Washington County
Sheriff's Det. Larry McKinney.
Karen Huster served two years in Oregon State Prison, but she refused to reveal her daughter's
whereabouts. During her incarceration, Oregon authorities staged an exhaustive search for Elisabeth
and had even received advice from FBI profilers. In February 1999, Karen Huster was released and
detectives still could not find any trace of Elisabeth.
That same month, Oregon officials indicted Karen Huster on murder charges. Again, Karen Huster fled.
She resurfaced in Canoga Park a week ago.
Stratford flew to Los Angeles from Oregon on Monday, but his partner, McKinney, said no new
evidence connected to Elisabeth's disappearance had emerged as a result of events in Los Angeles.
" 'No-body' murder trials have been done," said Washington County Sgt. Scott Ryon, "but they're
much harder."
Despite his fading hope, Michael Huster said he harbors no hard feelings toward his wife. "I don't have
the energy for that anymore," he said. "Most of all, I feel pity. She's made things so hard for herself."
3 . "Greetings Ishtar "
Posted by LadyBug on Nov-20-00 at 10:37 PM (EST)
Welcome to the forum. Thank you for posting the update. We can only hope she is safe. I think the
photo above might be a photo of age enhanced, not positive.
Could you also please copy the url at the bottom of your posts, that would help immensely. Some of
the areas are foriegn to us and we can use them as reference for future updates.
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