Strange Twisted Details
Slain woman called family from Miami six days before she was found dead Thursday, April 26, 2001
By BRIGID O'MALLEY, bmomalley@naplesnews.com
Christine Mayer called her family from Miami on Easter weekend and told her uncle that she was scared, running out of money and she wanted to come home, her mother said Wednesday.
Six days later, the 24-year-old Missouri woman was found shot to death — a single gunshot wound to the left temple — at a Collier County picnic area on U.S. 41 East. Her boyfriend, 28-year-old Frank Oehring, a Satan worshipper, was found shot in the head next to her and died later that day.
"She sounded like she was scared or anxious. I could hear the fear in her voice," said her uncle, Walter Parton, from his home in Missouri where she called as he recounted the 10-minute-long conversation he had with his niece April 14. "She said she only had $40 in cash and just a few minutes on her calling card."
Investigators have already said that Mayer, whom her family described as being "brainwashed" into Satanic worship, was most likely murdered by Oehring. They are expected to rule Oehring's death a suicide today.
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Kimyala Henson
But the whereabouts of a 21-year-old Portland, Ore., woman, Kimyala Henson, and her 2-year-old and 4-month-old daughters are still a mystery. The five had been traveling together since April 4 when they left Portland.
Mayer's family was told that she had gotten a fake identification in Nevada, using Henson's name and personal information with Mayer's photograph. A national manhunt is on for Henson and her children.
Mayer called around 5 p.m. as her family in Missouri was planning their Easter Sunday dinner.
Parton said he tried to question her a little more when she'd only say she was "down south." Then she said "way down south" and finally told him she was in Miami.
"I think I could hear the ocean behind her or maybe it was the wind," the 41-year-old Parton recalled. He said he believed that she thought she was calling from an outdoor pay telephone. She never mentioned Oehring, Henson or the girls, he said.
He said the family would help her get home, either sending her a couple of hundred dollars for a bus or airplane ticket. And they'd help her out of her financial problems.
"She said she knew she was going to jail because she had written three bad checks," Parton said. The checks were written in Missouri, Colorado and Wyoming, she told him.
*(photo)A cross, flowers and a note, left by someone unknown, stand watch over the rest stop on U.S. 41 just east of Seminole State Park where Christine Noel Mayer and Frank K.L. Oehring where both found on Friday. Mayer was found shot dead at the scene. Oehring was found alive but died later at Lee Memorial Hospital of a gunshot wound to the head. Erik Kellar/Staff
Mayer said she'd call back in an hour, the Parton family said.
"But we never heard from her again," said her mother, Regina Parton.
Oehring, whose former wife said he was a leader of a small group of Satan worshippers around their hometown of Bethany, Mo., had been trying to lure Mayer into practicing the rituals. Her mother said she's sure he tried to brainwash her into believing in his religion.
"He was taking her to his church where they practiced it. He prayed over her," Regina Parton said. "He had her listen to tapes while she slept. He was trying."
Mayer was raised as a Christian, mostly in the Assembly of God church, her mother said. She'd grown up in the Midwest, although she had moved to Portland in 1991 and stayed there about two years. They lived next door to the Henson family and the girls and their mothers became good friends.
Mayer had moved back to Portland for about a year in 1993 and lived with Henson and her mother, helping take care of Henson's sisters' children.
"She would never, ever hurt those children, if that's what people are thinking happened," Regina Parton said.
But about a year ago, she met Oehring.
"She fell madly in love with him," her mother said.
At one point in their relationship, Oehring took Mayer to his home and proposed that she live and have a relationship with both him and his wife. But his wife, who had Oehring arrested on domestic violence charges in June, decided to move out.
"I asked her if he was a Mormon or something," Regina Parton said. "When she said he wasn't, I asked her what God he worshipped."
She said her daughter replied: "There are many gods."
When Oehring was arrested in December for allegedly plotting to have his estranged wife, Benita, killed, Mayer stood by him. She even visited him in jail with Oehring's parents. In February, Oehring was released on $100,000 bond and went to live with Mayer and her mother at their home in Stewartsville, Mo.
Mayer told her mother that she was going to marry Oehring so she wanted him to move into their house.
"She said she wanted me to accept him," Regina Parton recalled.
He lived there about two months — until late March when they left town.
"Frank would never talk to us," Parton said. "When they came in, they just went back to the bedroom. And she was so withdrawn."
Parton said Oehring made sure that she was never alone with her daughter and often he followed Mayer around the house to make sure she was never alone with her family.
A note was left wedged in a cross left at the rest stop on U.S. 41 just east of Seminole State Park, marking the spot where Christine Noel Mayer and Frank K.L. Oehring were both found with gunshot wounds to the head on Friday. The author of the note is unknown. Erik Kellar/Staff
Regina Parton said in the past she and her daughter had talked about everything and when she first heard about the Satanism, the rituals and the tarot cards Oehring was into, she thought she had talked her daughter out of being involved.
"What he was into was evil and wrong," she said. "I thought I had convinced her to go back to church, our church."
She said he brought his Satanic ritual paraphernalia into her home and she forbade it. They put the items into a blue bag and carried it in and out of the house, Mayer's mother said.
"She never said she was scared. He fed her a line of bull," she said. "She was just a young girl."
She said Oehring even asked Mayer's mother to listen to his "relaxation tapes." Her daughter would wear headphones at night while she slept listening to the tapes.
"All I heard when I listened was a throbbing, buzzing sound," Parton said. "She told me to give it time. Chris said she heard words: 'I am loved. I am cherished. I am beautiful.' I never heard that."
Regina Parton said she knew Oehring was due in court at the end of March. They told her he was due there on March 23, when actually the court date on the conspiracy-to-commit-murder charge was two days earlier.
She remembers the two coming home around 3 a.m. March 20. They both seemed sick with the flu and were vomiting and had diarrhea. She said her daughter, who had worked as a certified nurse's assistant, asked about her unemployment check, which wasn't due until the end of the week, March 23.
Regina Parton said she knew her daughter was worried about some outstanding checks on a bank account she shared with Oehring. When her mother told her she'd see her in the morning, Mayer said, "maybe." And that was the last time she saw her daughter.
On March 23, the sheriff came with court papers to serve Oehring. And the next day, authorities came with an arrest warrant for his failing to show up in court.
Regina Parton said she believed that they thought he'd be cleared of the criminal charges.
"They were going to Canada after that was all over with," Parton said.
Mayer never telephoned family members or wrote to them. Parton said she thinks that the couple went to Oregon to visit Henson and somehow Henson was talked into going along. Family members have said the trip was to go from Portland to California to pick up a birth certificate for Henson so she could get into British Columbia where they were going to go sightseeing.
"My daughter loved her friend," Parton said. "I honestly believed that if he hurt (Henson), my daughter struggled with him."
In Portland on Wednesday, police collected copies of Henson's signature and her dental records, Henson's family and friends say. Her signature on a credit card receipt showed up last in Nevada, according to the paper trail along interstates in what is called the "southern corridor" or roads across the United States.
"I think they wanted that just to be sure to have it," said Christine Shaw, who is the sister of Henson's boyfriend, Steven Kirkpatrick. The missing children are her nieces.
She said word of Oehring's Satan worship has the family even more distraught over the three disappearances.
"We're thinking, 'Could he hurt the babies? Or could one of his friends in this cult or whatever it was?' " she said.
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