Portland Police (OR) are looking for Johnny Lawrence, a 90-year-old black man, who is about 5-foot-7. Lawrence is suspected of killing Mary Frances Reid (22) on April 8, 1963.
Whether Lawrence is still alive or, when he died, is unknown. There are no details about the connection or relationship between Reid and Lawrence. There is no photograph of Lawrence either.
Portland authorities have not been able to find Johnny Lawrence. Lawrence was interviewed at the time of the crime in 1963 . He was then a 42 years old man. If alive, he’d be in his 90s.
Police do not have his date of birth other than presuming he was born in 1921. This means that scanning databases of the missing and the unidentified gets complicated. They suspect that Lawrence fled some time after the crime and might have returned to the St. Louis, Mo., area. That is where he lived before coming to Portland in the late 50s or early 60s.
Mary Frances Reid‘s body was found by her sister Joanne. An autopsy showed she died of homicidal violence. Reid’s murder is the Portland police’s oldest unsolved case. Despite that, Mary’s case is missing on their cold cases page.
If you have any information about the Reid case or about Johnny Lawrence – include his address, exact date of birth or, his death – please call the Portland Police Cold Case Homicide Unit, 1-503-823-9748 or 1-503-823-0867. More information here.
