A teenage couple described as “inseparable” were brutally murdered this week in Oregon by a man with a history of disturbing behavior, KTVZ-TV reports.
At about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, police were dispatched to a home in southwest Bend after the homeowner reported finding a body in their garage. Detectives later found a second body.
Authorities have identified the victims as Angela Alexus Pastorino and Alfredo P. Hernandez, both 18, who were at the home doing housework a day earlier.
Investigators believe that after the housework was done, the teens were socializing and drinking at the residence with the homeowner and 41-year-old Wesley Abel Brady, who also lived at the house.
At some point, police allege that Brady got into a fight with Hernandez and murdered him and Pastorino.
Brady then allegedly moved the victims’ bodies into the garage and then fled the area to a property he owns in another part of the state.
But Brady later returned to the scene, where police arrested him. He is being held without bail on charges of aggravated murder, murder, strangulation, first-degree sodomy, first-degree sex abuse, first-degree abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, according to KATU-TV.
Many details about the horrific incident have not been released, nor has a cause of death.
Loved ones of Pastorino and Hernandez had reported them missing on Wednesday. Pastorino’s mother, Jennifer Grigg, had posted on Facebook about the pair pleading for help finding them.
Pastorino earned her GED in June and Hernandez was very close to earning his degree, Grigg told KTVZ-TV.
Erin Kevin, who mentored Pastorino through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, started a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the teens’ memorial services.
“Angela and Alfredo were inseparable,” Kevin wrote on the GoFundMe page. “They were bright, loving teens, with family and friends who adored them. Angela loved people almost as much as she loved dogs. Alfredo was known as a sweet, soft-spoken young man who was the first to volunteer to help with any task. They are both survived by their families, struggling to make sense of this tragic loss.”
Public records show Brady pleaded no contest to first-degree arson and first-degree burglary for allegedly igniting “ritualistic” fires at a historic home in downtown Bend several years ago. Police described the scene as containing “cult-type ceremonial activity: ‘trinkets among the ashes, pentagrams scrawled on surfaces and dolls arrayed in sexually violent poses,’” the Bend Bulletin reports.
Brady was sentenced to a maximum of five years of probation and had to receive mental health treatment in connection with the fires.
In 2017, Brady allegedly claimed to be a prophet who believed that the end of the world was coming, according to court records reviewed by the Bulletin. The documents were filed by Brady’s then-wife, Kathryn Zancanella, when she sought a restraining order and later a divorce. Brady also claimed to hear people screaming and crying who no one else heard, according to the newspaper, citing the court documents.
On Thursday morning, two detectives and a chaplain arrived at Griggs’ home to notify her of her daughter’s death. Griggs asked to see her daughter, but the investigators cautioned her against that.
“They told me that I might want to rethink that,” Griggs told the Bulletin.
“I’m just trying to prepare myself for what I might learn,” the grieving mother added. “She didn’t deserve this.”
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A candlelight vigil for the victims is scheduled for Sunday.
