Martha Morrison Photo

Convicted murderer and suspected serial killer Warren Forrest will return to Clark County to face new charges of killing a teenage girl in the 1970s.

Forrest, 70, faces new charges of first-degree murder in the death of Martha Morrison, a 17-year-old Portland girl whose body was found in Dole Valley in 1974. The Battle Ground man is serving a life sentence in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla for the 1974 murder of another Vancouver teenager.

Investigators saw a major break in the decades-old cold case in 2015, when blood found on an air pistol Forrest used to torture yet another woman in 1974 was identified as Morrison’s. The DNA evidence, combined with Forrest’s “consistent criminal pattern,” are the basis of a body of evidence against a man suspected of killing at least six women and girls in this area.

A single conviction

Forrest has been convicted of one murder: that of 19-year-old Krista Blake, who was last seen on July 11, 1974, climbing into Forrest’s light blue Ford Econoline cargo van in Vancouver. It would take five years before Forrest would be convicted.

On Oct. 1, 1974, however, another victim, identified in court documents as V, reported to Clark County sheriff’s deputies that Forrest had sexually assaulted her and tried to kill her. According to the probable cause affidavit, the 20-year-old woman was in Portland when Forrest lured her into his blue van, pretending to be a photographer and promising her a job.