Murders of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill

Roxanne Ellis (born November 4, 1942) and Michelle Abdill (born July 8, 1953) were a couple who had been together for 12 years at the time of their deaths. They had moved from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Medford, Oregon, in 1990 after experiencing homophobia in Colorado. In Medford, they ran a property management business, served on their church board, and were active in opposing two Oregon ballot measures targeting LGBTQ rights and library access to LGBTQ-related materials.

On December 4, 1995, Ellis, 53, went to meet 27-year-old Robert Acremant, who had arranged to view an apartment she managed. Abdill, 42, later left work saying she was going to help jump-start Ellis's car after receiving a call that it would not start. Ellis's daughter went to the apartment complex and saw her mother's pickup truck pull away when she tried to follow it. Neither woman was seen alive again. Four days later, their bodies were found bound, gagged, and shot in the head in the back of Ellis's pickup truck, wrapped in drapes and covered with cardboard boxes, after a cable TV worker reported the vehicle to police.

The case drew significant attention from the local gay community and national advocacy groups, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which asked the U.S. Department of Justice to assist in the investigation given the couple's activism and a prior threat against them. Police released a composite sketch based on a witness description. Acremant's mother, who had recently moved to Medford with her son, recognized the sketch and address labels on moving boxes matching those found at the crime scene, and contacted police. Acremant was located at a motel in Stockton, California, and arrested on December 13, 1995. He confessed to the murders, initially citing robbery as his motive, and also confessed to killing Scott George in California on October 3, 1995.

Acremant's stated motives shifted over time. In an August 1996 letter to the Stockton Record, he wrote that knowing the victims were lesbians made it easier to kill them, and that he had killed Scott George after George made a pass at him. He later recanted this account, attributing the killings to a sudden urge. Prosecutors noted evidence undermining robbery as the sole motive, since valuables including purses, wallets, jewelry, and money were left at the scene.

Acremant pleaded guilty to the murders of Ellis and Abdill on September 11, 1996. On October 27, 1997, an Oregon jury sentenced him to death. Oregon's high court upheld the sentence in 2005, but in February 2011 a court found Acremant too delusional to assist in his appeal and reduced his sentence to life without parole. Acremant was found dead in his death row cell on October 26, 2018, from natural causes.

In the case's aftermath, the Abdill-Ellis Lambda Community Center opened in Ashland, Oregon, in August 1996 in the couple's honor, closing in August 2010. In April 2001, U.S. Senator Gordon H. Smith cited the murders in Senate debate on hate crimes legislation.