Prosecutors will seek out max sentence

Brenda Duran, the former Corvallis woman who confessed to killing her husband nearly 24 years ago, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter Friday.

In her plea, Duran admitted to willfully causing her husband’s death “by shooting him with a shotgun.”

Prosecutors will ask that she be sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison with a five-year minimum sentence for using a firearm in a crime, said Deputy District Attorney John Mason. Duran, who was originally charged with a single count of murder, is expected to be sentenced Aug. 16.

Mason told Circuit Court Judge David Connell that he decided to offer a plea deal after the case became complicated by a defense motion to throw out Duran’s confession, hedging on the part of the FBI about key evidence, and allegations that a Corvallis police investigator involved with the case had an affair with Duran shortly after the shooting.

Duran, who is being held in the Benton County jail, spoke only to answer the judge’s questions Friday. Shackled and handcuffed, she smiled as she was led from the courtroom.

Duran’s first husband, Greg Kirkelie, was shot in the back on June 10, 1982, in the couple’s downtown Corvallis shoe repair store. At the time, Duran told police that an “East Indian” man had killed her husband during a robbery.

Police hunted down leads in the case for years before it went cold. Then, in 2001, Duran’s second ex-husband came forward with shotgun shells that, he alleged, were among her possessions. Authorities said that FBI tests tied the shells to the pellets that were taken from Greg Kirkelie’s body.

Duran, 53, confessed to the killing during an October interview with Corvallis detectives in Oklahoma, where she had been living. She also told the detectives that, shortly after the shooting, she had an affair a Corvallis police investigator who was overseeing the case.

“That always taints a case and creates a cloud over a case,” Mason said Friday.

Carolee Kirkelie, Greg’s sister, said Friday’s plea brought her family another step closer to resolving a situation that has haunted the Kirkelies for nearly a quarter century.

“To go 24 years and bring someone to justice and hold them accountable for their actions, I think, is an amazing feat,” she said.

“We need to heal,” Kirkelie said. “This is one family member killing another family member. … To have them do something like this, it really twists the mind and the heart pretty good.”

Friday’s plea centered largely around Duran’s confession. During an Oct. 12 interview, Corvallis Police detectives Karin Stauder and Shawn Houck invoked Duran’s faith in God, told her that confessing would prove comforting and said that she might not have to be arrested that day.

“We can walk and let you walk,” Houck said, according to a transcript.

But after she confessed, and after Houck spoke with his bosses, he apologized and told Duran that authorities planned to take her into custody to keep her from hurting herself, harming someone else or fleeing.

Duran’s lawyers filed a motion in February to suppress her confession, saying the detectives had duped her into talking and should have advised her of her rights earlier.

Although federal law does not require that a suspect be read her Miranda rights until she is arrested, the standard under Oregon law is more restrictive. The Oregon Constitution requires that suspects be Mirandized when they might feel compelled to answer an investigators’ questions.

Compounding matters, Mason said Friday that FBI officials, who had examined the shotgun pellets, sent a letter saying there were questions about the process used to analyze the evidence. The agency, Mason said, no longer uses the method.

Faced with the possibility that Judge Connell could throw out Duran’s confession, and with the FBI having “softened their position” on the shotgun shells, Mason said he decided a deal was the best option.

“If you lose the confession, in light of the pellet analysis, you really don’t have any case,” he said. “You’re back to where you were 23 years ago.”

On Friday, Wayne Mackeson, Duran’s lawyer, said the issue of whether Duran’s confession should be allowed at trial was “an extremely close question.”

“We weren’t certain of winning it, either,” he said.

Mackeson called the plea agreement “an acceptable compromise.”

Duran, he said, “hopes that it will give some small measure of closure and comfort to the family.”