The murder of Donald Bartron and Peter Zito Jr.
Beaverton, Washington County, Oregon · 1974
Overview
Donald Bartron, 16, and Peter Zito Jr., 18, both students at Aloha High School, were found shot to death early on October 3, 1974, in the parking lot of the Oak Hills Recreation Center in the unincorporated area west of Beaverton in Washington County, Oregon. Both teenagers had been shot multiple times in the head with a .22 caliber handgun while one of them worked on a 1956 Oldsmobile. The double homicide went unsolved for 48 years. In November 2022 the Washington County Sheriff's Office announced that ballistics testing by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Oregon State Police crime lab had matched the bullets from the 1974 killings to a .22 caliber handgun that an early suspect, Steven Paul Criss, had used two years later, in 1976, to murder his Army commanding officer. Criss was arrested and indicted on two counts of second-degree murder. Authorities described it as the oldest known ballistics match the ATF had confirmed for a prosecutable case.
How it was solved
Steven Paul Criss surfaced as a suspect within weeks of the 1974 murders. In December 1974 deputies arrested Criss for theft and found an illegally concealed .22 caliber handgun in his vehicle, but the crime lab technology of the era could not match the gun to the bullets recovered from Bartron and Zito, and the lead went cold. Two years later, in 1976, Criss used that same .22 caliber handgun to shoot and kill his Army commanding officer, Sergeant Jacob 'Kim' Brown, who was shot multiple times in the head; Criss pleaded guilty to that killing, was sentenced to 35 years, and was paroled in 1988 after serving 12 years. Decades later, Washington County cold case detectives re-examined the original ballistics evidence and submitted it to the ATF. The ATF reported a presumptive match between the firearm evidence from the 1976 murder of Sgt. Brown and the 1974 murders at Oak Hills, and the Oregon State Police crime lab confirmed the match. Because the gun used to kill Brown was traced to Criss, the ballistics chain tied Criss to the 1974 double homicide. The sheriff's office stated that, to date, this was the oldest known comparison and match the ATF had confirmed for a prosecutable case. Criss, 65, was arrested near his Aloha home on November 2, 2022, and a Washington County grand jury indicted him on two counts of second-degree murder. The case also carried a painful early error: hours after the 1974 killings, a different man, Joseph Amir Wilson, was arrested and charged, but the charges were dropped by early 1975; the sheriff's office later issued a formal apology, saying it was clear he was innocent and should never have been arrested. Wilson died in 2000.
Sources
- Oregon man indicted for murder in 1974 cold case shooting deaths of 2 teens
“Criss was indicted by a grand jury on two counts of second-degree murder in the Oct. 3, 1974, shooting deaths of 16-year-old Donald Bartron and 18-year-old Peter Zito Jr., in a recreation center parking lot in the Oak Hills community just west of Portland.”
- Cold Case Solved: Man Arrested for 1974 Murders of Two Teenagers
“In 1974, Deputy Jim Spinden discovered Criss possessed an illegally concealed .22 handgun but no ballistic match could be established at that time.”
- Washington County detectives announce arrest in 1974 double murder
“Two years later, Criss used the same weapon to kill his commanding officer, Sgt. Jacob 'Kim' Brown, at Fort Lewis in Washington. In 2022, detectives submitted ballistic evidence to the ATF, which reported a presumptive match between evidence from the 1976 murder in Washington and the 1974 murders in Oak Hills.”
- Oregon Police Arrest Convicted Murderer and Army Veteran for 1974 Cold Case Slaughter of High School Students
“Joseph Amir Wilson was arrested within hours of the October 3, 1974 murders and charged with both killings. By early 1975, charges were dropped. The sheriff's office issued a formal apology, stating it is clear he was innocent and should never have been arrested.”
- Oregon man arrested in 1974 cold case murders of 2 teens
“Detectives reexamined the ballistic testing performed on the .22 caliber handgun decades earlier and, after submitting the evidence to the ATF, determined the gun Criss used to kill his commanding officer was the same weapon used in the 1974 murders of the two teens.”
- Man arrested in 1974 killing of 2 high school students
“Steven Criss, 65, was arrested in the 1974 deaths of Peter Zito and Donald Bartron, who were shot multiple times in the head around 4 a.m. on Oct. 3, 1974, near a parked car at the Oak Hills Recreation Center in Beaverton.”
- Arrest made in double murder unsolved for half century
“Washington County detectives took another look at ballistic testing performed on the same gun decades earlier in the unsolved murders of Zito and Bartron, leading to the arrest of Steven Criss.”