PORTLAND, Ore. -- A woman found in a suburban Los Angeles apartment with a dismembered body will be returned to Oregon to face charges of killing her missing 9-year-old daughter.
Karen Lee Huster, 41, could be extradited to Washington County within a week.
She was arrested Nov. 10 after police found body parts in two freezers in the two-bedroom San Fernando Valley apartment she shared with 73-year-old James Cameron.
The remains have not been identified, but Cameron, a friend of Huster's father, has been reported missing.
The Los Angeles district attorney's office has declined to file charges, saying the coroner has not determined a cause of death.
In court papers, the district attorney's office said Huster told police she cut up the body, but only after the man died of a heart attack.
Washington County investigators plan to try Huster for her daughter's murder, no matter what happens with the case in Los Angeles.
Huster is accused of killing her daughter Elisabeth Anne, who was last seen Aug. 31, 1996. Her body has not been found.
"I believe she killed Elisabeth, and this only endorses my belief," said John Stratford, the Washington County Sheriff's Office detective who has investigated the case since 1996.
Stratford went to Los Angeles this week to search for signs of Elisabeth and to try to find anything that could be pertinent to the Washington County murder case.
"That's our whole case, that Huster is adept at getting rid of bodies," Stratford said. "We believe she did that to Elisabeth and was in the process of doing that with this man."
Huster disappeared from Tigard on April 12, just days before a Washington County grand jury handed down an indictment against her for murder. Huster had run before, almost immediately after a Washington County sheriff's deputy appeared on her doorstep on Christmas Eve 1996 to ask about Elisabeth's whereabouts. <
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Rick Bonilla said:
Thank you very much for these thoughtful comments Dr. Skelly.
TerryNagel said:
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