Search in Pacific Northwest for person of interest in 2 vicious attacks
Danny Wu
SEATTLE -- Karen Lange, a singer and piano teacher from Pendleton, Ore., is still in a medically induced coma at Oregon Health and Science University Hospital after being attacked while she walked on the Umatilla River Parkway on Aug. 9.
Detectives found her the following morning in a brushy area several feet below the path.
"It's a tragedy what happened to Karen," said brother-in-law Darrin Lange, who lives in Seattle. "It's a tragedy what happened to Karen. They are certainly focused on Karen's recovery. They certainly don't want this to happen to somebody else."
Pendleton police started searching for the 53-year-old mother of two after she didn’t return from her daily walk.
Police Chief Stuart Roberts said it didn’t take long to find video that identified 23-year-old Danny Wu as a person of interest in the case.
"You can actually see him watching her as she makes her first lap through this route," Roberts said of the surveillance video footage. "The second time around, you see him poke out and enter the parkway behind her and he's trying to conceal what appears to be a large section of galvanized pipe in his right hand, kind of behind his back."
Roberts said the attacker followed Karen off camera and she was found near that spot. Detectives found the galvanized pipe that forensic analysis has confirmed as the weapon.
Over the weekend, Oregon State Police matched DNA found on the pipe to DNA recovered from the scene of a brutal homicide in Pendleton on Aug. 14, 2012. AmyJane Brandhagen, 19, was found with multiple stab wounds in her chest in a motel where she worked as a housekeeper. The two crimes were very similar in that there was no sexual assault, no robbery and no motive for the crimes.
“There’s a lot of forensic analysis, cross-analysis being done, because Wu actually fits the basic description we received from one of the motel employees the day of the homicide of somebody who was hanging in the area earlier in the day," Roberts said.
He described Wu as “an extremely dangerous person who poses an imminent danger to society on an ongoing basis up until the point he's in protective custody."
The challenge has been finding Wu.
They need him to compare his DNA standard for confirmation purposes. However, investigators aren’t even sure that’s his real name. Police had 27 contacts with him in the last year for criminal trespass, illegal lodging, and outstanding bench warrants. He’s described as a loner who threatens people to stay away from him.
“He typically arms himself with screwdrivers, piping, any other improvised devices he can use as a weapon,” Roberts said.
Wu has a tattoo of Semper Fi on his wrist but detectives don’t know if he was in the military. They aren’t even sure that’s his real name. It’s one he gave them during the four times they’ve arrested him.
“There’s never been what I would consider a verification of that name because his fingerprint profile was compared against the automated fingerprint index and there was nobody else with that particular profile in the system.”
While Karen Lange struggles to recover, Darrin Lange said his brother Dan has been staying by his wife’s side at the hospital in Portland. He said they don’t want revenge against her attacker and that their faith is giving them hope. However, he said, "I think we all want to feel safe and when we hear about stuff like this, it kind of shocks that sense of being safe and that feeling like we can be safe."
Karen Lange
If anyone has any information on Wu’s whereabouts or know anything that might help investigators, they are asked to contact the Pendleton Police Department at 541-276-4411 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.