A young boy's screams as he was being carried from a movie theater led to the arrest of a man on charges he killed three other youngsters, police said.
Westley Allan Dodd, a 28-year-old Vancouver resident with a long history of sexual offenses involving children, was charged with three counts of first-degree aggravated murder in the deaths of three young Portland-Vancouver area boys, authorities said.Police said Dodd was apprehended Monday night after he carried a 5-year-old boy from a theater restroom in Camas, 15 miles east of Vancouver.
"The boy started screaming, `Help me! help me!"' said the theater's co-owner, Cathy Asher, "and we took off running after the guy."
The child was able to escape and was not injured.
After getting a description of the man's car, William Graves, the boyfriend of the boy's mother, found that it had broken down a few blocks away.
Camas police Lt. Mike Slyter said Graves caught Dodd after a little struggle. He returned Dodd to the theater, where bystanders tied a belt around his hands and held him until police arrived.
"You have to admire this man," Asher said of Graves.
Police also credited the boy for raising such a fuss as he was being carried away.
"The boy is a hero, I would say," Slyter said.
Dodd is charged with killing 4-year-old Lee Joseph Iseli, whose nude body was found just west of Vancouver on Nov. 1, three days after he disappeared from a school playground in Portland, Ore.
The boy had been strangled. Investigators declined to say whether he had been molested.
Dodd also was charged with killing 10-year-old William Neer and 11-year-old Cole Neer of Vancouver, who were stabbed to death on Labor Day in a park a few blocks from where Dodd lived. At the time, investigators said there was no evidence the brothers had been molested.
Authorities said Dodd had been convicted in 1987 of attempted unlawful imprisonment after admitting he fondled an 8-year-old boy in Seattle. Court records show he admitted to having a sexually deviant interest in young boys.