SALEM, Ore. — The Salem City Council voted 5–4 on Dec. 8 to reappoint Kyle Hedquist to the city’s Community Police Review Board, a volunteer panel that reviews complaints about police conduct and makes recommendations to the police chief.
Councilors Linda Nishioka, Vanessa Nordyke, Micki Varney, Irvin Brown and Mai Vang voted yes. Mayor Julie Hoy and Councilors Paul Tigan, Shane Matthews and Deanna Gwyn voted no.
After the vote, public safety unions and residents pushed back, saying Salem has no business putting a convicted murderer in a position tied to public safety oversight. Salem Police Employees Union President Scotty Nowning said the controversy is as much about the city’s guardrails as it is about Hedquist. “This isn’t even necessarily about Mr. Hedquist,” Nowning said. “Because if you move him off there, if you don’t change your guardrails … you could just put someone else on there with equal criminal history or worse.”
Councilor Vanessa Nordyke, who voted to reappoint Hedquist, said she has reversed her stance after the public backlash. Nordyke said she voted yes believing Hedquist had demonstrated rehabilitation and had been a productive member of the community since his release, pointing to his prior service on the review board and a police ride-along completed without incident. She said she should have sought broader input before the vote. The council has discussed revisiting the appointment at a Jan. 12 meeting, but as of now, the Dec. 8 vote stands.
City Council knew of his convicted murder charges before the vote, and there were previous articles about it that are publicly available. After some quick google searches, we were able to uncover everything. A 2022 letter from the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office opposing clemency spells out the facts prosecutors say were proven in the 1994 killing of Nikki Thrasher, a teenager from the Roseburg area. Here are the facts, quoted directly from the letter: (The full letter is available here)
“On November 24, 1994, Kyle Hedquist and one of his friends, Jonathan Timmons, stole a number of items from the home of Hedquist’s aunt, Cheryl Briggs, while she was away for Thanksgiving. Hedquist and Timmons took the stolen items and stashed them at the apartment ofTimmon’s girlfriend, Misty Dalton. Nikki Thrasher, the teenager Hedquist would murder a few days later, was roommates with Ms. Dalton. Ms. Thrasher was completely unaware of the burglary. On the morning of November 27, 1994, Ms. Thrasher saw some of the stolen items and asked Hedquist about them. Hedquist, concerned that Ms. Thrasher might find out the items were stolen and report him, decided he had to kill Ms. Thrasher to keep that from happening.
Hedquist lied and told Ms. Thrasher that one of her friends had left a message wanting to meet her on a hill to the west of the Melrose area. Hedquist then offered to drive Ms. Thrasher out to the meeting place. When they arrived at the bottom of a mountain road near the location Hedquist pulled out a pistol and told Ms. Thrasher that he was going to kill her. Hedquist then forced Ms. Thrasher to walk up the dirt road so he could find the most appropriate place to kill her. After walking, some distance Ms. Thrasher began hyperventilating and Hedquist, frustrated with Ms. Thrasher’s inability to continue walking, raised his pistol and shot Ms. Thrasher in the back of the head. Hedquist then grabbed Ms. Thrasher’s lifeless body and dumped it in a less conspicuous place on the roadside.”
Hedquist was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. He was also sentenced for a separate violent incident: first-degree robbery and three counts of second-degree kidnapping tied to a Pizza Hut robbery at gunpoint in which about $3,000 was taken.
Hedquist’s prison sentence was commuted in 2022 by former Gov. Kate Brown, leading to his release into the Salem area. Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast and Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson criticized the decision at the time and said they had serious safety concerns about how the state handled the commutation and release. Clarkson called the process “a shocking lack of concern” for community safety and said a judge had previously determined Hedquist should never be released. Kast said residents should be made aware of Hedquist and any potential safety risks, adding that local agencies would manage his supervision despite opposing the state’s decision.
Now, three years after that release, Salem is debating whether Hedquist should have a seat on a board designed to build public trust in police accountability. City officials have acknowledged that background checks were not consistently conducted for board appointments, even though city rules allow councilors to consider criminal history when deciding who should serve.
The question in front of the council isn’t complicated: if councilors knew Hedquist was a convicted aggravated murderer, was it acceptable to vote him onto a police oversight board without fully understanding — or publicly grappling with — what that conviction involved?
And if Salem is going to course-correct, it can’t just be about one appointment. The city will have to decide what standards it expects for people placed in positions of public safety trust — and whether those standards are clear enough to prevent this from happening again.
