County homicide rate dropped in 2002.

Byline: REBECCA NOLAN The Register-Guard

Business was slow for Lane County homicide detectives last year, but you won't hear police complaining.

In 2002, area police agencies saw six homicides, compared with 10 the year before. The county averages about eight homicides annually.

Springfield enjoyed yet another year without murder, a clean streak Chief Jerry Smith attributed primarily to "dumb luck." The city has had only one homicide since 1998.

The county sheriff's office handled four homicides, compared with three in 2001.

And Eugene police handled two homicides, including the only unsolved killing of the year. In 2001, the department investigated seven.

Azucena Terrazas, a 28-year-old employee of DolEx Dollar Express at 940 W. Seventh Ave., was found dead inside the currency exchange business on Feb. 8. Police said she was beaten before she died. Investigators have released few other details on the crime.

Detectives interviewed more than 100 people and spoke with as many DolEx customers as they could identify through client lists or fingerprints in the customer lobby.

Physical evidence found at the murder scene has been analyzed, but as the first anniversary of the crime approaches, detectives still have no idea who killed the popular, hard-working young woman who moved to Eugene from her hometown in Oaxaca, Mexico, to learn English.

"We're still at a dead end, but we continue to actively examine some elements of the case," said Detective Pat Ryan.

Police made a quick arrest in the June 4 shooting death of 43-year-old Arthur Nguyen Rowe Jr. whose body was discovered inside a Fox Hollow Road trailer house after an anonymous telephone tip.

Police found Rowe shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber rifle that later was recovered near Fern Ridge Lake. Detectives arrested Rowe's sister-in-law, Cynthia Lee Rowe, 40, on a charge of intentional murder.

According to police, Cynthia Rowe shot her brother-in-law after he argued with his brother - who was her estranged husband - and Cynthia Rowe's new boyfriend. Cynthia Rowe's two children were present at the time of the shooting.

She is scheduled for trial Feb. 11 in Lane County Circuit Court.

The county sheriff's office handled the first killing of the year - the Jan. 22 shooting of 18-year-old Justin Adams of Pleasant Hill.

Raymond Gulley, 24, said he fired several rounds from his .38 Special when Adams threatened him with a hunting knife as the two argued about Adams' excessive speeding on a neighborhood road. Prosecutors determined the shooting was an act of self-defense and Gulley was never charged.

All was quiet until July 20, when a man stopped by his parents' Bushnell Road home and found them dead on the back porch. Investigators quickly determined that Jack Dennis Stutz, 65, had shot his wife, 62-year-old Judith Louella Stutz, with a 9mm handgun, then placed the barrel of a .30-06 hunting rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The couple recently had broken up after 43 years of marriage marked by Jack Stutz's physical and mental abuse, investigators said. Jack Stutz had learned that his wife had begun seeing another man and wrote in a note found at the scene that he was going to end the marriage "today."

Two months later, on Sept. 11, Michael David Flindall, 35, pulled up at a friend's house on Fox Hollow Road with a dead man in the passenger seat of his white Jeep Cherokee. The friend called his mother, who called sheriff's deputies to report the crime.

Flindall pleaded guilty in November to criminally negligent homicide for shooting 38-year-old Richard Allen Huffman 10 times with a .40-caliber pistol. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Flindall's attorneys have said he shot Huffman in self-defense after the "severely intoxicated" man got into Flindall's car without permission, demanded a ride and attacked him while in a "drug-and-alcohol-induced psychosis."

Still a mystery is why Blake Leon Admire, 44, allegedly shot his ailing mother several times in the chest Nov. 5 in the living room of the Alvadore mobile home they shared.

Admire, who is deaf, used a TTY communication device for the hearing impaired to call 911 and report that there was a problem with his mother, that he had a gun and that he was sorry. Deputies arrived to find 66-year-old Christine Joanne Admire shot to death in her recliner.

Admire has been held in the Lane County Jail without bail on a charge of intentional murder since his arrest. He is scheduled for trial April 22.

Although not included in the county's homicide tally, sheriff's investigators also handled three traffic deaths that resulted in criminal charges.

Diane Ranae Bradley, 32, of Veneta, is serving five years in prison for a May 2 traffic wreck that killed her 10-year-old daughter, Dixie Lee Bradley. Bradley was drunk and speeding when her pickup ran off Vaughn Road and hit a tree.

Antonia Marie Mattingly, 30, of Pleasant Hill, is scheduled for trial Feb. 21 on a charge of first-degree manslaughter for the May 23 crash that killed Steve Overton, 47, of Eugene. Mattingly's blood-alcohol level was almost three times the limit defining illegal intoxication for drivers, police said.

Duane Dalles Schlender, 23, was sentenced last week to six years and three months in prison for a crash that killed 56-year-old Dennis Wayne Savage of Springfield. In a suicide attempt, Schlender drove his car into a Glenwood pizza parlor, killing Savage as he worked inside.