Terri Jentz

The Cline Falls axe attack refers to an unsolved attempted homicide that occurred on the evening of June 22, 1977, at the Cline Falls State Park in Deschutes County, Oregon United States. The victims were two female college students, Terri Jentz and her roommate, Avra Goldman, who were on a cross-country cycling ride along the Trans America Trail.

Both women decided to spend the night along the Deschutes River at the park near Redmond. During the night, they were awoken by a vehicle that drove over their tent, injuring both. The driver of the vehicle exited his car and proceeded to attack both women with an axe. Both women survived the attack, suffering significant injuries, but their attacker has never been positively identified.

Timeline Background In the summer of 1977, 19-year-old Terri Jentz of Western Springs, Illinois, were both Yale University students who decided to cycle across the United States via the newly-opened Trans America Trail. Shortly after beginning their tour, which started in Astoria, Oregon, the women headed east through the state. On the night of June 22, they stopped at the Cline Falls State Park in rural Deschutes County and decided to camp there overnight along the river.

Jentz would later recall being unnerved by the location and that both women felt as though they were being watched: "It was an animal instinct of danger, and we both had it, we both had it separately, and we shared it with one another."

Attack Around 11:30 p.m., while both women were asleep in their tent, they were awoken by the sound of a truck pulling up to their campsite. one leg, her collarbone, and several ribs, as well as crushing her lung. After, the man stood over Jentz. though an ABC News report refers to him as "Dick Damm." After the attack, Godwin was imprisoned for the murder of a five-year-old child, whose skull he used as a candle holder. In September 1977, Goldman's parents donated $3,000 to St. Charles Medical Center into a fund for critical-care monitoring equipment under the names of Penhollow and Gervais, the two teenagers who found Jentz and Goldman and helped save them.

In 2006, Jentz published a book recounting her life after the attack, titled Strange Piece of Paradise. While researching in preparation for the book, she discovered that the official records of the attack, including interviews, physical evidence, and crime scene photos, had been inadvertently lost.