Kevin Adams was a sixteen year old teen killer from Oregon who would murder his foster mother and his two sisters
According to court documents Kevin Adams would steal his foster father’s handgun the day before he would open fire killing Donya Adams, 55; Amory Adams, 26; and 10-year-old Payshience “Tia” Adams. Adams had brought the gun to school showing it off to classmates, none of them reported him to authorities
Kevin Adams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison however since he was a juvenile he is eligible for parole after twelve years
Kevin Adams Case
The teen who killed his foster mother and two sisters nearly three years ago in rural Douglas County was convicted of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison Tuesday — a sentence the prosecutor called “largely symbolic” because the young man will be eligible for parole in about 12 years.
Kevin Adams was 16 and a junior at Roseburg High School when he used his foster father’s .22 caliber Ruger handgun to kill Donya Adams, 55, Amory Adams, 26, and Payshience “Tia” Adams, 10
Kevin Adams was the latest high-profile case involving a violent juvenile offender to reach sentencing since the passage last year of Oregon’s landmark juvenile justice law. The law aimed to keep juveniles accused of serious crimes out of adult court and in the juvenile system, where the sentences are shorter and the focus is on rehabilitation.
In two recent cases out of Yamhill and Lane counties, judges ruled that the teens accused of murder be kept in Juvenile Court. In those cases, the youths will be released from state custody when they turn 25.
In his plea deal with Douglas County prosecutors, Kevin Adams, now 18, agreed to be prosecuted as an adult.
In a Douglas County courtroom packed with the victims’ family and friends, Kevin Adams was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said Adams will likely start his sentence in the custody of the Oregon Youth Authority, then will be transferred to the Oregon Department of Corrections when he turns 25.
Under Oregon’s new juvenile justice law, he will be eligible for parole in about 12 years.
Donya Adams’ family was outraged by the sentence.
“I don’t know that he can be rehabilitated,” said Adams’ sister Gaylen Olson, 59, of Auburn, Washington. “The anger and the resentment at the world in general is so strong.”
The family has started an effort to repeal Oregon’s new juvenile justice law.
In handing down the sentence, Douglas County Circuit Judge William Marshall said he was “left with what the legislation has done and what you have done.”
He added: “I don’t have a lot of choice about the sentence in this matter no matter what my feelings are and what the end result is.”
In court, Senior Deputy District Attorney Steve Hoddle walked through the circumstances leading to the killings:
One day earlier, Kevin Adams got into a locked closet off the living room where his uncle and foster father, Robert Adams, stored his firearms. The key to the closet was kept on a hook by the kitchen door.
He took the gun to Roseburg High that day and showed it to several classmates, the prosecutor said. But none of them reported it to school administrators or police, he said.
(In an interview after the hearing, Hoddle said he didn’t know how many people saw the gun that day.)
That evening, while Robert Adams was away from the house at a meeting of Boy Scout leaders, Kevin Adams shot Donya Adams and his sisters, stopping once to reload. Amory Adams was his foster sister, the daughter of Robert and Donya Adams, and Payshience “Tia” Adams was his biological sister.
He shot Donya Adams eight times — five times in her back and once in her shoulder, arm and head.
He then chased Amory Adams upstairs and shot her seven times – five times in her back, once in her arm, once in the head.
“Kevin then found Payshience attempting to hide from him in her parents’ bathroom,” Hoddle said. “When he found her, Paychience held up one hand and said, ‘Please don’t.’
“Kevin then shot her three times in her head,” he said.
The teen went outside, waited for Robert Adams and told him to call 911.
When authorities arrived, Kevin Adams confessed, Hoddle said.
When the prosecutor was done, the judge addressed Adams’ relatives and friends, many of whom were crying.
Marshall paused the proceeding.
“I see that there are family members that are having an emotional time,” he said, allowing a brief period of silence to settle over the room. “Just take a moment.”
Robert and Donya Adams had raised Kevin and his sisters, Kathleen and Payshience, as their own. They are the biological children of Robert Adams’ brother.
Kevin Adams was 5 and Kathleen was six when they were removed from their parents’ custody and placed with their aunt and uncle. When Payshience was born, she, too, was placed with the couple, who had two older children of their own, Vienna and Amory.
In court, Hoddle said the children were in “permanent foster care” with the Adams family.
Donya Adams’ sister Gaylen Olson said her sister and brother-in-law were devoted to their own children and to their nephew and his sisters.
She said the children’s biological parents had longstanding problems with substance abuse and that the boy had been neglected “in every way imaginable.”
“We did not realize how extensive the abuse had been until we were a couple years in,” she said.
She said her sister was overwhelmed by the boy’s needs.
Kevin Adams targeted Donya Adams and Amory for harassment. She said he did “vile things,” including destroying their clothing. He was obsessed with knives. He wiped feces on the walls.
Donya Adams saw her life spiraling out of control, her sister said.
“Several times Dondi told me, ‘They are going to wake up one morning and find us all slaughtered in our bed,’” Olson said, using her sister’s nickname.
“She was fearful living in her own home and the foster care system wouldn’t even call her back, let alone help,” her sister said.
Last year, the state of Oregon agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle claims that the Department of Human Services was partly at fault for the killings. The state agreed to pay each woman’s estate and Donya Adam’s husband.
Olson said she told her sister to have the boy moved from the home, but Donya Adams resisted. She said if she and her husband didn’t love Kevin, “who will?”
Olson described her sister as a woman of deep Christian faith who came from a large and close-knit extended family that enjoyed regular family reunions.
Adams worked as a legal secretary in Roseburg until she became a mother in her mid 20s, then quit to take care of her kids full-time.
She loved her hometown and lived on the outskirts in a home she and her husband built on 10 acres that her parents owned.
Robert Adams spoke in court of his profound grief.
“I look back at the last two and a half years with great sorrow — what could have been and with emptiness at what can never be,” he said.
He described Payshience as a “dynamic, intense little girl” who could have been a mother, a teacher or a doctor.
“We shall never know,” he said. “Tia would have been 13-years-old in 10 days. Instead she lies dead in a grave at your hands.”
Of his daughter, Amory, he said she was “so full of love” for the elderly and animals. She would be 29 today, he said.
His wife — “our Dondi,” he called her — would have likely been preparing music for church services and praying for Kevin.
“What was the future for this talented, caring, faithful woman who gave of herself for others?” he asked. “What would she be doing today?”
Kevin Adams sat beside his lawyer, Kathie Berger, who comforted him throughout the hearing by placing her hand on his shoulder.
Kevin Adams looked down as members of Donya Adams’ extended family stood to speak of their anguish. He reached for tissues.
When the judge asked if he had anything to say, he stood.
“I just want to say I’m sorry,” he said.
He referred to Donya Adams as mom and said he cries himself to sleep. He said he thinks of the three of them on their birthdays and holidays.
“If there was a way to go back and stop this from ever happening, I would,” he said. “I know I completely deserve my punishment and worse and I take it willingly.”
