First Parole Hearing In A Decade For Potential Release Of A Convicted Oregon Killer Who Says Himself He Shouldn’t Be Released Happening Wednesday

Portland, Ore. – According to the Oregon State Parole Board website, Convicted murderer Omar Michael Carroll has a hearing scheduled on Wednesday to look at his potential release from prison. Carroll was sentenced to life for stabbing a young teen to death in a park in Southeast Portland in 1985. Omar Carroll said the murder was an experiment and he had no empathy for his victim who was 13-years-old at the time, Tina Marie Jones. In late December of 1985, then 17-year-old Carroll, stabbed Jones to death in Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, after just meeting her there for the first time. He claimed he was obsessed with a book he had read and felt compelled to live out one of the scenes like the serial killer from the novel. The victim’s foster Mom Sue Cunningham says the stabbing was not random. Carroll said he’d been actively looking for a victim in the park on the day he met and murdered Tina. It was very premeditated.

During his last parole hearing the board ruled he would not be eligible again until March of 2021, so it’s unclear why there’s a hearing scheduled for Wednesday October 7th, 2020.

In a parole hearing in September 2008, Carroll said he went for the knife and killed her, attacked her. It took the parole board 15 minutes to unanimously decide Carroll would remain behind bars.

The victim Tina Jones, was a foster child and was just in the process of being adopted by her foster parents when she was murdered.

Sue Cunningham tells KXL, to have to testify again before the parole board this week, is like going through emotional hell over and over again. Cunningham plans again to testify that Carroll cannot be trusted in the community. She believes he is capable of hurting or even killing another person. But despite the deadly attack on her foster daughter decades ago, Cunningham says she does not hate Carroll, only that she feels sorry for him.

KXL’s Lars Larson as a reporter for NW Reports did an in depth documentary on the murder in 1986, interviewing Carroll from prison, and the family of the victim. A few years later when Carroll was up for parole, Lars did a follow up story on the case. In the video you’ll see interviews with experts and officials who say, Carroll has significant mental health diagnoses that are untreated. You can watch a portion of that here: