Diana Allen says it's her mother's intuition that's compelling her to believe alleged Portland serial killer Jesse Lee Calhoun has killed more times that detectives have let on.
"I have this just gut feeling that there's more than those five," Allen, mom to Calhoun's first alleged known victim, 24-year-old Charity Lynn Perry, told HNGN in an interview Wednesday.
Charity struggled with lifelong mental health issues and drug addiction. For those reasons, Allen said it made it impossible and unsafe for Charity to be around her little brother, Isaac, and she was forced to put her daughter in a group home.
But Charity often ran away and found herself staying in a homeless community.
Allen kept in touch as best as she could with her daughter – often visiting her at encampments – bringing her food and clean clothes, but by late February 2023, Allen could no longer get a hold of her.
In fact, none had heard from or seen Charity for weeks, and it wasn't until early April her body was in found dumped in a culvert in a state park along the Columbia River Gorge.
A medical examiner has not disclosed her cause of death, but determined she was the victim of murder and died March 8, 2023, two days after she was discharged from the hospital for an overdose.
"I didn't even get to say goodbye," cried Allen. "I don't even know what she knew for sure I loved her. Her death made it so real and final, and it brought about so much guilt that I have of my own."
Calhoun, 39, is also suspected of killing 32-year-old Joanna Speaks and 31-year-old Bridget LeAnne Webster. Their bodies were found within weeks of Charity's.
Authorities are still trying to determine if Calhoun is responsible for the suspicious deaths of two more women in the area around the same time – Ashley Real and Kristin Smith – both 22, and he remains a person of interest in their cases.
Like Charity, all of Calhoun's alleged victims lived a transient lifestyle and struggled with substance abuse
"I've never met anybody who has such a history of knowing people who have died under suspicious circumstances or just flat out disappeared," Allen alleged. "It is apparent that that man has so many connections with missing people that it can't be just a damn coincidence."
"I'm finding that there's more girls' suspicious deaths, and they just don't sound right, and to me, they're starting to look a bit alike," she speculated, divulging that she and loved ones of other victims have bonded over the tragedy and have been doing their own investigative work behind the scenes.
Although Calhoun has so far been indicted on three counts each of second-degree murder and second-degree abuse of a corpse for the deaths of Charity, Joanna, and Bridget, Allen said her quest for justice is far from over. She's hoping he will be charged with the murders of Ashley and Kristin.
When asked if she plans to address Calhoun in court, Allen responded: "Hell yeah," specifically at the request of Isaac.
"I let him know that they have the bad guy and he's in jail," explained Allen. "He told me: 'Good mom, I want you to ask him, 'why?'"
"And it broke me down so hard," she confessed. "Here's this 11-year-old kid, and he was just waiting for her to get better until he could see her. He still had Christmas presents he wanted to give her in person, and we were just waiting for her to be okay – mentally – for him to be around her."
"But my kid knows that I have the balls to look the person who killed my daughter in the face and tell them that her little brother wants to know why he did it," said Allen.
It's unclear when Calhoun will appear in court next.
His defense attorneys Shelley Aschenbrenner and Cameron Taylor did not immediately respond to HNGN's requests for comment.
