By Ashley Gebb
San Jose Mercury News
PORTLAND, Ore. — As he stood waiting for backup, holding the couple at gunpoint, Terry Uhrich watched the two murder suspects exchange a kiss. And the worst-case scenario flashed through the mind of the California Highway Patrol officer.
“You don’t know if it’s, ‘We’re going to jail, let’s kiss each other while we can,’ or ‘Let’s kiss because we are going to get out and do this thing,’” he said. “It could have gone way more south.”
That Uhrich had caught the young fugitives was the result of his second thoughts: He had stopped to check out a car on the roadside, but the young woman assured him she had just pulled over to stretch, so he went on his way. Then, down the road, it occurred to him that the car matched the description in a bulletin in a three-state weeklong manhunt. He pulled a U-turn.
Oregon residents David Joseph Pedersen, 31, and Holly Ann Grigsby, 24, were wanted for first-degree murder in the stabbing death of a 69-year-old Washington state woman — Pedersen’s stepmother — and are now suspects in the death of a 19-year-old Oregon man, whose car they were driving at the time of the arrest.
“It was really good to be able to help out other agencies,” Uhrich said. “Knowing how much evidence was detained because of this, that’s what I’m really happy about. And being able to give the families closure. ... If these two would have gotten away, who knows how long they would have had to wait for who did it.”
After being apprehended Wednesday, the couple were taken to the CHP’s Yuba City office to be interviewed by investigators from the Everett Police Department and the Oregon State Police. They were booked into Yuba County Jail on. Thursday.
Pedersen and Grigsby also face local charges of vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, possession of weapons and being felons in possession of weapons.
The Yuba County district attorney is working with Oregon and Washington law enforcement to have them quickly extradited north, where murder charges will supersede California charges.
On Thursday, Uhrich, a 10-year CHP veteran, was still reeling from the significance of Wednesday’s events.
It’s not uncommon to see people stretching on the side of the road or with out-of-state license plates on foothill roads, he said.
He knew there was a “be-on-the-lookout” alert for murder suspects on corridors like Interstate 5, but after pulling away from Grigsby and Pedersen, Uhrich realized the car sounded familiar.
He took a second glance at the license and called it in to dispatch, which confirmed the car was stolen and its occupants were wanted for homicide.
Uhrich was instantly pumped with adrenaline.
“I’m already going in with the fact these people are from Washington-Oregon, they don’t want to be here, they don’t want to be caught,” he said. “My assumption was they are going to do whatever they can to get away from me.”
Pedersen’s stepmother, Leslie Pedersen, 69, was found dead in her Everett, Wash., home Sept. 28 with her hands tied with duct tape and a bloody pillow wrapped around her head. Pedersen’s father, also named David Pedersen, is missing and considered endangered.
And the owner of the car the fugitives were driving, Cody Myers, 19, of Lafayette, Ore., was found dead from gunshot wounds to the head and chest Tuesday in a wooded area in western Oregon.
Both Pedersen and Grigsby had lengthy criminal records and connections to the white supremacist movement. His convictions include robbery, assaulting a police officer and making threats against a federal judge.
So Uhrich followed them with no emergency lights on, “just whistling and driving trying to alert them,” he said.
“I was very cognizant of the dangers that were in front of me,” he said. “It’s not like I’m making a speed stop on something not knowing what’s in the vehicle. I had a predetermined worse-case scenario.”
Instead the car drove slowly south before pulling over two miles down the road at Gettys Court. The pair put their hands in the air, and Uhrich held them at gunpoint until backup arrived.
The suspects were calm and did not try to talk their way out or make any moves, even though a loaded .22-caliber handgun was at Grigsby’s feet. A scenario that could have gone very badly, he said, ended peacefully.
“It was three minutes, but it seemed like 40,” he said.
Uhrich drove Grigsby in the back of his patrol car, while Pedersen was taken in a separate car.
Along the way, said Uhrich, Grigsby sang along to a song on the radio — “not a worry in the world.”
Copyright 2011 San Jose Mercury News