Deschutes County 1993 convicted killer dies as inmate

A 60-year-old state prison inmate, convicted in 1993 of a Deschutes County murder and sentenced to life in prison, died Saturday at a Portland area hospital, the Oregon Department of Corrections said.

As with all unanticipated deaths in state prisons, the Oregon State Police Criminal Investigation Division is conducting an investigation, the agency said.

Staff at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in the northeast Oregon town of Umatilla found inmate Joel Abbott, 60, in his cell unresponsive on Saturday, officials said . He was transported off-site for medical care around 10:30 a.m. and pronounced dead just after 5 p.m.

Abbott entered state custody on March 23 , 1993, on one count of first-degree murder out of Deschutes County. He was serving a life sentence.

Family members have been notified, officials said, adding that no other details were available.

Abbott was convicted in 1993 of murdering his girlfriend, Carolann Payne, who was 35 when she disappeared in 1985. Several searches failed to find her body.

Abbott, a Redmond resident when Payne vanished, had moved to Portland when he was arrested in 1992 after a lengthy Deschutes County investigation.

An informant made tape recordings in which Abbott said he took the woman t a remote area of the county and shot her, returning later to bury the remains. It was the first case in the county and one of only a few statewide in which a murder conviction occurred without remains being found.

Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis, who prosecuted the case when he was chief deputy DA in Deschutes County, said the lack of a victim’s body brought major attention to the trial, which was broadcast live on Court TV.

Marquis, who also has prosecuted three death-sentence trials of convicted killer Randy Lee Guzek, called Abbott “one of the scariest people I ever prosecuted.”

He said Abbott also was convicted of raping his daughter in a case later overturned by an appellate court, due to a statute of limitations that also was later overturned.