Bend woman: Man in West-Linn murder-suicide also threatened me

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – A suburban Portland woman fatally shot in a murder-suicide was granted a restraining order in November against the man who killed her — but he never received it. And a Bend woman who said he’d threatened her life also had one against him a few years ago.

In the Portland-area case, records obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office never delivered it.

The sheriff’s office said it couldn’t find David Cote after he moved.

Cote and the woman, Bethany Schuch, were found dead Wednesday outside a home in West Linn. The sheriff’s office said Cote shot the victim multiple times before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Schuch said in her petition for the restraining order that Cote was mentally unstable and she feared for her life.

Court records show Cote was convicted in 2014 of stalking and menacing a different woman. He was sentenced to 45 days in the Deschutes County Jail.

The newspaper reported Saturday that Shannon Schlipp of Bend said he had threatened to kill her, too. She met him at a party shortly before moving from Beaverton to Bend. She said she rebuffed his interested in dating, and when she told him she was interesting in dating someone else, he threatened and harassed her.

She said he agreed to stop threatening her if they met, so they did so at a Portland-area golf course. Schlipp said he asked for a hug as they parted, but he grabbed and held her and kissed her forcefully.

She said he told her there was a gun in his SUV and he’d thought about killing himself, her or both of them. She said a security guard pulled up and if not for that, “I would be dead.” She contacted Bend police and he later pleaded guilty to stalking and menacing, leading to the 45-day jail term and court-ordered conditions he later violated, according to documents.

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Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com