A man and a woman police say they found stealing cans on campus were arrested early Saturday morning, one on a seven-year-old traffic warrant and the other on a 2003 homicide warrant from California.
Department of Public Safety Officer Mike Drake said a community service officer spotted the two at about 12:40 a.m. Saturday at the north side of the Knight Library and reported them to DPS. A minute later, three officers cornered the couple and their cans in front of Gerlinger Hall.
When officers from the Eugene Police Department arrived on the scene 20 minutes later, records revealed that the woman, Constance Dahl, 42, had given DPS a false name: Connie Martin. They also discovered Dahl had a warrant out for arrest in El Dorado County, Calif.
According to archives from the El Dorado Hills Telegraph, Dahl pleaded guilty in 2003 to voluntary manslaughter charges in the 1985 killing of local newspaper columnist Jane Hylton. She was supposed to face 11 years in prison. Local police had found Hylton in the master bedroom of a friend’s house with 29 stab wounds, but they didn’t make progress in the investigation until 1999, when advances in DNA technology allowed them to determine the owner of the knife found on the scene. Four years later, Dahl’s boyfriend and accomplice was charged with premeditated murder and use of a deadly weapon. He faces 25 years to life in prison.
Randall Lee Russell, 37, of Eugene, was with Dahl on Saturday and was arrested on a 2001 warrant on a traffic charge.