Cold case of North Eugene High School students' double homicide cracked, 43 years later

Sixteen-year-old Lliana Gay Adank and 17-year-old Eric Shawn Goldstrand are remembered in a North Eugene High School yearbook as "two good-natured and fun loving members of the student body" and "outgoing personalities who were better than average students." 

In the summer of 1977, before the school year began, the two were found shot to death June 9, 1977, at picnic grounds in the Fall Creek area, where the couple told their parents they would spend the afternoon on a fishing outing.

Lane County Sheriff’s Office personnel first found Adank's body and hours later found Goldstrand's in a nearby brush. Adank was sexually assaulted.

Fingerprints and DNA were found at the crime scene and analyzed using technology available at the time, but no matches were found and investigative efforts afforded few leads, according to a news release from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.

However, the Lane County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Team continued to investigate the crime. 

After the initial investigation, the search continued over the years with numerous interviews, polygraphs and analysis of the evidence including testing firearms and  forensic analyzing of bullets, but none could identify a perpetrator. 

After more than four decades of mystery, the suspect’s DNA was re-submitted for analysis by modernized technology in July 2020 and the case was cracked, according to LCSO.

Ronald Albert Shroy’s DNA linked him to the homicide. At the time of the crime, he was 23 years old and living in Lane County. Shroy moved away from Oregon in the early 1980s. Investigators found he was living in Mesa, Arizona, since 2008. As they were making final preparations to present the matter to a grand jury, arrest and charge him, Shroy took his own life Feb. 24, 2021. He was involved in an unrelated domestic violence incident.

Detective Kurt Wuest was first assigned to the case in 1983. Now, 38 years later as a volunteer cold case investigator for the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, he hopes to bring closure to the families of the slain teenagers.

The North Eugene High School yearbook lamented that the two teenagers died young but asserted that "their impressions on the lives of many would never be forgotten."

Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to get unlimited access and support local journalism.