Oregon man charged in plot to murder child rape victim from jail
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An Oregon man jailed on suspicion of raping and sodomizing a 10-year-old girl now faces charges that he plotted from behind bars to have the girl killed so she couldn’t testify against him.
Police in Springfield said that Jared Anthony Bernal, 24, tried to hatch a plan with another inmate to have someone get a gun from Bernal’s brother and kill the girl before his trial, which had been scheduled to start this week.
The other inmate went to police with details. An undercover detective was appointed to deal with Bernal’s brother, who told police he never intended to help his brother. ‘He thought the plan was real and that his brother was serious in killing’ the girl and one other potential witness, according to a police affidavit in the case first obtained by the Eugene Register-Guard.
Authorities learned of the alleged plan on Aug. 23, when robbery suspect Venus Vishal Chand reported it to authorities at Lane County Jail, where both men are incarcerated.
Acting at the police’s direction, Chand subsequently obtained notes about the alleged plot from Bernal and maps designating the location of the victims’ homes, turning over all of it to detectives.
Police set up a plan for an undercover detective to pose as Chand’s cousin to obtain the gun from Bernal’s brother. ‘We had two or three contacts with [the brother], with the undercover officer. He wasn’t sounding reluctant to [the officer], but listening to his conversations with his brother [in jail], he was reluctant. He was way over his head. He was just trying to appease his brother,’ Springfield Police Sgt. David Lewis said in an interview.
He said police were primarily concerned about making sure there was no one else involved in the alleged plot. ‘One of the biggest things you have to do on something like this is make sure there’s not two guys with the same goal working on something -- one we don’t know about,’ he said.
Bernal, already facing charges of rape and sodomy, now also is charged with two counts of attempted aggravated murder and additional counts of conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. He had been a friend of the victim’s family, police said.
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-- Kim Murphy in Seattle