Police tracked a vehicle from Keizer into Washington before federal marshals found murder suspect Shelly Peca near a remote Forest Service road.
KEIZER, Ore. — The search for Shelly Rae Peca stretched from an Oregon home where her husband was found dead to the forests of central Washington, a roughly 10-day investigation in which police tracked a vehicle across state lines before federal officers arrested her on a second-degree murder warrant.
What first appeared publicly as a suspicious-death investigation quickly became a multistate search. Walter Arthur Peca, 59, was found dead in his Keizer home July 17. Three days later, police identified him, announced that detectives were treating his death as a homicide and said they wanted to locate his 56-year-old wife. Officials supplied a description of Shelly Peca and the red or maroon 1999 Ford Explorer Sport Trac she was believed to be driving, while warning members of the public not to approach her.
The vehicle created the first public timeline linking Oregon and Washington. Keizer police said it had been observed leaving Keizer at about 6:30 a.m. July 16. By about 10 p.m. July 17, the same vehicle had appeared in Brewster, Washington, hundreds of miles to the north and east. The movement suggested that investigators were dealing not only with a homicide inquiry but also with a search covering a large rural region where mountain roads and forest land could make a person difficult to locate.
The public did not know at the time that police had received a call connected to the death before they entered the Peca home. Court records unsealed in August say a caller identifying herself as Shelly Peca contacted Keizer police around 9:58 a.m. July 17. According to an affidavit later reported by local news organizations, the caller said Walter Peca was dead at the house and that she wanted police, rather than the couple’s children, to find him. The records say the caller also reported having the gun connected to his death.
Officers responded to the home on Cummings Lane North. Instead of immediately sending personnel inside, a detective used a drone to inspect the residence. The drone showed a person down in an upstairs area, according to the affidavit. Officers then entered and found Walter Peca, who had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. The house was otherwise empty. Police initially released little about what they had found, and the department’s early public notices did not describe the phone call, the firearm allegation or the manner in which Walter Peca had been injured.
That information gap placed most public attention on the search. Authorities distributed Shelly Peca’s description and vehicle information while investigators worked across jurisdictions. Her Explorer had been recorded far from Keizer, and law enforcement attention moved into Washington. Reporting from North Central Washington later said cell phone information and surveillance evidence were among the leads that focused the search in that region, though Keizer police did not provide a complete public account of every investigative method used.
The search ended July 27. Members of the U.S. Marshals Service Portland Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force for the District of Oregon and Western District of Washington found Shelly Peca off a Forest Service road in remote Chelan County. Local reporting placed the location near the Lake Wenatchee area. Keizer police said she was arrested, transported and booked into the Snohomish County Correctional Facility on a warrant charging her with second-degree murder. Officials said she would await extradition to Oregon.
The arrest did not resolve the larger questions surrounding the homicide. At the time, Keizer police said that, in collaboration with the Marion County District Attorney’s Office, investigators were not releasing further information. The department had not publicly identified a cause of death, disclosed the alleged call or explained the prosecution theory. Only after the search-warrant affidavit became available in August did the public receive a fuller account of what had allegedly happened before the officers’ first entry into the home.
Family comments added another layer while the criminal investigation developed. In social media statements reported by Law&Crime, Summer Peca, identified as the couple’s daughter, described Walter Peca as suffering from major health problems. She said his condition had worsened to the point that he had difficulty caring for himself and was in pain. She also expressed love for her mother and sympathy for what she believed Shelly Peca had been watching her husband endure. Those comments were not findings by investigators and did not establish Walter Peca’s medical diagnosis or wishes.
Neighbors had also noticed signs of declining health. One neighbor told KOIN that Walter Peca had been hospitalized at least twice during the weeks before he died. Sue Saxton, another neighbor, described Shelly Peca as kind and said the homicide allegation was difficult to reconcile with the person she had known. The statements gave the public a picture of a household dealing with illness before the death, but authorities have not released medical records or said Walter Peca had a terminal diagnosis.
The descriptions of his illness generated discussion about Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The law allows certain capable adults with medically confirmed terminal illnesses to request physician-prescribed medication after specific safeguards are followed. It is a patient-directed process requiring medical review and voluntary action by the patient. No public record reviewed for this story shows that Walter Peca was participating in the program, and the statute does not allow a relative to substitute his or her own decision for the patient’s required request.
After Shelly Peca’s arrest, the case reversed the same interstate path that had defined the search. She waived extradition and was returned to Oregon, where August reporting placed her in the Marion County Jail without bail. The murder charge is an accusation, and the released records do not represent a verdict. Her attorney did not respond to questions cited by local reporters after the affidavit was unsealed.
The investigation’s public timeline now looks substantially different from the one authorities could describe during the manhunt. Police knew of an alleged call from Shelly Peca before they found Walter Peca, but they withheld that detail while trying to locate her. The vehicle sightings led north. A federal task force ultimately found her on isolated federal land. Weeks later, court records disclosed information about the call and the condition in which Walter Peca was found, turning a fugitive search into a more detailed homicide case that will now be tested in court.
Shelly Peca’s next proceeding was scheduled for Sept. 28. Prosecutors have not publicly laid out all of the evidence they intend to offer, and the defense has not publicly presented its account of Walter Peca’s death. The long-distance search has ended, but the central legal questions — what occurred in the home, how the evidence will be interpreted and whether the state can prove second-degree murder — remain unresolved.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.