Authorities said a burned shed did not erase the trail linking Bobby Alsup to Kaley Snow’s killing in March 2024.
OREGON CITY, Ore. — The case against Bobby Lee Alsup turned on what investigators said he could not hide: cellphone location data, blood evidence and internet searches that prosecutors used to tie him to Kaley Snow’s killing and the fire that followed.
That investigative record ended in a guilty verdict on March 17, 2026, and a life sentence eight days later. Prosecutors said Snow was killed in her home on March 17, 2024, then hidden in a shed and burned on March 21. The importance of the case now lies in how it was proved. Public statements from the district attorney’s office and courtroom reporting show a prosecution built less on confession than on reconstruction, using digital traces and forensic findings to answer the defense claim that Alsup only found Snow’s body and tried to conceal it.
Investigators said the timeline came together first through phones. Cellphone records, according to the district attorney’s office, placed Alsup at Snow’s home on Southeast Flavel Drive when she was killed and again when the shed was set on fire just after midnight on March 21, 2024. Prosecutors said the data showed he was at the property for roughly four hours on March 17, when they believe he struck Snow twice with a hammer. They later used the same records to pinpoint the fire-setting at about 12:15 a.m. on March 21. That two-date pattern became central to the case because it linked one suspect to both the killing and the attempted destruction of evidence. Prosecutors told jurors that the same phones also undercut any suggestion that Alsup had only stumbled onto the scene.
The physical evidence filled in what the phones could not. The district attorney’s office said investigators found a large pool of blood on the living room floor, hidden under furniture. They recovered a hammer from a toilet with cleaning liquid in it and said Snow’s blood and DNA were on the hammer’s face and neck. Snow’s blood and DNA were also found on Alsup’s shoes and sweatpants, according to prosecutors. Authorities further said he texted Snow after her death to create an alibi and made internet searches asking whether police had found her body or begun a missing-person investigation. Senior Deputy District Attorney Stacey Borgman told jurors that Alsup’s physical and digital DNA was “all over that crime scene,” a line that captured the state’s theory that nearly every part of the cleanup effort had left behind more evidence instead of less.
The defense case challenged responsibility, not the violent end itself. One of Alsup’s lawyers argued that he returned to the house, found Snow already dead and hid her body because he feared being blamed. Prosecutors called that implausible, and the jury agreed. Their verdict covered second-degree murder, first-degree arson, first-degree theft, first-degree abuse of a corpse and unlawful use of a weapon. Public reporting from the trial added another layer to the state’s motive theory: Snow had rented Alsup a room weeks before the killing, and prosecutors said he quickly began taking items from the home and selling them online. They also said the two were secretly involved romantically and that Snow had told a friend she feared he might try to kill her. Those details did not replace the forensic case, but they gave jurors a story about why the violence and cover-up may have happened.
The sentencing record expanded the legal picture. Judge Jeffrey Jones imposed life with the possibility of parole after 25 years and added prison terms for arson and abuse of a corpse. County officials said the result means Alsup must serve 352 months before parole eligibility, and those terms run consecutive to a 70-month Washington County sentence he received last year for assaulting a jail inmate. Officials also publicly listed earlier convictions for assault and arson. Alsup told the court he intended to appeal and maintained his innocence. That leaves the next phase focused not on new fact-finding by a jury, but on whether appellate lawyers can challenge how the evidence was presented or how the convictions were entered.
Even at the end of a largely evidence-heavy case, the human loss was not absent. Snow’s mother told the court her daughter had tried to help others and had tried to help Alsup, too. Her statement gave a personal counterweight to a prosecution built on records, lab results and timing. The legal case may now move to appellate review, but the prosecution’s account remains defined by the same core idea: a killing inside a home, a body moved to a shed and a fire that did not destroy the trail investigators followed.
Currently, Alsup stands convicted and sentenced, with the record anchored in digital and forensic evidence. The next milestone is any appeal filed after the March 25, 2026, judgment in Clackamas County Circuit Court.
Author note: Last updated April 9, 2026.