A man was charged with three murders in Bend on Monday, two months after the first victim died.
Randall Kilby, 35, was arrested Sunday, after two men were killed at a home in southwest Bend. One of the victims died of hatchet wounds, according to Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel.
Kilby is also charged with murdering a woman who died in January. Daphne Banks, 42, was hospitalized with a head injury sustained on Christmas Day. She later died of those injuries. Kilby and Banks at one point had a romantic relationship, according to Hummel. The district attorney’s office did not bring any charges against Kilby in connection to her injury and death until he was arrested Sunday on suspicion of the other murders.
“[Kilby] provided information about the death of Ms. Banks that was extremely helpful to our investigation,” Hummel said. “Without that additional information, there was insufficient evidence to charge him.”
Kilby currently faces second-degree murder charges for the deaths of Banks, and brothers Jeffrey Taylor, 66, and Benjamin Taylor, 69. The men were roommates with Kilby’s mother.
She was an eyewitness to the murder of Jeffrey Taylor, Hummel said. Kilby took his mother hostage after the murders, according to a description of events provided by the district attorney.
On Sunday, someone called law enforcement to report “that a woman and a man walked by them, and the woman silently mouthed, “help,” Hummel said. Later, the suspect’s mother was able to get free, and run for help.
Speaking at a press conference Monday, Hummel repeatedly insisted that his office did not charge Kilby sooner in the Banks case because of a lack of evidence.
“The question here was how Daphne Banks’ head was struck. Mr. Kilby said she fell and struck her head,” he said. “We’ve determined by virtue of our charging decision that he struck her in the head.”
Hummel said his office had been waiting on a medical report from the Oregon State Police crime lab. He also said that if he had taken the case to trial earlier, Kilby possibly could have beaten the case in court.
“We have never held back on filing homicide charges,” he said. ‘I’m confident that if we charged Mr. Kilby in January, he would have been found not guilty.”