Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Serial Killers Hunted for ‘Jewish-Sounding’ Victims

A white supremacist couple accused of four West Coast murders said they intended to “kill more Jews,” according to court documents.

David Joseph Pedersen and Holly Grigsby were arrested north of Sacramento, Calif., last week after allegedly killing Pedersen’s father, stepmother and two strangers, including 19-year old Cody Myers, in a monthlong killing spree that spanned California, Washington and Oregon.

According to court documents obtained by FOX 12 Oregon, Grigsby told detectives that the couple killed Myers because they believed he was Jewish based on his last name.

“Grigsby also reportedly commented that when arrested, the couple were on their way to Sacramento to ‘kill more Jews,’ ” said the document.

In a jailhouse interview Monday, Pedersen told the Appeal-Democrat that he was guilty of all four murders, but that Grigsby was forced to participate under duress.

Oregon State Police officials told JTA that they have not yet established probable cause to suspect a hate crime.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.