The financial troubles of the family at the center of the North Portland “red house” occupation date back nearly 20 years to a criminal case involving the former owners’ son.
William Kinney III pleaded guilty in 2002 to felony hit-and-run, third-degree assault and the juvenile equivalent of criminally negligent homicide for causing the death of an 83-year-old man, Frederick Goetz, and seriously injuring Goetz’s wife, Ann.
Fred Goetz was an outdoors writer and at one time owned Cameron’s Books & Magazines, a downtown bookstore.
Kinney, who now goes by William X. Nietzche, was 17. At the time of the wreck, his driver’s permit had been suspended for driving without insurance.
According to police and court records, Kinney was driving with three friends back to Cleveland High School after lunch when Kinney was speeding, ran a stop sign and slammed his car into the Goetzes’ car.
Kinney entered the Oregon Youth Authority in 2002 before transferring to the Oregon Department of Corrections, where he remained until 2007, according to state records.
During a 2005 court hearing, Kinney’s family members made an unsuccessful plea to a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge for Kinney’s release.
In a letter to Judge Julie Frantz, Kinney’s sister, Michele Metcalf, said her parents refinanced their house to pay for a criminal defense lawyer for her brother.
“This put our family in financial devastation, an outrageous mortgage,” she wrote to Frantz, adding that prison phone bills and sending money to Kinney in prison added to her parents’ burden.
“Right now our family is pretty much at rock bottom (emotionally and financially),” she wrote.
Kinney, now 35, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday that his family paid $26,000 for his legal bills. He is identified in police, court and corrections records by the last name Kinney.
In a separate case, Kinney was sentenced to prison a decade ago for 5 ½ years.
He had been arrested in 2007 on illegal driving and drug allegations after police found him asleep in a van early one morning with crack and cocaine, according to court records. He had a “wad of cash” and admitted he’d been driving “and hitting the pipe,” the records said.
Authorities issued warrants for his arrest in 2008 and 2009 after he repeatedly skipped out on court dates in the case, court records show. Police arrested Kinney in 2010.
A Multnomah County jury found him guilty of two counts of driving with a revoked license and possessing a substantial quantity of cocaine.
At his sentencing hearing in 2010, Judge Leslie Roberts found Kinney in contempt of court 12 times for loudly and repeatedly interrupting and talking over her and the attorneys.
When Kinney got a chance to speak at the hearing, he said he was a sovereign individual, an “Indigenous” man and a “remnant of the divine people.” He told the court at the time that he answered only to God and not to the laws of Oregon.
Prosecutor Ryan Lufkin urged the judge to send him to prison for 5 ½ years, as long as possible under Oregon sentencing guidelines, to protect the public from him. Lufkin noted that Kinney’s disrespect for the law had resulted in death before.
“We are going to see Mr. Kinney again,” Lufkin told the court. “He is not going to obey the law.”
Kinney’s lawyer asked the judge for a sentence of 2 ½ years but the judge rejected the proposal. Roberts told Kinney that by continuing to drive, he was “playing Russian roulette with everyone’s lives.”
His license was revoked for life, although Oregon law allows him to ask to get it back after 10 years. Kinney told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he has had his license reinstated. State DMV records, however, show a person by the name of William X. Nietzche has a suspended driver’s license.
While in prison, Kinney violated rules on 15 occasions between 2003 through 2013, according to the state Department of Corrections. The violations included possession of contraband, assault and disobedience, prison records show.
Asked about his prison disciplinary record, Kinney said it was a difficult environment.
“It was a jungle in there,” he said. “I don’t know how I survived. It’s a blessing and a miracle to have survived such drastic circumstances.”
Kinney referred to the felony hit-and-run as a “mere accident.”
He said the criminal justice system “worked in tangent with the displacement schemes” to send him to prison and to financially drain his family.
“I was definitely railroaded on both cases,” he said.
Kinney said he grew up in the house on North Mississippi Avenue – now known as the “Red House on Mississippi.”
It belonged to the Kinney family for about six decades, starting in the 1950s, they say on a website.
The family had paid off the house but took out a mortgage after Kinney’s first arrest to pay for defense attorneys, according to the website and court records.
A lender foreclosed on the house for nonpayment in 2018 and sold it to a developer at an auction, public records show.
Kinney was arrested at the property on a trespassing accusation Tuesday morning after Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies and Portland police converged on the home to allow contractors to put up a fence and board up the house.
Kinney said he has been “staying in and out of the red house.” He said he was arrested while inside the house.
His brother, Michael Kinney, 30, also was arrested Tuesday on a trespassing allegation.
People have been camping at the property in an effort “to reclaim” it for the family since a court ruling in September instructed law enforcement to turn the house over to its rightful owner, Urban Housing Development Ltd.
The arrests and police presence drew a crowd of up to 200 people as some chased officers away, screaming at them and throwing rocks.
Occupiers have stockpiled homemade shields, rocks and bricks and fashioned homemade spike strips to puncture the tires.
Their blockade stretched two-and-a-half blocks, from North Skidmore Street to Blandena Street, along North Mississippi and Albina avenues, with groups of black-clad guards posted at each intersection.
Mayor Ted Wheeler has said he will not allow the protesters to establish an “autonomous zone,” like the one activists built in Seattle last summer. He said he has authorized the police to “use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation” in the gentrifying North Portland neighborhood.
-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
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