PRAIRIE CITY — The prime suspect in a vicious murder that occurred in John Day on Feb. 28 has been arrested.

Gary Dylan Cavan, 42, was taken into custody Wednesday, March 5, by Grant County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police personnel after a five-day manhunt.

According to information from the sheriff’s office, someone called 911 at 10:50 a.m. to report that a male subject fitting Cavan’s description had broken into the old Sags Motel just outside Prairie City. 

As sheriff’s deputies and state troopers were responding to the former motel, which is no longer open to the public, they were advised that Cavan had fled west down Highway 26 and into some nearby juniper trees. Cavan was located southeast of the motel near a ridgetop and taken into custody without incident at 11:18 a.m., the sheriff’s office announced.  

Cavan is facing a charge of second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend Janelle Klaar, who was found beaten to death on Friday, Feb. 28, at the John Day Motel.

Klaar, a 41-year-old Lincoln City resident, had reportedly come to John Day to see Cavan and was staying in Room 204 of the motel at 250 E. Main St. 

At 9:07 a.m. on Feb. 28, deputies responded to a welfare check request at 204 NW Seventh St. in John Day, where Cavan reportedly had been living. Deputies went to the home but no one answered the door.

Then, at 10:52 a.m. on Feb. 28, Grant County Dispatch had a call about a woman in Room 204 at the motel who was bleeding from a head wound. Police arrived at 10:56 a.m., and Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley found Klaar’s body in the room.

“She appeared to have been struck in the head repeatedly with a yellow handled hammer that was present,” the sheriff wrote in a probable cause affidavit.

Witnesses at the motel said video footage showed a male arriving and departing the motel the previous night.

McKinley wrote in the affidavit that the male in the video “matches the description of Gary Cavan.”

Klaar was the only person staying on the second floor of the motel, according to the affidavit.

“There was a brief time witnesses heard commotion, but then it stopped and nothing else was heard,” McKinley wrote.

Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter issued a press release early Saturday, March 1, naming Cavan as a person of interest in a murder. The release stated Cavan was last seen in Baker City and should be considered armed and dangerous.

On Feb. 28, the day Klaar’s body was found, Carpenter filed a charge of second-degree murder against Cavan.

The same day, Grant County Circuit Court Judge Robert S. Raschio signed an arrest warrant for Cavan.

The investigation was a joint effort between the Grant County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police.

“It’s all hands,” McKinley said on March 1. “We want this guy caught quickly.”

According to the probable cause affidavit McKinley wrote, Undersheriff Zach Mobley on Feb. 27 at 12:09 p.m. talked with Klaar, who was “distraught,” at the bus stop outside Chester’s Market in John Day.

“She claimed she had been dropped off in John Day and could not get out of town,” according to the affidavit.

The Heart of Grant County, a local nonprofit that primarily serves victims of domestic violence, rented a room at the John Day Motel for Klaar and bought her a bus ticket so she could leave the morning of Feb. 28.

According to the affidavit, Klaar told staff from Heart of Grant County that she had come to John Day to see Cavan, whom she had known for about six months.

On Monday, March 3, District Attorney Carpenter provided additional information about the victim in the case and the man accused of taking her life.

Klaar was from the Lincoln City area and had been in a relationship with Cavan, Carpenter said. They had been together in Lincoln City as recently as mid-February, Carpenter added, before Cavan came to John Day with his mother, Mickie Lynn Turner, to stay at the Seventh Street address, the home of Turner’s boyfriend.

About a week later, on Feb. 23 or 24, Klaar came to John Day, Carpenter said. He added that it wasn’t clear how she had traveled to the area, but “she didn’t have a vehicle.”

Cavan’s criminal record started early in his life.

In 1998, when he was 16 years old, Cavan was convicted of second-degree assault, third-degree assault and first-degree criminal mischief in Multnomah County and sentenced to 70 months in state prison, court records show.

According to court filings, Cavan in October 2003 pleaded guilty in Umatilla County to two counts of second-degree assault and one count of assaulting a public safety officer. He was sentenced to 30 months in state prison.

While incarcerated at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, court records state, Cavan attacked a prison guard, striking him repeatedly with a homemade sap, biting off a piece of the guard’s cheek and attempting to spit it into his mouth before being subdued by additional guards.

Cavan’s mother, Mickie Turner, is now facing charges in connection with her son’s flight after the killing of Klaar.

Turner is facing two counts of hindering prosecution, both felonies, for allegedly providing her son with transportation and concealing or harboring him after the murder.