Everything about the brief call was odd.

At 6:46 p.m., Beverly Parker’s employee phoned to say she had a severe case of strep throat and needed to go to the emergency room. Then the line abruptly went dead.

The employee wasn’t on the schedule to work that night at Herb’s Restaurant and Shenanigans Lounge in Grants Pass, and Parker could tell something was wrong.

She called the woman back three times, but no one answered. She then called her daughter, Angela Milner, and asked her to go check on her friend.

After Milner knocked on the woman’s front door less than 10 minutes later on that Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, she heard her friend screaming for help.

What happened in the days that followed — a weeklong manhunt for repeat kidnapper and torturer Benjamin Obadiah Foster — would become a national news story and reportedly the source material for a Netflix documentary still in the works. Foster’s attempted escape ultimately left two strangers dead, one woman behind bars on suspicion of helping Foster elude capture, and another woman, the employee at Herb’s Restaurant, struggling to survive after Milner discovered her bound and beaten nearly to death inside her home.

The manhunt ended on Jan. 31, 2023, when Foster, 36, shot himself in the head with a .45 caliber pistol while hiding from police in a crawl space under the tortured woman’s home.

She lived.

The Oregonian/OregonLive is not naming the woman because she may be the victim of sexual assault. She did not speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Foster’s crime spree now has been over for a year, but Grants Pass police records and other related documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive suggest the shocking ordeal will stay with residents of this small southern Oregon town for a long time.

It took Foster a year after being released from Nevada state prison to find his next victim.

Foster had grown up in Oregon, living in Medford, on the coast and outside of Grants Pass before moving to Las Vegas, where he found work as a bartender, according to police records and Grants Pass police spokesperson Lt. Jeff Hattersley. He had trained in mixed martial arts, according to an online fundraiser created for the woman he tortured in Grants Pass.

In 2019, he kidnapped his former girlfriend and for two weeks held her captive while torturing her inside her Las Vegas apartment, according to Clark County records. The woman finally escaped, with injuries, including from being bound by her wrists and ankles with zip ties, records show.

Foster spent a single day in prison for the crime, as he got credit for the 729 days he had already spent in jail awaiting trial. After his release, he moved to Grants Pass in October 2021 and found a job as a bartender at Corvette Bar and Grill on Sixth Street. He was fired about two months later, after coworkers who had looked him up online told the bar manager about his criminal record.

But his employment lasted long enough for him to become friends with one coworker, a 35-year-old woman who also worked at Herb’s.

The pair started dating, despite some of her friend’s concerns, police records show. Milner, one of the woman’s close friends, later told police the couple argued often. Danelle Bayne, Corvette’s manager, told police the woman sometimes joked that Foster “would kill her one day.”

He almost did.

One of their arguments led the woman to ask Milner to hang out with her on January 23, 2023, at Shannon’s Pub, about a mile down the street from Herb’s Restaurant, so she could avoid Foster. While the women were at the bar between noon and 3 p.m., one of the woman’s neighbors saw Foster, looking restless, parked for hours outside her home in his dark blue Nissan Sentra.

At about 4 p.m., Foster called the owner of his new workplace, Canyon Creek Tavern, to say he wouldn’t be able to come into work, citing car trouble.

After her worried mother called her that Tuesday, Milner raced to her friend’s house, arriving at 6:55 p.m.

Hearing the woman screaming for help, followed by loud banging noises, Milner dialed 911 and ran to the side door and tried to yank it open. It was locked. She ran back to the front of the house, where she saw that the garage door was now open. Foster was standing there next to his Nissan Sentra.

Foster told Milner her friend was having a heart attack and suggested they take her to the hospital. But when Milner stepped into the home, she realized Foster hadn’t come with her. She turned and saw him getting into his car. He started the engine and sped out of the garage. She read his license plate number to a 911 dispatcher as he disappeared from view.

When Milner ran back inside, she found her friend facedown on her laundry room floor, bleeding profusely from head injuries and with rope looped around her ankles and limbs. Pushing aside her friend’s hair, Milner found another rope wrapped tightly around the woman’s neck.

Grants Pass police officers and paramedics arrived to find the woman breathing in “labored gasps” amid a pool of blood around her face. Bruises on her body ranged from “penny size” to several inches in diameter.

An ambulance rushed the woman to Medford’s Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center.

And Grants Pass police began searching for Foster.

Police released photos of Foster, telling the public he could try to change his appearance by shaving his hair and beard, and warning that they considered him armed and extremely dangerous.

Those dangers didn’t worry Tina Marie Jones, police said. The 68 year old recognized Foster from church and wanted to help after he told her he’d had a fight with his parents and needed a place to stay for a few nights, Jones told police.

So when Foster pulled up outside Jones’s home that night in the unincorporated community of Wolf Creek, about 20 miles north of Grants Pass, she welcomed him inside.

Foster had a plan, of sorts.

The day after arriving at Jones’ home, Foster and Jones drove to Grants Pass, where he bought a cellphone at a Walmart.

Foster’s next step was to ditch his car so it wouldn’t be sitting outside Jones’ house. But he wasn’t fast enough. By the time he decided to send the car down a remote embankment a few miles away, police had discovered his hideout.

Grants Pass and Oregon State Police were in a meeting at 1 p.m. on Jan. 26, 2023 when a detective received a phone call: there was a credible tip that Foster was staying at a home on Sunny Valley Loop Road – a home owned by Tina Jones, whose only companions on the property were her dachshunds.

Grants Pass police rushed to form a perimeter around Jones’ property while they waited for a judge to sign a warrant to search her home. The officers were in a “sniper hide” as they watched Jones and Foster walking around the property with one of Jones’ dogs, Hattersley said.

The dog appeared to sense people nearby and started running toward the hiding officers until Jones called him back. But the dog’s behavior seemed to make Foster suspicious, Hattersley said. He started looking around, and eventually got onto Jones’ roof with a pair of binoculars.

As officers were strategizing ways to arrest Foster without endangering Jones, they saw him and Jones get into their respective cars and drive off the property. The pair returned about an hour later in Jones’ silver 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse. Foster’s car was gone, “dumped down that cliff,” Hattersley said.

That’s when Foster made a run for it, taking off into the nearby woods.

The officers rushed onto Jones’ property and chased after Foster, using drones and a police bloodhound to track him. The bloodhound sniffed Foster’s binoculars and followed his scent through the woods and into a house across the street belonging to Jones’ neighbor, 73-year-old Richard “Rick” Barron, but lost his trail around 7:15 p.m., according to police records and Hattersley.

After Josephine County Circuit Judge Sarah McGlaughlin signed the search warrant around 5 p.m., police searched Jones’ home, finding Foster’s camouflage “go bag,” containing his wallet, as well as a cellphone and a tablet device, both of which were wrapped in aluminum foil.

Meanwhile, officers took Jones to the Grants Pass police station. They found text messages sent from her phone saying “she planned to leave town and turn her phone off,” according to police records. Police also found a web browser on Jones’ phone open to the dating website and application Zoosk, and later warned the public Foster might be using online dating services to lure women as future victims or to help him elude capture.

Jones told detectives at the Grants Pass police station that she was upset to be “placed in this situation,” and that she had only been trying to help someone in need. She was arrested that night.

Weeks later, she would be convicted of hindering prosecution and sentenced to three years of probation and a month in county jail with credit for time served, court records show.

When she was arrested, Jones asked an officer to call her neighbor, Barron, to ask him if he would take care of her dogs while she was in custody. Barron, who’d been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, agreed to do so and assured police he would call 911 if Foster returned to the area.

Foster did return, but Barron never called 911.

Police suspect Barron and a man who lived in a trailer on his property, 64-year-old Donald Griffith, may have helped Foster elude capture after he fled into the woods. When police spoke to the pair later that evening, they didn’t show signs of distress, despite Foster’s scent being detected inside Barron’s house, Hattersley said.

“We don’t know if it was offered assistance or demanded assistance,” Hattersley said. “Unfortunately, we’ll never know since those two people were murdered.”

The final day of the manhunt started with a taxi ride.

Around 7:10 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2023, a police officer reviewing recorded tip-line messages noted a call had come in from Michael Brown, a Grants Pass taxi driver, who said he believed Foster had called the cab company for a ride into town.

For the previous four days, messages like Brown’s had flooded the police tip line, with people claiming to have seen Foster in the area and around the country. None of the tips thus far had proved credible.

This one stood out, however.

Brown’s tip said a man had called the cab company at 6:48 a.m. that day asking for a ride from Sunny Valley Loop Road to the Three Rivers Medical Center in Grants Pass. The caller didn’t leave a name, but his caller ID showed up as a landline number belonging to Richard Barron, Brown told police.

The officer called Brown, who said the company didn’t agree to pick up the man because of “the Foster situation.” Brown told police the caller sounded like a young man.

Police started calling every ride service in and near Grants Pass to determine whether Foster had secured a ride into town.

Officers also called Barron, but he didn’t pick up. An officer went to his house at about 8:15 a.m. and found his cars parked outside. No one answered the door.

A warrant was approved for police to enter Barron’s home to conduct a welfare check about two hours later.

A team of officers forced open the door to Barron’s garage, where they saw a pair of blood-splattered glasses on the ground. The officers followed a trail of blood into the home, where they found two men dead in the living room.

Barron and Griffith were on the floor. A nearby rug was soaked in gasoline.

Police determined the two men died from blunt force trauma injuries sometime after 3:30 p.m. the day before.

Some of Barron’s belongings, including his small white dog, Rascal, were missing. Police sent out a photo of the dog, asking the public to keep an eye out for him.

Just over an hour after finding the two men, the manhunt’s focus returned to where it started.

A police detective learned that cab driver Scott Weiber had agreed to pick up Foster that morning at Barron’s house and drop him off near the intersection of Redwood Avenue and Sun Glo Drive in Grants Pass, three blocks north of the home where the woman was found tortured one week earlier.

SWAT officers descended on the house, sparking an hours-long standoff. Police fired gas munitions at the home, but Foster never emerged.

Finally, a police dog detected Foster hiding in a crawl space underneath the house. Police sent in a robot equipped with cameras. It showed Foster holding a black pistol.

About two hours later, new images from the robot showed Foster with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Officers didn’t hear the gunshot because they had been firing gas canisters into the crawlspace at the time, said Hattersley, the Grants Pass police spokesperson.

Officers crawled under the house on their bellies. They could hear that Foster was still breathing. He was taken to a hospital, where he died within hours.

Grants Pass police said residents found Rascal wandering a few blocks away from the woman’s home. He was taken to a local animal shelter.

For most of the nearly 40,000 residents in Grants Pass, life has gone mostly back to normal since last year. The community still feels like a small town, where people can enjoy life nestled in the mountains along the winding Rogue River and smile at strangers, Hattersley said.

The woman who survived Foster’s attack stayed.

“She’s back to jogging every day and is taking care of herself,” Hattersley said. “Though she’s dealing with a lot of physical and emotional scars.”

Foster’s crime spree changed Grants Pass police, whose leaders spent the past year discussing how they might better handle a future manhunt. One of their first steps was to get more lightweight gear for SWAT officers to help them chase suspects faster through the surrounding wilderness, Hattersley said.

But a year of healing and preparing for a future manhunt will never explain Foster’s actions, said Hattersley.

“There was a sigh of relief from the community and across the nation that he had been caught,” he said. “But there are a lot of unanswered questions as to what caused him to do these crimes and what caused him to target the people that he did.”