OREGON CITY, Ore., Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Ward Weaver III will spend the weekend in familiar surroundings after being jailed on a rape charge, but the ex-convict was not being implicated Friday in the disappearances of two young girls from an apartment complex near his Oregon City home.
The FBI said it was continuing its search for Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis and had not named Weaver a suspect in the separate disappearances of the two 13-year-old girls as they headed for their middle school earlier this year.
"The rape investigation is being handled by the Clackamas County authorities," FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele told United Press International. "We have nothing new to report."
Weaver, 39, arrested Tuesday on charges he raped his own son's 19-year-old girlfriend. He remained in the Clackamas County jail Friday on $1 million bail pending a formal indictment in the attack expected to be filed early next week.
Francis Weaver, 19, reported the incident to police. According to transcripts obtained by The Oregonian, he told the 911 operator that his father had confessed to murdering Pond and Gaddis and was planning to skip town and move to Mexico.
Authorities have stressed that they had found nothing to link Weaver to the apparent kidnappings of the two girls, but Weaver has a long history of violence and also had personal ties to Ashley Pond.
He served time in prison for assault and has had the police show up at his home 10 times since 2000 to investigate domestic violence. His father, Ward Weaver Jr., is on California's Death Row for the murder of a young couple he had picked up after their car broke down.
In a July interview with the Oregonian, Weaver said Ashley was a friend of his own daughter and a frequent visitor to the house he rented on the same street as the apartment complex in the Portland suburb where the girls were last seen.
Ashley Pond disappeared on Jan. 9 shortly after she left her mother's apartment to catch the bus for school. Miranda, her classmate and neighbor, went missing on her way to school March 8.
No trace of either girl has ever been found despite an intensive search at the time and subsequent searches of the area by tracking dogs. Investigators did not report finding any new leads after arresting Weaver Tuesday night.
"There is no known connection between our arrest last night and the disappearances of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis," Oregon City Police Chief Gordon Huiras said on Wednesday.
Weaver was among the individuals contacted by police after Ashley vanished. He readily told The Oregonian that he had failed a polygraph test "across the board" and had also driven Ashley to school on several occasions.
"She really, really didn't like to get up and catch the bus," Weaver said. "She took her time, waiting until the last minute to take a shower so I would end up having to take her to school."
Weaver's two former wives have also been speaking to the Portland media, recounting incidents of domestic violence but disagreeing on the supposed confession that he made to Francis.
"Ward is a very violent person," Weaver's second wife, Kristi Sloan, told television station KATU. "Before this happened on Tuesday with Francis' girlfriend, I still had a feeling that he had something to do with the two girls missing in Oregon City."
But Maria Shaw, Weaver's first wife and the mother of Francis, expressed doubt about her son's story.
"An angry person whose girlfriend just got raped by his own father -- come on, what would you say?" she asked television station KOIN. "What would you do if you were in his shoes?"
