Portland Man Guilty of Killing Antifa Supporter Had DNA Link to Rape Case

Well, this is a weird twist. First let me bring you up to speed on the backstory. Back in 2019, 23-year-old Sean Kealiher was having drinks with a couple friends at an anarchist bar called Cider Riot. Kealiher was a well known locally as an Antifa activist. 

After leaving the bar, Kealiher got into some kind of confrontation. A car driven by a then-unknown person drove into him on the sidewalk and people believed to have been with Kealiher fired shots at the car. Kealiher himself was taken to the hospital by friends but he succumed to his injuries. The other parties involved fled the scene, leaving the SUV involved in the attack behind.

Immediately there were people suggesting that Kealiher was a victim of right-wing violence. And people connected to Antifa were telling like-minded folks not to cooperate with the police investigation. They held their own memorial service of sorts:

Last night, Portland looked a bit like Charlottesville when antifa black bloc amassed in the dark w/flares to vandalize property to “honor” their deceased comrade Sean Kealiher. Antifa groups are telling followers to not help police in the death investigation. Photos by B0m8sh3ll pic.twitter.com/0Tqtm6jkJ0

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 14, 2019

This became an annual event. In 2021, Antifa did a lot of damage to businesses in the city on the 2nd anniversary of Kealiher’s death.

Antifa projected their (German) logo on the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland last night just before they rioted. They broke into businesses & started fires in the street, doing more than $500,000 in damages. Police made no arrests. https://t.co/RzSgY98nDL pic.twitter.com/c8x3GEnd0v

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 14, 2021

But at that point, police still hadn’t arrested or charged anyone in Kealiher’s death, which seemed really odd given that the SUV used to kill him had been left behind. It wasn’t until Aug. of 2022 that police finally arrested Christopher Knipe in connection with the case. Knipe happened to be leaving a concert at a nearby venue at the same time that Kealiher was leaving Cider Riot. Words were exchanged and Knipe got into his SUV and rammed into Kealiher. Contrary to early suggestions, his death had no connection to politics.

Last September, Knipe pleaded guilty to manslaughter as part of a plea deal.

Christopher Knipe, 48, will accept a sentence of 17 years in prison for killing Sean Kealiher in the early morning hours of Oct. 12, 2019, according to court records…

Knipe and Kealiher’s family have said the killing was the result of a drunken confrontation rather than politics.

Laura Kealiher, Sean Kealiher’s mother, said she had hoped to see the case go to trial, which was scheduled to begin Oct. 23.

“We as a family said we really didn’t want a plea deal,” Kealiher told OPB this week. “We wanted it to go to trial. We wanted to go for murder because he did the three-point turn (and) drove up onto the sidewalk. But, nope.”

But the twist on this case was revealed just last week. In the process of connecting Christopher Knipe to the Kealiher killing, his DNA was also connected to a rape reported in 2003.

Kealiher died in October 2019 in Northeast Portland after Knipe crashed his SUV into the 23-year-old. Knipe and two people he was with that night fled the scene, leaving their vehicle behind. As part of the investigation into the killing, law enforcement collected DNA samples from the SUV.

The Oregon State Police crime lab ran those DNA samples through local, state and federal databases. On Dec. 12, 2019, a state forensic scientist sent a letter to Portland police Detective Scott Broughton, the lead investigator on Kealiher’s death, indicating she had linked Knipe’s DNA from the SUV’s steering wheel to sperm cells recovered in a 2003 rape kit.

The story includes an account of what led up to the 2003 rape.

Officer David Bell responded and found a woman who was barefoot, drunk and crying.

She told police that she and her boyfriend had met a man named Chris and another person at a restaurant near Southeast 41st Avenue and Southeast Holgate Boulevard. The group was drinking and smoking cannabis, according to the woman.

Later, the woman said, the group moved to Chris’ apartment, just a few blocks away from the restaurant, on Southeast Cora Drive. The woman’s boyfriend left because he had to work in the morning, according to the police report, and the woman found herself hanging out with Chris alone in his room.

The woman told police Chris forced her to have intercourse without a condom, and she “told him ‘no’ several times” as she kicked and pushed him away.

After escaping from the apartment, the woman called police. She gave a description of Chris and took police to the site where she believed she’d been raped. Police checked the resident’s name and found it wasn’t Chris but Christopher Knipe lived next door. 

Knipe is not being charged for the rape. Police knew about the DNA connection in 2019 but never contacted the victim. Portland police apparently said that was because the 12 year statute of limitations had expired by the time they learned about it but last year lawmakers extended the deadline to 20 years. So it’s possible charges could have been brought. Police apparently did email the county’s DA office to verify the deadline but never heard back. They realized months later that the prosecutor they had emailed no longer worked there.

So it sounds like a bit of a botch by the police. It took four years to convict Knipe of manslaughter and he’s also not going to face charges on the rape case possibly because police didn’t make an effort to make use of the extended statute of limitations.