Christopher Lovrien is arraigned in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Thursday, March 11, 2021. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP)
An Oregon man was sentenced on Friday for the second of two homicides, putting an ostensible end to his rocky and defiant attempts to defend himself.
In January, Christopher Lovrien, 57, told the Multnomah County court to “go to hell” even as he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing Mark Dribin, 42. He maintained he would have won if he could have afforded a private attorney.
Instead of initially going with a public defender, Lovrien would go on to mostly represent himself for separately killing Kenneth Griffin, 53, but that case didn’t go his way. During the murder trial, Lovrien complained he was being set up.
“I know for a fact that it was stolen,” he reportedly said while accusing prosecutors of taking an autopsy photo from evidence, according to The Oregonian. “This is just sneaky tactics. Your honor will be complicit in allowing this to happen.”
He ultimately relied on standby counsel during the end of the case. Jurors convicted him of second-degree murder and first-degree abuse of a corpse.
Already sentenced to 20 years in prison for Dribin’s death, Lovrien appeared in court Friday to learn his fate for murdering Griffin. The Oregonian noted that contrary to his outbursts in trial, he said nothing as Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 46 years.
Lovrien killed Dribin more than 20 years ago. That victim, who has yet to be found, was last seen alive on July 1, 1999. Prosecutors conceded that they could not determine exactly what happened that fateful night. Lovrien reportedly asserted that he, a meth dealer, met with Dribin at an adult bookstore in the early morning of July 4, 1999.
Dribin invited him home but started to come onto him in his sleep, he said. Investigators discovered a large kitchen knife and signs of cleaned-up blood, but the case went unsolved for about two decades, even though they found Dribin’s Ford Explorer abandoned in a rehab clinic parking lot next to where Lovrien lived at the time.
Investigators said they solved the case in recent years after performing genetic genealogy to link DNA evidence to the defendant’s family. They spoke to Lovrien at a pub, where he denied knowing Dribin, but they got his DNA from a glass and confirmed the match.
The defendant reportedly claimed to have buried the body at Larch Mountain, which is near Portland, though he did not give a precise location.
Lovrien would also be charged with murdering Griffin, whose mother reported him missing on Feb. 2, 2020. She died before the completion of the case.
“That was hard to see her so heartbroken,” Griffin’s brother, Charles Patton, said Friday, according to The Oregonian.
Lovrien reportedly said he shot that victim five times with a crossbow and struck his face with an ax after Griffin refused to leave. He dismembered the remains and hid him in shed. He fell through on a plan to dump the body parts in a river, so investigators made the horrific discovery when they checked out the shed.
“The evil that was put upon my brother that day, or that night, this was an evil act,” Patton said on Friday, according to Portland Fox affiliate KPTV. “I’m not saying you’re evil, but boy it takes some really — you got to be twisted to do the things you did to my brother.”
Lovrien had been locked up for Dribin’s death at the time of the discovery. He instructed his brother not to look in the shed, according to a reported prosecutors’ memo.
“There’s more to this than has been revealed and it’s bad,” he said. “I’ve got Satan in me.”
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘You are a predator,’ judge says while sentencing Indiana man to 130 years in prison for cold case murder and rapes
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
