By Lee Juillerat Ashland.news Janine O’Neill has been a newspaper reporter, prosecutor and crime victims’ rights attorney. She became the author of a book, not the one she originally planned to write, when she learned often lurid detail about a family that spawned three generations of serial killers in the suburbs near her Portland home. “I wanted to write a true crime book,” says O’Neill. “I had another in mind but …” “But” happened when she began reporting about a family that had spawned three generations of killers in the suburbs near her Portland home. “I got obsessed.” Obsessed enough that for 10 years while working other jobs meticulously gathering facts for her book “Close to Home: Sexual Abusers and Serial Killers, Memoir and Murder.” It’s a carefully detailed study of three generations of men in the Weaver family – Ward Weaver, his son Pete, and Francis, Pete’s son. Her obsession began while working as a reporter for the Portland Tribune when she was assigned to assist another reporter with stories on cases involving the Weaver family in Clackamas County. The reality of what happened proved wildly than fiction. O’Neill used knowledge gained through her earlier work as a Clackamas County prosecutor who focused on sex abuse cases to relentlessly piece together information to tell the withering story of the Weavers. It wasn’t easy. “Some of the people really had trust issues,” O’Neill recounts of interviewing family members and others who knew, and sometimes were victimized, by the Weaver men. “I tried to go back to all the houses where they lived,” she says of tracking the men and their victims. Many of the people she attempted to interview were “extraordinarily reluctant … There were a lot of people who didn’t want to talk to me.” Because of her legal background, O’Neill had the knowledge of how to root through police and court records. What began as writing about two missing 12-year-old Oregon City girls who went mysteriously in 2002 led to her very personal relentless search for information that has resulted in “Close to Home,” which is more than just a “true crime” book. Over the years, as facts have emerged, it’s now known the Weavers committed multiple murders, with the possibility dozens have never been documented. Despite “big chunks of discouragement,” O’Neill has produced a documentary style book that indicates the sometimes problematic role of state child protection and law enforcement agencies along with her personal frustration at not having asked that in retrospect she wishes she had asked. Although O’Neill believes some individuals and agencies “dropped the ball,” as when three people reported allegations of attempted rapes to children’s services agency but no reports were filed, she notes many agencies “have caseloads that are completely unimaginable.” She also believes that “some of the investigators were so component and put so much into it.” Over the course of her investigation – “I love research” – she traveled to seven states with her husband and their dog.” It was like a part-time job and it lasted forever.” What she and police learned is shocking. One Weaver buried one of his victims, a young woman, in the backyard of his home. Another buried two young girls under a concrete slab, which he had poured, under his back porch. Interviews with the Weavers by O’Neill and others reveal frighteningly psychotic men who seemingly felt immune to prosecution. As an example, Pete Weaver, who had offered to admit to two dozen unsolved murders in exchange for a sentence of life in prison, is still alive in San Quentin. According to O’Neill, “California taxpayers have paid at least a million dollars for his and the government’s legal investigation and other costs.” Likewise, Francis Weaver, who it was learned is not Pete’s biological son, was convicted of a 2014 murder but the charge was reduced to manslaughter by the Oregon Supreme Court in 2021. O’Neill includes interviews with academics and experts on genetics and trauma. Through her book, “I hope they (readers) gain a real understanding of the danger kids live in,” noting that although rare, incidents of childhood trauma do happen within families and are “not stranger danger.” For her Ashland reading, O’Neill plans to read from her different, often only a few pages long, chapters – “I try to cover different aspects of the story. I really hope people turn out.”