Charges filed in case of poisoned lobbyist

By NW Spotlight,

Clackamas County District Attorney John Wentworth made charges in the case of a poisoned lobbyist Joe Gilliam who represented the Oregon Grocery Association. The DA charged Gilliam’s son, Earl Joey Gilliam III, with six felony counts of aggravated theft in the first degree and six counts of criminal mischief. Twice in 2020 Joe Gilliam was poisoned with thallium which has left him a vegetative state in a long term-care facility.

A report showed that in 2021 Earl joey Gilliam took $350,000 from Joe Gilliam’s accounts. The show, Dateline NBC has been interviewing people for an upcoming show.

The Willamette Week notes, “Earlier this year, Joey Gilliam circulated a draft letter to his relatives and Joe’s friends suggesting it might be time to honor his father’s wishes that he not be kept alive by artificial means. That desire stemmed from Joe Gilliam’s having watched his beloved older brother, former state Rep. Vic Gilliam (R-Keizer), suffer a slow, agonizing death from Lou Gehrig’s disease. (Vic Gilliam died June 17, 2020, shortly after Joe Gilliam was poisoned the first time.)Joey Gilliam acknowledged that he contravened his father’s wishes in the weeks he lay in intensive care in an Arizona hospital after the second poisoning.“I also kept my dad alive on life support against his own written medical directive and even if I was after his money or wanted him to die I had every legal power to pull the plug on him right when he first got sick and they would of never known it was thallium,” Joey wrote in an April letter he shared with Joe’s circle.But, Joey Gilliam proposed in that draft letter, it might be time to honor Joe’s wishes. “I am begging anyone who is willing, to help me let my dad be free. The doctors have confirmed he is at baseline and will not ever recover,” he wrote. “Nobody in this world deserves to finish out their life like this.”

Oregon Catalyst