A Killer Arrested at Mayville, Oregon
It was February 16, 2001, Clarence Oliver "Ollie" Bean JR., age 56, was arrested at his Mayville home for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend that he had committed some 22 years earlier in a small town in Michigan. Assisting with the Michigan State Police, the Oregon State Police and Gilliam County Sheriff's Office made the arrest and lodged Bean in the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility in The Dalles, Oregon. Since 1980, the Michigan State Police , the Oregon State Police and the Gilliam County Sheriff's Office worked together in the investigation of this case. In the end,Bean's wife testified that she was with Bean when he disposed of Diane Chorba body in the woods near Luther Michigan. Bean was convicted and received from 30 to 60 years in a Michigan Prison. Diane Chorba's remains have never been found.
On May 1979, Diane Chorba, age 30, was pregnant with Bean's second child when she disappeared. Bean claimed Chorba was killed on the doomed flight of American Airlines 191 that crashed in Chicago, Illinois. Chorba's remains were never found, and she was eliminated as one of the passengers on that fateful flight.
In January 1980, as the investigation into Chorba disappearance continued, Bean a truck driver, left Michigan and moved his family to Oregon where he continued to live untile he was arrested.
Bean and his wife had four children, three sons and a daughter. One son drowned in the John Day River. One son was only 28 years old when he was killed in a car accident. One son is in an Oregon Prison for a violent crime he committed. When a domestic violence dispute erupted between Bean and his children, he was shot by his daughter. The injury from the bullet left Bean paralyzed for the rest of his life. He went to jail in a wheel chair.
Today, Bean's wife lives in Mayville. Once a year she returns to Michigan, searching in the wood for the remains of Diane Chorba.
Bean's daughter lives in Gilliam County.
