Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Fort Bliss, Texas, and then to Newport Beach, California, where Forrest enrolled at the North American School of Conservation and Ecology.
In late 1970, Forrest and his wife moved to Battle Ground, Washington, where he found a job with the Clark County Parks Department.
Once in a stable condition, she provided a description of her assailant and the distinctive features of his car; according to her testimony, he drove a blue 1973 Ford van and had greeted several park employees while driving through the area.
As he owned a 1973 blue Ford van and matched the perpetrator's description very well, police obtained a search warrant for his home and vehicle.
While searching his home, officers found jewelry and clothing fragments that belonged to the 20-year-old who also conclusively identified him as her attacker once she was presented a photograph of him.
[5] On July 16, 1976, two Portland residents went to pick mushrooms and wildflowers in Tukes Mountain near Battle Ground, noticing a small brown shoe sticking out of some bushes.
[6] When the mushroomers pulled on the shoe, they saw a skeletal leg and reported the find to the local police, who unearthed the half-skeletonized body of a young woman.
[7] Forensic examination of the jaw led scientists to determine that the remains belonged to 20-year-old Krista Kay Blake, a hitchhiker who disappeared from Vancouver on July 11, 1974.
As Forrest had the same van, he came under suspicion in not only Blake's, but the disappearances and murders of at least six teenagers and young women who had been abducted from Clark County between 1971 and 1974.
A closer look at Blake's clothes led to the discovery of holes on her T-shirt, which investigators believed were made by a dart gun similar to the one Forrest used on the kidnapped 20-year-old woman.
His mother claimed that he had spent part of the day at her house, but left early in the evening and did not return home until the following morning.
Since Blake's clothes and bones showed no signs of stab wounds or bullet holes, the medical examiner concluded that she had likely been strangled.
[13] However, her testimony was deemed unreliable, as prosecutors pointed out that she had originally told investigators that her son left the house in the early evening and did not return until the following morning.
[3] Since his initial convictions, Forrest has remained a suspect in multiple kidnappings, disappearances and murders committed in Clark County during the early-1970s.
[17] He stated that Blake had been deeply depressed at the time of her murder, as well as severely stressed and suffering from the effects of a mental illness, and claimed that he did not intend to kill her at first, but eventually did so because she attempted to escape.
[18] Her skeletal remains were discovered on October 12, 1974, in Clark County, eight miles from Tukes Mountain, where Krista Blake's body was found; however, authorities at the time were unable to positively identify Morrison and she was known simply as a Jane Doe.