La Grande's Unsolved 1983 Dana DuMars Case
Spring Avenue and S Avenue (central La Grande), La Grande, OR 97850
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public city park; admission is free.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Maintained municipal park with paved paths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1900 · Unsolved Oregon Homicide · Oregon Court of Appeals Case Law · Local Cold Case
Candy Cane Park is a public city park in central La Grande, in northeastern Oregon's Union County. The park is locally known as Hatchet Park because of an unsolved 1983 case.
On the evening of February 11, 1983, Bart Cochran was overheard at My Wife's Bar making a threat about cutting a woman's head off and was escorted out by a companion. Around 7 a.m. on February 12, two men walking past the park noticed a pool of blood on the sidewalk and followed the trail into the park, where they found Dana DuMars, a 21-year-old bartender, severely injured. She had been struck with a hatchet seven times. DuMars was taken to the hospital and died of her injuries later that day.
Cochran was arrested, tried, and convicted of the killing, but the conviction was overturned by the Oregon Court of Appeals (State v. Cochran, 1985) due to issues with police interrogation and the strength of the evidence. The case has never been solved. In 2025, federal funding cuts forced the closure of the active cold-case investigation, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. The park retains the 'Hatchet Park' nickname in local conversation.
Sources
After the 1983 case, the park's nickname Hatchet Park became part of La Grande oral history, and local accounts described a presence associated with the park's old merry-go-round. Visitors described the merry-go-round spinning unexpectedly and a figure occasionally seen seated on one of the swings or benches. The merry-go-round was eventually removed from the park.
Local folk-history writers, including PNW Haunts and Homicides, frame the park's reputation as a community memory anchor for the unsolved case rather than as a 'haunting' in the strict sense. Visitors are encouraged to approach the park with awareness that the site is associated with a real, named, unsolved homicide.
A short, daytime walk through the small central La Grande park associated with the unsolved 1983 Dana DuMars case. The park's nickname 'Hatchet Park' comes from that case and from the local folklore that followed.
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