David Hebbert Hard

Case record: David Hebbert Hard

Background

Dorothy Biggs was a resident of the tiny Lincoln County community of Eddyville. She ran the Little Elk Store for years, extended credit to customers who were short of ready cash, and put “a small toy or a piece of candy” in shopping bags for children. When she was not running the store, Dorothy Biggs worked as a registered nurse at the New Lincoln Hospital and Health Care Center in Toledo, 20 miles away.

David Hebbert Hart was Dorothy Biggs’s son and was 17 years old at the time of the arrest. People remembered Hart as a quiet, sometimes moody teenage boy who worked in the store with his mother and carried customers’ groceries to their cars. They recalled that he was sometimes “normal David telling jokes, happy as a clam.” Others described “dark sides” to his personality and to Dorothy Biggs’s personality that came out after the murder and at Hart’s murder trial.

Residents who were familiar with the mother-son relationship said Dorothy Biggs and Hart “squabbled frequently, in private” and that Hart “kept a lot of his bitterness bottled up inside.” School teachers and administrators at the Eddyville School, which had 225 students, said Hart “could have been a good student if only he had applied himself.”

David Hart wanted “desperately to be treated like an adult,” but was “not ready or willing to accept the responsibility of being an adult.” In court, District Attorney Ulys Stapleton said one reason for Hart’s “troublesome, anti-social behavior” was his mother.

During the trial, Stapleton introduced files from Oregon’s Childrens Services Division showing that Hart was physically and mentally abused as a young child by Dorothy Biggs and his stepfather, Dwight Biggs. Dwight Biggs was convicted in 1983 of fourth-degree assault after threatening Hart with a knife.

The offence

Dorothy Biggs was murdered. After her murder, homicide investigators described that she was tortured before being killed by her son. District Attorney Ulys Stapleton stated that Dorothy Biggs was kicked down the stairs of their upstairs home, beaten with fists and a baseball bat, and then strangled.

Family members testified that Dorothy Biggs, on the day of her murder, told Hart, “We’d all be better off if you Were dead.”

After deliberating five hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict against David Hart on Jan. 21, 1985.

Investigation

After Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputies found Dorothy Biggs’s strangled and beaten body on Aug. 4, 1984, deputies arrested David Hebbert Hart at the Little Elk Store. The arrest occurred in the same building that housed the family’s second-floor residence and the scene of the brutal murder.

Investigators found blood on David Hart’s clothes that matched Dorothy Biggs’s blood type. Investigators also linked the evidence to a baseball bat that Hart used on his mother.

Arrest

On Aug. 4, after deputies found Dorothy Bigg’s strangled and beaten body, deputies arrested David Hebbert Hart. He was arrested at the Little Elk Store in the same building that included the family’s second-floor residence and the murder scene.

Trial

Hart’s murder trial occurred the following January.

District Attorney Ulys Stapleton later said Dorothy Biggs was tortured before she was killed by her son, kicked down the stairs of their upstairs home, then beaten with fists and a baseball bat before she was strangled.

During the trial in Lincoln County Circuit Court, Hart’s attorney, Thomas O. Branford, told jurors in his opening statements that he would present evidence showing that Dorothy Biggs offered Hart half the money from her insurance policy if he would burn down a vacant house on her property.

Hart was later convicted of arson. During the same trial, Stapleton also offered evidence that Hart himself offered money to strangers to kill his mother.

At the trial, Stapleton introduced files from Oregon’s Childrens Services Division indicating that Hart was physically and mentally abused as a young child by Dorothy Biggs and his stepfather, Dwight Biggs, when the family lived in Portland back in the 1970s. Dwight Biggs had been convicted in 1983 of fourth-degree assault after threatening Hart with a knife.

During the six-day trial, after deliberating five hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict against David Hart on Jan. 21, 1985.

Sentencing

David Hart sat impassively as the guilty verdict was read. He was subsequently sentenced to life by trial Judge A.R. McMullen.

Timeline

• Aug. 3, 1984 — Dorothy Biggs was murdered.
• Aug. 4, 1984 — Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputies found Dorothy Biggs’s strangled and beaten body and arrested her 17-year-old son David Hebbert Hart at the Little Elk Store.
• Jan. 21, 1985 — After deliberating five hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict against David Hart and he was sentenced to life by trial Judge A.R. McMullen.
• 1983 — Dwight Biggs was convicted in connection with threatening Hart with a knife; the conviction was for fourth-degree assault.

Other details

David Hart’s fishing trip the day before the murder was described as taking place in the Yaquina River, east of Toledo, with a friend, 17 year-old Laric Cook. Cook later told a reporter for The Oregonian newspaper that Hart was “the normal David telling jokes, happy as a clam.” Cook said Hart did not discuss his mother and nothing seemed to be bothering him.

People could not believe David Hart could do such a thing. They remembered him as carrying customers’ groceries to their cars and working in the store with his mother.

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