A minivan used in an Oregon murder is found at a junkyard. Can police save it before it becomes scrap metal?

The Race to Save a Minivan Before It Became Scrap

Wertynews.com – Detective Devin Rigo of the Hillsboro Police Department was sprinting toward a metal scrapyard north of Portland, Oregon, fully aware that seconds mattered. The vehicle he needed — a maroon minivan potentially holding critical forensic evidence from a homicide — might still be whole. Or it might already be shredded steel.

The van was linked to the killing of Kenneth “Kenny” Fandrich, a 56-year-old contract pipe fitter whose body was pulled from a parking garage on the Intel campus in Hillsboro on January 27, 2023. Surveillance footage later revealed that a masked figure had dragged Fandrich into the minivan shortly after his work shift ended. Investigators concluded the assailant broke Fandrich’s neck inside the van, then moved the corpse back into the driver’s seat of Fandrich’s own car to disguise the scene.

The Spray-Paint Cover-Up

In the hours following the discovery, Intel security handed over recordings from hundreds of cameras installed throughout the garage. The footage captured a man in a hard hat, tinted glasses, and face mask coating multiple lenses with blue spray paint early that morning. Intel staff had not noticed the intruder at the time, but when detectives reviewed the tapes they realized the paint job was incomplete — enough imagery survived to identify the suspect’s movements.

The sequence of events pointed to a premeditated ambush: someone waited inside the maroon minivan and struck Fandrich the moment he returned to his vehicle. The killer then drove out of the garage in that same van within minutes.

“Because it’s the minivan that we believe was really our main crime scene … We thought there was going to be forensic evidence … in that minivan.” — Detective Devin Rigo

A Stalker With a History

The night Fandrich’s body was recovered, his wife Tanya told investigators the couple had been dealing with a stalker: Dr. Steven Milner, a wealthy former veterinarian. Tanya had spent years working at Milner’s veterinary clinic and the two had carried on an affair she described as long finished. Records showed Kenny Fandrich had filed multiple protection orders against Milner, and Hillsboro officers had personally warned the doctor to stop tailing him. Months before the murder, Milner was caught attaching a GPS tracker to one of the Fandrichs’ cars and faced criminal charges.

After days of work, detectives arrested Milner and charged him with Kenny Fandrich’s murder. Once in custody, they tied both the minivan and a second vehicle back to him — cars he had parked for extended stretches in a Home Depot lot. Rigo and his partner, Detective Stephanie Winter, dubbed them “burner cars.”

“Everybody kind of is more familiar with like a burner phone … where you have a phone that’s not … traced to you but, you know, you can use it for what you need, get rid of it … Essentially, he did the same thing, but with a car.” — Detective Devin Rigo

The Van’s Trail and Its Destruction

Home Depot security footage placed the minivan in that lot until shortly before the killing. Investigators logged the VIN and dispatched flyers to every law-enforcement agency in the region. The first tip arrived from the Oregon Department of Transportation: the van had been towed from the shoulder of busy Interstate 5 in North Portland just days after Fandrich’s death. Detectives concluded Milner had abandoned it there.

Rigo contacted the towing company and learned the vehicle had already been sold to a scrap-metal processor. He raced to the yard hoping to recover what remained. He was, by his own account, exactly one week too late.

“I was able to watch one of my key pieces of evidence be crushed and taken away, before my very eyes … exactly a week too late.” — Detective Devin Rigo

The full arc of the investigation, along with Milner’s trial defense, is explored in this week’s episode of 48 Hours, “Murder in the Parking Garage,” now streaming on Paramount+. Correspondent Natalie Morales follows the hunt for the killer and the desperate attempt to preserve physical evidence before it was reduced to unrecognizable scrap.