Man’s ‘utterly senseless’ murder tied to troubled neighbor

UPDATE • The 24-year-old suspect was no stranger to police

By Kelly Moyer

The South County Spotlight, Mar 4, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

Joshua Wayne Cubbage, 24, has been charged with murder and burglary in the death of Vernon McCullough, a retired Albertson's produce manager who lived in a neighborhood off Highland Road about six miles north of St. Helens.

File photo / The South County Spotlight

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Six months ago, on a quiet road about six miles north of St. Helens, residents woke up to a grisly discovery.

One of their own – a man who kept to himself, rode his bike around the back roads near his house and never forgot to wave to his neighbors – had been found murdered on his own property.

There were few details to go on.

All most people in the neighborhood knew was that Vernon McCullough, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran with a shaggy beard and thick glasses who had worked as a produce manager in a Beaverton-area Albertson’s grocery store for many years before retiring to his acreage off Highland Road, was dead, the victim of “blunt force trauma” according to detectives who scanned the area for clues, interviewing McCullough’s neighbors and friends.

“He lived up there alone,” Marge McElroy, one of McCullough’s neighbors said of the retired veteran. “He wasn’t a troublemaker, just a nice, quiet person. It’s just utterly senseless.”

Last week, the Highland Road residents received more disturbing news: McCullough’s neighbor had been charged with McCullough’s murder.

On Friday, Feb. 27, Joshua Wayne Cubbage, a 24-year-old whose mother lives next to McCullough’s property off Highland Road, appeared via closed circuit television in Columbia County Circuit Court. He is charged with one count of murder and one count of burglary in the first degree in connection to McCullough’s homicide.

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