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Victor Romero Jr. served time in California prison for unrelated drug crimes

PRINEVILLE, Ore. (KTVZ) – A Madras man who served time in a California prison for drug crimes has been returned to Central Oregon to face murder, kidnapping and other charges. He is the second person charged in the September 2022 fatal shooting of a Madras man who authorities had listed as missing and endangered.

Detectives from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police arrested 27-year-old Victor Manuel Romero Jr. transported Friday from California’s Corcoran State Prison to the Jefferson County Jail, Crook County District Attorney Kari Hathorn said Sunday.

Romero Jr. and previously arrested co-defendant Audrey Hahn, 33, of Bend, were indicted on three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree kidnapping and unlawful use of a weapon in the killing Thomas Patrick Nielson, 61.

Hathorn explained that the multiple counts each “outline different factors and legal theories about the crimes.”

The same month Nielson was murdered, Romero Jr. arrested in California on unrelated drug charges, Hathorn said. He is expected to be arraigned in Crook County Circuit Court on Monday after the filing of a previously undisclosed indictment.

Hahn, also a former resident of Madras and Redmond, was arrested in September 2023 and pleaded not guilty on murder and kidnapping charges.

Hathorn revealed more details about the couple’s alleged crimes on Sunday in a press release announcing the second arrest in the case.

Nielson was listed as missing and endangered in September 2022, shortly after his mobile home on Culver Highway in Madras was damaged. destroyed by fire. The Jefferson County Fire Department said at the time that the owner or occupant of the vacant mobile home was unknown and the cause of the fire was under investigation.

The subsequent murder investigation revealed that Hahn and Romero Jr. on September 8, 2022, drove to Nielson’s home and then attacked and kidnapped him, prosecutors said.

The pair “took him to a location in Crook County off Lone Pine Road, where Romero and Hahn shot Nielson multiple times,” Hathorn said. “Nielson’s body was found on the private property a year later, on September 9, 2023.”

Hahn was scheduled to appear in court in February, but her attorney filed a motion requesting a postponement in August. She noted that prosecutors had presented “five different theories of murder,” the numerous witnesses — some out-of-state, others transient — and the “voluminous” amount of evidence in the case that needed to be reviewed.

Judge Daina Vitolins agreed to continue the trial, without a new date, and scheduled a Feb. 24 hearing on the status of Hahn’s case.