KEIZER — Forty years ago this week, former Philomath Police Chief Richard Raleigh nearly lost his life.
In one of the most bizarre and violent episodes in the local police department’s history, Raleigh on Jan. 8, 1985 was held hostage at knifepoint for nearly four hours before one of his own officers and a sheriff’s deputy burst through a door and shot the suspect.
In the moment, Raleigh was in a struggle with the knife-wielding man but had luckily gotten out of the way far enough to escape the stream of bullets.
“I could actually see bullets flying through the air,” Raleigh said during an interview at his Keizer home Monday morning. “I could see them. It’s like time slowed way down and they were coming right by my arm.”
The man who held him hostage was killed.
Raleigh, who is now 81, agreed to revisit the incident all of those years ago when Bradley Dennis Covany took him hostage.
During a 28-year career in law enforcement, Raleigh never shot anybody in the line of duty. In fact, he drew his gun only twice — both times in Multnomah County where he worked as a deputy sheriff. On one occasion, a suspect rushed him with a knife and on another, the individual came at him with an ax.
Violent, life-threatening confrontations were especially rare in a small, quiet town like Philomath, which at the time had between 2,500 and 3,000 residents.
Raleigh hired as police chief in 1975
Raleigh joined the Philomath Police Department as its chief in May 1975 to replace the retiring Joe Murphy. He was working as a deputy for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office before taking the Philomath job. Prior to that position, he served with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office for four years while working toward a degree from Oregon State University, which he earned in 1974.
A Minnesota native, Raleigh served in the U.S. Army with counterintelligence work among the skills in his background. After relocating to Oregon, his first job was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Portland office as a clerk.
“When I first started there were only three,” Raleigh said when asked how many Philomath officers he had in the department. “I got a federal grant to get another guy and so that boosted us up to four pretty quickly after I took over and it gradually went up to seven — counting me.”
The police station during Raleigh’s tenure was located at 1215 Main St. — the building is now called Main Street Station and rents out office space. The building also housed City Hall and for a time served as the location of the local library. The police have been using its current station since 2005.
Covany’s connection to Philomath
Raleigh, who was 41 at the time, remembers Covany as a troubled former member of the military who had battled mental illness. Originally from California — he’s buried in Los Angeles County and at the time of his death at age 31, his mother lived in Van Nuys — Covany had a former wife and two children living in Philomath.
“His wife chose Philomath to escape from him basically,” Raleigh said. “But he tracked her down.”
The first time Raleigh crossed paths with Covany involved a violent incident outside of the police station.
“One day, one of my officers was out in the parking lot there and this guy walked up to him and just smacked him in the face as hard as he could — knocked him down,” Raleigh said. “He grabbed his radio and called for help. The sergeant and I were both in the office, ran out there and grabbed this guy and cuffed him up.”
The man’s reason for striking the police officer was a mystery. Raleigh said the police didn’t know who he was with no previous run-ins with law enforcement around Philomath. Obviously, he was arrested on assault charges and hauled off to jail.
“That was the last I heard about him for a while,” Raleigh said. “Apparently, his parents came and got him and took him back to California.”
A couple of weeks later, however, he was back in Philomath.
Taken hostage in his own office
Raleigh and Covany crossed paths again on the evening of Jan. 8, 1985.
That day, Raleigh had been in Coos Bay performing a background investigation on a potential Philomath police officer hire. He returned to town in the late afternoon.
“We used to have two parking spaces in the back of that building,” he said. “There was a garage so I came in, backed into the garage and closed the door, went through the building and into the police station.”
Raleigh then added, “I forgot my gun under the seat of the car, which was a good thing as it turned out.”
Alone in the building, Raleigh headed to his office. An officer on duty was out on patrol and the employee who split clerking duties between the police department and municipal court had gone home for the evening.
Not long after 5 p.m. Raleigh heard someone rapping on the door.
“I went out there and didn’t recognize him. The only time I had seen him was when we were wrestling around putting cuffs on him and I saw the back of his head,” Raleigh said. “So I unlocked the door and he jerked it open and stuck a big Bowie knife right up to my throat, you know, a sheath knife. So he had me.”
Raleigh was just glad that he had left his revolver in the car.
“It’s a damn good thing because the first thing he did was (tell me to) ‘lock the door’ and so I did and then he patted me down and I didn’t have any weapons,” Raleigh said. “So if I had a gun, then he would’ve had it.”
The police station had shotguns in Raleigh’s office behind wooden doors and a padlock.
“He didn’t know anything about that,” he said. “I had the keys right on my key ring but he obviously didn’t know that.”
So, the weapon of choice for the ordeal was the large knife — held in place against Raleigh’s back.
“He ended up holding me with that knife right here in my kidneys for four hours or so — give or take,” he said. “And he had a hold of my belt the whole time.”
A request for the media and FBI agents
Raleigh recalled that the first thing Covany wanted to do was notify the media.
“He wanted TV stations, newspapers, radio, everybody,” Raleigh said. “So I called dispatch on the nonemergency line and said, ‘I’m being held hostage here and this guy wants all of the media to come here.’ And also, the FBI was specifically requested.”
The dispatcher determined through a few questions that Covany didn’t have a gun. Media outlets and the FBI, which had an office in Eugene, were contacted.
“Unbeknownst to me, there started to be quite an accumulation of people across the street watching into the office,” Raleigh recalled. “We didn’t move around a lot. I sat at a little countertop where we had a couple of IBM electrics (typewriters) and a phone and he sat in a chair right behind me with this knife here all the time.
“So that’s how we spent two or three hours.”
Eventually, Covany wanted to use a copier to make a copy of what could be called a manifesto, which he had written out on a roll of paper — the kind that back in those days were used in dot matrix printers. The only copy machine was located across the hall in the city recorder’s office, which was separated from the police station area of the building by a locked metal door and a hallway.
Covany to Raleigh: ‘I’m going to kill you’
When they reached the door, Covany took the key to unlock it and in that process, had to take the knife away from Raleigh’s back.
“As soon as we open the door, there’s two cops there — one of them’s mine and the other one’s a deputy sheriff,” Raleigh said. “They had been on the floor looking under the door watching us but they saw us coming so they jumped up. He opens the door and there they are — right there. So he slams the door again.”
Covany then attacked Raleigh.
“The guy starts jumping around and he’s got the knife in his hand going ‘I’m going to kill you … I’m going to kill you,’” Raleigh said. “He kept trying to stab me.”
To defend himself, Raleigh kept blocking Covany’s attempts to get to him.
“We danced around in that tiny little room where the file cabinets were for a few seconds and he made several jabs at me,” Raleigh said. “But I never did get cut. He hit my arm several times but he never got me with the knife.”
To explain, Raleigh said his attacker was holding the knife with the same grip that he had when it was in his back and not in a way where he could easily come down at him in a stabbing motion. The awkwardness of his grip on the knife played in Raleigh’s favor.
“He would have been far more effective if that knife was sticking out in the other direction,” Raleigh said. “Far more effective.”
Law enforcement ends ordeal with gunshots
Meanwhile, the Philomath police officer had a key to the door that had been slammed shut and opened it.
At that moment, Raleigh was in a position back by the door with Covany in front of him. Gunshots ended the ordeal.
“My officer had one shot in the heart and the other guy, the deputy, fired several times and got him in the ankle, in the thigh and somewhere here,” Raleigh said, motioning to places on his body. “He got him all over the place. I think the deputy almost emptied his gun. So he went down and never came back up.”
According to a news report published at the time, Covany died from five gunshot wounds.
As soon as the shooting started, the front door of the station opened and several others rushed in — FBI agents among them.
“’Did you have to shoot him’ were the first words out of one of their mouths,” Raleigh remembered. “Well yeah, he was trying to stab me.”
As far as the manifesto that Covany had penned, it basically said his kids were being poisoned — by the city of Philomath with its water supply and by the school district with its teachings, Raleigh recalled.
“The water department was poisoning his kids and the school was poisoning their minds,” Raleigh said the man claimed. “We (the police) represented the city 24 hours a day and I guess that’s why he picked on us.”
The aftermath includes $3.5 million lawsuit
In the following months, Covany’s mother filed a $3.5 million lawsuit against various entities, including the city of Philomath, a local police officer (however, not the one who shot him) and Benton County. Among the woman’s claims was that the FBI agents had negotiated a peaceful settlement when Raleigh allegedly tried to overpower Covany and in the struggle, her son was shot to death.
An Oregon State Police investigation reviewed the case and determined that the officer and the deputy were justified in shooting Covany. Several months later, the lawsuit was dismissed by the judge hearing the case.
Raleigh got out of the ordeal with only bruises on both arms and on his left foot.
“The shooting was obviously necessary,” he said. “I came pretty close to getting killed.”
Back at the time, law enforcement involved in such incidents were not required to take administrative leave and there were no sessions arranged with mental health professionals. In fact, Raleigh was back at work two days later.
Raleigh retired as Philomath’s police chief in June 1998 after 23 years of service — his last job in law enforcement. He worked for a few years for a private investigation and security company and performed volunteer work, including for Mount Union Cemetery. To this day, he continues to contribute to the organization by providing updated directories of the individuals buried there.