Then, while conducting door-to-door welfare checks in the region early this week, the authorities found the bodies of Mr. Griffith and Mr. Barron. Their deaths were ruled homicides, the authorities said, adding that they believed the men had died from “blunt force trauma,” sometime between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Some items were missing from the home, according to the authorities, including a dog.
“We have no outstanding suspects in relation to the deaths of Mr. Barron and Mr. Griffith,” Dave Daniel, the Josephine County sheriff, said at the news conference. “We believe that those are related to Benjamin Foster at this time.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Foster traveled back to the home where he had abused the woman in Grants Pass, the authorities said, and where he ultimately ended up in the standoff with police officers.
The case involving Mr. Foster had been described by officials in Grants Pass as one of the most disturbing they had ever seen in the small city of about 39,000 in southern Oregon, where homes are surrounded by forests. It drew particular concern after officials said Mr. Foster might have been using dating apps either to target more victims or to force someone to help him elude capture. The authorities later clarified that, saying they did not believe he had used the apps to actively recruit or manipulate anyone.
Investigators had used police dogs to search for Mr. Foster in the woods last week, and Lt. Jeff Hattersley of the Grants Pass Police Department said in an interview on Friday that officers had exhaustively looked into every tip or lead about his whereabouts.
On Jan. 26, the authorities found Mr. Foster’s car in Wolf Creek, a neighboring unincorporated community in Josephine County. That evening, the police also arrested Tina Marie Jones, who investigators believe hid Mr. Foster and helped him evade officers. She was charged with two counts of hindering prosecution, Lieutenant Hattersley said.
A friend of the victim who had been concerned about not hearing from her in hours walked to her home on Jan. 24 and “interrupted” the torture that Mr. Foster had been inflicting, Lieutenant Hattersley said in the interview.