It's correction time with Margie Boulé

The story of Goldschmidt and the little girl is actually creepier than you thought

“Hi Phil,” the email begins. “Great work in your Substack pieces.”

Why, how nice to hear from my long-ago, fellow Oregonian columnist, Margie Boulé.

“I’m so glad more pieces of the truth finally are getting out there,” she says.

Which, coming from Margie, is high praise indeed. She just happens to be the ranking expert on Elizabeth Dunham, the young girl who former mayor and governor Neil Goldschmidt kept pretty much as his own private sex toy, and who died a broken person thirteen years ago.  

Margie had just read my latest Substack column, “More Dirt on Goldschmidt’s Dirty Little Secret,” and obviously wanted to compliment me on my great work, right?

Well, not exactly. Or as Margie so delicately put it, she had “a few things” she wanted to add.

In other words, it’s – gulp – correction time.

I had said the “affair,” as Goldschmidt and the Oregonian tried to pitch it at the time, began when the girl was in her first year of high school. It was actually earlier than that.

And what follows here is the rest of Margie’s email – which includes not just the heart-breaking details gathered from her extensive interviews with Elizabeth but an account of her five-year struggle to get the Oregonian to publish what she learned.

Margie Boulé, all dressed up here as former Texas governor Ann Richards in a Portland stage production of Ann six years ago. From 1987 to 2010 Margie was the best read columnist at the Oregonian, and before that the popular host of an afternoon variety show on KATU-TV. She is in fact the only person in recent Portland memory who’s been a star in all three media.

This is Margie speaking now:

“Elizabeth told me (and her friends verified) that the sex started the night of her mother’s 30th birthday party, when Elizabeth was an EIGHTH GRADER at the nearby private Catholic elementary school.  And when Neil visited her classroom several times, it was at that eighth grade classroom, not at St. Mary’s Academy.  

“Liz told me, and I verified it with two of her eighth grade classmates and with her classroom teacher, who I believe was a nun.  Liz and her friend said the teacher was really naive and thought he probably went to all the classrooms across the city to talk about government. When I spoke with the teacher, she was very elderly and couldn’t remember why he’d been in the classroom, she just verified that he had been.

“To further prove it started when she was in eighth grade, the only reason Elizabeth went to St. Mary’s instead of going to Central Catholic, where she’d been planning to go for high school, and where all her friends were going to go, was because Goldschmidt wanted her downtown so she would be available to him for sex during the day.  And then, when her classes kept her from being instantly available, he told her to drop out.  

“I never will forget when she told me that Neil had said, "You’re so smart, you don’t need to go to school.  I’ll give you a reading list." So that’s what happened: she quit high school after her freshman year and began working as an "intern" in the mayor’s office — working, she said, in his actual office sometimes.  And, of course, having sex in that office.  She said many people knew or suspected what was going on.

“In fact, when his re-election time came around, she heard people saying they had to get her out of city hall, at least until the election was over, because it "looked bad." So they got her a temporary job working in a travel agency on NW 23rd.  She cried hard when she told me about this.  She said she was just now realizing how many people knew what Goldschmidt was doing with her, and didn’t give a damn about the welfare of this little girl — her.  All they cared about was the campaign.  

“Oh – one other thing: she and her eighth grade friends all totally bought into what Neil had told her — that it was true love, it was so romantic, it was a love affair and someday, when his kids left for college, he was going to divorce Margie and marry Elizabeth.  These were little girls, and this seemed like a teenage romance novel come true.  

“The whole thing makes me weep.  She was so, so smart, Phil.  Smart and funny and self-aware.  She knew she was sick, she knew she was dying because of her alcoholism, she knew she was mentally ill and always was careful to take her psychiatric meds before our interviews.  And because I would cancel the interview immediately if she’d had a drop of liquor, we conducted our many interviews early in the morning.

“Every time, our interviews ended when her DTs got so bad she could not go on without a drink.  She was funny, and well-read, and well-spoken.  She looked 20 years older than she was. She was skinny and wrinkled, as if her shame and his damage had caused her to withdraw into her pain and shrivel up.  When I saw the photos of her at 13, I literally could not recognize her as the same person.  

“Oh — and there was a lot my editors would not let me include in my story.  Sandra [Substack note: This is Sandra Rowe, who was editor of the Oregonian at the time and, not incidentally, a social friend of the Goldschmidts] kept insisting that I find more witnesses to substantiate anything Elizabeth claimed, and yet they’d printed Goldschmidt’s description of the "affair", filled with lies, without ever contacting ANYONE to substantiate his claims.  She kept refusing to print without more and more and more substantiation.  

“Finally I’d spoken to so many people I guess they realized they were going to have to print it. That’s when Sandra came up with her piece de resistance, and it worked.  It kept my story out of the paper until after Sandra and I both had left the paper, until after Elizabeth had died.  Sandra said we had to put Elizabeth’s name in the story.  It never had been published before, but I was told Sandra said "her name is out there, on the streets. Many people already know her name."  

“I was furious.  I pointed out that it was the paper’s policy not to print the names of rape victims, but it made no difference. And because Liz was about to move back to Portland and would be looking for a job, and because she wanted to protect her parents from criticism for not protecting her or contacting the police when they learned of the abuse when she was 16, she would not allow her name to be used. 

“Sandra must have been exhausted, trying to protect Goldschmidt in so many ways, for so long.  

“By the way, one of the many people I reached and spoke to was Goldschmidt’s former driver, who told me he’d driven Goldschmidt past Liz’s house countless times when taking him home and sometimes blinked the lights in front of her house.  But in a later phone call he told me he had dementia and didn’t remember anything, so I couldn’t use his earlier statement.  

“Oh, and you missed half of the signaling system.  It might have been cut from my piece.  Liz and her two friends would sit in an upstairs window each afternoon, watching for his car.  If the lights blinked, it meant Goldschmidt wanted to come to her house that night.  He didn’t just come over if her parents were out.  Many times he came over after they were asleep.  If the car lights had flashed earlier, Liz would sneak down to the kitchen, unlock the door, turn on the back porch light, and wait for him in the basement.  

“Okay.  These are tiny corrections or additions, but I wanted you to have a correct version of what Liz told me.  She was very consistent and clear, in spite of her mental illness and addictions.  She wanted to get things exactly right.”

Thanks, Margie. Next time drinks are on me.