Conflicting Accounts

ON A SUNDAY MORNING four weeks ago police arrested Keith
Grotewald, a 57-year-old tenant of the Westwind apartments, on
suspicion of repeatedly stabbing Martin Porth, the building manager.
“Downtown apartment manager stabbed after he tried to get tenant to
clean his apartment,” read the headline of an Oregonian story
about the incident on Tuesday, July 14.

What actually transpired is far more complicated.

The Westwind’s 73 apartments, on the corner of NW 6th and Flanders,
are a different world from Portland’s chi-chi Pearl District just two
blocks to the west. Satellite dishes adorn most windows facing the
street, and rent ranges from around $200 to almost $500 a month for 400
square feet, depending on location within the building. With its
reasonable pricing at a quarter of the Pearl District’s average, the
Westwind tends to appeal to transients and those with economic,
medical, and addiction problems.

Grotewald, who suffered head injuries after being hit by a car when
he was 10, is a typical tenant at the Old Town dive. He suffers from
mental health issues, pays rent from a Social Security check, and
claims to be in treatment for alcohol addiction, according to court
documents. With a long shaggy beard, unkempt hair, and an unresolved
case still open against him for allegedly tearing the windshield wiper
off a TriMet bus, Grotewald has obvious problems.

Regardless of Grotewald’s past, a Multnomah County grand jury
dropped Grotewald’s second-degree assault case related to the alleged
stabbings on Friday, July 24.

“There were two avenues for the grand jury to return a ‘no true
bill’,” explains Deputy District Attorney Greg Moawad, who presented
evidence for the prosecution to the grand jury. “Either that
[Grotewald] acted in self-defense, or that it was impossible to
decipher what happened. We had four or five eyewitnesses, and each and
every one had a different version of events, including some witnesses
that had a couple.”

According to court documents, Porth told police that Grotewald’s
apartment was “infested with dead mice and cockroaches,” and that he
had knocked on the door and entered the apartment, where he began to
pick up garbage until Grotewald pushed him out. After other residents
calmed Grotewald down, Porth told police he started to clean up again,
when Grotewald stabbed him twice in the back with a filet knife.

Grotewald, on the other hand, told detectives that Porth had “broken
into his room and assaulted him.” Grotewald claimed Porth was removing
his property, and that Grotewald was “defending his property.”

It’s not clear whether Porth followed Oregon tenant law, which
requires 24 hours notice before entering Grotewald’s room to “clean”
it. It’s also possible Grotewald’s “property” may have amounted to a
few garbage sacks. (Other tenants told the Mercury Grotewald
returned on Saturday afternoon with a full black plastic sack from a
day foraging in the city’s trashcans.) Some witnesses also alleged
Porth hit Grotewald before he was stabbed.

Adding to the incident’s uncertainty is Porth’s documented history
of violence against Westwind tenants. “The grand jury’s finding [in the
Grotewald case] is consistent with information that we have about Mr.
Porth’s conduct in the past,” says Grotewald’s attorney, Thomas
MacNair.

Porth pled guilty to fourth degree assault in September 2007 after
beating then 56-year-old Westwind tenant Monte Coburn, in apparent
retaliation for Coburn’s complaints about a fellow tenant’s barking
dog.

“Motherfucker, this is my building and I’ll run it like I want,”
Porth told Coburn—according to police reports quoting witnesses
to the incident—before dragging Coburn out of his apartment and
throwing him to the ground. A witness said Porth told Coburn “that he’d
better be happy he didn’t break Coburn’s head instead of his arm.”
Porth told another witness he would kick his “fucking ass” and to “come
on over” if he “wanted some of it too,” according to police reports.
“This is my building,” he repeated.

A deputy district attorney recommended a sentence of 30 days in jail
for Porth, two years’ bench probation, anger management counseling, and
no contact with Coburn, in exchange for his guilty plea in 2007.

The Mercury has talked with four frightened Westwind tenants
on condition of anonymity since Grotewald’s stabbing charges were
dropped. They all alleged that Porth’s documented behavior toward
Coburn was hardly out of character in the context of his tenure as
manager of the apartment complex over recent years. Furthermore they
have all made additional troubling allegations against Porth that cast
Grotewald’s alleged stabbing of the apartment manager in a different
light.

One tenant, who was called before the grand jury in the Grotewald
case, told the Mercury Porth threatened to kill them if they
testified against him there. Another tenant says Porth threatened to
“blow up the building” if anybody testified against him at grand
jury—a threat made more disturbing by Porth’s 1994 conviction in
Klamath County for second degree arson.

Three tenants claim Porth has a history of hitting tenants, in
addition to imposing a climate of intimidation at the Westwind. “He
knows these people have problems,” says one tenant. “He scares them to
hell, and then he takes advantage of them.”

All four tenants allege that Porth is receiving Social Security
checks at the Westwind despite receiving regular payments for his work
and living in a separate house on SE 80th Place—the federal
government does not give out details on Social Security recipients.

According to court documents and property records, the Southeast
home that Porth resides in is actually owned by Porth’s boss, Mike
Narver, who tenants say pays Porth several thousand dollars a month in
cash to manage the Westwind. Narver, who also runs the Stewart
Apartments above Mary’s Club on SW Broadway, did not respond to the
Mercury‘s repeated requests for comment on this story by press
time.

Porth may also be running a scheme to skim extra money from the rent
checks of some Westwind tenants, according to the four anonymous
tenants.

“Every time something’s wrong, he says, ‘That’s it, it’s your last
straw, you’re out of here,'” says one tenant. “Then he wanted me to pay
an extra $50 cleaning fee or something. He was going to kick me out but
he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you stay here but you pay me $50
a month extra and we’ll be all right.'”

“I asked him for a receipt but he said, ‘No, I’ve got to have
cash,'” the tenant continues.

“He told me that extra money ‘comes to me for putting up with their
shit,'” says another tenant, alleging that Porth may be charging up to
a dozen tenants extra “last-chance payments” in cash each month.
Allegations over these rent irregularities surfaced at Grotewald’s
grand jury hearing, and sources say that the Portland Police Bureau is
now investigating the accusations—although it is against the
bureau’s policy to comment on such matters.

To make the story even more confusing, Porth told the Mercury on Monday afternoon, August 3, that he is not even the manager of the
Westwind—contrary to what he told the police after Grotewald
stabbed him, according to court reports. Porth says he cleaned up
Grotewald’s room as a favor to his fiancée, who is the real
manager of the building.

“She didn’t want to go in there, it was gross, and get bitten by the
mice,” he says. “I did it as a favor.”

Porth adds that he doesn’t remember telling police he was the
building manger and that “I just got stabbed.” He says he used to be
the manager at the building and that “the people still have it in their
heads that I am the manager. I don’t work there, I don’t want to work
there.”

Porth says his fiancée gave Grotewald 24 hours notice before
he entered Grotewald’s room. Porth denies all other allegations in this
article, apart from receiving Social Security checks at the
Westwind.