Until recently, friends say, Dana Ryssdal enjoyed a larger-than-life bachelor’s existence in Portland. He sat in suites at Trail Blazers games. He partied and golfed in Las Vegas. He also spent time with family, traveling to Colorado and Washington to visit a niece and nephew.
But on Jan. 27, police found Ryssdal, 35, in a Houston townhouse, shot to death. Also found in the home, according search warrant records obtained by WW: 129 pounds of what appeared to be marijuana, 10 pounds of hash oil, and $36,000 in cash.
Five days later, police found Ryssdal’s friend, James Martin III, dead in the trunk of a car that had been towed from where police found Ryssdal. Martin had also been shot to death.
The Houston Police Department tells WW it hasn’t yet identified any suspects, and declined to comment on the pending investigation.
But back in Oregon, the double homicide has rocked the cannabis industry.
“It was so shocking to hear that Dana was killed,” says Nathan Howard, co-founder of East Fork Cultivars.
Some industry sources think that unless the federal government legalizes cannabis, the legal and illegal markets in Oregon will be inextricably linked and laced with danger. The federal prohibition means weed remains a cash-only business and that surpluses in prime growing states cannot be shipped to other states as is the case with other crops.
Although Oregon’s congressional delegation has pushed for federal legalization, it hasn’t happened. The preservation of the black market can have deadly consequences. In 2021, for example, two Portland men and two of their would-be customers died in a Southeast Portland shootout. Police said it was a weed deal gone wrong.
And because legal dispensaries are forced to deal in cash, armed robbers target them. A 2020 Portland robbery left one budtender dead.
Some in the industry are hesitant to draw any conclusions from the deaths in Houston.
“We should let the investigation play itself out,” says longtime Portland cannabis lawyer Amy Margolis. “We shouldn’t engage in speculation.”
But Beau Whitney, an economist who follows the industry, says the federal prohibition on cannabis makes the industry unnecessarily dangerous.
“There’s safety issues. There’s money issues. There’s no banking,” Whitney says. “The threat is palpable.”
Mike Reeves, a former business partner and longtime friend of Ryssdal’s, tells WW he spoke to Ryssdal on the phone the day he was killed. “We talked about golf and workouts. It was just totally normal,” Reeves recalls. “Total Dana stuff.”
In 2016, the two, along with other friends, co-founded LTRMN Inc., a Portland-based cannabis distribution company.
“Dana’s superpower was making people feel seen,” Reeves recalls. “He was the guy in the room that everybody gravitated towards. He had a laugh that we’ll miss.”
Ryssdal left the company in 2020, but those close to him say he remained in the industry, though it’s unclear in what capacity.
Friends of James “Jimmy” Martin, described him similarly: Big smile, big laugh. Richard Roth met Martin 15 years ago at a poker game in Houston, where Martin then lived.
“He lit up every room he ever walked into,” Roth tells WW. “He was just as comfortable in a Fortune 500 CEO meeting as he was at a Biggie concert. "
Ten years ago, Martin released a rap video called “Hustle Hustle Ball.” In it, he’s barechested and wearing sunglasses, a backward cap, and cargo shorts hanging low on his hips. Surrounded by friends, “Jimbo” raps about money, weed and bodacious women.
Martin also had a keen business mind, and over the following decade, he built a successful cannabis business.
Roth says Martin, 37 when he died, funded Roth’s Portland edibles business starting in 2016. Martin provided Roth $100,000 over two years, while building his own business in Southern Oregon.
Martin co-founded Rogue Valley Cannabis, which operates three dispensaries in Southern Oregon and had a distribution arm. On top of that, he became a father and bought a home in Jacksonville, Ore.
Roth says more recently, Martin wanted to sell his stake in Rogue Valley Cannabis. It’s unclear if he had. “He was trying to move back to Houston,” Roth says.
Ryssdal’s and Martin’s deaths come at a turbulent time for the Oregon cannabis industry.
When Oregon legalized recreational cannabis in 2015, industry veterans hoped small farmers would thrive and set the state up eventually as a leader in interstate shipping. Since then, though, big money outsiders have flooded the industry, contributing to chronic oversupply and low prices, and federal legalization remains uncertain.
Inevitably, some the oversupply has found its way to the black market. The Legislature held a special session in 2021 to address rising weed-related crime in Southern Oregon and sent money and police to beleaguered counties.
To industry onlookers, Ryssdal’s and Martin’s deaths pose the question: Will oversupply and the unchecked black market lead to more crimes involving the legal industry?
Whitney thinks so.
“It’s still dangerous,” he says. “People are getting killed. And no one’s talking about it.”
Ryssdal had recently sold his Southeast home in Portland, Reeves says, and was spending more time in Southern Oregon. His friend describes him as a “rolling stone.” “He liked to be on the road, to be out in nature, " Reeves says. (In 2021, Oregon business filings show, Ryssdal founded a company categorized as “transportation leasing.”)
Martin had also tried to separate himself from the Oregon industry, it appears, but some ties remained. In addition to his involvement in Rogue Valley Cannabis, Martin is listed as a part owner of a marijuana wholesale distribution company that dissolved in September 2022, according to business filings, but still has a license with the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.
One of Martin’s business partners in Rogue Valley Cannabis, a man named Jonathan Quintero, was implicated in a federal civil case in July 2022 for allegedly participating in a black market marijuana shipping operation in Medford. Federal court filings say the operation shipped weed across state lines, primarily to Florida.
The documents also note that local detectives were “familiar” with Quintero due to “previous marijuana investigations,” including a seizure of more than 20 guns and 2,400 pounds of weed in 2022 from a Medford property Quintero owns. (Quintero has denied wrongdoing through his attorney. He declined to comment on Martin’s death.)
While the cannabis industry waits for more information about Ryssdal’s and Martin’s deaths, the paradox remains: Oregon is a great place to grow weed and, for now, a tough place to make money selling it, at least legally.
In a Feb. 15 report to the board of the OLCC, the agency’s director of analytics and research, T.J. Sheehy, showed a graph of a strong 2022 harvest and called Oregon’s capacity for producing top-quality weed “boundless.”
“But demand is bounded by in-state consumption,” Sheehy said. “That’s always going to be the dynamic until federal [legalization].”
It’s unclear if Ryssdal and Martin ever had a formal business relationship, but it appears their friendship stretches way back: A Polaroid photo posted by Ryssdal nearly four years ago shows he and Martin, Martin’s arms thrown around Ryssdal, in a suite at Moda Center for a Trail Blazers game.
