The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

James Renner: THE SERIAL KILLER’S DISCIPLE

FROM THE Cleveland Free Times

THE DEATH HOUSE at Lucasville Prison has a room for witnesses of executions, divided by a partition. When Akron Beacon Journal reporter Phil Trexler was ushered in one morning just over five years ago, he noticed three men sitting together on one side. Trexler had covered the case of the condemned man, Robert Buell, so he knew who these men were: the father and brothers of Krista Harrison, whose murder 20 years earlier, at age 11, was the crime the state was avenging that day.

On the other side of the partition sat Patricia Millhoff, Buell’s attorney, and the Rev. Ernie Sanders, his pastor. Millhoff was crying. Not 10 minutes before, she’d had to tell Buell that his request for a stay had been denied. She’d gotten to know Buell well. As the appeals process had wound down, there’d been little in the way of law to discuss, so they talked about mundane things. That morning’s Diane Rehm show on NPR. Or what books Buell was currently reading aloud into a recorder for blind people.

Buell always insisted that he had not murdered the girl. Millhoff believed him.

Sanders also was grieving. He’d known Buell much longer, 17 years. Buell had heard Sanders speak at the prison, and wrote the reverend a letter, asking him to visit. Buell had a lot to confess-the rapes of two women, at least-but Sanders’ God has grace enough for that. Grace enough to forgive even the murder of the child, he’d told Buell. But Buell never sought forgiveness for that. And in Sanders’ mind, he didn’t have to. Sitting there that night, Sanders believed he knew who really killed Krista.

The last time they spoke, Buell had said, “You were right all along.”

The chairs on both sides of the partition faced a window that overlooked a gurney. On the other side, someone drew a curtain and when it was reopened, Buell was lying there, strapped down, facing the ceiling. He appeared calm. An IV tube snaked out of his arm and disappeared behind a wall.

Trexler observed Buell’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, up and down, counting off the seconds like a swallowed metronome. The witness room was silent except for the faint scratching of reporters’ pencils on paper.

Buell was asked if he had any last words. He did, for Krista’s parents.

“Jerry and Shirley,” he said, though Shirley wasn’t there, “I didn’t kill your daughter. The prosecutor knows that…and they left the real killer out there on the streets to kill again and again and again.”

Soon after Buell finished, Trexler noticed that Buell’s breathing appeared more labored. Buell closed his eyes and died.

Buell’s typewriter and small TV went home with Millhoff; he’d left them to her because the prison wouldn’t let him donate them to fellow inmates. His personal collection of court transcripts, police files, letters, handwritten notes and newspaper clippings, collected over 18 years, left with Sanders. The contents of the box do not reflect well on Buell; there seems little reason to doubt that he belonged in prison. But they also raise a strange possibility: that he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t kill Krista Harrison. And that he knew who did.

IN THE EARLY 1980S, someone was killing little girls in Ohio.

The first incident was the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Tina Harmon in the fall of 1981. Tina was a cute, round-faced girl from the small town of Creston with shoulder-length hair and a taste for Camel Light cigarettes. Back then, the only real entertainment was the game room at the Union 76 Truck Stop in Lodi, a few miles away. Tina was known to hang out there whenever she could hitch a ride.

According to police reports, on Thursday, October 29, 1981, Tina got a ride into Creston from her father’s girlfriend, who dropped her off in front of a convenience store with a group of friends. Tina bought a fudgesicle and bummed another ride from her teenage brother, who took her only as far as the next Lawson’s. Eventually, she made it to Lodi; several witnesses, including a local detective, remembered seeing her there that evening. Tina was last spotted in the presence of an unshaven man in a jean jacket, who appeared to be in his early 20s.

The girl’s body was found five days later in Bethlehem Township, about 40 miles from her home, dumped beside an oil well in plain sight of anyone driving down the road. She was fully clothed and had been placed neatly on the ground. She’d been raped and strangled shortly after she was abducted. Oil well workers who had visited that access road the day before had seen nothing, and this supported the detectives’ theory that Tina’s body had been stored someplace else before being placed in the field.

In her pocket they found a book of matches from the Union 76 Truck Stop. On her clothes, the coroner found dog hair and several “trilobal polyester” fibers the color of nutmeg.

Less than a year later-July 17, 1982, a stormy Saturday-Krista Harrison was snatched from a baseball field across the street from her home. She had been collecting cans with a 12-year-old friend, Roy, who later told police that around 5 p.m., a dark-colored van pulled into the park. The van had bubble-shaped windows, black seats and a roof vent.

The driver climbed out and approached Krista. The man was white, and looked to be about 25 to 35 years old. He was skinny, with a mustache and dark brown hair that curled near his shoulders; he looked Italian, the boy thought. The man said something to Krista and she went and sat on the bleachers overlooking the diamond. The man then sat down next to the girl and reached underneath her blouse. When Krista started to cry, the man whispered something into her ear. Roy could not hear what was said, but Krista walked to the man’s van, opened the driver’s-side door, and climbed between the front bucket seats and sat on the floor. The man climbed in too and quickly sped away.

Witnesses later told police that a strange man resembling Krista’s abductor had attended one of her summer softball games, photographing her with a 35mm camera. Classmates told police that on the afternoon Krista was abducted, she had gone to the Village Snack Shop game room and when she left, a strange man had blocked her way and tried to get her to dance with him. The man had dark hair that was curly on the ends.

And in the weeks leading up to her abduction, there had been several prank calls placed to the Harrison residence when Krista was home.

Krista was missing for less than a week. On July 23, two turtle trappers discovered her body next to an abandoned shed in a field in nearby Holmes County. She was fully clothed and wrapped in plastic. The coroner discovered carpet fibers on her, the same trilobal polyester fibers that had been found on Tina Harmon. Like Tina, Krista had been strangled to death shortly after being kidnapped, but her body had been stored somewhere before being moved to the field. Like Tina, she had been sexually assaulted, possibly with a vibrator.

The next day, a second crime scene was located in West Salem. In the weeds next to the road, police found a green plastic garbage bag covered in Krista’s blood and hair. Beside the bag was a Budweiser blanket and pieces of blood-stained cardboard.

Then, a second sweep of the area where Krista’s body had been found turned up a pair of dirty jeans, spotted with blood and specks of powder-blue paint. There was a hole in the left knee. A man’s plaid shirt was also found.

The evidence was sent to the lab at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, which determined that the bag and box had once contained van seats that had been ordered through Sears. And on the bag was a fingerprint.

Sears provided detectives with the names of everyone in the area who had ordered similar seats. The list was long, but every name was checked out. Bob Buell was on the list and was interviewed, but the detective did not feel that Buell was being deceptive and so he did not become the focus of their investigation.

The BCI &I lab also confirmed that the fibers found on Krista matched those found on Tina. The FBI commissioned a criminal profile of the perpetrator by Special Agent John Douglas, whose pioneering studies of the habits of serial killers inspired the book The Silence of the Lambs. Krista’s killer should be in his early to late 20s, Douglas said. He is a latent homosexual.

“When employed, he seeks menial or unskilled trades,” wrote Douglas. “While he considers himself a ‘macho man,’ he has deep-rooted feelings of personal inadequacies. Your offender has a maximum of a high school education. When he is with children, he feels superior, in control, non-threatened. While your offender may not be from the city where the victim was abducted he certainly has been there many times before (i.e. visiting friends, relatives, employment). He turned towards alcohol and/or drugs to escape from the realities of the crime.”

Detectives from several jurisdictions and FBI special agents worked diligently to find the man who killed Krista and Tina. But the evidence could not be matched to a likely suspect, and each new lead only led them to a different dead end. Then it happened again.

On Saturday, June 25, 1983, 10-year-old Debbie Smith disappeared from a street fair in Massillon. Later that day, Debbie called home. She sounded upset, but would not say where she was. On August 6 a canoeist found Debbie’s body on the banks of the Tuscarawas River. She had been raped. She had most likely been stabbed, though the body also showed signs of blunt force trauma. Melted wax was found on her body, and the candles from which it had come were recovered nearby.

THESE MURDERS WERE STILL on the minds of police and area residents two months later when Franklin Township police received a chilling call from a Doylestown resident. There was a shaved, naked woman with a handcuff attached to one wrist standing in her kitchen, the caller said. The woman had shown up on her doorstep, claiming that she had been held captive in the house across the street-the little ranch house owned by Bob Buell.

The victim was a 28-year-old woman from Salem. She worked at a gas station, and on the night of October 16, 1983, she had been painting the office floor when a middle-aged man came up behind her with a gun and ordered her into his van. He pushed her between the front seats and handcuffed her hands behind her back. Then, he drove her to his house, into an attached garage and told her to go into the bedroom and undress. Inside, the man handcuffed her to a leather bench and spent the rest of the night raping, torturing and degrading the woman in increasingly vile and unique ways. When it was over, he shaved her head and tied her to his bed. In the morning he went to work, promising to return around lunchtime.

But the woman escaped, and when Buell returned home, a Franklin Township cop was waiting. Buell was arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape and kidnapping.

At the time, Buell was 42 years old. He had a college degree and was employed by the city of Akron, writing loans for the Planning Department. He was dating an attorney. He had a daughter at Kent State. Those who knew him described a neat, clean, orderly man, almost to the point of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He didn’t exactly fit the FBI’s profile of their child killer.

But when other agencies got word of Buell’s arrest and recognized his name from the list of men who had purchased van seats from Sears, police descended upon his home with an array of search warrants. They found everything they were looking for, and more.

In the master bedroom, they found all the evidence they needed to confirm the rape victim’s story.

In a guest bedroom, painted powder-blue, detectives discovered a roll of carpet the color of nutmeg. The fibers were trilobal polyester and matched fibers found on the bodies of Tina Harmon and Krista Harrison. In the closet were jeans with a hole worn into the left knee-identical to the pair found near Krista’s body. They also found dog hairs that matched those found on Tina, a newspaper clipping on the abduction of Debbie Smith, and candles of the same brand that were found near Debbie’s body.

Investigators took Buell’s van too, a 1978 maroon Dodge with new black seats from Sears. Inside was more of that same nutmeg carpeting.

Police put Buell’s picture into a lineup which was shown to witnesses. Several people who had attended Krista’s last softball game identified Buell as a stranger they saw watching the game. A check of Buell’s timecards revealed he had taken time off from work the day Krista’s body was dumped.

As Buell’s face became a front-page and TV news staple, other women came forward claiming they had been abducted and raped by him, then released. One woman from West Virginia told a grim story almost identical to the Salem victim’s, down to being handcuffed in the bedroom so that Buell could go to work.

But all of these women were in their late 20s or older. So FBI Special Agent Bill Callis commissioned a second criminal profile to help explain what is referred to as “the missing link” between Buell’s practice of raping and releasing grown women and his presumed taste for killing young girls. Serial killers tend to stick to one sex and age group and tend to escalate in violence over time; they generally don’t start just letting victims go. This second report was not prepared by John Douglas, but by another profiler in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. It blamed Buell’s mother.

Buell pleaded no contest to the rape charges and was sentenced to 121 years in prison for those crimes. He was only charged with one murder, Krista’s, even though police believe he murdered Tina Harmon and Debbie Smith and maybe more. But as one detective put it, “How many times do you need to kill a man?” Buell was convicted of Krista’s murder on April 4, 1984. The jury sentenced him to die.

MARTIN FRANTZ WAS assistant prosecutor for Wayne County during Buell’s lengthy trial and played a significant role in sending the Akron city employee to the Death House. Today, Frantz is county prosecutor and remembers the case well, down to the names of eyewitnesses, 23 years later. He has no doubt that Buell killed those girls.

“It wasn’t in the trial,” he says, “but we had someone figure out, mathematically, how many people in the world could possibly be connected to all of that circumstantial evidence that we found inside Buell’s home. It was something like 1 in 6 trillion.”

Actually, it’s 2 in 6 trillion.

Bob Buell was not living at his ranch house during the summer of 1982. His nephew was. Ralph Ross Jr. was a skinny 20-year-old from Mingo Junction, a factory town just outside Steubenville. He had dark hair that curled near his shoulders and was growing a mustache. In February 1982, Ross moved to Akron to drive a truck for an auto-parts manufacturer. His uncle Bob let him stay in the powder-blue guest room. Usually Ross had the house to himself because Buell spent most nights at his girlfriend’s place. In exchange for room and board, Ross did chores around the house. It was his job to take out the garbage.

Ross was Buell’s ex-wife’s brother’s kid, but they shared a special kinship that was thicker than blood. For instance, they often fantasized about kidnapping women and doing things to them inside Buell’s van.

“What are some of those things?” asked Wayne County Sheriff’s Department Detective Dennis Derflinger, in an interview with Ross shortly after Buell’s arrest in 1983.

“Tying them up, shaving their crotch, putting a gag in their mouth, using a vibrator, that’s about all.”

Ross went into a little more detail about these conversations when questioned by Frantz in front of a grand jury.

“Can you tell us what you remember about what Robert Buell said when he was talking of these fantasies and riding around in the van?” asked Frantz.

“I would like to say something,” Ross replied. “It was me as well as him that was discussing whatever we were discussing.”

Frantz: “So both of you were talking about it?”

Ross: “It was a two-way conversation.”

Frantz: “Just tell us what Buell said.”

Ross: “Well, he would talk about, if we would pass up a girl or something on the street, talked about wouldn’t it be nice to have that girl for this evening, and I would say, yeah, sure would.”

Frantz: “What else was said?”

Ross: “Well, I said I would doubt if she would go out with me or get together, that I didn’t know her, just passed her up on the street. And he said well-or we both suggested-that we could get her into the van if we wanted to.”

Ross specifically remembered cruising Marshallville.

When Ross moved into Buell’s house, the roll of nutmeg carpet was still being stored in the living room, where it had been for years. It matched the color of Buell’s old van, a golden-brown 1977 Dodge that Buell had sold to Ross in 1980. That van and Buell’s new one were very similar, but Ross’ had a sun roof and bubble windows. And Ross’s van was a little dirtier; Buell had let his daughter’s dog sleep in it before selling it to Ross.

But they didn’t just share seats and vans, they shared women, too. Women like Buell’s secretary.

Frantz: “And the three of you were in bed together?”

Ross: “Yes.”

Frantz: “And at that time the vibrator was used?”

Ross: “Me and Bob both used it.”

Ross’ hair was a little curly and Buell’s was straight, but otherwise the two shared an uncanny resemblance. In fact, when a police officer responded to a noise violation at the house in July 1982, he mistook Ross for Buell. (Ross may have shown him Buell’s driver’s license.) And a closer look at original interviews with bystanders at Krista’s last softball game raises important questions as well. One who identified Buell in a lineup also said, “There was another man standing beside him with a camera and mirrored sunglasses on.”

The detective asked her if she meant that Buell was taking photographs.

“No, the man beside him was taking photographs. [Buell] did not have a camera.”

Roy, the boy who stood just a few feet away from Krista’s abductor when she was taken, said repeatedly that the man he saw that day was not Buell, but that the man was similar in appearance.

Ross did not have an alibi for the day Krista was abducted. He told police that he was probably visiting his parents that weekend, but couldn’t remember for sure, and this apparently was never confirmed. Detective Derflinger asked Ross to submit fingerprints and his photo, but he refused. Derflinger ends his written report with this note: “P.S. He has started to grow a beard, but I don’t think that means anything.”

When interviewed by Franklin Township Detective Ron Fuchs about whether Ross had ever helped Buell alter his vans, Ross was more evasive. “Ralph’s answers are contrary to other information already gained and he appeared to be deliberately lying and trying to cover up the incident,” Fuchs stated. In fact, Ross had helped his uncle move seats from Ross’ van into Buell’s new van.

A witness told police that he saw the jeans and shirt that were found at one of Krista’s crime scenes lying near the road at around 11:30 the morning of July 23. Police believe Krista’s body also must have been dumped that morning because the items strewn about the road were not seen before then. The jeans and shirt are assumed to have been dumped at the same time. But Buell was at work until noon that day. And, according to his girlfriend, the only reason he took the rest of the day off was to help her fix her clothes dryer. She produced a receipt that showed she had purchased a dryer belt that afternoon. By the time Buell had a chance to stop by his house, it was 4:50 p.m. In a letter to the Rev. Sanders during his incarceration, Buell stated that he remembered the time because he thought it was odd that his nephew was home so early on a work day, and Ross’s hand was wrapped in bandages. “He told me he had injured his hand at work and had to go to the hospital to get his hand x-rayed and bandaged,” wrote Buell. Ross’s employer had no record of the injury, according to police records. Buell’s girlfriend also told police that the last time she saw the boxes that had contained the van seats they were in the garage next to the garbage cans.

A week after Krista’s body was found, Ross abruptly quit his job in Akron and moved home. He went to work at his mother’s craft store and, for a while, managed small booths for her at area malls, flea markets and fairs.

And then there is the evidence that detectives didn’t find. When they confiscated Buell’s van, they vacuumed every inch of the interior, but did not find one hair or fiber from Tina Harmon, Krista Harrison or Debbie Smith. They never bothered to test Ross’ van. The fingerprint on the plastic bag did not match Buell’s, nor did DNA collected at the scene.

BY 1984, BUELL WAS BEHIND BARS, but young Ohio girls continued to disappear.

In 1989, 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic was abducted from Bay Village. Like Debbie, she made a phone call to her mother when she was most likely already with her abductor. She resembled Krista Harrison. And even though Amy was from Bay Village and Krista was from Marshallville, two cities separated by 58 miles, Amy’s body was discovered a short distance from where police found a bloody garbage bag containing part of Krista’s scalp. Like Tina, Amy’s body was found in a field, on an incline, placed so that it could be easily seen from the road. Amy’s body had also been stored someplace before being moved to the “dump” site. On Amy’s body, the coroner also discovered gold-colored fibers, but they were never compared to those gathered in the Tina Harmon and Krista Harrison homicides because Buell was already in prison. Wayne County Prosecutor Martin Frantz says his Sheriff’s Department destroyed the evidence after Buell was executed, though some samples may still be kept by BCI &I.

The case of 13-year-old Barbara Barnes of Steubenville is similar too. Barbara disappeared in December 1995, on her way to school. She was found two months later, strangled to death. But Barbara’s killer went to great lengths to hide the body, in a muddy embankment in Pittsburgh. She was discovered when the river level rose with the thaw.

“I UNDERSTAND the circumstantial evidence could be put to Ralph Ross as well as Robert Buell,” says Frantz in his office today. The prosecutor is a gracious host and opens his files to the Free Times because he truly believes he sent the right guy to the Death House. He sees the Harrisons in public sometimes and can meet their eyes.

“I know that during the investigation, Derflinger had those feelings. We ruled [Ross] out, but I can’t remember how. I’ve always felt in my heart that Buell was guilty.”

Pastor Ernie Sanders disagrees.

“Buell never killed those girls,” he says. “He was by no means someone you would call a perfect citizen, but I know he didn’t do it. I told him I was suspicious of his nephew, but he just kept saying that [Ross] was not smart enough to pull something like that off. You see, Buell thought he was smarter than everyone he knew. He told me that when he talked to Ralph about kidnapping women, he specifically told Ralph not to cross the line. He said not to take kids. And Ralph never argued with him, but Buell said he wasn’t happy about it. A month before his execution, he told me, ‘You know what? You were right all along. Ralph set me up.’ And I believe him. Ralph had access to Bob’s clothes and the clothes found at the crime scene were too small for Buell anymore. He’d left them for Ralph.”

Today, Ralph Ross Jr. lives in a small house just outside Steubenville, where he grew up. He works for a cable company. He was arrested earlier this year and charged with possession of marijuana.

He spoke to this reporter on the stoop in front of his house in 2007. “I don’t think Buell did it,” he says. “But I don’t know who did. They never questioned me about the deaths. Why would they?”

When asked why he didn’t allow the detective to take his fingerprints, he becomes defensive. “What if something come up?” he says. “I told them if they wanted it to get a court order and take it. If they needed it, they could have got a court order.”

He puts his hands in his pockets and looks over the river that meanders below his house. Ross says he started talking with his uncle about kidnapping and brutalizing women when he was 13 years old, and the conversations continued until Buell was caught.

“Times were different back then,” he says. “I was hanging out with my cool uncle. I thought it was just guys talking when we talked about taking those women. I should never have said anything about it to the cops.”

Asked about Krista, he abruptly ends the conversation. “I don’t have anything more to say,” he says. He goes back inside, stands behind his screen door and glances up and down the sidewalk. Asked if he had anything to do with Krista’s abduction, he shuts the door and disappears into the darkness.

Jack Swint, author of Who Killed…Cleveland, provided Buell’s box of documents, which were cited in this story.

JAMES RENNER is a staff writer for the Cleveland Free Times. He is also the author of Amy: My Search for Her Killer, a true crime book that chronicles his investigation into she unsolved murder of Amy Mihaljevic. Renner was named one of Cleveland’s Thirty Most Interesting People by Cleveland Magazine in 2005, after he adapted a short story by Stephen King into a film, which Renner directed. It premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival later that year.

Coda

I have spent the last three years researching the strange abduction and murder of Amy Mihaljevic, a crime that occurred in 1989, in Bay Village, the idyllic Cleveland suburb made infamous by the Sam Sheppard case. The FBI agents and police detectives that have worked Amy’s case for eighteen years believe that her murder was the first and only one committed by her killer, because his “MO” does not match any subsequent crime. I began to wonder if that assumption was incorrect.

While it’s true that there appears to have been no similar murder committed in northeast Ohio after Amy’s, I quickly found three that occurred just a few years before. However, these murders were attributed to a man named Robert Buell, who had been executed in 2002. Still, I tracked down the original case files, to see-just for my peace of mind-that the police and prosecutor who sent Buell to the death house got the right man. After reviewing the files, I quickly came to believe that Buell was innocent of these crimes and that the real killer still lives among us.

Since this story was originally published in the Free Times, things have not gone well for Ralph Ross, Jr. He was fired from his job installing cable for Comcast after the article circulated around the office. FBI agents were seen at his office, questioning coworkers. However, Wayne County prosecutor Martin Frantz refuses to officially reopen the Krista Harrison case-the murder for which Buell was executed. Instead, detectives are “reinvestigating” the murder of Tina Harmon, which remains an open case, even though identical fibers were discovered on the bodies of both Tina and Krista. Those fibers have recently been compared to similar fibers found on the body of Amy Mihaljevic. They do not match.