The Serial Killer's Apprentice

by James Renner

  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’s 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 it was Buell who 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 observation: “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’s old van—the one he was still driving—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 that 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 reports. 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, where they waited for Ross to take them out to the curb on collection day.

  A week after Krista’s body was found, a year before anyone was implicated in the crime, Ross abruptly quit his job in Akron and moved back home to Mingo Junction. 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 street fairs.

  And then there is the evidence that detectives didn’t find. When they confiscated Buell’s van, they vacuumed every inch of its interior but did not find one hair or fiber from Tina Harmon, Krista Harrison, or Debbie Smith. As any good detectives knows, when an object makes contact with another object, a transfer of material always occurs. They never bothered to test Ross’s van. The fingerprint on the plastic bag does not match Buell’s. DNA collected at the crime scenes did not match Buell, either. No one attempted to match this material to Ross.

  During the five months he lived in Akron, Ross made a few friends on Symphony Lane. Guys he smoked dope with. They were interviewed by police, too, but didn’t appear to have much to say at the time. I re-interviewed those friends for this story, in 2007. One of them, a man named Carl Calvert, called me back after he had some time to think over the events of the summer of ’82.

  “Dead cells have awakened,” he said. “At the time, when all this went down . . .”

  Suddenly, over the phone line, I heard what sounded, at first, like a woman screaming.

  “Molly, please!” yelled Calvert, and the screaming stopped. “That’s my parrot,” he explained.

  After a moment, he continued.

  “I briefly did suspect Ralph. If he wasn’t involved, he knew of it. He was home all the time when it happened. Their vans were very similar. But Ross’s had wooden cup holders and there were always roaches in the ashtray, if you know what I mean. But since police didn’t do anything about him back then, I figured he must not have done anything.”

  * * *

  By 1984, Buell was behind bars, but young Ohio girls continued to turn up dead.

  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 in appearance. And even though Amy was from Bay Village and Krista was from Marshallville, two cities separated by 58 miles, Amy’s body was discovered within a short drive 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 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 when the crime occurred. Wayne County Prosecutor Martin Frantz claims 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 extra lengths to hide the body, burying her 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 opened his files to me 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. He believes Ross, at most, is nothing more than a serial killer’s apprentice.

  “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.”

  * * *

  When I caught up with him in September 2007, Ralph Ross Jr. was living in a small house just outside Steubenville. He worked for a cable company, installing boxes. He had recently been arrested a
nd charged with possession of marijuana.

  He spoke to me on the stoop in front of his house. “I don’t think Buell did it,” he said. “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 became defensive. “What if something come up?” he said. “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 put his hands in his pockets and looked over the river that meanders below his house. Ross said 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 explains. “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. Also, he would never have gone to that softball game. Bob hated baseball.” Ross, however, was a star player on his high school team. “And he was never home that summer. He was always at his girlfriend’s. People called it ‘Ralph’s Place.’ ”

  When asked about Krista, he abruptly ended the conversation. “I don’t have anything more to say,” he said. He went back inside and stood behind his screen door, glancing up and down the sidewalk. I asked him if he had anything to do with Krista’s abduction and then he shut the door and disappeared into the darkness, there.

  * * *

  Less than a week after my newspaper article on Buell’s case was published, Ross was fired from his job at the cable company in Steubenville, where he worked installing cable boxes in homes. His van was immediately emptied and driven to a location away from the main facility by unknown men, say co-workers. According to people who still work at the cable company, FBI agents have been seen at the office, questioning managers.

  In late 2007, the FBI compared fibers taken from the body of Tina Harmon to those found on the body of Amy Mihaljevic. They do not match.

  After months of requests, the Wayne County Prosecutor confirmed that all the evidence gathered in Krista’s case was incinerated after Buell’s execution. A detective with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office told me that Krista’s case was being “re-evaluated.” But prosecutor Martin Frantz says that the case will not be officially reopened. He says detectives are reviewing Tina Harmon’s case, instead, to see if something further can be done there.

  “I know many want to hear from Ralph Ross Jr.,” writes retired detective Derflinger in an e-mail. “Why would Buell not give him up if he was involved? Was Buell worried that Ralph would talk about other cases? Do any of the departments have DNA type evidence that could link Ralph to the cases? Soooo many questions. You, I’m sure recognize the possible magnitude of this case because it ended with an execution being carried out. No one wants to be wrong and if there ever is a time not to be wrong it’s with this case. I have never second guessed the outcome of the Buell case and now in my mind I have to question, did we miss Ralph as an accomplice? Let’s pray we get an answer.”

  Hopefully, Ernie Sanders’s God has grace enough to answer those prayers.

  * * *

  Coda:

  There’s a new twist to this case that has been bothering me, a coincidence I can’t wrap my head around. Do you have time for just one more strange tale?

  On Wednesday, September 29, 1982, seven-year-old Dawn Marie Hendershot was abducted from Massillon, Ohio, on her way home from school. This case is no mystery. A man named Donald Maurer confessed to kidnapping her and killing her, when he became the main suspect. He actually led the police detectives to her body. He was sent to prison for the rest of his life. Of course, at the time, Buell had not yet been caught and police wondered if Maurer could have abducted Krista Harrison and Tina Harmon as well. They gave him a lie detector test, which he passed (for more information on the reliability of lie detector tests, read the chapter on Lisa Pruett’s unsolved murder).

  But I discovered something odd while combing through Maurer’s file. Shortly before Dawn’s murder, Maurer worked at a butcher shop called Salsburg Meats, in Canton, with a man named Herbert Sefert. Sefert was the same young man who found the body of Tina Harmon, while he was tracking a deer near his father’s house in Bethlehem Township. Maurer knew Sefert—was hired by Sefert’s brother-in-law. Could Maurer have been familiar with the Sefert’s property?

  It’s a coincidence that calls into question everything I thought I knew about Tina’s case and the evidence that authorities say links her murder to Krista’s. But Maurer can’t possibly be responsible for each of these murders, given the evidence that links Krista’s body to Buell’s home. And Maurer was in prison by the time Debbie Smith disappeared from Massillon in 1983. So, just how many serial killers were active in this small part of Ohio back then?

  Is it easier to believe that a man like Sefert could have crossed paths with two separate serial killers, or that one man is responsible for both cases?

  Which answer is less frightening? Which answer is more true?

  Editor’s Note:

  In 2011, James Renner presented his theories on the deaths of Tina Harmon, Krista Harrison, and Debbie Smith to an audience at the Green Branch Library in Uniontown, Ohio. In this video of the event, he talks about how this book finally solved Tina Harmon’s murder.

  Eyewitnesses provided a description of Krista’s abductor. They said his hair curled at the ends. (Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office)

  Robert Buell, age 42, at the time of arrest in 1983. (Summit County Sheriff’s Department)

  Ralph Ross after his arrest for drug possession in 2007. Inset: His 1979 senior class photo. (Steubenville Police Department)

  Buell raped and tortured women inside this inconspicuous ranch home in Doylestown.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing about grizzly murders is often a painful process for me. It hurts physically. Sometimes, my entire body tenses up and I shake all over. When I sit down in front of the computer, it’s all I can do not to throw up. I’m pretty sure these are panic attacks. I get migraines, too. I have nightmares. I get depressed. Really, darkly, depressed. I can’t go to the grocery store when I’m writing these stories because I look at other people in line at the register and imagine them at home torturing their kids. I start to think everyone is evil. When I get really bad, I make sure I reach out to my wife, or a parent, or a friend and ask for help bringing me back.

  I was probably at my worst during the course of writing the story The Serial Killer’s Apprentice. One night during research for that one, I found myself driving across rural Ohio, very much alone, a hundred miles from home. With what felt like my last ounce of will, I used my cell phone to call my buddy Mike.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Just tell me a joke, Mike,” I said. “Make me laugh.”

  “Okay, here’s one,” he said. “This girl and a pedophile are walking through the woods and it’s starting to get really dark, right? So the girl turns to the pedophile and says, ‘Mister, I’m getting real scared.’ And the pedophile looks at the girl and says, ‘You think you’re scared? I have to walk back alone.’ ”

  There were some other people who were a little more helpful than Mike during the process of writing this book.

  For Joe Kupchik’s story, Fran Nagle was extremely helpful in providing information about Joe’s personality and pointing me toward the people who knew Joe well. Thanks to the Kupchik family for taking the time to speak with me about Joe. Even though they do not grant many interviews, they have been quietly working behind the scenes for years to get the Cleveland Police Department to reopen Joe’s case. Maybe one day the detectives will listen to what they’re saying.

  Garfield Heights Police Captain Robert Sackett and Detective Carl Biegacki were kind enough to share many new details about the Bev Jarosz case with me. I was inspired by their commitment to the case and hope that’s apparent in the piece. Thanks al
so to the Jarosz family for sharing Bev’s poetry with me. And thanks, Captain Sackett, for taking the time to write the foreword which precedes these stories.

  Thank you, Tony Gricar, for meeting me for a beer when I popped in out of the blue to talk about your uncle. And thank you, Detective Matt Rickard for giving me the weird scoop about the science fiction novel that seems so connected to the disappearance of Ray Gricar.

  “Gemini’s Last Dance” could not have been written without the help of Akron Police Detectives Bertina King and Steven Null.

  Detective Lieutenant Ray Arcuri of the Westlake PD invited me into his detectives’ den and was extremely generous with information about the case of Tony Daniels. Thanks for that, because such a warm welcome is rare.

  Retired U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott was nice enough to find some time to talk to me about Ted Conrad, the man he’s hunted for nearly 40 years. Thank you. And thanks also to Kathleen Einhouse, who may have inadvertently jump-started this case again after talking to me.

  Thanks again to Ted Schwarz for helping me with background information on the Lisa Pruett homicide.

  I spent a couple of hours talking to Detective Christopher Bowersock during my research into the strange suicide of Joe Chandler and little of that time was actually spent talking about Joe. Thanks for sharing your stories with me. And I’d like to say thanks to Joe’s friend—and executor—Mike, for helping me better understand who that man was. Also Chris Yarbrough for doing the initial research that led to Stephen Campbell.