12/14/2015
VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
ActivePaper Archive VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY Small community full of grief, questions after homicides BY ANTHONY GOTTSCHLICH
[email protected] JIM WITMER/DAYTON DAILY NEWS JOHN SULLIVAN SITS on the steps of his sister Joan Green’s home and looks at one of the roses that was left on the front lawn by grieving people in Bellefontaine after she was found killed.
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VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
PAUL VERNON/ASSOCIATED PRESS FUNERAL URNS are removed from a funeral home June 6, 2005, in De Graff, following the funeral for Scott Moody, 18, and the grandparents and mother he killed in a shooting spree on the family’s dairy farm on his graduation day.
BELLEFONTAINE — On the day Joan Green was buried, dozens of mourners gathered outside her North Main Street home by candlelight and paid tribute to this 72-yearold grandmother through hymns, Christmas carols and bouquets of flowers they placed on her lawn. http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/apa/cox/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=DDN%2F2006%2F01%2F08&id=Ar00100&sk=E3FDA022
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VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
In the background, hanging from Green’s front porch, a large white banner with red, spray-painted letters asked a seemingly simple question: Why? Why would someone — allegedly a 16-year-old boy living in a group home two doors away — beat, rape and murder this kindly widow and Christopher Sunday school teacher on Christmas Eve in her lifelong home? Tindall
But “Why?” is not a simple question these days in the Bellefontaine area and Logan County, about 60 miles northeast of Dayton. Why, for instance, did 18-year-old Scott Moody grab his .22-caliber rifle on the day of his high school graduation May 29 and kill his maternal grandparents, mother, two friends and seriously wound his 15-year-old sister before fatally shooting himself? Then in September, 20-year-old Jamie Rogan was found stabbed to death in her apartment. What gives? This is Bellefontaine, after all, a city of 13,000 that’s had fewer than five homicides since 1996 and where the most excitement in any given year might be the county fair or the Honda Homecoming events. “For a small, little town, these murders going on are just unreal, it’s crazy,” said Kim Moon, who was sweeping up one afternoon last week at JoJo’s Deli in downtown. “You think you live here, you’re safe, nothing like this is going to happen.” Teen may face adult court The suspect in Joan Green’s death sits in the Logan County Juvenile Detention Center on delinquency charges of aggravated murder, rape, aggravated burglary, breaking and entering and abuse of a corpse. The county prosecutor wants to charge the teenager as an adult. Until then, Christopher Tindall — who because of his age does not face the death penalty if convicted — is being held for violating terms of his juvenile probation. In 2003, the then 13-year-old Tindall admitted to raping a 14-year-old girl at his Huntsville home near Indian Lake. The admission came in exchange for prosecutors dropping another rape and a kidnapping charge. He received the maximum sentence of detention until age 21 with parole eligibility after one year. He was out on parole and living in the Logan County Family Court’s group home at 726 N. http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/apa/cox/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=DDN%2F2006%2F01%2F08&id=Ar00100&sk=E3FDA022
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VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
Main St. when police say he slipped past a door alarm and home monitors Dec. 23, broke into a nearby pizza parlor and then climbed through an unlocked window in the rear of Green’s home. Investigators believe Green was attacked in her bedroom sometime between midnight and 9 a.m. Dec. 24. That any youth could so easily leave the group home and wander about leaves many in this area shaking. “My daughter, she’s 15. He could have walked right by her,” said Billiejo Anderson, owner of JoJo’s Deli. “My God, that’s terrifying!” One resident calling for change is Joan Green’s brother, John L. Sullivan, who would like the family court to at least inform the home’s neighbors of its occupants’ criminal history. “Everybody deserves to know who’s living next to them,” said Sullivan, a retired, 30-year veteran of the Bellefontaine Police Department. The home for rehabilitating juvenile offenders is licensed as a non-secure home; it’s not a “lockdown” center, Logan County Family Court Judge C. Douglas Chamberlain said. And even with limited security — door alarms, adult supervision — the home was better for Tindall than the alternative, he said. “If this court did not step in, he would have been released into his father’s home and into the school district of the (previous) victim,” the judge said. “We just didn’t feel like that was appropriate.” Chamberlain said the group home has a strong record of reforming youths and that he couldn’t recall any criminal acts committed by one of its residents since the home’s inception. Still, Chamberlain said the court is contracting with the University of Cincinnati to conduct a “critical review” of its juvenile sex-offender program and its group home. “We want the community to know we’re taking this seriously and we’re acting responsibly,” he said. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which licenses the home, is conducting a review as well, said Jon Allen, spokesman for the department. The department sent an investigator to the home Wednesday to see if the home was complying with licensure rules during the time of Green’s murder, Allen said. http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/apa/cox/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=DDN%2F2006%2F01%2F08&id=Ar00100&sk=E3FDA022
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VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
“If we find areas where the home was not in compliance with licensing rules, we will issue a citation, which if it would occur would likely be next week,” he said. Allen said the Family Court at the minimum would have to submit a plan to correct any violations. Earlier, more violence Perhaps the question “Why?” was never asked more in this rural community than last Memorial Day weekend, when Scott Moody went on a morning shooting rampage on his family farm along west Ohio 47. “He was consistent from the first day he came to school until the last time we saw him. He was friendly, he was polite,” Bernadette Pachmayer, superintendent of Riverside Local Schools in nearby De Graff, said at the time. Pachmayer called Moody “a good student — not an honor student — just average. Quiet, but very, very polite. Great manners. He was one of those kids who would call you by name.” But statements from friends and relatives in the days following the shootings paint a picture of a troubled youth with an explosive temper who had abused his mother verbally and physically and threatened to kill himself on occasion, according to investigative reports by the Logan County Sheriff’s Office. A couple who once rented a house on the farm told investigators that Moody and his mother, Sheri “Kay” Shafer, frequently fought with Shafer’s parents, who also lived on the farm, about duties and finances related to the cash-strapped property. “It was a war, an all out war,” the couple said, according to police records. “He (Moody) came over to the house several times and said he wishes (the grandfather) would just drop dead. He just hated them.” Knowing that much about Moody’s past behavior makes his crimes easier to understand, although not acceptable, said Tim Apolito, a professor in the University of Dayton’s criminal justice program. Moody and youths who commit heinous crimes likely have had “major, major problems” for perhaps a lifetime, “and it comes out in an outrageous way, like in taking someone’s life,” Apolito said. “There are always events that lead up to this behavior. Doing something like that is a way of acting out something inside,” Apolito said. “They appear to be fine, but they really aren’t http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/apa/cox/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=DDN%2F2006%2F01%2F08&id=Ar00100&sk=E3FDA022
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VIOLENCE SHAKES LOGAN COUNTY - Dayton Daily News, 2006-01-08
and they haven’t been for some time.” Investigators believe Moody first shot his grandparents, Sharyl and Gary Shafer, over their breakfast, then returned the quartermile to his home to execute his mother, sister, sister’s friend and his 14-year-old girlfriend in their sleep. Deputies found Moody laying on his back in his bed, his feet on the floor and the .22-caliber rifle across his chest. His thumb was on the trigger and the muzzle was near his head. Only his sister, Stacy Moody, survived. She initially told police she saw a gray-haired man shoot her. She later recanted her story and said Scott was the shooter. Forensic evidence, the sheriff’s investigation and laboratory results all point to Scott as the shooter. But seven months later, some in this community still can’t believe it. Wild speculation and rumors continue. Add to it the slayings of Rogan (an aquaintance reportedly confessed and has been charged) and Joan Green last month, some residents don’t know what to think, said Annie Crowther, a clerk at Ameristop Shell in De Graff. “A lot of people are wondering, ‘What’s it coming to?’ ” she said. Contact Anthony Gottschlich at 225-7408.
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