Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Ohio Man Hid Dead Girlfriend in Freezer as New Gal Pal Assumed Her Identity

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Arturo Nova (L) and Katrina Layton

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — A man stashed his dead girlfriend’s corpse in a freezer in his Ohio home for months while his new gal pal assumed her identity, using her credit cards and even taking care of her dog, authorities said.

Arturo Novoa, 31 and Katrina Layton, 34, have so far been charged with corpse abuse as investigators try to determine the cause of death of Shannon Graves, 28, who had last been seen alive around Christmas time.

Youngstown prosecutors said that around the time police believe Graves vanished, Layton moved in with Novoa and began using Graves’ car, phone and credit cards and taking care of her dog.

The creepy caper came undone when Novoa asked a friend to keep a padlocked freezer, police said. But the friend grew suspicious and called police after finding Graves’ remains when he pried the freezer open.

Shannon Graves had last been seen around Christmas

Novoa and Layton are each being held on $1 million bond.

Son of ‘Monkey Head Doctor’ Admits Stealing Thousands from Ailing Mother

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A monkey who survived a head transplant

JEFFERSON, Ohio — The son of man known as the “monkey head doctor” has pleaded guilty to forging checks and stealing tens of thousands of dollars from his ailing mother.

Michael A. White, 57, of Geneva, Ohio, pleaded guilty to one count of forgery just days before his case was set to go to trial, the Ashtabula Star Beacon reported.

White was charged with forging his elderly mother’s name on checks and other documents starting in 2011. She died in 2013 at age 79.

White’s father, Robert J. White, was a globally renowned neuroscientist most noted for successfully transplanting the head of a living monkey to another monkey’s body in 1970.

Dr. Robert J. White

The surgery earned him the nickname “Dr. Butcher” among animal rights activists. He died in 2010.

 

Ohio Man Charged With Beating Wife Using His Prosthetic Leg

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Richard Wilson is accused of using not one, but two of his prosthetic legs to beta his wife

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Legally, it sounds like he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

A man is accused of attacking his wife his prosthetic legs during a knock-down, drag-out fight in their Ohio home.

Sandusky police say 63-year-old Richard T. Wilson Sr. was arrested Saturday after his wife, Ronna Wilson, told them he blew his top when cops showed up at their house the day before in response to a report of him being disorderly.

She told investigators that her husband hurled one of his prosthetic legs at her, striking her in the head, and then threw her to the ground. He then tried beating her with his other prosthetic leg, but she was able to block the blows, although she suffered injuries to her wrist.

Richard Wilson was charged with domestic violence. The Sandusky Register reported that Wilson denied the allegations to police and became agitated with the woman for “getting him in trouble.”

 

Dope Asks Cops to Send Police Dog to Help Find His Heroin

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BATH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — This is your brain on drugs.

A drug-addled dope made life easy for cops in Ohio when he called 911 and asked them to send a police dog to help him find some heroin he believed had been stolen from him.

“Dispatchers take all type of calls. This is one of the most bizarre that I’ve heard,” Bath Township Police Chief Mike McNeely told WEWS-TV.

The January call began harmlessly enough, but quickly took an odd turn when a distraught-sounding Joseph Murphy began asking for a police dog.

“You need a police dog?” the operator asked. “What’s going on there?”

“She stole heroin from me,” Murphy replied.

The 20-year-old seemed clueless about why this was a problem even after cops showed up and began quizzing him about the dope.

Police body camera footage shows Murphy explaining that a woman stole money from him, but when officers press him about the drugs he accused the woman of stealing on the 911 call, Murphy responded: “I believe she did, but she won’t admit to me.”

Cops say Murphy pulled a “brown waxy substance” from his pants and he was arrested.

Murphy made headlines earlier this year when he allegedly urinated on a police officer in Florida while being arrested for causing a disturbance at Disney World.

Two Ohio Ministers Hit With Sex Trafficking and Child Porn Charges

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Cordell Jenkins (l) and Anthony Haynes

TOLEDO, Ohio — Two prominent men of the cloth in Ohio have been indicted on sex trafficking and child pornography charges in a shocking case where they allegedly had sex with a 14-year-old girl being groomed to be a prostitute inside their houses of worship.

Federal prosecutors say Cordell Jenkins, 46, and Anthony Haynes, 37, have been charged with two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, one count of production of child pornography and one count of obstruction of a sex trafficking investigation.

“Adults in a position of trust taking advantage of children for their own sexual gratification is beyond reprehensible,” FBI Special Agent Stephen Anthony said.“These defendants are a stark reminder that human trafficking can be hidden in plain view.”

Authorities say Haynes, who has served as the pastor of the Greater Life Christian Center in Toledo, began grooming a 14-year-old girl to be a prostitute in 2014 when he began sexually assaulting her, which continued into this year.

Some of the assaults took place at his center, prosecutors said, and Haynes is accused of using his cell phone to film himself having sex with the victim.

Prosecutors say Haynes regularly gave the victim money after the acts in an effort to buy her silence, telling her that if she said anything, it would ruin his family and his church.

Haynes is also accused of handing the girl off to several other men who also sexually abused her. Authorities say Jenkins, who served as pastor at the Abundant Life Ministries, was one of those men and abused the girl at his office, home and at a motel in Toledo.

Jenkins also recorded the assaults on his phone and paid the girl what he called “hush money,” prosecutors said. His wife, Laura Lloyd-Jenkins, serves the administrator for Lucas County in northern Ohio.

Cremation of Obese Man Sparks Major Grease Fire at Cincinnati Chapel

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CINCINNATI — They say being overweight can kill you, but apparently it can continue posing a threat to others even after you die.

Authorities in Cincinnati say a dangerous grease fire was sparked at a funeral home during the cremation of an overly obese man.

“When a morbidly obese person is cremated, there’s a danger of what can only be called (in layman’s terms) a ‘grease fire,'” according to Caleb Wilde, a licensed funeral director told WCPO-TV.

The fire department says the flames spread to nearby container used to hold ashes and that they may have been stored too close to the crematorium.

The building is highly fireproof so the flames were contained but it still took firefighters two hours to get the situation under control. The building was not heavily damaged.

It’s not the first time that cremating the body of a an obese person has caused such a fire. In 2014, a funeral home in Virginia caught fire during the cremation of a 500-pound man.

 

Triple Murder Suspect Leaps to Death in Shocking Courthouse Plunge

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Robert Seman was about to start trial for a triple killing

 

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — A triple murder suspect stunned an Ohio courthouse when he leapt to his death from a four-story balcony inside the building.

The grisly death of Robert Seman Jr. brought a stunning end to a case that had sent shockwaves through the region.

Seman, 48, was awaiting trial on charges that he set a fire that killed a 10-year-old girl he was accused of repeatedly raping, as well as her grandparents. He faced the death penalty if convicted.

Seman leapt more than 50 feet to his death as he was being led by deputies to a holding cell from a courtroom after a routine status hearing at the Mahoning County Courthouse in Youngstown. Surveillance video showed Seman walking normally and appearing to speak calmly with the deputies when he suddenly made a mad dash for the balcony railing and hurled himself over.

“According to a couple of the attorneys and basically everybody there, it seemed like he was in pretty good spirits,” Sheriff Jerry Greene told the Youngstown Vindicator. “He was talking about the future of his trial, and he just decided to jump.”


The impact of Seman’s body — which weighed over 260 pounds — shook the building, the newspaper reported. Police said it was not unusual that Seman was walking through the courthouse unrestrained as judges prefer defendants not to be seen with cuffs on as it gives the impression to jurors that they are already guilty.

Seman was charged with killing 10-year-old Corrine Gump, 63-year-old William Schmidt and 61-year-old Judith Schmidt, in March 2015 in a fire at the family’s home that broke out the day Seman was set to be tried trial for raping the young girl. Gump, who was the daughter of a long-time girlfriend of Seman, was set to testify against him.

Investigators determined that the fire had been fueled by gasoline and Seman had severe burns on his body that were found after his arrest, prosecutors said.

His murder trial was set to begin Tuesday 35 miles away in Portage County, after his attorneys had successfully argued he could not get a fair trial in Youngstown because of pretrial publicity. A mistrial had been declared last September after a potential juror had prematurely concluded that Seman was guilty and discussed details about the case with fellow jurors.

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa said Monday that people were surprised that Seman was going through with a trial as the evidence was very strong against him.

“Every witness we talked to in preparation for the case, they didn’t know why he wasn’t pleading guilty or asking for some sort of plea,” Cantalamessa said.

Terrifying Toledo Man Charged With Chasing Relative With Hatchet

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Imagine this guy coming at you in a dark alley

TOLEDO, Ohio — This guy is the stuff of nightmares.

An Ohio man who looks like something straight out of a horror movie has been charged with chasing a relative with a hatchet.

Noel E. Dawson Jr., of Toledo, is accused of swinging the hatchet at the man Sunday but missed, striking the hood of his truck instead, and leaving a large dent, the Toledo Blaze reported.

Cops say when they arrived, Dawson refused to give officers any information and instead unleashed a string of obscenities at them.

Dawson, 63, was charged with domestic violence, assault, criminal damaging and failure to disclose personal information. He pleaded not guilty and was held on $50,000 bond.

‘Angel of Death’ Killer Dies After Brutal Prison Beating

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TOLEDO, Ohio — A former nurse’s aide who admitted killing 37 patients, earning him the name the “Angel of Death,” has died two days after being brutally beaten in his prison cell, authorities said.

Donald Harvey, 64, was serving multiple life sentences at a state prison in Toledo, when he was found badly  beaten in his cell on Tuesday. Further details about the incident have yet to be released.

Harvey earned his evil moniker during the 1970s and 1980s while working as a nurse’s aide at hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky where he poisoned numerous patients in what he claimed was an effort to end their suffering.

Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. who prosecuted the cases against Harvey, insisted that he  was not a mercy killer.

“He killed because he liked to kill,” he said.

In 1987, Harvey pleaded guilty to killing 37 people, but he later claimed to be responsible for 18 additional deaths while working at the Veterans Administration Center in Cincinnati.

Harvey had been jailed since 1987

Harvey said he began plying his deadly trade in 1970 at Marymount Hospital in Kentucky and he later admitted to killing 21 of his victims at the Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati.

Most of his victims were people who were chronically ill, and Harvey said he was just trying to put them out of their mystery. In most cases, he used cyanide and arsenic to poison his victims, putting in their food. In other instances, he would allow their oxygen tanks to run out.

He was eventually caught when a medical examiner smelled cyanide while performing an autopsy on one victim. Harvey pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, but admitted to a newspaper that he liked being in control of who live and who died.

He was caught after a medical examiner smelled cyanide while performing an autopsy on a victim.

Harvey told a newspaper after he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty that he liked the control of determining who lived and died.

Mysterious A1 Steak Sauce Caper Leaves Ohio Librarians Baffled

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AVON LAKE, Ohio — This is one tasty caper.

Employees of a public library in Ohio have been puzzled by the mysterious appearance of dozens of bottles of A1 steak sauce stashed throughout the building.

The first bottle turned up in January, when one was found in the newspaper area, employee Linda Janesz told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Since then, employees have been finding them stashed all over the place — with bottles showing up behind books and planters throughout the main portion of the library.

“Sometimes we find one, sometimes we find three or four, sometimes we don’t find any,” Janesz said. “Our surveillance video doesn’t show anyone trying to hide something.”

Even more puzzling is the fact that “they are always empty.”

“We believe they are being hidden during the day so we don’t believe it would be a student,” she said.

The library has contacted police who told them they have not received any reports of similar activity anywhere else.

“We don’t know if they are playing a game or purposely doing this to stump us,” Janesz said. “It’s just kind of bizarre. Is it a game that we don’t know how to play or are we messing up someone’s game?”