VRABEL CASE Killer took motive to grave

Stephen Vrabel apparently told no one, even his lawyers, why he did it.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Even after his death by execution, Stephen A. Vrabel remained an enigma to those who had fought for his life.
During his 1995 trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, where he was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Susan Clemente, and their 3-year-old daughter, Lisa, Vrabel was uncooperative and combative with his lawyers, John F. Shultz and Paul Gains, refusing to let them mount a defense for him.
Several times during the trial, Vrabel asked that the court-appointed lawyers be removed from the case so he could defend himself. It seemed that Vrabel wanted to be convicted and sentenced to death, his lawyers said last week.
Shultz recalled Vrabel's impassioned statement to the jury, in which he said that there was no mitigation for what he'd done and that the jury had no choice but to recommend the death penalty.
"I was stunned," Shultz said. "I just sat there with my hands over my face. I couldn't believe it."
Thanks in death
Yet late Wednesday morning, shortly after the 47-year-old Vrabel was put to death by lethal injection, Shultz got a telephone call from Vrabel's sister, Karen Koval.
"She said Steve wanted her to thank Paul and me for working so hard for him," Shultz said, sounding a bit bewildered. "I guess life is just full of ironies."
That is the legal legacy of Vrabel -- convicted of killing his family without ever admitting or denying it and unwilling to allow anyone to put up a fight to spare him the death penalty.
When the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence last year, Vrabel waived all further appeals and asked that the execution be carried out. He was pronounced dead at 10:14 a.m. Wednesday.
Keeping mum
Authorities and Clemente's family were confounded by the fact that Vrabel never offered an explanation for the killings.
"He never told anyone. Not even his lawyers or the doctors who evaluated him," said Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, who presided over the trial and pronounced the death sentence. "He never denied this, and he never admitted it. That's the bottom line."
Vrabel was evaluated more than once to determine his mental competency to stand trial. He was originally declared incompetent, but after four years of psychiatric treatment was deemed competent and was tried.
For Shultz and Gains, who is now Mahoning County prosecutor, Vrabel's refusal to open up made it maddeningly difficult to defend him.
"He never told us why he did it. He wouldn't talk about it," Gains said. "He certainly did not want a vigorous defense. That's what was so perplexing."
Quite a character
Shultz and Gains both remembered Vrabel as a thoughtful and intelligent man given to outlandish and bizarre behavior, whose life was filled with ironic twists.
After Vrabel killed Clemente, he could have cashed her welfare check and pocketed the money.
"But he didn't do it because it was against the law," Gains said. "That's the thing about him that sticks out in my mind. I'll never forget that."
"Steve truly was the most unique individual I've ever represented," Shultz said. "I've represented some pretty tough people, some pretty bad people and some pretty good people. Steve is, and always will be, in a category all by himself."
Personal convictions
Gains and Shultz would not say whether they believe Vrabel actually committed the murders, but Kenneth Bailey, who was the lead prosecutor on the case, has no such reservations.
He said after Vrabel killed the victims, he got books with instructions on cleaning up bloodstains.
"He knew what he was doing," said Bailey, who works as an assistant prosecutor in Trumbull County. "He intended to get away with it if he could."
Judge Krichbaum also was "100 percent" convinced that Vrabel committed the murders. That, and his belief that Vrabel was given a fair trial, have kept the judge from having any second thoughts about imposing the death penalty.
"There are no regrets in that sense," he said.
But Vrabel's execution for murder was yet another ironic twist in his life, Judge Krichbaum said.
"Regardless of the fact that it is legal and justified, [the death penalty] is still the taking of a person's life," he said. "The very act that we condemn is justified by law."
Vrabel's execution also has put a face on the death penalty, which Judge Krichbaum said until now had been an "abstract concept" in Mahoning County. Several people have been sentenced to death, but Vrabel is the first from the county since 1948 to be executed.
"It has always been a possibility, but in Ohio it has never been a probability, and it's never a certainty," the judge said. He said the appeals process usually drags on for years, and inmates often die in prison before they are executed.
Mixed emotions
Shultz said he has defended nearly a dozen people charged with capital murder during his 20-plus years in practice. Three are on death row, and Vrabel is the first to be executed.
"It's a very difficult feeling to explain," Shultz said. "You're left with a very hollow feeling, wondering whether there was something more I could have done."
"It's a mixed bag of emotions," Gains said. "I'll always have that self-doubt, wondering whether I could have done something differently."
But both Gains and Judge Krichbaum said the execution will not dissuade them from seeking or imposing the death penalty in future cases when it is appropriate.
"Courts are duty bound to honor the law," Judge Krichbaum said. "Although that may sometimes be a difficult thing emotionally, it is never difficult professionally."
Likewise, Bailey said the death penalty is a necessary punishment for people like Vrabel.
"Society is better off without these people," he said. "They deserve to die."
bjackson@vindy.com