Witnesses testify in Beshara murder trial

The homicide victim was identified by dental records two days after her death.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- As he was waiting to go to church, Andy Leone was startled by the squealing of car tires outside his South Side residence early on a summer Sunday morning as he sat on his porch drinking coffee and reading a magazine.
"It ran over something. What, I didn't know," Leone testified Friday morning in the trial of Benjamin Beshara, 33, who is charged with kidnapping, robbing and killing Marilyn Guthrie, 61, of Niles, by driving her own car over her.
Leone, of Hudson Avenue, said he saw the car back up, fishtail, stop, and then pull forward on Parkcliff Avenue near Hudson Avenue between 8 and 8:30 a.m. July 10, 2005, before speeding off toward Market Street.
Thinking the car might have hit a fallen tree limb, Leone went to investigate, finding a woman, later identified as Guthrie, lying face down on the pavement. He testified that he ran home and called 911 and that police and an ambulance arrived within minutes.
Prosecution's case
Leone was among the first witnesses to testify as Martin P. Desmond, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, began presenting his case in Beshara's trial before a six-man, six-woman jury in the courtroom of Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. If convicted of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated murder, Beshara faces 26 years to life in prison without parole. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty.
Patrolman Kenneth Ruse of the Youngstown Police Department said he responded to a call concerning someone hit by a car on Parkcliff Avenue and found an unidentified woman lying face down in the middle of the street. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later and took her to St. Elizabeth Health Center, where she died that morning.
"We weren't sure if it was a hit-skip or a homicide," Ruse said.
Sister-in-law testifies
Guthrie's sister-in-law, Robin Ruschman of McDonald, said she received a telephone call around 10 a.m. July 11 from Guthrie's workplace -- the Liberty Arms assisted living center -- saying Guthrie hadn't shown up for work. "I couldn't imagine her not going to work. It was very uncharacteristic of her," Ruschman said.
After making several telephone calls to family members and friends in an effort to locate Guthrie, Ruschman said she went to the gated Niles apartment community, where the manager let her and police into Guthrie's apartment between 5:30 and 6 p.m. July 11. She saw that Guthrie wasn't there, that her bed was unmade, which Ruschman said was "not like her," and that Guthrie's purse, keys and watch were missing, Ruschman testified.
Ruschman, who then filed a missing-person report with Niles police, told the jury she could think of no reason for Guthrie to be on Youngstown's South Side.
After hearing news reports that an unidentified woman was run over and killed by a car in Youngstown, Ruschman called the Mahoning County coroner's office and was told to bring a photo of Guthrie to the coroner's office. When she got there, coroner's office staff members told her they'd need dental records to make a positive identification, so Ruschman procured records from Guthrie's dentist.
Ruschman testified that she got a phone call from the coroner's office that afternoon saying a forensic dentist had identified the deceased as Guthrie based on the dental records.
Allegations
The prosecution says Beshara, a neighbor of Guthrie, had planned to lure Guthrie out of her apartment in the Carnegie Arms complex on Youll Street, saying he needed her to give him a ride to a store to pick up medication for his ailing father. Beshara and three teenage accomplices abducted Guthrie shortly after 6 a.m. July 10 from outside her apartment, put her in the trunk of her car and took her to a Mahoning Avenue store parking lot, the prosecution says.
There, Beshara opened the trunk, demanded money, beat her and shut the trunk, Desmond said in his opening statement Thursday. While lying in the open trunk on Mahoning Avenue, Guthrie addressed Beshara by his first name and begged for her life, and Beshara then told his accomplices she'd have to be killed, Desmond said Thursday.
When the group got to Parkcliff Avenue, Beshara removed her from the trunk, threw her to the pavement and ran over her twice, Desmond said in his statement Thursday.
Judge Krichbaum excused a female juror, who had injured her ankle, and replaced her with a female alternate before testimony began Friday morning, leaving only one alternate.
The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Monday.