Cold case warms up: Arrest made in ’01 killing

The suspect is in the
Mahoning County Jail awaiting arraignment.

YOUNGSTOWN — Authorities have arrested a man in the death of a 16-year-old boy who was reported missing nearly six years ago.

James P. Higham’s body was never found. Youngstown Police Chief Jimmy Hughes and Capt. Kenneth Centorame, chief of detectives, said Thursday the boy was drowned and dismembered, and his body was disposed of in a trash bin and in several other places on the city’s South Side.

They would not be more specific. They said his remains are in a landfill.

Charged with murder, tampering with evidence, endangering children, permitting child abuse and gross abuse of a corpse is David Sharpe, 44, of Pyatt Street. All of the charges are felonies.

Sharpe was indicted Thursday on the charges, which were presented to the Mahoning County grand jury.

Authorities from YPD, the U.S. Marshals Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force, the Ohio Adult Parole Authority and the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office arrested Sharpe at his home at 5:50 p.m. Thursday.

He was in the Mahoning County Jail and was expected to be at the county common pleas court for arraignment today.

The grand jury also indicted Sharpe’s girlfriend, Jennifer Lynn Snyder, 34, in August on felony charges of tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, child endangerment and permitting child abuse.

Snyder is serving a prison sentence in an unrelated case, Hughes said. He had no details on that case.

Sharpe and Snyder had the teenager with them after his parents split up. His mother had returned to her native Japan, and his father gave custody of the boy to Snyder, a relative through marriage, authorities have said.

The father lives somewhere in this country, Hughes and Centorame said, but the boy had no other family in this area.

The indictment says the boy was killed on or around June 15, 2001. Snyder did not report him missing until Jan. 3, 2002, authorities have said.

Centorame said Thursday that authorities believe Sharpe drowned the boy in a bathtub after a confrontation at 22 Manchester Ave. on the city’s West Side, where Snyder was living at the time.

He said he had no idea why the child’s body was taken to the South Side.

It was Snyder who finally implicated Sharpe, Centorame said.

Centorame said the circumstances of the boy’s death “give new meaning to the words evil, cruel and pathetic.”

Hughes said that despite the time lapse, authorities believe they have a good case against the defendants.

He said he believes a jury or judge will be able to determine a murder was committed and that Sharpe is responsible for it.

The chief credited agencies who worked on the case — the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department, the Adult Parole Authority, Mahoning County Children Services, the FBI, the violent crimes task force, the drug task force, the U.S. Marshals office, Youngstown State University, the YPD street crimes unit and the county prosecutor’s office.