Valley crime in 2007: From the horrific to the daring

Several of the year’s high-profile cases, including the Jan. 29 quadruple
homicide in Youngstown and the March slaying of an Air Force Reserves captain in Newton Falls, remain unsolved.

STAFF REPORT

What a year in crime in the Mahoning Valley: 2007 began with a horrific execution-style quadruple homicide in Youngstown and ended with a daring $7.4 million heist in Liberty.

The FBI said Roger Lee Dillon, 22, and his girlfriend Nicole D. Boyd, 25, tried to hide in his mother’s double-wide, counting the millions by their side.

The Youngstown couple is accused of planning what was meant to be one of the biggest thefts in history, but apparently did not put enough thought into an escape plan.

Dillon worked as a driver/messenger for AT Systems, an armored-car company on Tibbetts-Wick Road in Liberty.

On. Nov. 26, the alarm system was disabled at the business, a surveillance tape taken and two large safes cleaned out of $7.4 million in cash and checks. Dillon didn’t show up for work the next day, and Boyd’s purple pickup truck was found abandoned in Salem.

FBI agents, using receipts found in the pickup, tracked Dillon and Boyd to a trailer home in Pipestem, W.Va., on Dec. 1. Also there was Dillon’s 48-year-old mother, Sharon Gregory of Youngstown.

A federal grand jury indicted Dillon, Boyd and Gregory on Dec. 5. They are charged with conspiracy to steal money from a bank; conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines; and transporting and aiding and abetting in that transportation.

The quadruple homicide at 548 W. Evergreen Ave. on Jan. 29 remains unsolved. Those killed in a second-floor bedroom, all from Youngstown, were: Anthony M. Crockett, 23; Christopher D. Howard, 24; Marvin Boone, 19; and Danielle Parker, 22. All had been shot in the head. There was no sign of forced entry, and the victims were not bound or gagged.

First officers on the scene found two of the male victims dead on separate couches in the bedroom; the third man was on the floor. Parker was curled in a fetal position in a corner of the room. Numerous shell casings were found on the floor.

The pilot’s wife

On March 12, 44-year-old Karl D. Hoerig was shot to death at his Newton Falls home. He was a full-time commercial pilot and a major in the Air Force Reserves, having flown more than 200 combat missions.

His wife, Claudia Hoerig, 42, was indicted by a Trumbull County grand jury on a charge of aggravated murder with a gun specification in April. She had already fled to Brazil. She has dual U.S. and Brazilian citizenship.

Brazil has refused to extradite her, causing U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, to work to put pressure on the Brazilian government to get her back to stand trial.

Hospital escapee

On April 2, it took federal detainee Billy Jack Fitzmorris of Columbus just 70 seconds to sprint out of St. Elizabeth Health Center and begin his trek to a Columbus suburb. Fitzmorris, who was at the hospital for a gash on his head, overpowered a Northeast Ohio Correctional Center guard on the eighth floor of the hospital and escaped with a guard’s uniform and .38-caliber revolver. He carjacked an Austintown man outside the hospital and headed southwest.

Reports soon came in from the Columbus area that Fitzmorris, in a Corrections Corporation of America uniform shirt, had held up two banks. CCA is the parent company of the private prison on Hubbard Road that houses federal detainees. Fitzmorris managed to make it to the Columbus suburb of Hilliard, where he kicked in the door at an accounting business and holed up. He surrendered to police about six hours after his hospital escape.

In May, Michael K. Pearson of Fairmont Avenue, Youngstown, a one-time counselor at the private prison on Hubbard Road, was charged with bribery and providing contraband to an inmate. The two-count federal indictment said he slipped cocaine, cigarettes, cell phones and MP3 players to the inmate and accepted cash for the prohibited items. Pearson pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He is expected to report to prison sometime after Jan. 26, records show.

Salem band director

Salem’s former band director, James L. Purrington, was sentenced June 21 to a year in prison in connection with having sex with a band member.

Purrington, 45, of West 12th Street, Salem, had pleaded guilty to one count of sexual battery, a third-degree felony. The charge said he had sex with a girl who was baby-sitting at his home May 24, 2006.

Purrington resigned his position in 2006 just before he was indicted.

Timothy McNicol, assistant Columbiana County prosecutor, said there was no force involved. The sexual conduct was a felony because of the student-teacher relationship, McNicol said.

Under the sentence, Purrington was classified as a “sexually oriented offender.”

Ceremonial ax

In June, on Belden Avenue in Youngstown, Forrest Adams and his visiting teenage son told police that a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and a bandanna to cover his face surprised them on the porch when they arrived home and forced them to open the door. The intruder screamed that he wanted all their money, threatened them with the gun and said “Don’t [expletive] with me; I do this for a living.”

Adams and his son were told to strip to their underwear before being marched into the dining room and ordered to lie on the floor. Police said when Adams told the intruder he had no money, the suspect, later identified as Derrick J. Harmon, aka Derrick Harman, fired one round into the floor and then yelled: “Don’t [expletive] with me — I will shoot your kid!”

Adams suffered knife wounds to his left hand and upper arm. The cuts came from a kitchen knife the intruder snatched after dropping his gun. Adams managed to slice the intruder with a ceremonial ax, and Adams’ son shot the man. Harmon is set for a pretrial hearing in February.

Triple homicide

In August, Youngstown recorded a triple homicide when 29-year-old Helen Moore, nine months pregnant, was shot in the neck as her car traveled on North Center Street. Moore and her unborn baby died at the scene. Her 8-year-old son, Ceonei, sitting in the front seat, died later from a gunshot wound to the head. Curtis J. Young, father of the unborn baby, is charged with three counts of aggravated murder and set for trial in June.

In November, off-duty Youngstown firefighter Andre “Dre” Johnson was shot in the face, stomach and leg at his North Fruit Street home during what detectives believe was a drug deal gone bad. More than a pound of marijuana was found in the house after the shooting, and Johnson, 26, was indicted on charges of drug trafficking and possession of marijuana and then fired by the mayor and fire chief.

Prison for life

Three Youngstown men were sent to prison for life last year for the brazen shooting of 23-year-old Martwain Dill in the middle of Glenwood Avenue during broad daylight in November 2006. Bertrum Moore and Eric Lewis, both 19, and Gary Crockett, 30, were all convicted during trials in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Moore was the driver of the car, while Lewis and Crockett were the gunmen who fired around two dozen shots into Dill and his pickup truck.

Police think the shooting was motivated by bad blood resulting from testimony Dill may have promised to give into drug activities in Decatur, Ga., from a year earlier. They also believe the Dill shooting led to the quadruple homicide in January, which prompted the mayor to launch a “zero tolerance” traffic interdiction program.

Ran over woman

Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced Benjamin Beshara to life in prison without parole in January after a jury convicted him of killing Marilyn Guthrie by running over her with her own car July 10, 2005, on Youngstown’s South Side.

Judge Krichbaum also sentenced Beshara, 31, to prison terms of 10 years each for kidnapping and robbing Guthrie, 61, whom he lured out of her Niles apartment and forced into the trunk of her car. Three teenage accomplices, who turned against Beshara, cooperated with the prosecution.

Cold murder cases

Recent DNA testing led to the October arrest of Bennie L. Adams, 50, of Hollywood Avenue, who faces the death penalty in the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation death of Gina Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student, whose body was found floating in the Mahoning River the day after she was slain.

Adams, who was Tenney’s Ohio Avenue duplex neighbor, is charged with aggravated murder, rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. He was imprisoned until 2004 for a 1986 rape conviction in another case.

In another cold homicide case, David Sharpe, 44, of Pyatt Street, was arrested in November on a murder charge in the 2001 bathtub drowning and dismemberment of 15-year-old James P. Higham, whose remains were allegedly disposed of as trash, went to a landfill and were never found.

Sharpe was also charged with tampering with evidence, endangering children, permitting child abuse and gross abuse of a corpse after his live-in girlfriend, Jennifer Lynn Snyder, 34, was indicted on the same charges, except for the murder, and gave statements to police about the case.

Cops in trouble

Stephen Kendall and Nick Levinsky were Boardman police officers who saw the other side of the law.

Kendall was sentenced in January to six months at Community Corrections Association after pleading guilty to gross sexual imposition of a 17-year-old girl, a felony.

He was accused of picking up a 25-year-old woman outside a U.S. Route 224 restaurant/bar while he was on duty and having consensual sex in his cruiser with her. He also was accused of using the Law Enforcement Automated Data System to look up both the 17-and 25-year-old women, sending sexually explicit photographs to the 17-year-old’s cell phone and paying the girl $500 for sex. The two women are cousins.

Ken Kasiewicz, who wasn’t criminally charged, also was accused of using LEADS to run the women’s information. Both officers resigned from their jobs.

In February, Levinsky, a Boardman police sergeant, also resigned and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of telecommunications harassment by way of aggravated menacing.

He was accused of posting threatening messages directed at his estranged wife, township Trustee Robyn Gallitto, on an Internet message board.

The couple has divorced.