Daughters testify; wife, mother invoke 5th

By Ed Runyan

Another man involved in the fatal fight testified that Stahlman told him, ‘I think I might have stabbed that guy.’

WARREN — Ronald Stahlman fled to the western United States with his wife and two small girls in 1979 and succeeded in changing his family into the O’Neils — Jim, Pam, Tina and Rhonda.

But in 1993, the family decided that the girls, who had been born in Warren, needed to have any record of their former name — Stahlman — erased.

So the girls were taken to a Social Security Administration office in Arizona and had their surname legally changed to O’Neil.

The girls, who were teenagers at the time, were informed that their former name was Stahlman, but that news didn’t make much of an impression on them, they testified Tuesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in their father’s murder trial.

But learning that two girls in Arizona had changed their name from Stahlman to O’Neil in 1993 made quite an impression on U.S. Marshal Bill Bolden and Warren Detective Brian Holmes, when they hit on that fact while searching computerized records in 2008.

It gave the lawmen a reason to look closer at the two girls, now in their 30s, and determine whether the girls would lead them to Ronald Stahlman, the man who had been wanted for the murder of Bernard Williamson since 1979.

And it did.

It only took a few hours after they arrived in Payson, Ariz., an isolated town 80 miles north of Phoenix before they located Stahlman and took him into custody.

Stahlman is accused of stabbing to death Williamson, who was 18, at Front and Fulton streets Southwest April 29, 1979. The trial resumes for a third day today.

Under questioning by Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, Stahlman’s daughters testified how it was possible to grow into adulthood without knowing the true last name of their father’s parents and brothers.

Rhonda Doss, 31, said she knew she had uncles named Bill and Bob back in Ohio, but she never had any reason to wonder what their last name was.

Since they lived so far from Ohio, she never questioned why she had no contact with any of her father’s family or ever got Christmas or birthday gifts from them, she said.

As for Stahlman’s wife, Pam, she went by her maiden name, Pam Liebal, Stahlman’s oldest daughter, Tina O’Neil, testified.

Pam Liebal was called to testify, but she invoked her Fifth Amendment right to stay silent on the grounds that her testimony might incriminate her. Stahlman’s mother, Frances, who lives on Meadow Lane in Warren, did likewise.

Also testifying was Roger P. Collins, 60, of Mineral Ridge, the man who came forward after Williamson’s death and told police he had been involved in the fight with Williamson and left the area for a week with Stahlman afterward.

Collins, who is related to Stahlman by marriage, said he and Stahlman had been friends since the early 1970s. The men worked on motorcycles together and went out together.

On April 29, 1979, Collins, Stahlman and a third friend went to a bar. Later, Collins and Stahlman dropped off the third man at his home, and Collins drove erratically back to his house.

At the traffic light at Fulton Street and Main Avenue, Williamson got out of his car and confronted Collins about hitting the back of Williamson’s car, and a fight began.

“I got knocked down pretty quick,” Collins said. “I think I was out, too, for a moment.”

The next thing Collins said he remembered was seeing a cut on his left arm. Then he saw Williamson.

“He was sitting there, leaning on the car, so I ran past him and got into the car,” Collins said of his pickup t ∫ruck.

At that point, Collins drove off with Stahlman in the passenger seat.

“We were going down the road. Ron was kind of upset. He says, ‘I think I might have stabbed that guy,’” Collins testified.

Collins surrendered to police May 6, 1979, and later pleaded guilty to assault and obstructing justice involving the case. He spent six months in jail.

runyan@vindy.com