Widow’s murder in 1994 shook Ohio neighborhood

COLUMBUS (AP) — Lawrence Reynolds Jr. was out of work and needed money to fuel his alcohol addiction, prosecutors said.

When he ran out of personal items to sell, he knocked on his neighbor’s door, forced his way inside and strangled the 67-year-old woman with rope. He left with $40 in cash and a blank check from her purse.

Reynolds, 43, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday for the 1994 killing of Loretta Foster, who lived three doors down in their Cuyahoga Falls neighborhood.

It would be Ohio’s first execution since Sept. 15, when Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the procedure on inmate Romell Broom after state executioners struggled for two hours to find a usable vein.

Broom’s execution is on hold while his attorneys prepare for a Nov. 30 hearing in federal court. They argue that an unprecedented second execution attempt on Broom violates a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

That delay hasn’t stopped plans for executing Reynolds. The Ohio Supreme Court last week rejected his argument that the lethal injection system should be investigated before the state tries to put him to death. Defense lawyers have appeals pending in federal courts and Reynolds has asked Strickland for clemency.

Reynolds’ brutal crime shattered the victim’s family and tore apart his own.

Foster was like a grandmother to kids in the neighborhood, baby-sitting from time to time, said Lori Reynolds, who remains so upset by the murder that she hasn’t spoken to her older brother since his arrest 15 years ago.

“We’d sit at her house and play games for hours,” Lori Reynolds recalled of the time she spent with Foster, a widow whose husband died in the mid-1970s. “She taught me how to cook and bake.”

Lawrence Reynolds, who left home after graduating from high school and spent six years in the Army, wasn’t as close to Foster as his three younger siblings, his sister said.

Reynolds’ childhood was marred by alcohol abuse. He was getting intoxicated by the time he was in sixth grade, he told a psychologist during a prison interview before a September clemency hearing.

Upon leaving the Army, Reynolds moved back home. He got fired from his uncle’s window replacement company for showing up late — or not showing up at all — because of late-night drinking binges.

About a month before her murder, Foster hired Reynolds to paint her basement. Reynolds claimed he was promised $300 but only got $100, said Summit County assistant prosecutor Brad Gessner.

Reynolds harassed the widow for weeks — knocking on her door after dark, hiding outside and jumping out to scare her, Gessner said. Foster complained to her son, Michael, that she was scared.

Reynolds went to the widow’s house again Jan. 11, 1994, this time wearing camouflage clothing and carrying a wooden tent pole, which he used to beat Foster when she reached for a phone and tried to call for help, prosecutors said. Then he strangled her and removed her clothes.

At a bar later that night, Reynolds told a group of friends what happened. Unsure whether to believe him, the group went to Foster’s house and saw her body lying on the floor.

Two of the friends went to a police station and reported what they saw. Detectives who arrived at Reynolds’ house arrested him, seizing the camouflage outfit, gloves, tent pole and blank check from Foster’s purse.

At the trial, Reynolds’ defense team didn’t deny that Reynolds was responsible for the murder but attempted to show that he was drunk and had not gone to Foster’s house intending to kill her.

He was convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and attempted rape.

“Larry is very remorseful for what he did,” said assistant public defender Kathryn Sandford.

Reynolds has had few family visits while in prison, and his parents wanted nothing to do with his request for clemency. His sister, Sheila Breiding, however, signed an affidavit saying she didn’t want her brother to die.

The state Parole Board recommended that Strickland not grant mercy.

Asked in prison how he felt about his execution date, Reynolds told the psychologist, “I’m basically at peace with it. ... I’d rather it not take place, [but] I think I’m where I need to be spiritually.”

Foster’s family members declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press but told the parole board in September that the crime continues to haunt them.