Justice may yet catch up with serial killer of young women


The annals of jurisprudence are full of cases of criminals getting off with light sentences.

Yesterday’s editorial addressed just such a local case.

But the worst of these miscarriages of justice are those that involve someone getting away with murder.

Meet Nolan Ray George, a 67-year-old serial killer from Butler County, Ohio.

Of course, it is important to remember that George is innocent until proven guilty. And therein lies possibly the most startling fact: George has been proven guilty of strangling or suffocating two women, both pregnant, 14 years apart. And for both those killings George served less that 22 years in prison, 12 for the first, about 10 for the second.

Some of the lightness of his prison time was attributable to his ability and luck in appealing his convictions and in making subsequent plea bargains in the deaths of a Michigan woman and an Ohio woman. He was more than lucky in that Michigan police and prosecutors back in 1968 did not pursue charges for the death of a second woman, possibly because Pontiac, Mich., police told him he wouldn’t be prosecuted if he confessed.

Whatever happened or didn’t happen then, a cold-case investigation opened in Butler County, just north of Cincinnati, has established ties between George and not only the two women he was convicted of killing and the woman he confessed to killing but for which he wasn’t prosecuted, but the deaths of two Southeast Ohio women and, possibly, a Northern Ohio woman. Who knows if there are others?

The trail of bodies

A chronology put together by the Cincinnati Enquirer shows that George pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1969 strangulation death of Francis Brown, 22, who was found semi-nude in a car parked outside a Lake Orion, Mich., tavern. He also confessed to killing Gwendolyn Perry, 22, whose semi-nude body was found in a Pontiac, Mich., field in December 1968, but he was not charged in her murder.

George was sentenced to 40-60 years but in 1973, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, saying the judge did not advise him adequately of his right to confront witnesses and his right against self-incrimination.

He went on trial for the Brown killing in 1973, but the jury hung. He was eventually convicted of second-degree murder, but the Court of Appeals again overturned the conviction on a technicality.

In 1977, he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the Brown killing and was sentenced to 17-25 years with credit for time served. He was released in 1982.

Just 11 months later, George strangled Cindy Garland Rose, 22, in Hamilton, Ohio. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years. Police suspected him in another strangulation a few weeks later, but he was not charged. He was released in 1992 and has lived in Ohio much of the time since.

The Oakland County, Mich., prosecutor has reopened the investigation into the Perry murder, and George was arrested last week in Monroe, Ohio, on a charge of murder.

Meanwhile, Detective Frank Smith of the Butler County Sheriff’s Department is investigating George in the strangulation deaths of Della Mae Miller, 24, of Covington in 1967 and Tammy King, 22, of Price Hill in 1982. He also said he was awaiting DNA results that could tie George to the death of a northern Ohio woman.

Where’s the justice?

If the theory that George is responsible for the murder of five women over a period of 14 years in two states holds true, justice has been perverted. In any case, justice has been denied, because George has been convicted of or confessed to the murder of three women, yet he served only 22 years in prison and has been living as a free man for the last 18.

It’s encouraging that fresh eyes and renewed dedication by police and prosecutors in Michigan and Ohio are focused on George. But at the very least, he should have been put away forever a long time ago.

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