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Ferrara conviction upheld in 1974 triple murder of Marsh family
YOUNGSTOWN
A three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals has unanimously upheld the conviction of James P. Ferrara in a Canfield triple murder that occurred nearly 41 years ago.
Ferrara was convicted in the Dec. 13, 1974, shooting deaths of Benjamin Marsh, 33, and his wife, Marilyn, 32, and in the beating death of their 4-year-old daughter, Heather, in their South Turner Road home.
Their 1-year-old son, Christopher, was found nearly a day later. He suffered a concussion and survived.
After a jury convicted Ferrara of three counts of aggravated murder in 2013, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, sentenced him to three consecutive life-prison terms without parole.
Ferrara, 66, also is serving prison time for a 1983 Columbus-area double homicide.
The Marsh case was reopened in 2009, when the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation matched three fingerprints found on the Marsh’s garage door to those it had on file from Ferrara.
In 2011, Ferrara told Detective Patrick Mondora of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office he didn’t know Ben Marsh or where he lived, had never been to the Marsh residence and didn’t know where Canfield was, the appeals court decision noted.
“This case depends almost completely on the fingerprint evidence,” the appeals panel observed.
The fingerprints, however, coupled with Ferrara’s statements to the detective constituted “sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that appellant was the one who broke into the Marshes’ house and murdered them,” the appeals court ruled.
Monday’s decision was written by Judge Gene Donofrio, with Judges Cheryl L. Waite and Mary DeGenaro concurring.