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Newly submitted physical evidence allows Howland police to charge man in 1996 rape, break-in
By Ed Runyan
HOWLAND
Howland police expect to return Jack L. Sheetz, 48, of Utica, N.Y., to Trumbull County today to face rape, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery charges relating to an attack on a woman, 75, on Orchard Avenue in December 1996.
Sheetz was secretly indicted Thursday by a Trumbull grand jury and is in custody in the Oneida County, N.Y., jail. He could get 30 years in prison if convicted.
He will be arraigned Wednesday by Judge W. Wyatt McKay in common pleas court. He waived extradition from New York last week, said Howland Police Chief Paul Monroe.
The charges accuse Sheetz of breaking into Virginia Swindler’s home in the Bolindale area at night and raping her. Sheetz was renovating a vacant home next door for someone and staying in the home, Monroe said. Swindler has since died.
Sheetz was a suspect early on, but detectives did not have evidence enough to prove he had done it, Monroe said. DNA evidence had not begun in 1996.
The case was never closed, but it was re-investigated several times, including last November and December, when Detectives Tony Villanueva and Jeff Edmundson took a fresh look at it.
They conferred with the FBI and took physical evidence to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation crime lab in Northfield, where a piece of overlooked evidence was tested.
The DNA matched DNA for Sheetz. His DNA was in a national database because of a 2004 Trumbull County conviction for breaking and entering and grand theft of a motor vehicle in the Warren area.
Sheetz got probation in 2004 but was sent to prison for 17 months in 2006 on a probation violation.
Monroe credited the detectives for their work in turning up the additional evidence. “They just kept chomping away, and their work has paid off,” said Monroe, who becomes sheriff at the start of next year.