Prosecutors display evidence against Robert Seman, a day after his suicide

YOUNGSTOWN

Dawn Cantalamessa has prosecuted a lot of murderers in her time as an assistant prosecutor in Mahoning County.

Tuesday, she said during a news conference, none of them were as evil as Robert Seman, who committed suicide Monday by leaping to his death inside the Mahoning County Courthouse.

He had just attended a pretrial hearing in his death-penalty case for the murders of Corinne Gump, 10, and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, during a March 30, 2015, arson at the Schmidt’s Powers Way home.

“I think it’s the most cold, calculated murder we’ve seen in all the years I’ve been here,” Cantalamessa said.

But Thomas Zena, a defense lawyer for Seman, said the defense would not have gone into the trial empty-handed.

“I’m not attempting to say that a jury may not have found him guilty,” Zena said. “I’m trying to tell you that there were things in this case that could have been brought out at trial that just show something on the other side ...

“I think the general feeling in the community is that the defense had absolutely nothing (to present in the trial), and that was not true,” Zena told a reporter after the prosecutors’ news conference.

Flanked by her colleagues Michael Yacovone and Jennifer McLaughlin, Cantalamessa went over the evidence prosecutors would have presented in the case against Seman, which had been set to begin with jury orientation today in Portage County Common Pleas Court.

Also on display was evidence that would have been shown to jurors, including gas cans found at the scene, gloves with Seman’s DNA found at the scene, pictures of burns on Seman’s face that surfaced two days after the fire and makeup he bought to cover the burns.

As to prosecutors’ contention that Seman broke his electronically-monitored house arrest to set the fatal fire, Zena observed: “Every part of the electronic monitoring device said he was home.” Such ankle-mounted devices are difficult to remove and show evidence when they’re tampered with, he added.

The defense provided an alibi that Seman was home on the morning of the fire, so he could not have been at the fire scene. Prosecutors had no witnesses that would have said they saw Seman at the fire scene, Zena noted.

Zena also addressed the DNA in the plastic glove found with a gasoline can at the fire scene.

“There was a plastic glove sitting on the gas can with gas in it – a latex glove surrounded by burned and charred material. This didn’t have one mark on it. Not only that, the gas didn’t explode,” Zena said.

“We’re saying we don’t know how that got there, but it couldn’t have gotten there before (or during) the fire, or the glove would have melted, and the gas can would have exploded,” he added.

Read more about the case in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.